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The New Hampshire Democrats' annual state convention is being held in Manchester today. The chairman of Democratic Governors Association, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley delivers the keynote address. He will be joined by John Lynch, Jeanne Shaheen and other elected officials as well as candidates for Governor and Congress. Break out sessions will focus on regaining majority status in November.
If you're attending, let us hear from you. This is an open thread.
(The House is scheduled to vote on these two destructive proposals on Wednesday, part moved below the fold. - promoted by William Tucker)
At a time when New Hampshire is falling behind other states in its ability to attract new businesses with good jobs for our citizens, the Free State/Tea Party legislature in Concord is putting our economic future at even greater risk. On Wednesday, May 30 a legislative committee of conference passed CACR 13, a constitutional amendment that, if approved by the voters in November, will forever ban taxes on incomes.
One doesn't need to be in favor of an income tax, something I'm sure to be accused of, to understand that a constitutional amendment of this nature may well be easy to sell and far harder to explain its long term damage to our state.
However, unless the business community is willing to settle for rising business profits taxes, as well as getting less for their money to boot from a deteriorating infrastructure and educational system, and unless property taxpayers are willing to see their property taxes rise faster and by greater percentages, folks better take a long hard look at where this simple sounding solution to all of our fiscal woes will actually lead.
In their cynical ideological rush to tie the hands of future generations' ability to consider any alternative to rising property and business taxes, the legislature has managed to pass a badly flawed bill that experts say will involve years of court battles and whole new bodies of constitutional law.
Prospects looked grim late last year, when the House barely bothered to consider the governor's amendment. But Speaker Bill O'Brien says ultimately a deep desire to do something outweighed all other considerations.
"Governor Lynch and I really on a one-to-one basis, and in some instances, just he and I, sat down and said we all want to solve this. How do we solve this? And we said we solve it by trusting each other, wanting the best for New Hampshire. And working down to an agreement."
- NHPR
If you don't trust Speaker O'Brien, if you don't believe he acts to promote what's best for New Hampshire, oppose this capitulation to the public education haters.
(Senate/House leaders and Gov. Lynch agree on educational funding amendment - promoted by William Tucker)
Here is the camel - or is it zebra - made by committee:
[Art.] 5-c [Public Education]. In fulfillment of the provisions with respect to education set forth in Part II, Article 83, the legislature shall have the responsibility to maintain a system of public elementary and secondary education and to mitigate local disparities in educational opportunity and fiscal capacity. In furtherance thereof, the Legislature shall have the full power and authority to make reasonable standards for elementary and secondary public education and standards of accountability and to determine the amount of, and the methods of raising and distributing, state funding for public education. [italics mine]
(Part moved below the fold - promoted by William Tucker)
I know those of us who keep up-to-date on the commentaries on www.BlueHampshire.com have a number of important overriding issues of late, but this is one that should not be put aside.
I wrote the following to the Resolutions Committee of the N.H. Democratic Party Convention, as followup to similar comments against the death penalty by former Rep. Renny Cushing. He wrote excellent observations, which I won't quote here since they are his, but I hope he will print them here.
This is an important issue that affects the way we, as a society, function. I hope our Convention delegates will support Renny's resolution this weekend against the death penalty:
To All -- I fully support Renny's words, and his great and long-time leadership and passion on this issue, which is reflected by his personal experience as well.
As you know, I sponsored several death penalty abolition bills through the years, including the one in 2000 that passed both the House and Senate but was vetoed by Governor Jeanne Shaheen, and one that didn't make it through but had a veto threat by Governor John Lynch. I respected the decisions of each Governor, and their opposition did not lead me or most of those of us who disagree with them on this issue not to support them for reelection.
One of the unanswered questions surrounding the Bettencourt scandal — and House Speaker Bill O'Brien's assertion that he only learned of Bettencourt's impending resignation the day it occurred — is how the New Hampshire Legal Rights Foundation web site came to identify Bettencourt as executive director days before the scandal broke.
Now we know. D.J. did it! That's right, in an interview with the Concord Monitor, NHLRF chairman Tim Condon claims Bettencourt created the web page himself and added it to the site. Then, as his world was crumbling around him, he likely deleted it. Really.
Condon said Bettencourt was put in charge of updating the website, to which Bettencourt added a page describing himself as the executive director who "received his juris doctorate from the University of New Hampshire School of Law in 2012."
On Monday, the board convened a conference call with Bettencourt to inform him he would not become the board's executive director, Condon said. Bettencourt's page has been removed from the group's website, which Condon said was likely Bettencourt's doing.
For the record, board member Robert Hull is identified as the site's webmaster. A May 23, 2012 screen shot of the now deleted page follows below the fold.
"They've lied and they've lied and they've lied." GOP state Rep. Steve Vaillancourt reiterates a point first made in yesterday's devastating Portsmouth Herald editorial. The personal lies that led to the downfall of former House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt cannot be separated from the public lies that Bettencourt and O'Brien have been foisting on this state for the last two years.
In a sense, DJ's lies in his personal life don't trouble me nearly as much as the constant stream of lies he told from the House floor which I have pointed out in my blog.
D.J. had begun to feel he was above the laws which apply to normal people. ... The more I think of it, the more I see personal and public lies intersecting....DJ obviously came to believe (perhaps not even consciously, and that would be the real tragedy) that he'd been getting away with so many lies on the House floor, that he'd been able pull to wool over the eyes of members of his super majority so often, that he would be able to get away with personal lies as well.
I'm no psychiatrist but that would tend to explain him recklessly going for broke with such a stupid lie, stupid being defined as one in which you are certain to get caught. It seems that those who take comfort in lying at will never think about getting caught, so it becomes second nature to them.
Given his combination of youth, debt and an inability to tell the truth, it is not surprising that Bettencourt has fallen hard after just a short time in power. And we expect that O'Brien will be tumbling after him following this November's general election. People who exercise dictatorial authority can quickly rise to power, but their falls are as inevitable as they are spectacular.
. . .
They've lied and they've lied and they've lied, and now Bettencourt has fallen. Because when you tell enough lies, inevitably, you get caught.
What did the Speaker know, and when did he know it? A quick scan of the newspapers this morning makes it clear the focus of the Bettencourt scandal is now turning to House Speaker Bill O'Brien's role in the attempt to let Bettencourt resign without disclosing his academic misconduct.
Associated Press:
O'Brien, the House speaker, also could come under pressure in the days ahead, said Bob Clegg, a former Senate majority leader and speaker pro tem of the House during his 14 years in the Legislature. He said people are going to ask if O'Brien was covering up for Bettencourt and how Bettencourt came to land a job at the New Hampshire Legal Rights Foundation, which lists O'Brien as its vice chairman on its website.
"I believe the speaker was trying to help the kid out of a bad situation, but a lot of people are going to ask if that was the right thing to do," said Clegg, a Republican from Hudson. "Are the coming days going to be tough on Speaker O'Brien? You bet."
Fosters:
Rep. Julie Brown, R-Rochester, said she would "absolutely" support an investigation into how the situation was handled by the House's GOP leadership.
"If there was to be an investigation, I would certainly support that to find out what the speaker knew, when he knew it, and why he didn't handle it differently," she said.
In a late night email to his Republican causus, O'Brien acknowledged the attention on his personal involvement:
"There will be those that say that D.J.'s failure and his resignation characterize our current majority. Others will say that it characterizes the leadership of our caucus," O'Brien wrote.
The Union Leader, that purveyor of Democratic Party propaganda, has seen enough:
While it is unclear just what the Speaker knew about this fiasco and when, he might do his party and the House a favor by reflecting on his own future as a leader.
Tom Watson, who has chronicled the rise of online social activism, identifies five online campaigns that honor the sacrifice of military veterans — and help support them in their return to civilian life.
More than 100,000 signatures have already been gathered at Change.org to ask the U.S. government to provide healthcare for Marines and their families poisoned by bad drinking water at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina in the 1980s. ...
Go Silent is a campaign organized by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America – it asks participants simply to keep one minute of silence at 12:01 pm on Memorial Day....
Hashtags4Heroes is a fascinating campaign designed to raise awareness for the Wounded Warrior Project serving injured service members. ... Tweeps can donate their surplus Twitter character space – characters that will then be repurposed by the WWP to autofill messages about programs and services. ...
Blue Star Families, an organization founded in 2008 to deal with the increased number of Americans in active combat service overseas, is running a Facebook campaign to bring attention to their cause....
Iraq Veterans Against the War is a spin-off of Veterans for Peace, a post-Vietnam Era organization that works against military involvement overseas.... [I]n addition to opposing the recent wars, membership also works for full benefits and quality healthcare for returning veterans.
Memorial Day is a federal holiday observed annually in the United States on the last Monday of May. Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War. By the 20th century Memorial Day had been extended to honor all Americans who have died in all wars
--Memorial Day via Wikipedia
(Boom! House O'Brien begins to crumble... - promoted by Mike Hoefer)
did not graduate from law school, and was less than candid about an internship he is alleged to have used as part of his graduation requirements. Rep. Brandon Guida says there is a discrepancy between the hours Bettencourt actually worked in Guida's law office, and the hours Bettencourt submitted for credit. Check out the Union Leader story here
Pull quote added by Ed.
Giuda, who has his own law firm, said he had agreed to take on Bettencourt, a third-year student at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, for a spring-semester internship that Bettencourt told him he needed in order to graduate. But he said Bettencourt only showed up at his office for one day, "where he did approximately one hour of legal work."
He later discovered that Bettencourt had submitted "extremely detailed" reports about that internship, including court hearings he supposedly attended, cases he worked on and interviews with clients.
If true, this is astonishingly self-destructive, and truly sad.
! Sunday Update: Pindell is reporting that Bettencourt will resign immediately
Our family - quasi-extended here, the tree from one set of grandparents - said goodbye to two veterans last year: one from World War II, one from Korea. Another two World War II veterans and a doughboy from the First World War passed on earlier, in my memory.
Each of them enjoyed their Memorial Days as chances to get an extra day or two off from work and spend it with family and friends, with a little luck on an early summer day. If they were somehow to nag me about observing this weekend, I would hear "Did you visit your aunt? How are my grandkids doing?" They wouldn't ask about flag ceremonies or cemeteries.
We did go to the cemetery today, and we had a cookout too. I hope you all have great weekends and spend them in ways that you enjoy. To misquote someone, "Living well is the best remembrance."
Yesterday's news bomb was that DJ Bettencourt is resigning his position as House Majority Leader effective June 6 so he can focus on his job as Executive Director of the New Hamphisre Legal Rights Foundation. So what is the New Hampshire Legal Rights Foundation, and what does it do?
According to its web site, NHLRF
is a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to our mission. Through advocacy, public education and sponsored legislation, its staff and volunteers work to preserve liberties grounded in United States and New Hampshire constitutions and civil rights laws.
I'm guessing "public education " does not include support for your local public school.
What has it done to date? Well, it has an Executive Director, DJ Bettencourt.
