Is the NH Economy So Good That We Can Afford To Grow State Government by 16%?

I know what you were thinking while you were paying almost four dollars a gallon for gas, or looking at your utility or cable bill, or thinking about how much more it costs to do the grocery shopping these days.  You were thinking, “Hey, times are so good, lets grow the size of the state government by 16%!”

You must have said that because someone in Concord seems to think they heard you say it.

What?  You weren’t thinking that?  Well you’d best get in touch with your legislator and tell them because the Democrat majority House is preparing to vote on a budget that will make your state government cost you 16% more.

The Hassan/House Democrat budget also includes $600 million dollars in new spendingthat was not even in the original budget–which itself spent revenues from streams that do not even exist.

I suppose that might explain why the Democrats have already gotten back to the business of cramming and downshifting costs on towns, as Susan observed just a few hours ago here.  That 16% growth in the cost of government has to get paid for somehow.

Of course, we could suggest to the legislators in Concord that the economy has not grown 16%–if at all. That if the people of New Hampshire were even making more now than they were last year or the year before, they’d need that money for themselves just to manage the skyrocketing costs of running their own households at level funding.    Costs which more than a half-decade of Democrat rule in DC have failed to address, and may (arguably) have made worse.

We can ask, but they don’t give a damn.  They really don’t.  How could they?  Only someone who is completely disconnected from reality would vote to take 16% more from the citizens of their state in almost any economy; New Hampshire Democrats are looking to take 16% more in this one.

And yes, I’m going to say I told you so.  I told you that New Hampshire Democrat party leadership was and is committed to government-first growth.  The expansion of the state,  paid for by the working families and the business owners who employ us, is their first priority.

And here it is.  In a stumbling economy with rising unemployment, rising prices, and stagnating wages, the Majority Democrat House needs that 16% so they can make government bigger.  They added 600 million more in spending and buried it inside the budget.  And after years of denying all the downshifting of costs they voted for while trying to hide their last tilt at the levers of fiscal power, and all the blaming of Republicans for doing it, their first budget takes up right where they left off–cramming costs down on cities or towns so they can grow state government. 

H/T AFPNH

Note: Democrats say yes!  The House Passed the budget on a partsian line vote. 

You are reading  Is the NH Economy So Good That We Can Afford To Grow State Government by 16%?   by  Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com (Home)

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Dean Trefethen – Dover, Only NH Mayor To Stand with Nanny Bloomberg

by Steve MacDonald

First, thanks to Kathleen LaBonte, who pointed out in the comments for this post, ‘Legal Gun Owners Against Stupid Gun Grabbing Mayors,‘ that Dover, New Hampshire Mayor Dean Trefethen is the only mayor in all of New Hampshire to climb on board Mike ‘Buckshot’ Bloomberg’s anti-gun owner clown car.

Trefethen has signed on to “mayorsagainstillegalguns.org.”

Really?  Mayors Against Illegal Guns?  Illegal guns.  Bloomberg is such an arrogant ass.  Every law abiding gun owner is against illegal guns so I’m reasonably certain (reasonably) that every mayor is as well; except perhaps for Chicago’s  Rahm Emanuel of the ‘please just don’t touch the children fame,’ who may be the only U.S. mayor on public record for demonstrating that it is possible for a cities chief executive to couch gun related gang violence in terms of when he’s really really REALLY against illegal gun use.  Hey- No shooting at each other when there are kids around?  Got it?

Dean has only been Mayor-Mayor of Dover since mid 2011 but he was Deputy Mayor for the three years prior.   He served 8 years on the city council and was on the zoning board of adjustment as well.    A real joiner, that guy.  And now he’s hitched his little blue wagon to Nanny Doomberg to promote the idea that more gun control laws will have some kind of impact on illegal guns.

What is both ironic and amusing about this notion is that illegal gun owners probably FAVOR stricter gun laws and more stringent background checks.  Why? Because only legal gun owners–their perspective victims–will ever be affected by those laws.  Lawbreakers don’t care about the law.  So any smart criminal would have to support a government or politician willing to guarantee them a force majority.

I think it is safe to say that Dean, who has been stewing in Dover’s liberal ghetto for longer than we were supposed to be afraid of global warming, is more interested in creating victims.  That’s about the only thing the Bloomberg/Doomberg grandstanding plan will ever accomplish, though I expect he will get praise from his sycophantic left-wing majority citizenry for his “courage” on this important issue.  Or is he just a progressive rube?

Speaking of courage.  Kathleen politely reminds us that Trefethen is up for re-election this December.  If someone has the courage to try, maybe they could challenge Mr. Treflethen for the office.  Despite all his years of ‘experience’ he’s still inclined to glom on to dumb things.

Maybe Maggie “Squats With Lobbyists” Hassan Just Wants A Casino Bailout?

As our Democrat Governor tries to improve her odds at winning a bet on a state gambling monopoly in norther New England, AP is reporting hard times for the Indian Casino monopoly in the southern part of New England.  The Indian tribes, who got the law changed to allow them to put up casinos as a way to pay for their needs way back when, got so busy relying on other peoples gambling money for their free ride that when that money dried up, (down economy, waste, bad spending decisisons, abuse, because they are entitield) they figured they'd go running back to Uncle Sam for a bailout.

It's millions of dollars, just sitting there, to which the 'law' entitles them, and as the song goes, they aint too proud to beg.

The money provided annually to the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation through the Interior Department and the Department of Health and Human Services has risen over the last five years to more than $4.5 million, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act. One former tribal employee says department leaders were encouraged to offset dwindling resources by seeking more federal grants.

The Pequots, who once distributed stipends exceeding $100,000 annually to adult members, are not alone among gaming tribes seeking more federal aid. Several, including the owner of Foxwoods' rival Connecticut casino, the Mohegan Sun, say they have been pursuing more grants — a trend that critics find galling because the law that gave rise to Indian casinos was intended to help tribes become financially self-sufficient.

How many times have I said this?  Gambling revenue (not unlike sales and income taxes) are a poor source of tax dollars for any government.  When they need it most it will be at its least.  That puts a strain on existing spending at a time when the state very often wants to do more.   That means seeking new revenue from people who have already demonstrated, through their lack engaging in gambling or commerce, that they don't have it to give.  But tribal governments, it seems, are no more competent than any other, nor are those dependent upon them.  How many years did every tribal adult get a $100,000.00 stipend?  Where did that money go grasshopper?

Why is anyone in that tribe in need of anything from anyone?  Because they didn't earn it, didn't respect it, and now it is probably gone?

More from the same AP Article

"A billion-dollar gaming enterprise should fully fund the tribal government," said Weissmuller, (who was chief judge of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Court until 2011) who said that he was forced out of the job by tribal officials who told him he did not appear to have the tribe's interests at heart on other matters.

Weismuller is not against accepting Federal grants but if we had to make comparisons he must be the tribal equivalent of the TEA Party, asking those inconvenient questions.  Which brings us New Hampshire Governor Hassan.

Governor Hassan is committed to Casino revenue.  She included it on the revenue (that's tax) side of her budget, even though no such law permitted them.  Meanwhile, the Indian Tribes are struggling so badly with their own investment in casino revenues, that they need the Federal government to come along and help bail them out.  So it appears as if Maggie "Squats with lobbyists" Hassan (or how about "Dances with Debits?") has not only put the cart before the horse,  the cart is empty, or as likely to be at any point at which the other Democrats in her tribe are demanding that the state spend even more on top of what is now less.

There are no guaranteed bailouts from the Federal Government for any future failed New Hampshire Casinos, in a New England market that already has too much competition?, so this means that the spending to which our Democrat Governor has already committed--that and so much more--will have to be "bailed out" by New Hampshire taxpayers who, like the tribal members in Connecticut and other places, were probably told--hey! don't worry, its like--free money.  You'll get stuff for nothing!

You know what else is free?  Poverty.  But when it is imposed on you through deceit and then by the force and will of your government,  around our little Tribe at the Grok, we prefer to call that legislated tyranny.

You are reading  Maybe Maggie “Squats With Lobbyists” Hassan Just Wants A Casino Bailout?   by  Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com (Home)

Steve has been recognized as the Americans For Prosperity Blogger of the month for December 2012

Todd I. Selig - Durham Town Administrator and....Plagiarist?

Our own Scott Morales, almost as a footnote, asks whether Durham gas tax supporter and Town Administrator Todd Selig plagiarized a chunk of his editorial posted here at NH Insider on March 21 ,2013

Todd Selig - Opposing An Increase in the Road Toll is a Hard Road to Travel for NH Legislators

Thursday, March 21, 2013 at 07:47AM

The Importance of HB 617 to New Hampshire

by Todd I. Selig

The correct answer to Scott's question is yes.  Take a look.

Two important points stand out.  First, the content is posted as "by Todd I. Selig," and second...regarding the text in question, there is no attribution, no links, nothing is put in quotes, there is no formatting to denote a quote or the content of others,  and you'd have to be blind not to see, as Scott infers, that he lifted an entire chunk from a News release by TRIP, a national transportation Research Group, and passes it off as a paragraph of his own.

Identical text in red.

Here is the second to last paragraph of Selig's letter, by Todd I. Selig  posted at NH Insider.

New Hampshire faces an annual transportation funding shortfall of $74 million, more than one third of the state’s major roads are deteriorated, nearly a third of Granite State bridges are in need of repair or replacement, and the state’s rural traffic fatality rate is disproportionately higher than that of other roads in the state.  Unless NH can increase transportation investment, conditions are projected to worsen significantly in the future.  This serves none of us well and works against the NH advantage.

And here is the opening to the first paragrpah from the TRIP News release dated February 12, 2013.

At a time when New Hampshire faces an annual transportation funding shortfall of $ 74 million, more than one third of the state’s major roads are deteriorated, nearly a third of bridges are in need of repair or replacement, and the state’s rural traffic fatality rate is disproportionately higher than that of other roads in the state. Unless the state can increase transportation investment, conditions are projected to worsen significantly in the future.

Durham Town Administrator Todd I.Selig does mention the TRIP report from which he draws so heavily further up in the previous paragraph, but only in reference to the data in that paragraph.  The closing remarks are in no way identified as belonging verbatim to the news release, and we are left to assume the words are Selig's.

As Scott writes regarding Selig's 'heavy lifting' in his close...

 I wouldn't put it past him. What his is his and what’s your is his  whether it’s money for taxes or written word.

Selig does provide a lengthy Bio at the end of his letter, filled with wonderful things about Todd.  We can only assume that he has done more than his fair share of research and writing to have achieved so much.  A smart guy like that must know how to cite sources and understands what is fair use and what is not.   He must also know that many professional organizations, including schools and universities, have a zero tolerance policy for failing to properly credit sources and quotes, given the breadth of his professional credentials.  But he never mentions that he lifts entire paragrpahs from reports and then passes them off as his own thoughts or observations.

Should we just assume that this is the first time?

Note" as of March24, the identical letter has also now appeared at Seacoast Online.  H/T to Susan Olsen for the find.

You are reading  Todd I. Selig - Durham Town Administrator and....Plagiarist?   by  Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com (Home)

Steve has been recognized as the Americans For Prosperity Blogger of the month for December 2012

New Hampshire House Votes to Raise Tobacco Taxes

The ten cent resolution, that one thin (not so thin) dime New Hampshire Republicans cut off the tobacco tax two years ago, expires shortly.   At the time it was proposed and passed the left was so insane with outrage that you'd have thought Republicans were selling guns to foreign drug lords across the border who were killing agents of the federal government and innocent civilians as well.  But some Democrat president was the one who'd done that so there was no moral call to war; New Hampshire Democrats were as quiet as church mice.  (Regular Church mice, the social justice Church mice are noisy sums-o-beeches--and likely protected by a stimulus grant through the EPA.) But that ten cent tax?  That was a crime against humanity.

But it was probably doomed from the start.

As a step toward another reduction it could have achieved its ultimate goal but at just ten cents it was always too thin, never allowed a long enough run.  Ten cents in this economy doesn't even cover the rising cost of fuel to get from A to A+1 let alone to B or C and back to A to make it worth the trip.   So as much as I (among others) wanted to see it succeed it likely never could.  Not because lowering the tax wouldn't work but because the hill it had to climb was too steep.

So the same Democrats who can ignore a president of their own hue whose policies kill people against their will must seize on an insufficient tax cut to justify a tax increase. There is some moral imperative to 'need' the revenue, and plucking at any heart-string to get it will suffice.  So the New Hampshire House just passed a bill to tack on another 0.20 cents a pack.

This 'revenue' will be extracted from predominantly middle and lower income people, but the left has an excuse.  They think the cost will deter teenagers from picking up the habit.  That is a dreamy notion given that most teens who smoke probably either have parents who smoke or friends who wield something more powerful than the "cost per-pack" to jump start the habit--peer pressure.  I'm surprised some left-wing Mary-Poppins has not yet found a way to define that as bullying so they could bring the full weight of the nanny-state to bear on the problem of teenage smoking.  "Off with their Butts!"

Butt they need the revenue...

I've asked repeatedly in the past, if teenagers stop smoking, when the old smokers die off, what happens to that revenue we so desperately needed in the first place?  It dies with them.  At which point the tax and spend cave dwellers pick up their spears (coated with self-righteousness) and shuffle off onto the progressive plantation to find fresh game to harvest, if there is any left; heart shaped harps in tow, as they seek revenue meat to feed to their insatiable government gods.

It is all a game to them.

In the long run it is not about the dime, or two dimes, it's about the idea.  The progressives believe first, above all things, that Government must always grow, even if it means you have to shrink.  If you do not take a stand for the dimes, you will lose them and the dollars that follow.

You are reading  "New Hampshire House Votes to Raise Tobacco Taxes"   by  Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com (Home)

Steve has been recognized as the Americans For Prosperity Blogger of the month for December 2012