New Hampshire: August 2009 Archives

You know someone's in deep doo-doo when even Glenn Reynolds is piling on.

In this case Representative Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH1) is on the receiving end of tactics she used against her predecessor, former Congressman Jeb Bradley. Her reactions show she can dish it out but obviously can't take it, having a constituent arrested at one of two town hall meetings she held recently.

This is a curious re-election strategy, especially for a Representative who made her name by bird-dogging her former Congressman at his town-hall forums. Consistency isn't Carol Shea-Porter's strong suit, apparently, as she demonstrates in [a] clip from the meeting she finally held with constituents after dodging them for most of the month. When one of her constituents challenges the presence of union enforcers in the crowd, Shea-Porter asks for police intervention.

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I've watched this video a couple of times, and I still can't figure out why the police took this man out of the room. He was actually less disruptive than the woman behind him. He challenged Shea-Porter on the appearance of SEIU protesters in the room, one of whom got up and disrupted his question. When the first man then challenged the residency of the SEIU rep, police swooped in and removed him.

Now Hampshire also reports that the man they removed is Carl Tomanelli -- a retired policeman.

Shea-Porter has also shown her true stripes, disparaging protesters outside her town hall meeting venues as "tea-baggers", a sexually explicit term no member of Congress should use to describe constituents. She has also made known she didn't consider military families that support the war in Iraq as her constituents, nor those of us that didn't vote for her. So much for representing the people in her congressional district. (She's made the mistake of pissing off the Blue Star and Gold Star Mothers here in New Hampshire. That won't go over well come the 2010 elections.)

I'm sad to say this condescending effete snob is my representative. On more than one occasion I have written to her (using both snail-mail and e-mail) with my viewpoints on certain issues going before Congress and not once has her office responded. I guess I'm just one of "those people", one she figures she can ignore because I'm not really one of her constituents. I didn't vote for her and I support the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which means she figures she can safely ignore me and those like me.

She's wrong.

It's ironic that Governor John Lynch is touting New Hampshire to other states as an example of fiscal responsibility. Ironic because it isn't true.

In the face of a deep national recession, New Hampshire stands as an example for other states in crafting a budget that makes tough cuts and lowers spending, while protecting essential services and avoiding major new taxes.

Instead, the Legislature raised existing taxes and fees, in some cases adversely affecting 45,000 small businesses in the state at a time when they could least afford it. (Hey, there's a recession on and business is way down, meaning income is down.)

The state did not lower spending...unless you call over $1.2 billion (~13%) in additional spending compared to the previous budget "lowering" spending.

We produced a budget that makes cuts by making changes to just about every area of state government and sets state government on a path to greater reform. Overall, state spending is down about 1 percent.

"Down 1 percent"? Maybe compared to the original proposed budget (an increase of 13% instead of 14%), but not when compared to the previous budget.

The governor and the legislature had more than enough opportunities to truly trim the budget and minimize the burden to the taxpayers in New Hampshire. They had more than enough time to look at the projected revenues and to craft a budget that fit within the constraints of those revenues. Instead they reversed the order, putting together a budget and only then looking to see if there would be enough money to pay for it. When it became apparent the revenues wouldn't come close to being able to fund the proposed spending, the legislature raised taxes and fees that hit the taxpayers at a time when they could least afford it.

Both the governor and the legislature failed the people of New Hampshire. We expected an austere budget, even if it meant laying off state employees and a reduction in services. What we got instead was a crap sandwich that we were expected to swallow whole and then say "Please, sir, may we have another?"