January 2012 Member Posts (21)

By Ovide Lamontagne

I was pleased to hear Governor Lynch's renewed support for a constitutional amendment on education funding during his final "State of the State" speech delivered today.  He is correct that an appropriately worded constitutional amendment could allow the state to target school aid to those ditricts and communities who lack the fiscal capacity to fund an adequate education while restoring local control of education in the hands of parents, local…

The Legislature is once again trying its hand with a Voter ID bill. The Senate Public and Municipal Affairs Committee held a public hearing last week for SB 289 and I was one of some two dozen people packed into LOB room 101.…

The New Hampshire House and Senate were at full throttle this week.



Guns and eminent domain dominated the Senate discussion, while the House took up consideration of a bill to allow businesses to decline its services to gay couples and a bill that decreases benefits to a welfare mother who has more children.



HB 1658 states that with certain limited exceptions, such as rape or incest,…

  The NH Supreme Court, in their MILLER/TODD decision:

http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/opinions/2011/2011030miller.pdf

clearly states that children have a right…

If state Sen. Amanda Merrill has her way, drinking games in bars will be illegal.…

Given the divided Congress, we shouldn’t be surprised that the politically divided New Hampshire delegation in Washington, D.C., responded in partisan fashion to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech last night.



Our three Republicans were critical; our one Democrat was supportive of the Democratic president’s address to Congress and the American…

As we look around and address the most recent recession, we have a tendency to lose hope and not recognize some of the good things that are happening here in our State of New Hampshire. Although many are still looking for work, our unemployment rate remains at one of the lowest levels in the nation and unemployment claims continue to

trend downward.…

The first-in-the-nation primary campaigns are gone, but New Hampshire won’t be forgotten entirely as the presidential primary circus has moved on to South Carolina, Florida and beyond.



That’s because the Granite State will be an important swing state in the upcoming general election.



For Democrats, 2012 is an opportunity to a) repeat its selection in 2008 of a Democratic presidential candidate over a Republican (Barack Obama over John McCain), and b) wrestle political…

I believe the citizens of New Hampshire expect and deserve elected leaders with personal integrity, the courage of their convictions, objectivity, with the willingness to place the welfare of the state over their personal or party self-interest; other words men and women of principle.

After the events that occurred on the House Floor on January 18, 2012, I believe that the citizens of New Hampshire have every right to question the “courage of convictions” and the willingness…

The New Hampshire House on Wednesday approved a redistricting plan that both giveth and taketh away in terms of new voting precincts throughout the state.



The House accepted the Republican leadership’s redistricting plan by a vote of 205 to 86.



In some cases, the redistricting plan pairs town precincts with city wards. According to examples cited by the Concord Monitor,…

Earlier this week, New Hampshire's House of Representatives voted (257-101) in favor of a constitutional amendment prohibiting a state income tax.



I question the need for such a measure. For starters, the anti-tax culture remains prevalent in New Hampshire:

New Hampshire has a long history of opposing an income tax. The House…

Did you know the state Legislature considers hundreds of bills every year? Most citizens might not be aware because the media can only devote attention to a few dozen pieces of legislation.

To be honest, many, if not most, of these bills are not related to core issues - the economy, taxes, education, law enforcement, transportation, etc.

I thought it would be a fun exercise to look at some of the obscure/trivial pieces of legislation. Here are some of the bills I found this…

One of the local stories to emerge on Primary Day was the Project Veritas undercover video showing reporters obtaining ballots in the name deceased citizens. Legal or not, the report shows the potential for voter fraud in New Hampshire.



The Legislature passed a Voter ID bill last spring, but…

Ever heard of Wordle?  It's a free tool to create word clouds.  Paste in a block of text and Wordle will generate a cloud in which the words used most often are the biggest.  The results are amusing as well as insightful; the visual representation can give you a look at what message was emphasized in the text.

So what better way to analyze the overarching message of the Republican presidential candidate stump speeches than to paste them into Wordle?  Here are the results.…

The circus that was the 2012 presidential primary packed up its three rings and its side shows and left New Hampshire after Tuesday’s voting.



Here’s a bit of what happened:



-- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney met expectations and garnered 39 percent of the vote cast in the Republican race. Given that New Hampshire’s is an open primary where undeclared voters can vote Democrat or Republican, analysts say Romney’s win …

Primary day 2012 is nothing like primary day 2008.



Long lines greeted Democrats, Republicans and independents four years ago. Voters were able to breeze through their polling stations today.



A crush of sign-holding supporters greeted voters four years ago. In some locations today, there wasn’t a single sign holder to be found.



Those are some of the impressions after touring voting locations in the Seacoast region earlier today in Durham, Exeter, Greenland, Hampton,…

Friends, readers, countrymen: Lend me your ... eyeballs?



OK, look for that to register as the worst lead of the 2012 New Hampshire Primary Election season. But if you're still reading this, you'll be rewarded (or perhaps punished) with this blog post updated at various times throughout the day to bring you the rich pageantry that is the first-in-the-nation primary.



To start things off, if the…

How Speaker O’Brien is making New Hampshire irrelevant.

For the next 24 hours, the nation will be paying attention to New Hampshire as the presidential candidates and their supporters flood the state making their final attempts to win over the voters in the first in the nation primary.  Come January 11, 2012 New Hampshire’s status as host of the first in nation primary if maintained could become totally irrelevant come 2016;

The cause; the deals Mr. O’Brien…

We’re cribbing from Rick Santorum to introduce this week’s TWIR, because it is indeed “game on” for not only Santorum as the newest surging presidential candidate but for the state of New Hampshire as a whole



The Granite State is now the political epicenter of the 2012 Republican presidential primary as we speed toward our first-in-the-nation primary on Jan. 10.



The Iowa caucuses on Tuesday gave former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt…

With only a few days to go until the Republican Presidential Primary Election, GOP voters and pundits alike are looking to a new dark horse candidate's strong showing in Iowa, and a possible disruptive effect on the yearlong front-runner. They should prepare for disappointment.



A few months back, I wrote that ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is a lock in the…