From the Op-Ed pages of boston.com, comes an essay by Renee Loth. She opens by asking "What's the matter with New Hampshire?"
First, the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted to raise the state's gasoline tax by 15 cents over three years. Then the House approved a bill allowing the use of medical marijuana, by a vote of 234-138. Next, it voted to repeal the state's capital punishment statute. The House wrapped up March with a vote to legalize same-sex marriage, and the Senate followed suit yesterday.
(Follow me below the fold for more. And another debunking of the MA liberal meme)
To bring readers down to Earth again, Loth quotes John H. Sununu deriding the "San Francisco agenda" and questions whether Governor Lynch will sign the bills that reach his desk.
But, she says change has come. And she credits women Representatives and Senators with bringing about this change.
Since January, the New Hampshire Senate has been making history as the first majority female legislative body in the country: Thirteen of its 24 members are women. Overall, the New Hampshire Legislature is 37.7 percent female, just a fraction behind Vermont (37.8 percent) and Colorado (38 percent). But New Hampshire also has women in leadership: a woman House speaker, a woman Senate president, and a woman majority whip. The congressional delegation is 50 percent female, including one of only 17 women in the US Senate. It's as if there was a bloodless coup of the state's political establishment in November, and women were the avatars of change.
Loth concludes
Women see the world as a web of relationships. They are more communitarian and less individualistic. They are less ideological and more practical. It's hard to imagine a better set of qualities for solving the intricate problems that face our world.
What's the matter with New Hampshire? Nothing. They've just seen the future up there.
That's exactly what our State Senate did yesterday when they voted to pass HB436 as amended. Dialog has begun on trans-gendered rights. The death penalty will be studied yet again, and soon, like death penalty proponent Governor Bill Richardson, we'll see it is too costly in more ways than one.
From the comments to the article:
joepublic23 wrote:
NH went crazy. I moved here to escape from MA only to find that the craziness followed me.
Ron7236 wrote:
perhaps you brought it with you, Joe. :)
