Find Something Else Stupid To Do - Don't Do This
Friday, May 15, 2009 at 03:00PM I just got off the phone with Mary Adams of Maine.
If you don’t know who Mary Adams is - here ya go. Mary Adams is the small--government juggernaught grandmother who has, for several decades, fought the good fight against government waste and spending up in Vacationland.
Mary called about a new development in Maine politics, there is an effort by those on the left to make the Maine Legislature smaller, or in other words, put it up for sale to lobbyists. The highest bidder, taxpayers are NOT.
The quickest way to turn any state into Massachusetts is to have a small “professional” legislature to do “the people’s work.” (insert belly laugh here)
And what kind of “professional legislators” will inhabit this new, glorious Maine Legislature?
Can you say – trial lawyers, defense lawyers, low life con artists, ego maniacs, former and current public employees, and moonbats.
Hey Maine taxpayers! Just say no to making the Maine Legislature into “Bulger/Finneran North.”
When I go on the road and meet people from other taxpayers groups across the country they always ask what it is like to have a 400 member House of Representatives.
I tell them the same thing: “I know its is pretty tough with that many, I just wish we could add about 200 more so nothing would get done and we would all be safe.”
Reader Comments (12)
N.H.'s "citizen" legislature, isn't actually representative of the citizens. The only people who can participate are the self-employed, the extremely wealthy and the retired. You end up with people like Ted Gatsas and Lou Dell'asandro, or old drooling crackpots who escape from the old-folks home long enough to drive their Buicks to Concord and sleep through hearings. And then you have all the absentee reps. Sometimes you get a few college students, but remember how well that worked out with Republican caped crusader John Kerns?
In the areas around Concord you actually get a few actual real, live actual working people who can make quick trips to the Statehouse, or maybe arrange to work half days, but even most of them are self-employed. If you live in the North Country and it would take 7 hours just to get and to and from Concord AND you want to work for a living - forget about it.
The correct solution is to do something like what Connecticut does - a semi-pro legislature. There's a stipend of about $28k, which is not enough to live on (or at least not live a lavish political fat cat lifestyle on) but compensates those who aren't wealthy, retired, living off their parents, etc., who still want to participate in politics. The stipend means that if you can't put in a full 40 (or 50 or whatever it is you would normally work) you can still make as much as you would if you did.
$28k is way too much for NH, but something could be done to make it a little more accessible for actual everyday folk.
Ed will go ballistic over this because a novel idea like letting people who work for a living and who aren't wealthy and/or crazy participate is novel and scary, but I would propose that if the people who actually took the votes on our budget and taxes weren't so wealthy they didn't care, or living off social security, disability and/or Mommy and Daddy, they would probably vote more fiscally conservative.
Gotcha Ray.
As for being a logger, no you could never be one of those TT, that requires body parts that you are, ahem, missing.
Maybe TT Raybo can explain Executive Councilor Ray Burton's employment and elective history to us.
Let me see, you pay a small salary and in exchange you get - one guy, elected forever.
No thanks!
Biennial sessions just like we used to have when NH was frugal. Now THAT was a citizen legislature.
I think Vermont does a quality job in this area. Its a small salary plus $500.00 a week while the House in session.
With the exception of Chitenden County (sic) normal people can be elected to the Legislature.
Vermont also doesn't bunk up pointless legislative summer study committees as is common practice in New Hampshire.
Lobbyists make money even when the bills don't pass.
We need new blood and we need real NH business people and real NH employees to serve.
Notice how I say BIENNIAL SESSIONS and some comments are about anything but.
Demand biennial sessions NOW!
Any other answer is just Mass. North
also to Observer: Quasi-employed is Ed brags about working for a living, but I can't believe someone who whines about EVERYTHING that much or shows so little common sense actually stays working on a regular basis. And I don't want to be a logger. Ever. Thank you.
You still haven't answered the question.
An exception: There are approx. 120,000 disabled, low income, displaced workers living off the dole in NH and that number rises each month with no end in sight. With all that time on their hands it is not likely they will show up to vote in a way that bites the hand that feeds them.
Do you hear us snicker as you walk the halls in Concord? Even your own party thinks you're a joke.
So angry.
I am never in the statehouse, by the way.