by Edward Mosca

This coming week, the House is set to take up a so-called bipartisan constitutional amendment on education funding. But the amendment is bipartisan only in the sense that it is supported by both Democrat and Republican House members. As far as the substance is concerned, the amendment is totally one-sided in the Democrats’ favor.

Essentially, the amendment writes the Supreme Court’s misbegotten Claremont/Londonderry decisions into the State Constitution. More specifically, the Legislature would be required to define an adequate education, determine its cost, and fund the cost exclusively with state taxes. All of this would be done under the highest level of judicial oversight.

What this means is that anybody can go to court at any time and sue the Legislature on the grounds that it hasn’t properly defined an adequate education and/or that it hasn’t set the cost high enough, and it will be the Legislature’s burden to prove otherwise. As a practical matter, unelected judges will have the ultimate say on what is taught in the public schools, how it is taught, and how much we are taxed to pay for it.

According to Republican policy leader Gene Chandler, this amendment “meets our Republican ideals.” If Chandler and other Republican “leaders” really believe that the education mandarins in Concord can make better education policy than local school boards, teachers and parents, and that unelected judges should have the ultimate say on the curriculum and cost of public education, to paraphrase Obi-Wan, “Well then they are truly lost.”

If this amendment passes, say goodbye forever to local control. The education mandarins in Concord would determine what the locals should be paying for public education. And those school districts that did not receive full funding would have to make up the difference through the local property tax.

And say hello to a broad-based tax. Because the amendment envisions the Supreme Court having the final say on the cost of an adequate education, anybody can run into Court and claim that the $1 billion the Legislature has determined an adequate education costs is “inadequate.” If the Court agrees, the amendment requires the Legislature to pay for whatever the Court says the cost is.

The only tweak to Londonderry/Claremont is that the Legislature would not have to distribute funding on a comparable per pupil basis. However, at the insistence of House Republican leadership the amendment also provides “every school district shall receive a meaningful share of these funds.” In other words, no town, no matter how affluent, can be denied a “meaningful” spot at the education funding trough. Let the feeding frenzy begin!

The so-called bipartisan amendment is not just antithetical to “Republican ideals”, it is also really stupid politics.

Republicans are going to lose, not gain, votes in the 2008 election by supporting this amendment. Voters who believe that unelected, elitist judges should be running our public schools aren’t going to suddenly switch their affiliation to Republican. On the other hand, voters who believe in fiscal responsibility and/or local control and/or that the judicial branch has no business setting education policy will have good reasons not to vote Republican.

But it is not just public education where elected Republicans are truly lost. Can you name a single major policy proposal that Republicans have brought forward since John Lynch was elected Governor back in 2004?

Worse still, it’s not just that Republicans are only offering “same-but-less”, rather, some of the most egregious examples of “nanny-state” legislation in the last legislative session have been supported and sponsored by Republicans. For example, it was Republican State Senator Bob Clegg who sponsored legislation mandating that health insurers cover bariatric surgery.

Republicans seem to be staking the entire 2008 campaign on the State’s budget deficit. One problem with this strategy is that voters don’t get all that worked up about deficits. Remember Ross Perot? All he talked about during the 1992 election was the deficit, and all that got him was a distant third place.

The other problem with making the 2008 election all about the deficit is that we won’t really have a handle on the size of the deficit until 2009 because that is when most of the red-ink is projected to occur.

What Rep. Chandler and the other Republican “leaders” don’t seem to understand is that you can’t beat something with nothing. And, aside from carping –albeit quite correctly– about the budget deficit they appear to have no alternative approaches to the issues facing the State.

by Evan F. Nappen Esq.

Those pesky Granite State gun owners have damaged the anti-gun spin machine of the Violence Policy Center.  In a recent news release, the credibility-challenged VPC proclaimed, "Pro-Gun States Lead the Nation in Per Capita Firearm Death Rates.” The news release goes on to say, “The analysis [of data from the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] reveals that the five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, Tennessee and Alabama. Each of these states had a per capita gun death rate far exceeding the national per capita gun death rate of 10.32 per 100,000. By contrast, states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had far lower rates of firearm-related death. Ranking last in the nation for gun death was Hawaii, followed by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New York.”

The VPC dares not look at the bottom seven (7) states instead of the arbitrary five (5). That is because, lo and behold, New Hampshire ranks seventh from the bottom in per-capita gun deaths. New Hampshire is undeniably a strong pro-gun state that greatly respects the individual right to keep and bear arms.  New Hampshire is beat only by sixth-place Connecticut, the home of “Gun Valley,” a major area of gun making in the United States.  For that matter, all of New England is in the bottom 12.  Low gun deaths in New England are more attributable to the culture and character of the region than to the availability of firearms.  By contrast, the West is still somewhat wild and the South has not fully lost its rebel yell.

The VPC also has to purposely limit their selectively picked data to states rather than cities. This is because the one jurisdiction with the strictest gun control in the entire nation is the District of Columbia. In D.C., all handguns are banned, long arms must be stored disassembled, locked, and unloaded, and law-abiding citizens have no right to carry guns. According to the same 2005 CDC data relied upon by the VPC in their news release, D.C. has the highest death rate of any place in the US!  D.C has well over double the national average.

The VPC also conveniently fails to mention that the total number of deaths in the entire United States is ever so slightly over one hundredth of one percent — .0103% to be exact, and that is with approximately 250 million guns in the country.  Additionally, those are all firearm deaths, including police shootings, justifiable self defense, and suicide.

The reason for the VPC’s new propaganda push is obvious, and they unknowingly reveal it in their news release. They are scared “to death” of the very real possibility of a Supreme Court victory in June for the Second Amendment in the celebrated Heller case. Ironically, the Heller case is a challenge to the very D.C. anti-gun law ignored by the VPC.  VPC Legislative Director Kristen Rand states, "Blind allegiance to the Second Amendment comes at a deadly price. Many residents in pro-gun states cheer the possibility of a June Supreme Court ruling that could place gun controls across the nation at risk, never realizing that those states stand as proof of the need for such laws.” Well, unfortunately for the VPC agenda, the District of Columbia torpedoes their glorification of anti-gun laws and New Hampshire stands as granite counter-proof that there is no need for such laws.

By Peter Bearse

MAY DAY! MAY DAY! – The call of people in distress; also, the name of May 1^st, traditionally more of a “Labor Day” than the one in September.

These days, “distress” and “labor” go together. Workers’ work is earning far, far less, either in real terms [their inflation-adjusted earnings have declined] or as a share of earned incomes [in an economy in which the share of the rich has risen by leaps and bounds]. Thus, rising inequality is a sleeper (read between the lines) issue of this 2008 political year, to become a time bomb of an issue if we don’t start to do something about it now.

What’s to be done? First, try to get to the root of the problem. One fundamental source is that garden-variety wage and salary workers aren’t receiving shares of the profits and other wealth that their work helps to produce. Some firms have profit-sharing plans. Others have “ESOPs” – Employee Stock Ownership Plans. The latter are preferable since shares of stock embrace all company assets, not just profits. Several studies have shown that companies with ESOPs perform better than those without.

Another source is that, while paying through the nose as gas prices rise, American workers are not receiving any shares of the considerable profits being accumulated by “Big Oil” from our nation’s (diminishing) natural resource of oil, nor from any other natural resources whose prices are also rising in the commodities markets. The exception is Alaska, whose citizens receive an annual check from the Alaska Permanent Fund, derived from oil revenues produced in the state.

A third source is the negative rate of return on the forced savings that American workers contribute to Social Security for their own retirement.

Anybody seriously concerned with the ability of American workers to earn “living wages” that can support families will do more than claim an increase in the minimum wage as a major accomplishment. The evidence shows that it “helps” no more than a small minority of the nation’s workforce and leads to a loss of entry-level jobs. The next Congress will need to do much more. A good start would be threefold:

(1) In light of a generation of experience, liberalize and improve laws to encourage and enable the spread of employee stock ownership.

(2) Allow more oil drilling on public lands and increase lease rates and royalties that oil companies would have to pay for the privilege. [At the state level, states with considerable natural resources should look at the Alaskan model.]

(3) Require that workers’ Social Security funds are invested to earn a significantly positive rate of return – by putting the funds into a true, secure trust fund in the form of a public/private partnership that would invest them in a broad spectrum of American enterprise. This would negate the need to raise the already high rate of FICA taxation to maintain Social Security.

The bylines of these suggestions are: “Everyman an entrepreneur!” by broadening the base of ownership, “Spread the Wealth!” and “Let’s hear it for the American worker!”

Yet, these points are but a partial beginning of an effort to deal with a long-run, fundamental issue. Let’s get a discussion going. Comments? Other suggestions? Reply to peterj@peterbearseforcongress.com.

Peter Bearse, Ph.D., International Consulting Economist, author of Mobilizing Capital & Services: The New Economy (co-author), and Candidate for Congress, NH CD #1. Released by Supporters of Peter Bearse for Congress on May 1, 2008.

by John Clark

Last Sunday evening we were treated to a rare delight, the 'Keynote Speaker' at the Detroit NAACP Dinner.

Carried 'live' by two national TV networks, regular white folk were afforded the opportunity to be addressed by a leading Black Liberation Theologian who was speaking to 'us' rather than to his 'normal' congregation. Jeremiah Wright explained in a very lucid manner why he felt that color did indeed make people different, he went to considerable length to differentiate the cognitive reality perceived by black and white.

A speech with sufficient examples of both African and European origin thought processes to assure 'us' many times over that "Indeed Change is Coming".

In quite a different manner of Speech than those given within his Home Church, Wright left no doubt of the differences between the way he and his followers, including as stated last evening, the Nation of Islam, see what they wish our Country should be from the Country which predominantly white Europeans have built.

No recognition was given for the evolution and emancipation of the last two centuries, only "That Change is Coming" 

No inkling of fault being with anyone except the white majority who must accept "The Change which is Coming"

Given such a Speech, by Barack Obama's current Pastor ( until the end of May, according to his introducer that evening ) it is totally beyond my comprehension just how a President with the thought processes described in such detail by Jeremiah Wright could possibly represent ALL of the people, including those who 'think so differently'.

Especially a prospective President (and spouse ) who have been Wright's congregants and friends for twenty years.

Wright made no attempt to offer any exceptions to his 'Thought Process' paradigm, thus including ALL black people in his characterization.

Until this Speech a lot of white folk had no idea that the difference was so profound. Probably  a large number of both black and white folk, could and should, disagree with Wright's Speech and his reasoning, but now it is out there for Obama to suffer the consequence.

Liberation Theology has changed the political face of Latin America in the last four decades into a communist dominated society. "Change has Indeed Arrived in those Countries".

This Speech, without being specific, left little doubt as to the implied "Change" facing the United States of America. 

Thank You, Jeremiah Wright, for explaining so clearly !!

note: Please go to   www.socinian.org/liberty.html   for a basic definitive Paper on Liberation Theology

by Richard H (Dick) Olson

Superior Court Judge Patricia Coffey has resigned under pressure from Governor John Lynch. I find that amazing since a panel of her piers, The Judicial Conduct Committee, only recommended a three(3) month suspension and the NH Supreme Court imposed a three (3) year suspension.

Since Judge Coffee participated in fraud by helping her disbarred husband by hiding personal assets, why wasn’t she disbarred and fired? She and her husband cost NH taxpayers thousands of dollars when she helped hide $10,000 from stock sales and hid $76,000 from the sale of an office condo. This money was supposed to be used to reimburse the NH court system for investigative costs.

Oh well! I suppose the suspension is better than disbarment and allows her to collect a pension and still earn a living as a lawyer.

General John Stark did not mean that trusted government officials should live on the state when he said; “Live Free or Die”.