NH vote soon may no longer count

HB 148 wins this year for being the most freedom stripping bill of the year.

This brainchild of Representative Weed essentially strips away NH's right to vote for who is in our best interest.

This bill adopts the interstate agreement to elect the president by national popular vote.

While our voting system isn't perfect, the concept is that each state carries it's own weight so politicians don't cater just to big cities and forget about the rest of the country.

What this bill does is tosses that right out the window and puts 100% of the power in the hands of major cities leaving NH in the dust.  90% of our state could vote for Candidate A, but if Candidate B gets a majority vote our electoral votes ignore what the people of NH actually want and instead go with the majority of the rest of the country.

Our founding father described pure democracy, which this bill is, as two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

Sorry Rep Weed but I would rather the people of NH actually have their votes counted instead of having NY City, Boston, Chicago, LA and other major cities make those choices for us.

The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived. - John Quincy Adams

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%. - Thomas Jefferson

That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the world. - John Adams

Not My Mess

It dawned on me today that Democrats remind me of my kids. 

In an online debate I was having I pointed out how nearly every single poster who was positive about Obama was going on about how "historic" it was he was being sworn in for a 2nd term because he was our first black president.  I pointed out that since there was nothing being said of his character and accomplishments and instead the focus was on the color of his skin we clearly haven't accomplished the dream MLK had.

At this point I would have thought a well informed Democrat would list out the accomplishments they credit Obama with.  Of course none did.  Instead the argument turned back that he had to inherit all these problems from Bush and from there they repeated talking point after talking point.  You know the ones... the Iraq war on credit cards, Bush ruined the Economy etc. etc. etc..

I gave our leftist friends a 2nd chance to show me up asking point blank, can you please site some of Obama's accomplishments since unemployment is no better today then it was when he took office, the wars in the middle east he said he'd end continue worse then ever, the Patriot Act that Democrats blasted Bush for was expanded under Obama, the deficit has gone up so high that it makes even the last 2 years under Bush look good, GITMO prison which was so evil has been expanded, taxes on those of us making less then $250,000 a year have gone up, ObamaCare is now starting to show is increasing health care costs instead of decreasing as it was suppose to... what is better off today as a result of Obama and his policies?

Did even a single person come back with anything?

I was at least expecting that he killed Osama or he opened it up to allowing gays in the military.  Granted the first was accomplished using intelligence gathered under Bush using "torture" and the 2nd is subject to point of view as whether or not it was an accomplishment but I'll give those two to him.

But what else did he accomplish?  Anything?

The responses came back once again blaming Bush for everything under the sun.

This brings us back to my kids and how they remind me of this group of Democrats.

I walk into a room full of toys.  It doesn't matter who's toys they are or how they got on the floor, I just want them picked up.  I say to my kids that it's time to pick up the toys.  Instead of doing this they argue back that it was the other one who made the mess.  I say again, it doesn't matter who made the mess but you have to clean it up.

Obama didn't make the mess, this I'll agree on.  The economic down turn started before he became president (let's ignore any responsibility he had in office prior to becoming president and since we're being generous let's also ignore that Democrats held the house and senate since the 2006 elections).  However he ran for office as the guy who would clean up the mess.  He's had 4 years so far and the mess is still on the floor.

Democrats, instead of focusing on the mess and discussing how to clean it up, continue to argue about who made the mess in the first place and just like my kids attempt to draw focus onto something different ignoring the mess that they should be responsible for cleaning up.

Update on Thursday, January 24, 2013 at 10:55AM by Rick Barnes

If 8 is good and 10 is better why not go up to 100 or 1000

Interesting discussion over on Blue Hampshire this week regarding a bill currently pending in the state house.

HB 127 "AN ACT relative to the state minimum hourly rate."

Our friends over at Blue Hampshire had the following to say about this bill idea:

First I would like to say that I am happy to see that Rep Sullivan is already pushing for a higher minimum wage.  However, does this law go far enough?  Is $8.00 per hour really what we want to set the NH minimum wage at?

Right now, New Hampshire is the bottom of the barrel in minimum wage laws.  Massachusetts is already at $8.00 p/h. Vermont is at $8.60.  This is good, but I think we should push for more.

There is already a national push to move minimum wage to $10.00 an hour over the next two years.  The proposal was put in last session and failed to gain traction.

To sum it up, the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is bad.  $8 an hour is better but $10 is better yet.

When I read this I think then if $10 is better yet why stop there?  Wouldn't $20 an hour be even better.  Or $50?  Or why not $100 or $1,000 an hour?

Why not just make minimum wage an even $1 Million an hour and solve all the problems in our country all at once?

Think about it.  Students with tens of thousands in student loan debts would be able to pay them off with just a single hours worth of work.  Families struggling to pay off their mortages would be able to pay off their debts after a single day of work.  And with everyone earning $1 million an hour we'd have more then enough in tax revenue to pay off the national debt in no time.

Great idea right?

Sure, it's a great idea until you consider reality.

Let's assume you run a business.  You sell widgets for $5 each.  The company that makes them charges you $3 each for them so for every unit sold you earn $2 profit.

In an average day you can sell around 350 units.  350 X $2 profit means you earn $700 in profits during a normal 8 hour day.  Being a typical business you can't do everything alone so you have a couple employees.  Let's say you have two cashiers to cash people out, a stock boy to make sure the shelves are filled and a maintenance guy who fixes things around the shop.

It costs roughly $20,000 a year in benefits for an average full time employee.  This is a combination health care costs, taxes, insurance etc.  To be generous let's lower this down to just an even $10,000 a year because suddenly ObamaCare makes employing people cheaper.  So we have $10,000 divided by 52 weeks then again by 40 hours comes to $4.80 an hour for the cost of benefits per employee.

Doing the current math...

2 cashiers each earning $7.25 + $4.80 in benefits costs your business $24.10 every hour.

The stock boy has worked for you for a while so he's up to $8 an hour + $4.80 in benefits so he costs the business $12.80 an hour

The maintenance guy, being skilled, earned $20 an hour + $4.80 so he's $24.80 an hour

This brings the total up to $61.70 every hour not including your own salary.  This comes out to $493.60 a day in expenses leaving $206.40 for your own salary to live off.  Which breaks down to $21 an hour plus your own benefits of $4.80.

Increasing minimum wage to $10 an hour as our Blue Hampshire friends propose as a great idea would add to your expenses.

Your 2 cashiers are now $10 an hour + $4.80 so they come out to be $29.60

The stock boy bumps up to $10 an hour + $4.80 coming to $14.80

Assuming you keep your maintenance guy the same he'll still come out to $24.80 an hour

Now every hour you have to come up with $69.20 which all else the same leaves you with $7.50 an hour less in your own salary.

Here are a couple more things to consider...

If you were that stock boy who has slowly gotten increases over the years would you be happy now if you were essentially back at minimum wage earning exactly the same as the two cashiers who just started their jobs?

If you were the business owner would you attempt to get by on less?  Most would increase the price of their product.  Chances are since the company making the widget likewise has to pay out more in salaries they too will increase their price and the trucking company bringing the widget from the company that makes it to your stock room will also charge more.  350 units per day average just about 44 units per hour.  To make our math easier let's round it up to an even 50.  50 units an hour would mean every 2 cents in price equals $1 an hour in store income.  To raise minimum wage from $7.25 to $10 an hour would be a 38% increase.  Saying not everyone earns minimum wage from the manufacturer to your business let's say it only results in a 20% increase.  That $3 now becomes $3.20 and just to make up the $7.50 loss you saw in your own salary you'd need to increase your own price an additional 15 cents on top of what you are being charged.  Now your widget is selling for $5.35

With an increase on the cost of living with the cost of products going up, now your maintenance guy's standard of living dropped as did yours own and this is just on a 5 employee shop.

Since you own the business you have the ability to increase the cost you sell your product for so your own standard of living wouldn't drop but there isn't a law requiring you to make it up to your maintenance guy since he's above minimum wage.

So what happens?  The business owner (let's call him Rich) can set his own salary so he keeps going up the ladder by passing off higher costs on those buying his product.  Those at the bottom see a small bump but they also see increased costs.  Those in the middle class get completely screwed because they see increased costs but don't see any increases in wages to make up for it.

In other words, the rich get richer and the poor and middle class get poorer, everything democrats claim they are against.

And if you want to really add a double dose of reality into the mix, let's say it's a bigger company who has 100 or even 1,000 employees.  In their case, rather then increase costs to consumers they can get around the added expenses by laying off 5 or 10 percent of their workforce.  This puts more people living off government, increases expenses and taxes on the rest of us.

No one wins.

Fail in the public sector try government

Most people by now have heard the news of WTKK changing formats over to a music station.  This shouldn't be a big shock considering they were 15th in the ratings over the past 4 months averaging 2.3 for the month of December.

When the station fired Jay Severin they dropped a full point in the ratings for his time slot dropping from a 2.6 to a 1.8 rating share.  Instead they pushed the "angry is over" gimmick and put forward Jim and Margery, Mike Bower and Michael Graham as their mid day line up.  At the time Jay was their highest rated show with Michael Graham being the only one to come close at the time.

Eventually management gave up and changed formats.

Considering the majority of hosts failure to get ratings, where do radio hosts go from there?  Government radio of course!

As WTKK's news/talk format went silent earlier this week, its former morning show hosts keep talking. Jim Braude and Margery Eagan will occupy the WGBH 89.7 studios as guest hosts for a special edition of station's local talk block "Boston Public Radio" this coming Tuesday(1/8) from 12pm-2pm.

Imagine my shock when I flip past NPR and Jim and Margery were doing their same show.

Clearly when you are government funded you don't need to worry about whether or not your host gets ratings or not.

Voter ID and Seceding

Polls are interesting things.  I don't put much weight in them because a good pollster can get the results they want based on how they ask a question.  Asking if people support a woman's right to choose and showing a picture of the young attractive women protesters you see in the paper for instance would give far different results then if you ask if people support the right to murder unborn children and show a picture of a dead unborn.  You would basically be asking the same question but it's all in how it's asked.

All that said, once in a while when looking at polls you do see interesting things in their results.

Two polls taken recently on the patch website are good examples of that.

Poll 1 asks "Should Voter ID be repealed?"

Poll 2 asks "Should NH Consider Seceding from the Union?"

When looking at the results first consider the rule of 3s.  With nearly everything political you will always find that about 1/3 will always be for it and 1/3 will always be against it.  It's the 1/3 in the middle the sways things one way or the other.

When asked if voter ID should be repealed 32% said yes and 67% said no.

When asked if NH should consider seceding, 42% said yes and 57% said no.

So the way I look at these results you have the fairly split 1/3 for and 1/3 against but in the case of seceding from the Union a portion of that middle 1/3 is starting to believe it's a good idea.

What is that telling you about what direction people are thinking this country is headed in?

As I've said in the past when Republicans were in power, the party in power (in this case Democrats) would be wise listening to people and what they want.  People want fair elections and they want less government.  Unfortunately I think you're going to see Democrats push for ways that will make it easier for people to vote illegally and push for far more spending and more government over the next 2 years.