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Sunday Columns: Benson Protege Ayotte, Taxes, Vetoes, and More!

by: Jennifer Daler

Sun Oct 25, 2009 at 08:26:57 AM EDT


Today's available Sunday columns are Tom Fahey's, from the Union Leader and Kevin Landrigan's from The Nashua Telegraph.

Fahey opens with a report on unemployment benefits. The amount the state pays out will be higher, due to higher unemployment. Employers will also have to pay more into the system in 2010, while laid off employees will have to wait a week to collect.

Landrigan was following the money this morning. The link between Kelly Ayotte and the epic-failure- as-Governor Craig Benson was brought into focus. Well, he did give her her start as AG, which is her platform for her Senate run.

Reporting that most of Ayotte's money was raised from out of state political PACS, many donors have already maxed out, and much of her money can only be used in the general (optimistic!), Landrigan writes:

There was barely a member of the extended Benson-allied family (read campaign $$$) whom Ayotte missed in her maiden fundraising voyage.

Landrigan goes on to list them.

 

Jennifer Daler :: Sunday Columns: Benson Protege Ayotte, Taxes, Vetoes, and More!
Then more fallout from Benson where the state was disallowed $35 million dollars of money requested from 2004, when, according to the column, Benson though he had some kind of "agreement" with Bush or something:

This goes back to an infamous handshake agreement Benson thought he had with the Bush administration - New Hampshire would get the disputed DSSH cash in exchange for trimming back its legal windfall money scheme going forward.

Landrigan doesn't explain the details, but they seem sketchy from the wording he uses. In any event, the US Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) has given the state $98 million. But this shows how under Republican rule, some "deals" involving money (taxpayer money, of course) weren't quite legit.

Then he goes on to say medical marijuana will be law, but not now. IIRC, he wasn't correct on some other things; marriage equality comes to mind. We'll see how this prediction goes.

Also a "shout out" (shout at?) to BH for uh-citing historical antecedents to present issues (how dare we!)

The cop-out of the week award goes to the Blue Hampshire blog that blamed not Lynch nor the SEA for the layoffs, but two long-dead people - New Hampshire Union Leader publisher William Loeb and ex-Gov. Meldrim Thomson, who saddled the state with the anti-broad-based tax pledge.

Yeah, those guys had no influence on this state. At all.

Fahey reported on the recent tax forum held by the state House Ways and Means Committee. Much was discussed, nothing decided.

Conservative economists advised us to nibble at the edges of what we have in place now, but cut business taxes. Liberals said pass an income test. Others said a sales tax. Or a carbon tax. Or a pollution tax. Or a general wealth tax. Or a higher business tax. Or ... You get the idea.

In general, most speakers acknowledged that New Hampshire has a good thing; it just needs to be better. According to the claims: The rich pay a lower share of their income in taxes than the poor and lower-income residents. The state taxes businesses at close to the highest rate in the nation, and is losing high-growth jobs. Its share of patents and engineers is declining. The state is also aging more quickly than most states.

And, of course,

Republicans, who panned the sessions even before they started, announced plans to hold a "Stop the Spending Summit" this Tuesday to look at what they say is the other half of the equation that was missed at Ways and Means.

Let's see: because of present cuts, we'll have lead poisoned kids, who have a good chance of being disabled for life, the inability of the state to handle its mandatory sentencing laws vis a vis drunk drivers...and much more, I'm sure. We'll have to see what and where else the Republicans want to cut.

Fahey ends his column with a congratulations to Caitlin Dainuk and  Rep Mike Rollo, who were married this weekend. I'll second that, adding: Much luck and love to you both!

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Too subtle for Kevin? (4.00 / 2)
What I wrote:
It would be easy to blame this on SEA leadership, or Lynch's choices.

But I pin it squarely on William Loeb, Mel Thomson, and the pledge politics that have poisoned all thinking about state revenue.

Let me be clearer, then, Mr. Landrigan: that's a criticism of John Lynch's adherence to the pledge, both the New Hampshire Democratic and Republican Parties' adherence to the pledge, and a state media too incurious or too stuck in old paradigms to examine the effect of pledge politics on our state services.

All because of two men long gone that I would gather a fair share of the state's current population have ever heard of.

And as for the SEA - has there been a single front page post defending them on this site?  And in the comments on the original post on the layoffs, when they were defended against Lynch, I wrote:

All well and good, but   (4.00 / 2)  
this is more difficult to disentangle, imo, than the Workers v. Big Bad Boss storyline.

We've got a balanced budget requirement.  There isn't enough money.  A choice results between keeping all jobs and losing some paid time, or losing jobs and keeping full salaries.  The union voted for the latter.

Was that the better choice, or not?

And the larger question: could this choice have been averted by the Gov or legislature in the first place by structuring the budget differently?

But I've already spent too much of this sunny day wasting my time on this. Oh, web logs!

birch, finch, beech

Let my just assert for no particular reason that (0.00 / 0)
the purpose of money is to be spent.  It does absolutely no good hidden under the mattress or locked away in a vault.  I like to call money a figment of the imagination--a truly human invention.  In that it is like the alphabet whose purpose is to be used to write words or, if you will, facilitate the transfer and transmission of ideas.  We can get along with speech, but the written word goes farther and wider and has the potential to last forever.  Although not palpable, the written word is real.  

Money is a little different in that it can be touched, held in the hand and left in one's purse.  But, like the word, money facilitates the transfer and transmission of ideas and things over great distances and time.  We could barter, but using money is more efficient.  In trade, it's both a store of value and a lubricant of the gears of the economy.  In that it is like oil.  If you drain the oil out of the crank-case, the gears seize up and the engine conks out.

That's what's happened to our economy.  The gnomes of Wall Street have been secreting the money, in effect draining it out as quick as we put more in.  That's what the TARP has, I think, demonstrated definitively.  That's why the next infusion is going to go straight to Main Street.

One more point, while the immediate cause of the sequestration of the money by Wall Street was speculation on worthless enterprise, that's really part of a long-standing effort to control the economy by manipulating the supply of money.  While the effort to control the economy may seem inconsistent with faith in the autonomous, self-regulating free market, the real object was always to retain control of the economy in private hands, rather than cede it to that quintessential "do it yourself" enterprise--government by the people.  As long as the people were governed and kept on a short leash or thrown some crumbs from time to time, who controls the economy seemed less important.  The universal franchise changed that, or at least created the potential that the people would rule.  The question now is whether the power of the people can be secured.



What would the emergence of Craig Benson, kingmaker (4.00 / 2)
mean to the state Republican Party?

If Ayotte wins, Benson becomes the most influential Republican in New Hampshire. Do Gregg, Sununus, Bass et al even realize that?



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