House Advances Pensions, Death, and REGGI

            The New Hampshire House Wednesday afternoon moved a bill to expand the death penalty and another on pension reform on to the Governor.  It also insisted on amending REGGI repeal provisions to a Senate shoreline protection.

            All three votes were primarily along party lines.  However, no less than 61 Republicans joined 92 Republicans in voting not to concur with the Senate amendment to the death penalty expansion (House Bill 220).

            The final vote was 211-153, and Governor John Lynch, one of the few pro death Democrats you’ll find (Jeanne Shaheen was another), has indicated he will sign the bill.

            Republicans were 203-61 (not your usual suspects) for the bill while Democrats were 8-92 against it.  When the bill passed the House earlier, it went by in a flash, but death penalty opponents (including me) made a concerted effort to stop it this time around.  Hanover Democrat David Pierce and Derry Republican Patricia Dowling joined me in speaking against the bill sponsored by Speaker William O’Brien in response to the grizzly Mt. Vernon murders two years ago.

            I’m against the death penalty, period.  I revealed a long kept secret, that when I was a mere child my father was murdered and, like Renny Cushing, that hasn’t brought me into the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” mentality.  Society cannot send a message that killing is wrong by killing people in a premeditated and conspiratorial fashion (that’s what the death penalty is).  No civilized nation in the world still uses it; innocent men have been put to death and will continue to be with this expansion; all indications are that blacks are much more likely to be put to death (especially if the victims are white).

            Rep. Pierce noted that the bill lacks clarity since it fails to define what an enclosed structure is.

            Shawn Jasper made an especially silly argument that while other states have fried (my word, not his) innocent men, New Hampshire has not.  Of course, we haven’t—yet—Shawn—for one simple reason.  Our death penalty law is so narrowly drawn that it’s seldom sought, but I did manage to work in the argument that of the two police officers recently slain, the black assailant was given the death penalty while the white assailant (Perry killing Officer Charron) was not.

            I rest my case.

            Jasper also used the Biblical “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” admonition but of course he neglected to mention that the death penalty was assessed in Biblical times for such frivolous things as eating the wrong type of food.

            Poor, poor, pitiful Shawn.  Next thing you know, he’ll accuse me of drinking during the lunch hour (I do NOT drink—remember that’s the tactic Jasper used last week when he helped oust one of the Quandts from a leadership position.  If silliness were a motivating….whoops….I better stop there).

            The pension reform compromise, attached to Senate Bill 3, was approved 250-112.  Only two Democrats (John Gimas of Manchester and former Republican Sandy Keans from Rochester) voted for it.  13 Republicans, indeed mostly the usual suspects who are chummy with Big Labor, voted against it.

            The 13 included both Quandts, both Perkins, Remick, Shackett, Buxton, Brownrigg, Gandia, McCarthy, former Manchester firefighter Proulx, Copeland and John Sytek, husband of former Republican Speaker Donna Sytek.

            In pushing for the bill, some Republicans noted it does not go far enough but was the most the House could get from the Senate.   Unlike with the right to work bill, the House is expected to have the votes to override any Lynch veto.

            The REGGI-Shoreline Protection bill most likely was along party lines, but individual names were not recorded.

Weinergaters Modify My Best Quote

The Photo In Question

"Elections have consequences."

Those who've followed House sessions this year realize that is one of my favorite lines in admonishing Democrats about results from last November.

Have you heard (and I truly can't take credit for this) that someone involved in Weinergate has stolen the line...well, almost.

Yes, it's true, New York Congressman Anthony Weiner has learned that...

"Erections have consequences."

I can't help myself.

Seriously, Jimmy Kimmel on ABC last night showed Paris Hilton three photos of Weiner and asked the socialite which of her famous words "hot" or "huge" she would use for them.  Paris didn't miss a beat.

"Brutal."

"Sad."

"Heave."

She stated.

Well, I guess it wasn't seriously after all.

What really is serious is that this vile human being has not yet resigned.  I say vile not vile because of his sexual proclivities...that really is his business...but vile because he lied about it for ten days and in the process, he tried to implicate an innocent human being (Breitbart) and vile because apparantely he offered to have his p.r. team (is that at taxpaper expense, Weinie?) come up with a lie for one of the six women he texted, a Las Vegas stripper as I recall.

Republican Chris Lee bared his chest and was gone quicker than you can say "wax job or avec hair" and Weiner is desperately trying to cling to office after bringing our entire government into shame.  Rush Limbaugh and Greta the Lisper van Susteren say he should hang in because his tenure is hurting Democrats more than a resingation would hurt them.

Hey, Rush, Hey Lisper, there's something more important than embarassing Democrats here.  It's called integrity in our governing process.

As always, this is not about the Weinie; it's about the lies and the cover-up. 

Get out, you Weiner, and don't let the wax machine hit you on the way out.

Obama And Lynch Afflicted With Alfred E. Newman Syndrome

Send in the doctors for a second opinion. 

President Barack Obama and Governor John Lynch have both been diagnosed with that increasingly common ailment known as Alfred E. Newman syndrome, also known as "What Me Worry?" syndrome.

Doctors had long feared the President was suffering from the dreaded malady, and their worries were confirmed when he asserted yesterday, in nearly Rooseveltian terms, "Let me assert my firm belief that I do not fear a double dip recession."

Doctors paraphrased Obama's words as, "What me worry about a double dip recession?  Why should I worry?  After all, I'm only the most powerful man in the world, immune to laws of economics which apply to mere mortals."

John Lynch long ago was diagnosed with Alfred E. Newman syndrome.  His lack of concern about balancing a state budget is a sure symptom.

"What me worry?" Governor Lynch told us as he inflated revenue estimates by $300 million a few years ago.  Why worry?  Chickens never come home to roost, do they?

"What me worry?" John Lynch blathered again in a state of near hysteria as he illegally attempted to raid the malpractice fund to cover $100 million of his earlier mistake.  Why worry?  There's always another fund to raid isn't there?

"What me worry?" John Lynch muttered from his near catatonic state last spring as he convinced his party's senators and representatives to pull $60 million out of thin air, claiming quite erroneously that the state could sell of $60 million of imaginary assets.  Why worry?  Not when we can sink into a world of fictional assets.

Barack Obama may not be worried about the economy, and the very fact that he's contracted Alfred E. Newman syndrome is all the more reason why the rest of us should worry--a great deal.

John Lynch may not be worried about balancing the budget and the very fact that he's contracted a near fatal dose of Alfred E. Newman syndrome is all the more reason for the rest of us to worry--a great deal.

With incompetent dreamers like Obama and

 Lynch at the helm, we all need to worry--

A GREAT DEAL!

Proofiness: The Book, The Concept, The Award

For ammunition on any number of topics to be addressed on the House floor (or any other floor), Charles Seife's new book Proofiness is about as close to ideal as we're likely to find.   Thanks to a tip from Nashua Rep Mary Gorman, I procured Proofiness and within two days of reading it (quickly, it's only 260 pages), I was quoting it on the House floor in the debate over the costs for introducing photo IDs into the voting process.

Proofiness is a concept we should all know.  According to the author, it's "the art of using bogus mathematical arguments to prove something that you know in your heart is true--even when it's not."

I've always been interested in numbers and how they are used to deceive us.  Proofiness explains concepts I instinctively knew to be true, and while I don't agree with all of Seife's conclusions (for example, he thinks the Florida 2000 Presidential and the 2008 Minnesota Senate elections should have been declared too close to call and decided by coin flips--Absurd!), this is great stuff overall.

"Our society is awash in proofiness," Seife writes.  "Using a few powerful techniques, thousands of people are crafting mathematical falsehoods to get you to swallow untruths.  Advertisers forge numbers to get you to buy their products.  Politicians fiddle with data to try to get you to reelect them.  Pundits and prophets use phony math to get you to believe predictions that never seem to pan out."

Seife takes on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in an argument which I just might use in a death penalty floor debate this week.

He talks about causistry in shooting down the bogus allegation that legalizing marijuana will lead to people getting hooked on harder drugs.

His chapter on the Minnesota election and the lizard people is a real hoot, but Seife still doesn't convince me that flipping a coin is the way to go.

He draws a vivid distinction between statistical error rates in polling (usually very small) and systematic error rates which can be very large indeed, enough to render polls totally meaningless.  Seife goes back to the 1936 Readers Digest Poll (Langdon over FDR) to make his point, and he explains the classic Dewey Beats Truman from 1948 as well.

"Risky Business", his chapter on how the too big to fail mentality of bailing out failed businesses, is a classic.  It's sure to make you angry at how we got where we are today.

I disagree with Seife's contention that modeling census numbers is better than actually trying to count everyone.  In fact, I get the feeling Seife is really a left winger.  He contends that both the left and the right use Proofiness, but he seems to side with liberals most of the time.

For example, Seife is against photo IDs for voting, and I used his arguments against him.   After all, the League of Women Voters claiming photo IDs will cost us $2.5 million when it's actually about five percent of that amount seems like pure Proofiness to me.

Thus, Seife has created a monster.  Once you get the knack of what Proofiness entails, you will discover it all around you, and you'll have the tools to combat it.

I sense that's what Seife (the German word for "soap") really wants, to make us a more informed electorate.

For example, I couldn't help but think of Proofiness when Obama's go-to guy on economics, the soon to be former go-go guy Austan Goolsbee insisted last week that a paltry 54,000 in news jobs was a good thing, that we're a million times better with Obama running the economy.  You don't have to have read Proofiness to get the gist there--Goolsby is a perfect fool, a spinning scoundrel (don't let the door hit you on the way out), but Proofiness helps.

I've thought of instituting the Proofiness Award for this blog and my TV show, and it wouldn't be a good thing to get.  It'll be a dishonor, and the League of Women Voters takes the first Proofiness Award with Goolsbee a close second.  (Let's not count Anthony Weiner out; he'll probably earn a Proofiness Award by next week; six women indeed!  Rest assured, we'll find no hard truth in that assertion).

Thanks Rep. Gorman, I'd say I you one (book recommendation that is), but then I did turn you on to K Blows Top earlier, a great look at Nikita's 1959 tour of the U.S., one of my favorite all time books, even better than Proofiness.

The Reading Room--Andrew Johnson Deserved To Be Impeached (And Convicted)

When time permits, this blog will feature commentary on new books. 

Harvard University professor Annette Gordon-Reed, an African American whose previous works include a look at the Hemmingses of Monticello, is no fan of the Andrew Johnson, the first American President ever to be impeached.

In the new short biography (144 pages--you can finish it in a day) for Arthur Schlesinger's American Presidents series, Gordon-Reed makes that fact perfectly clear.  From page one; Johnson comes across as a blatant racist, particularly ill-equipped to deal with the awesome challenge of reconstruction in the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

"Whatever Andrew Johnson may be, he is no friend of our race," Frederick Douglass is quoted early on in the book.  Clearly one of the worst Presidents ever, Johnson suffers a bit too heavy a dose of psychoanalysis by the author, but her point is well taken.

From his days as an indentured servant, Johnson was considered "white trash" by the southern planter society prior to the Civil War.  Only his animosity for black people, according to the thesis of this book, surpassed his dislike/resentment of wealthy whites.  That's why he attempted to circumvent Congress and impose lenient conditions on the defeated southern states in reentering the union.

Better to have the old white clan back in the Union than to allow blacks to get a foothold of freedom.

If that seems overly simplistic, so be it.

Clearly, the author does not agree with Ted Sorenson who, in his book Profiles In Courage (you don't really believe JFK wrote that, do you?), has high praise for Kansas Senator Edmond Ross whose vote was critical in preventing Johnson from being convicted of impeachment in the Senate.

Gordon-Ross contends that while the specific charge against Johnson, a run-in with Congress over Secretary of War Stanton and the Tenure of Office Act, might have been overplayed, then certainly the President deserved to be both impeached and convicted for subverting the will of Congress in carrying out its Reconstruction policies.

Since the book is so short, details are a bit sketchy, but Gordon-Reed does a fair job of detailing Johnson's spectacular rise from dirt poor tailor to the top through a series of electoral wins, due in large part to his great oratorical skills.  If you haven't heard about how Johnson was stone cold drunk the day he was sworn in as Vice President--even if you have actually--you'll enjoy the story; apparently Secretary of State Seward helped get his Veepiness intoxicated.

A few years ago, I nearly fulfilled a New Years Resolution of reading a biography of every U.S. President.  Johnson was low on my priority list; I didn't go chronologically, and I missed him.

This small book is ideal for those who want to know a little about all our Presidents.  It hasn't left me wanting to know more; I'm fully satisfied I know enough about this very bad President and probably rather bad man as well.

Millard Fillmore, Zachary Taylor, and Martin van Buren--three other Presidents who fell through my resolutionary crack--are all covered in this series.  Ah yes, at last a chance to fulfill the resolution. 

As an indication of how much the author dislikes her subject, she dedicates Andrew Johnson to "Vernon E. Jordan Jr. and to the memory of Mary Belle Jordan for standing against everything Andrew Johnson stood for."  Begin by reading those words and you know it's not about to be a glowing biography, no matter how short.

Andrew probably deserves little more, Ted Sorenson's recollections notwithstanding.  (Ross is never mentioned in the Gordon-Reed book).