THE WEEK THAT WAS!!!

AT LEAST YOU CAN’T CALL the State House boring.  The Bettencourt fiasco kept everything in the news with all of its little twists and turns and it is too long and complex to try to explain in a blog posting; but, if you run a Google check it should all come up.

This past Weds. Session was more like a wake than a pre ending to the legislative session.  House leadership was, in my opinion, trying to run for cover not only on the Bettencourt; but, also who authorized Bob Mead to collect mileage for driving around the state trying to get republicans to run for state rep.  I think we all know who authorized it; but, I don’t think it will ever see the light of day.

The Seacoast Newspapers did an editorial board with the Speaker and Bettencourt and concluded they either lied or told half truths.  In fact it was probably one of the most negative editorials I have ever read; but, very accurate.  It was right after that the law school scandal broke with Bettencourt.

The political sign up period is a week away and I still haven’t seen anything positive being said about Republicans; unless it is we cut the budget and spending.  I think the voters know that republicans do that; but, what is problematic is what about our ethics and character?

This next election is going to be about keeping spending down (at least within our revenue estimates), truthfulness, character, integrity and moral fiber.  We have to bring civility and integrity back into the state house and the political discussions; there are times you can cut the tension in Concord with a knife.

I’m a firm believer that talking is always more fun than fighting and we are not always doing a lot of talking.  The house seems to run on orders instead of discussions; everyone in the house has the right to contribute to the process and by leaving people out is a huge disservice to them and their constituents who have a right to be heard and represented.

I think this is all going to change in the next election; most of the freshmen will be gone as well as others who have shown such a blind loyalty to the speaker.  I want to see people who can think, analyze and use common sense to come to a conclusion, not people who say, “What does leadership want?”  We don’t need PHDs in Concord just people who will listen and have common sense.

I’m a Republican (independent one at that) and want to see how the democrats are going to attack us in the next election.  There can be a case made that because of how the democrats ran the house when they had the majority is why they were thrown out and got us into the current mess. 

We need to think outside the box for lowering insurance costs (we will never curb their greed) but can come up with better ways of delivery.  We need to balance our budget cuts in education to what we want to accomplish in the long run and need to have the teachers involved in helping to keep costs down; without their input the budget cuts will be forced on them and that is not good.  We need to totally revamp our consumer protection laws, special interests have been attacking them for years and we need to dig in and fight back to protect our constituents.  If we can focus on just a handful of issues we can get more done with the right leadership.  There is nothing that we can’t do if we all work together.

THE SHOUT HEARD AROUND THE WORLD!!!

Just when you thought you have heard everything and seen about everything you get surprised. 

This past week in the legislature the speaker out did himself and got into an argument with Rep. Steve Vailancourt from Manchester.  Steve is a very popular Rep. in his area and his well known for his intelligence, flamboyance, and fierce defense of right from wrong and people’s rights.  This past week a democrat got up to speak and was cut short by the speaker.  Then one of the speaker’s friends got up to speak and was allowed.  Then Steve got up to speak and challenged the speaker on what he just did and a shouting match ensued.   You can never win an argument with a bully holding the hammer and Steve was told he was out of order and to sit down.  In a set of circumstances like this, Steve is not inclined to do either and the speaker ordered security to escort him to his seat.  Steve started to walk away and the speaker said something else and Steve walked back to the mike and said, “sieg heil”, and the speaker ordered him removed from the house.

I never took offense of what Steve said, bad choice of words, but no offense.  I knew Steve was paying tribute to someone acting like a German dictator and nothing else.  The speaker’s cult quickly jumped on this and made it sound like Steve was a Nazi sympathizer which is the furthest from the truth.

Steve went back to his seat to sit down when house security and state police arrived to escort him out.  What was interesting was several legislators started yelling at security to leave him alone.  At that point Representative (attorney) Soltani from Epson, who has been thrown off the house floor for arguing with speaker on prior occasions, went and sat down with Steve for a legal chat.

Things quieted down and Steve made his apology and the house started to get back to normal.  An interesting side note is when Tony tried to speak about this incident; the house (cult) started booing him which is a big taboo.  Tony asked the speaker “if you’re going to throw rep. Vailincourt out he needs to throw out all the people booing”.  The speaker couldn’t do that because they were mostly his supporters.

I then find out that this incident went global and was reported in a number of other countries.  This whole incident was avoidable and showed the world what the NH House is like; this wall the house and press talked about for the rest of the week.

HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH LEGISLATIVE LEADERSHIP THAT CAN’T TELL THE TRUTH???

The latest out of the speaker is NH has added 10,000 jobs since the republicans have had control back.  I wish I could believe that; but, there was no caveat as to where this info came from.  The last credible information I have received is that we caused the layoffs of about 4,000 between hospital layoffs and state employees.

Now the speaker is talking about cutting another 400 million dollars out of the budget if he gets re-elected; 

I think the voters will have something to say about that.  Whenever possible I fully support budget cuts; but, they have to be well thought out and prudent.  Slash and burn tactics to grab headlines is not a prudent way to go about cutting the budget.

Everything I’ve been reading and seeing on TV tells us that the NH economy is slowing down even more than it has in the past.  I’m not an economist; but, I think the signs are starting to show.  I think the towns and communities need to make plans for layoffs and budget cuts, the state will need to review what we have done in the last budget and see if there is anymore reductions to be had; but, to say 400 million more in cuts could be a little too optimistic.

New leadership that will work with the senate while working with the department heads will be the right path to travel on this issue.

POLITICS OF ANGER!!!

How many times have we seen or heard people say “I’m mad about this or that”, and then proceed to attack whomever they are addressing; whether it is the Board of Selectmen or a legislative committee hearing, this becoming more and more prevalent. 

There is no easy way to deal with this, sometimes people will listen and other times they start attacking and keep it up never listening to an answer for their issues.

Now we have ultra groups that have funding from sources that they don’t want to make public while the contributors do not want to become known.  This goes against everything most of us stand for and is against the movement for more transparency in government and politics.

What gets formed are hate groups who say and do whatever they want and think they can keep who is behind and pushing them in a closet.  There is a movement underway in Concord to force them to report who is paying them to attack people.  It would be nice to see who paid to have the tobacco tax reduction pushed through a how much they paid.

ONLY A FOOL RUN’S INTO A FIGHT!!!

Last week was certainly telling on O’Brien’s leadership mentality. I have said in the past that O’Brien wants to attack instead of talk when it comes to dealing with problems and this past week proved my case. The house, under the recommendation of O’Brien attacked the senate.

What brought this to a head were some bills the senate either refused to accept or killed out right. I am glad and NH should be grateful that the senate has more common sense this session than the speaker’s office has. This is a WAH, WAH AND WAH, you killed our wonderful bills and we are going to show you by tabling yours.

A true leader or diplomat would have sat down with the senate and see what could be negotiated out before going to war.

Many of the senators were state reps before being elected to the senate and I worked with all of them; good, honest people who, like many of us, just want to try and do a good job.

This isn’t a fight over I have more power than you, it should be a meeting of the minds of moving the state and peoples hopes forward for a better place to live.

The sickness that has infected the state house is really starting to show.

IS REPRESENTIVE Will SMITH UNHINGED???

The following is a post from, supposedly, Representative Will Smith from New Castle, that appeared on the Exeter Patch. This is so typical of the O’Brien Supporters and leadership team and speaks for itself as to why we need a change. I guess poor Willie is now the poster child for the O’Brien cult.

Don’t worry Will; O’Brien will give you a pat on the head for this fabrication.

The fact is on the Right to Work Bill, O’Brien took it out of order to try to run it through since I was not there and still in the hospital. Representative Peter Bolster took to the floor to move that the bill be special ordered to the following week to see if I could be there, a very common process. O’Brien did not want this and it went to a roll call vote of 300 to42, or close to these numbers and the speaker lost the argument and issue. Since the house rebuked the speaker, I got out of the hospital on a Sunday and was in Concord 3 days later to argue the Right to work issue that Rep. Smith sponsored. I felt I needed to return the show of respect shown to me by the house and the show of gratitude for the respect of the political process.

Calling Emerson and Copeland liars is like calling Mary Poppins a hooker, just doesn’t fit and not credible.



Rep. Smith

4:41 pm on Saturday, April 21, 2012

“Peter that's because none of the so called "bullying" episodes EVER occurred! Emerson is a liar, the Senate Sergeant at Arms is a union hack and was FIRED and he wasn't even in the room and Tim Copeland is a union hack liar who also wasn't there and never even had a conversation with the Speaker or majority leader. Isn't it interesting that all those alleging about bullying were against right to work and bringing jobs to Nh and they themselves were bullies. One NEA member Telling one rep that his daughter wouldn't be on the varsity basketball team of he voted for it, threatening another he'd lose his job, threatening yet another rep that her husband would lose his job, stalking and following reps on the highway and following them home to intimidate them. And those dues go toward giving BILLIONS to get Dems re-elected so NO WONDER they want to force people who don't want to be in labor unions to still pay to fund their political agenda. It's gotten out of control in state government and in the school system. O'Brien is a good, good man with amazing character who is very compassionate but does so quietly because he's not a fake like all these guys alleging bullying. Anyone mention when Quandt had his heart attack O'Brien put off the right to work vote until he could come back to speak against and vote against the bill (even though it wasn't in Obriens best interest)? No, because it doesn't fit in to YOUR narrative and intimidation tactics.”

WOW, NEVER TRUST A BULLY!!!

The redistricting bill passed the house; but, I don’t think the fight is over with almost guaranteed court challenges on a variety of issues. Matt and I said we would not support this bill, as well as many others, and then they caved and supported it.
What O’Brien supposedly did was to tell the press that he would NOT bring the governor’s veto up (redistricting) last week and a number of reps took a spring vacation. Then, it looks like; the speaker counted votes and rammed the bill through. Manchester is suing because of the bill and other cities are looking to sign on.

The people, who fought the Right to Work bill, knew you couldn’t trust the speaker. During the Right to Work fight the speaker constantly put out misleading information on when he was going to call for a vote, called us back for three session days and lost the vote anyway because we knew he couldn’t be trusted. Now there are a bunch of red faced reps that went along with him and denied those reps in opposition of the redistricting plan a chance to be heard because of intentional misinformation was put out.



WHAT HAPPENED TO STEVIE V???



I heard last night that the out spoken house rep from Manchester Steve Vaillancourt was thrown off of the finance committee. He and the speaker have been going at it on policy and anyone that knows Steve knows he does his home work on the issues and won’t back down. One thing about Steve, and I know him he will not go quietly into the night.



THE DESTRUCTION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN NH IS ALMOST COMPLETE!!!



Some of our state reps also are locally elected officials, selectmen, budget committee, etc. Well, some of them either didn’t get elected to their positions, their family members didn’t get elected to a position or they were thrown out of local office. They don’t seem to understand why because they believe that this insanity that we call legislative politics (the house) is what they think the voters wanted. Unfortunately, when the new people got elected they just talked amongst themselves, didn’t listen or talk to the voters, and proceeded to dissect state government. Instead of creating jobs, we have caused the layoff of about 4,000 workers. Anybody proud of that is off their meds and out of touch with the reality of the last election.

I was told by someone in state campaigns, and travels the state that there are two names that equate with mud. One is Bully O’Brien and the other is the free staters, they are both being tied to the “out of touch republicans”. Unfortunately, we have a good group of old fashion republicans that are simply overwhelmed by the craziness that is prevalent in the house. We are still counting votes to remove the speaker and waiting for the right spark to do it.

WHEN OPINION IS JUST OPINION!!!

Sorry I haven’t been keeping up on the blog; but, still recovering from open heart surgery.

It appears to be busy in the legislature since I’ve been gone but a surprising number of O’Brien supporters lost their seats in the local elections, either selectman or budget committee. I’m sure they can rationalize it away; but, I think we all can see the writing on the wall for the next election. The speaker has done something most other speakers could not do, bring down the Republican Party in NH; don’t take this lightly, it was no easy feat. It is equally sad the number of Republicans that have stood by and watched this happen; most do not see what is coming down the pike, but can at least put it on their resume there were state reps. Some who lost local seats blame the public sector employees and various union groups, but, I think it was more of their inability to listen to their constituents about what the people wanted and not the far right of our party.

The so called marriage equality bill appeared to be a total fiasco to the republicans, it is a republican platform issue and yet many republicans voted to keep it. Now, when 50 republicans voted not to support right to work, another platform issue we were called RINO’S, and Democrats even though many of us were Republicans longer than some were born. I guess we have a whole new crop of hypocrites.

I’ve been told by republicans that have been going around the state that this legislature and the O’Brien leadership have been on the tip of every discussion as a problem for the next election. It sounds like all the people the speaker has thrown off their committees, people who have been threatened and bullied, has started to take their toll.

As far as I can see the political system in NH has been broken for about six years, four with the democrats and the past two with this group of RINO’s passing themselves off as republicans. If we are lucky, after the next election, we will have a close to even split between real republicans and reasonable democrats. We need to be forced in to sitting down and negotiating our issues, neither party should have absolute control, whenever that happens they screw up the system; politics is about the “art of negotiating”, that will be in the best interests of the state.