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Some up in my neck of the woods in the Upper Valley say Governor Lynch is not their favorite Democrat. They say he's not liberal enough. They complain he works across the aisle too much.
That's probably true for a lot of people here in Hanover, where Obama won 82% of the vote in 2008 and where Granny D beat Judd Gregg by almost 2:1 in 2004.
Yes, John Lynch works for consenus in Concord. Yes, Governor Lynch works for all the people of New Hampshire, not just the ones who want him to beat up Republicans.
But Governor Lynch has proven himself over and over again to us who believe in Democratic values that we need him to stay in the corner office. Lynch has been the strongest Democrat on the statewide ticket in the last two cycles and his victory in 2010 will be our victory.
Here are my top ten reasons for supporting Governor Lynch's re-election in 2010.
The Smartest Right-Wing Ideologue in the Senate, John E. Sununu (R-Cloud-Cuckoo-Land), in 2005, on helping to kill a minimum wage increase:
"I do not support raising the minimum wage, and the reason is as follows," said New Hampshire Republican John Sununu, "When the minimum wage is raised, workers are priced out of the market. That is the economic reality that seems, at least so far, to be missing from this discussion."
...But Sununu made a further point demonstrating that his concerns go beyond the economic realities. He delved into Republican theology about the role of government. He chastised Democrats -- particularly Teddy Kennedy, who led the Democrats' fight on the issue -- about their oft-trumpeted contention that raising the minimum wage would "reward work."
"I have a concern about this phrase," Sununu said, "because it suggests that, as federal legislators, it is our job to reward work. That may sound nice, but it suggests that it is our job to set prices; that it is our job to set wages; that it is our job to decide whether the work any citizen is doing in the economy (in the private sector) is worth a particular amount of money -- whose work is worth more that someone else's and what rewards does the federal government give the taxpayer for doing their job. That is not the role of the federal government."
Bravo, Senator. That was a beautiful speech. You keep the Red Menace Itself at bay with such forceful eloquence.
Some people are naturally incredulous when I tell them that the radical free marketeer actually voted to ABOLISH the federal minimum wage.
But I think the above quote speaks for itself on that charge. And if we're really lucky, the rest of us who live in the real world can soon provide Professor Sununu all the time in the world that he needs to hole himself up with Ayn Rand books in his ivory tower on Cloudcuckooland.
It's also worth noting, as the article in the link does, that Sununu's lecture on the free market was delivered shortly after we lost four Senate seats in 2004, when Bush was championing the privatization of Social Security (with Sununu's help), and when Karl Rove was crowing about the Permanent Republican Majority.
(But don't tell the Nashua Telegraph. Remember, for them, he's a model of bi-partisanship and working across the aisle.)
Chris Bowers has made a delightful discovery about Johnny McMaverick, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. The same discovery, it seems, that elwood made over a year ago about our own John E. Sununu.
What do Johnny and John E. (and Judd Gregg, for that matter) share in common?
Both have an abiding love for radical free marketeering. They expressed this love by voting to abolish the federal minimum wage.
Not increase it to keep up with the times. Not keep it the same pitiful $5.15 it had been for over ten years. Not even to lower it. Nope - the top two men on the GOP ticket in New Hampshire for 2008 voted to end the very idea of a minimum wage.
At the end of a long and winding road through the state the Edwards family wrapped up their bus tour with a Town Hall event on the banks of the river at lovely Prescott Park in downtown Portsmouth, NH which was well attended by more than a thousand people.
Edwards takes questions at every event and this half of the vlog (vee-vlog) contains the full Q and A for the event; there were some amazing moments that night, but none more than when Nebraska showed up to thank Mrs. Edwards and took the opportunity to tell Edwards:
I just want you to do something about health care and fix it, please, without compromising health care because that's why I'm alive today.
If you'd like to see the full remarks, check out part one of this vlog, he gave some great remarks too so those clips might be worth a viewing.
I'm sort of delighted that the minimum wage in New Hampshire is going up. It's about time. It almost happened four years ago, but it lost by one vote in the House; then it almost happened two years ago, but it got sidetracked in the State Senate. This time, thanks to the election last November, it passed overwhelmingly. In the House, the opposition was smashed. I watched the debate in the Senate last week -- it occurred just before the discussion of the Civil Unions issue, so I had a good seat -- and again the opposition was smashed. Deservedly so.
In past years this has been a partisan debate: most Democrats FOR increasing the minimum wage, most Republicans AGAINST. That's not a biased assessment. It's a fact. This year in both the House and Senate, it was much the same but more Republicans supported it than in the past. I guess they do watch television and read the newspapers and Blogs.
However, I'm only "sort of delighted" because it's not enough. Putting the minimum wage up from $5.15 an hour to $6.50 by this September, then to $7.25 a year later, hardly keeps up with current inflation. But it IS good to have passed the increase, and it will help many New Hampshire working men and women. Congress is still working on a similar minimum wage increase nationwide, but it being bogged down by business interests who see their all-mighty profit being taken from the golden parachutes of corporate CEOs and the pockets of speculative stockholders.
Even with the increase in the minimum wage, New Hampshire will still be below the rates set for our neighboring states. It ain't cheap to live in New England (price of gas, food, housing, and heating is higher than most of the nation).
And even with the increase, which will push some of the slightly higher above-minimum wages up a bit, the prevailing wages will still be below the "livable wage." A recent study by UNH's Office of Economic Initiatives and the North Country Council determined a livable wage for a single person in the state is $10.42 an hour, and about $2.00 more per hour in the Seacoast where I live. A livable wage for a family of four with two wage earners would be $11.69 for each.
The "livable wage" is determined, by the way, as the level which is just about enough to pay for basic needs such as housing (rent in most cases), essential utilities, transportation, some child care, some health care, and a small amount for personal expenses. In other words, just about surviving until you get to old age, then you die.
Here's my solution: New Hampshire is in a constant process of growth. We encourage, welcome, and regularly try to seduce businesses to move here and give us their jobs. Let's be selective in that business search and encourage corporations and businesses to locate here which want to invest in their employees and see people as assets, not just cost factors. Let's get those businesses that will pay people liable wages, instead of just locating here to suck out every dollar they can for their corporate board of directors, CEOs, and stockholders, most of whom don't live here (that's the nature of most corporations).
Those corporate chain coffee shops, department stores, supermarkets, movie theaters, fast-food restaurants, hotels, and car distributors should be asked to pledge that they will pay a livable wage. Then their own employees will actually be able to afford to buy what they sell. That's good for business, AND our people.
The minimum wage bill that passed with overwhelming support in the New Hampshire House has moved out of Senate committee unamended:
The Senate Commerce, Labor and Consumer Protection Committee voted 6-0 today to recommend the full Senate pass legislation to raise the minimum wage, rejecting an amendment that would have frozen wages for tipped employees.
...
House Bill 514 passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives with a vote of 286 to 69 before advancing to the Senate. The legislation would increase the state's minimum wage from the current level of $5.15 per hour to $6.50 per hour in September 2007, and from $6.50 to $7.25 per hour in September 2008.
The lack of amendment is significant, since a discrepancy between the House and Senate bills could have stalled the legislation. Reynolds had proposed a cap on tipped employees wages but voted with the majority when the amendment failed to gain support:
(Thanks Scoonie! There's so much going on we're missing quite a few important bills. These are important. - promoted by Mike)
Today was a great day in the NH legislature. Besides the civil unions bill passing, a number of worker-friendly bills passed. These bills dealt with a minimum wage increase, guaranteed hours paid, nurse overtime, and mandatory workplace meetings.
Bills like these speak to the core values of the Democratic party: standing up for middle class workers and giving everyone a fair shake in the economy. It's a great feeling to finally be able to guide the direction of the NH economy after so many years in the minority. I am extremely proud to be a Democrat today.
Who knew that new Hampshire's straight talking Yankees were represented by a master of convoluted speech, Senator Judd Gregg? Who knew that Gregg seems to be bugged by the antiquated provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, with which most labor organizations seem to be O.K?
I didn't. Not until I went to march in Washington and happened to glom onto the congressdaily.org report which pointed out that, once again, Senator Gregg was trying to derail an increase in the minimum wage by adding on the provisions of the Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act which, for all intents and purposes, neither labor or business can possibly want. In other words, he was using one miserable failure to bring on another.
I noted earlier that the Republican plan to kill the minimum wage bill in the Senate was to introduce an unending number of amendments to it. Well, even though he was unable to stop the bill, it looks like our Johnny Sununu got what he wanted:
Senator John Sununu has added Portsmouth (New Hampshire)'s Women's Business Center to the proposed minimum wage bill in Congress. Sununu's amendment maintains funding for the programs, which were set to expire.
And it looks like he got more than he wanted, too:
The Women's Business Center in Portsmouth is offering scholarships to a "boot camp" for entrepreneurs next month at the School of Community Economic Development at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester.
...Guest speakers include Gary Hirshberg, chief executive of Stonyfield Farm yogurt.
Senate Multimillionares Vote To Block Minimum Wage Hike
After repeated delays by conservatives, the Senate voted 87-10 today to end debate on legislation that will raise the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, from $5.15 to $7.25. The bill will move to a full vote in the next several days.
Ten right-wing senators stuck together and voted to further delay raising the minimum wage:
Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC)
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Sen. John Ensign (R-NV)
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH)
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)
No place like the Senate to hide your true intentions in parliamentary tricks, and our Johnny is nothing if not cunning. I mean, look at the rabbit of "I'm a moderate!" good press he pulled out of his free market radical hat:
The Senate voted 54-43 in favor of a proposal that came out of the House to increase the wage from $5.15 to $7.25 without a tax relief package, but that was six votes short of the necessary 60 to keep it going.
In Sununu's case, voting with the minority kept alive his amendment to preserve funding for the Women's Business Centers, like the one in Portsmouth.
"I was protecting New Hampshire's interests in voting as I did, and will continue to do so," he said Wednesday through his office. "I have voted before for legislation that combines an increase in the minimum wage with provisions that help New Hampshire's small businesses, and will do so again when this bill is adopted next week."
There's only one problem with this rosy scenario: it's utterly dishonest, and Senator Kennedy cued us into this this when he lost his temper dealing with these "death by amendment" tricks.
What a banner day for Johnny and the State of New Hampshire. First he (along with cranky Judd) voted to kill the minimum wage bill and negate Hodes' and Shea-Porter's work in the House. The NHDP press release says it better than I can:
Today, Republican Senators Judd Gregg and John Sununu voted to block the Democratic plan to increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25, a plan that would have given a much needed pay raise to 19,000 hardworking people in the state of New Hampshire. [CBPP, 8/2/06] ...
Despite the fact that nearly 13 million American workers would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage and 89 percent of Americans support its increase, including 72 percent of Republicans, Sens. Gregg and Sununu joined the rest of the Bush Republicans in the Senate in putting their special interest friends ahead of the American people by blocking a minimum wage hike. [EPI] [Newsweek poll, 11/11/06]
(I'll make Johnny a deal: if he can last a month on $5.15 an hour for him and his family, I'll withdraw my criticism.)
But the real surprise of the day is that Mr. I'm-Sorta-Kinda-Against-the-Surge couldn't even bring himself to vote for a toothless resolution that simply expresses disapproval for the troop increase. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee (on which Sununu sits) vote was 12-9, and the only Republican to vote with the Dems was Hagel (who had this to say):
"There is no strategy. This is a ping pong game with American lives."
Since I'm sick and tired of dancing on the head of a pin trying to figure out where my Senator stands, only to get burned by him, I think I'll post my own resolution here once and for all: WHEREAS MY SENATOR, JOHN E. SUNUNU, SUPPORTS THE ESCALATION OF US SOLDIERS IN IRAQ, AGAINST THE WILL OF AN OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF AMERICANS, MOST OF CONGRESS, AND MOST MILITARY EXPERTS.
Johnny's word is not bond. What I want to know is: how did Straight Talk lure him back into bed with him on this one?
Update: Unbelievably, Sununu continues to soundbite his surge opposition even as he voted against the resolution. Situations like these are exactly why Blue Hampshire can be useful. Looking back on this months from now, the soundbite will stand more loudly than the vote. But there really is no reason to believe anything he says anymore:
Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., said additional troops should not be deployed until the Iraqi government showed more resolve.
Update #2: Could this really be all about the Benjamins?
At the end of a long and winding road through the state the Edwards family wrapped up their bus tour with a Town Hall event on the banks of the river at lovely Prescott Park in downtown Portsmouth, NH which was well attended by more than a thousand people.
