Prog Blogs, Orgs & Alumni
Bank Slate
Betsy Devine
birch, finch, beech
Democracy for NH
Live Free or Die
Mike Caulfield
Miscellany Blue
Granite State Progress
Seacoast for Change
Still No Going Back
Susan the Bruce
Tomorrow's Progressives
Politicos & Punditry
The Burt Cohen Show
John Gregg
Krauss
Landrigan
Lawson
Pindell
Primary Monitor
Primary Wire
Scala
Schoenberg
Spiliotes
Welch
Campaigns, Et Alia.
Paul Hodes
Carol Shea-Porter
Ann McLane Kuster
John Lynch
Jennifer Daler
ActBlue Hampshire
NHDP
DCCC
DSCC
DNC
National
Balloon Juice
billmon
Congress Matters
DailyKos
Digby
Hold Fast
Eschaton
FiveThirtyEight
MyDD
The Next Hurrah
Open Left
Senate Guru
Swing State Project
Talking Points Memo
50 State Blog Network
Alabama
Arizona
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
In today's edition, the Concord Monitor endorses Carol Shea-Porter for re-election. Here's the link:
http://www.concordmonitor.com/...
More (Dean): It's the integrity, stupid. From the endorsement:
In swing districts like Shea-Porter's, politicians concerned mostly with self-preservation are often inclined to compromise their convictions in an attempt to be all things to all voters. To her credit, Shea-Porter has remained true to herself. She is right on many of the big issues facing the country, and her constituents never have to guess how she will vote.
...Across the country and especially in New Hampshire, the 2010 campaign has featured highly disciplined candidates from both major parties spouting the worst sort of political jargon. They use the language of political brochures and advertisements, lingo that becomes nearly meaningless from repetition. Shea-Porter, on the other hand, talks like a regular person, even after four years in Washington. She speaks her mind plainly and with conviction - just one more reason she has earned our support.
Holly Ramer of the Associated Press describes the bizarre reality of the Guinta money scandal in her debate write-up:
Shea-Porter, who has been relentless in raising questions about how Guinta was able to loan his campaign $355,000, responded by once again arguing that Guinta's explanations don't add up.
Guinta amended a financial disclosure form in June to add a previously unreported bank account holding between $250,000 and $500,000. He has declined to release any bank records to prove the account existed before then and has said he and his wife earned the money by working in the private sector "for approximately 20 years." Guinta, 40, was 35 when he was elected to the first of his two terms as mayor in 2005.
And the Nashua Telegraph:
Guinta quickly amended the report to include the account, between $250,000 and $500,000. But Shea-Porter has continued to push the matter throughout the campaign, questioning the source of the funds and challenging him to release his bank records.
Guinta declined to do so once again during the debate.
And the Union Leader:
The sharpest exchanges took place as Shea-Porter urged Guinta to disclose his bank statements to explain the source of a $245,000 loan that Guinta made to his campaign. Guinta has said he forgot to disclose the account and subsequently amended his disclosure forms.
The Concord Monitor:
Guinta says it is his money, but he has not yielded to Shea-Porter's requests for bank records for the account.
After numerous debates, and many direct questions from both the debate panelists and Carol Shea-Porter herself, Frank Guinta finally admitted tonight that he will protect Social Security.
Because of the promise made to "certain Americans."
Too bad for you Generation X. And you, Millenials. And you too, five and six-year olds.
No sane newspaper could conceivably endorse a candidate who, after months of calls from Republicans, Democrats, and the media, refuses to produce a bank statement showing that he did not commit a crime on the order of several hundred thousand dollars.
So what does the wannbe-UL Fosters editorial board do about this dilemma? Pretend it doesn't exist:
Guinta is who [sic] N.H. needs in U.S. House
...The strongest criticisms leveled at Guinta in this campaign come from his time as mayor of Manchester.
If New Hampshire undergoes the shame of a congressman resigning under the cloud of a House ethics investigation, you'll have the see-no-evil Fosters editorial board to thank.
Adding: Just to underscore how shamelessly right-wing partisan Fosters is, remember that back pre-primary, when the GOP establishment decided Guinta was too flawed a candidate, Fosters gave their space and ink to the former chairman of the NHGOP's devastating critique of Guinta's mystery money. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong about being shamelessly right-wing partisan. It's a free country. But a newspaper claiming to serve everyone in a community ought to be more upfront about disclosing their fealty to the GOP.
FAIRBANKSMANCHESTER -- A judge ruled Saturday that the Fairbanks North Star BoroughBank of America must release personnel recordsbank statements of U.S. SenateHouse candidate Joe MillerFrank Guinta.
In an unusual weekend hearing, retired Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank ruled that the public's right to know about candidates outweighed Miller'sGuinta's right to privacy.
"I hold that although Mr. MillerGuinta has a legitimate expectation of privacy in those documents, Mr. Miller'sGuinta's right to privacy is indeed outweighed by the public's significant interest in the background of a public figure who is running for the U.S. SenateHouse," the judge said. He noted that U.S. senatorcongressperson is among the highest elected offices in the nation.
It really never occurred to me that right-wing Republicans would start running on a pro-salmonella platform, but Jesse Kelly and his Tea Party allies have a surprisingly twisted worldview. Kelly seriously seems to believe that laws to enforce food safety are unnecessary, and may ultimately make matters worse. Just let the free market work its magic, and everything will be fine.
NHDP has a new site up documenting the mendacity of the Republican nominee for Congress in New Hampshire's first district:
I'll say it as many times as needs to be said:
The available facts strongly imply that the money Frank Guinta put into his campaign is not his. Yet he can end this controversy today by showing a simple bank statement.
He refuses to do so.
Magic bank accounts and mystery money don't go away after November 2nd. If he squeaks into office without adequately explaining this now, all of New Hampshire will suffer the shame of a disgraced congressman later.
Has Frank Guinta had a change of heart about privatizing Social Security? Or is he lying about his intentions? Voters deserve an answer.
Frank Guinta, September 29, 2010:
I believe we need a solution to preserve Social Security which does not privatize the system, does not raise taxes, and does not cut existing benefits.
Frank Guinta, May 22, 2010:
Government's the problem here, ladies and gentlemen. When Social Security was created, you didn't have the wealth of private sector solutions for lifetime savings that you have today. We have to honor the obligations that have been made to those who are reliant on the federal government - older generations. But future generations should seek different private sector solutions and have personal responsibility start to lead the way. My kids are 6 and 5. They shouldn't know what Social Security is!
George W. Bush, perhaps the worst president in the history of the Republic, got reflective the other day:
The former president said his greatest failure in office was not passing Social Security reform.
It wasn't "reform"; it was privatization. And I remember it as the tipping point that led to Bush's dramatic decline in popularity. Which was certainly fortunate for America; imagine the economic collapse his policies hastened with the added horror of our Social Security money having gone into Wall St. instead.
But never to fear. Where George W. Bush and his congressional allies John E. Sununu and Paul Ryan failed, Frank Guinta intends to succeed:
Government's the problem here, ladies and gentlemen. When Social Security was created, you didn't have the wealth of private sector solutions for lifetime savings that you have today. We have to honor the obligations that have been made to those who are reliant on the federal government - older generations. But future generations should seek different private sector solutions and have personal responsibility start to lead the way. My kids are 6 and 5. They shouldn't know what Social Security is!
Of course, this brings us to where we were before with Frank on this: by taking future generations out of Social Security, he doesn't have a clue as to how to pay for people like you and me who are currently contributing to the system. So under the Frank Guinta plan, either we will see decades of our earnings stolen from us, or else he will have to dramatically balloon the budget deficit. Take it away, President Obama:
"Given the way Social Security is structured, you'd actually have to borrow a trillion dollars to make up for the money that was siphoned into the private accounts, and this would weaken the solvency of Social Security,"
So there you have it. In order for Frank Guinta's kids never to know what Social Security is, he's going to have to put the US in debt one trillion dollars.
I'm not sure there's a magic bank account in the world big enough for Frank Guinta to borrow that much money.
(Part put below the fold. - promoted by Dean Barker)
October 20 was a wonderful day for New Hampshire and Maine. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood came to Portsmouth with a $20 million grant that will be used towards replacing the deteriorating Memorial Bridge. This bridge, built in 1923 to honor New Hampshire's World War I veterans, connects Portsmouth and Kittery, Maine. It is a foundation of the economic and cultural life of the Seacoast.
UPDATE: I am glad to see Team Shea-Porter is not letting up:
END UPDATE
Because if he lived in a state that had campaign finance laws with teeth he might get tossed off the ballot:
Democrat Joe Garcia filed a federal lawsuit Thursday in an attempt to get his Republican opponent, state Rep. David Rivera, kicked off the November ballot. Garcia argues that recent amendments to Rivera's financial statements disqualify him from running for office. The Miami Herald reports there's a legal precedent: Last week, a judge threw a Tampa-area state Senate candidate off the ballot because he didn't list all of his personal assets.
The fact remains: logic and common sense show that the $355,000 that Frank Guinta gave to his campaign could not possibly be his, thus making it an illegal act.
And despite repeated calls from leading New Hampshire Republicans - including Jeb Bradley, his old boss and the last Republican to hold the seat he runs for, repeated calls from Democrats, and repeated calls from the media, Frank Guinta refuses to show a simple bank statement to back up his claim that the money was his to give.
It's your job between now and November 2nd to let everyone you know in the first district about this. Every person with whom I have discussed it finds it repellent and indefensible. Because it is repellent and indefensible.
Here's an alarming list from the CDC on the rising rates of autism in the United States:
1990 1 in 2,000
2000 1 in 500
2004 1 in 166
2007 1 in 150
2010 1 in 110
That's roughly one child receiving an autism diagnosis every fifteen minutes.
In 2006, the Republican controlled congress stepped in, with the passage of the Combating Autism Act:
...signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 19, 2006. It authorizes nearly one billion dollars in expenditures, over five years beginning in 2007, to combat the autism spectrum disorders of autism, Asperger syndrome, Rett syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder, and PDD-NOS through screening, education, early intervention, prompt referrals for treatment and services, and research.
The legislation had broad bipartisan support in both chambers of congress. In the Senate, John E. Sununu was a co-sponsor. As were Jeb Bradley and Charlie Bass in the House version of the bill.
Congressional Republican nominee Frank Guinta is opposed to federal research funding for autism such as was championed by his own party. His approach is more along the lines of bake sales.
No-Gummit Guinta wants food and drug producers to have no safety oversight. Was Frank asleep when they covered this in high school? Or does he consciously want to bring 19th century laissez-faire to 21st century factory farms and Big PhRMA?
(And here I thought Charlie Bass' support of allowing someone to slap a "NH MAPLE SYRUP" label onto a bottle of corn syrup was bad.)
Of course, I gather the FEC is another one of those Big Gummit acronyms Frank would also love to abolish.
If Frank Guinta wants to live in an adolescent Ayn Rand fantasy world, good for him. But please don't let him drag New Hampshire along for the ride. We have serious problems in this country that call for serious public servants. The kind of puerile demagoguery Guinta shows in the clip above is not going to cut the mustard.
I've said this before in a general sense. And the continuing scandal over Frank Guinta's refusal to prove that $355,000 of his campaign money came from him is unfairly blocking this "hair-on-fire" issue from getting the traction it deserves.
But let's be clear. A Congress with a Frank Guinta in it is one step closer to two generations of workers getting the reward of their Social Security, to which system they have been contributing for years, stolen from them:
For two decades I've been paying into the system for those older than me.
Frank doesn't want his kids or anyone else's kids to do the same for me. He doesn't even want them to know what Social Security is.
When pressed by Carol Shea-Porter at the debate on how he was going to do this while at the same time honoring the commitment to those already in the system, he was either too ignorant or too dishonest to answer outside of his non-answering talking points.
This is a huge deal. Frank Guinta might be able to rely on hundreds of thousands of mystery money dollars to get him through retirement, but you and I and regular law-abiding folks don't have access to those kinds of magical bank accounts.
Do you have friends and neighbors who are Millenials or Ge X-ers in the first district? Or others who care about them? Because they need to know ASAP.
The Hill continues its 2010 midterm polling. It's a small sample, but it's still bigger than UNH's. And the results make me more suspicious than ever that the UNH sample is so far out into Cloud Hampshire that it's not worth anything:
Carol Shea-Porter: 42%
Frank Guinta: 47%
Undecided: 9%
407 "likely voters," MoE 4.9%, 10/9-10/12
The poll ended over a week ago, just before the NHPR Guinta expose started filtering into the larger state media bloodstream. Pair that fact with this:
However, 20 percent of voters said they aren't familiar with Guinta, while only 4 percent said that of Shea-Porter, who is the first woman to be elected to national office from New Hampshire.
We can win this race, folks. Don't let those presidential drop-off voters get away. Remind everyone that there is an election going on! Most of all, remind them about Carol's relentless focus on the "rest of us," and Guinta's refusal to prove that $355,000 dollars he put into his campaign is legal. We need those 20% of voters to learn all about Frank Guinta.
Recently, Facebook was found to have leaked the private information of an untold number of users to third party apps. A bi-partisan pair of Congressmen are demanding answers:
The letter to Facebook follows a Wall Street Journal report which said all of the 10 most popular Facebook applications were transmitting unique user ID numbers to outside companies.
One of those ten apps has 59 million users.
This is Frank Guinta's response to the news:
"Facebook is not forcing anyone in this room to go on Facebook, therefore there is no law that is required to address the issue," he said. "It is classic 'government has to solve a problem that exists.' "
This should be disturbing to anyone in the Live Free or Die State.
Mr. Guinta is telling us that the next time your bank or your supermarket leaks your credit card info, he sees no need to step in. You don't have to have a bank account. You can grow your own food.
It is a particularly disturbing position for someone to take who values his own privacy so much he refuses to release a simple bank statement that would clear up a months long controversy about money that logic and common sense say cannot possibly be his.
An instant classic - the Accountability Coalition has an answer for Frank's Fifty that they are putting on the radio: Frank's Fifty - A Response
You can help them keep this ad up by sending something to the address below the fold...
