WMUR Said It - It Must Be True

Hello NH Insiders!

I’ll start by wishing you all a great Happy New Year!!!! 

I’m down here at Borders in Concord now. It’s snowing pretty good and to my surprise the atmosphere in here is really subdued. Neither Britney Spears or Paris Hilton and their wonderful personalities appear to be here which to me is good. Maybe they’re at home playing with the toys Santa brought tis the holiday season. In any case there isn’t a lot of type A, me first people here either, those that are here are reading or shopping quietly. Awesome.

Last night I saw a report on WMUR that Grafton County is the sixth best place to live in America. Is this amazing or what?

The scripted report showed or started with the Hanover area with all its intellectual success. The whole scene just looked like prosperity. Though they didn’t interview any of the Dartmouth Trustees in charge of the investment portfolios that have lost millions of dollars on the markets, they also didn’t say that business startup Mascoma Corp. has an interesting four year history and who is paying for the 70 plus jobs that have been created there. I’m now imagining the people that will move from areas across this great republic to the upper valley to find prosperity and jobs in the sixth best place to live and what they will find for housing and at what price. And it doesn’t get much better than this! Next they went up to Littleton they talked about the lack of empty storefronts. Prosperity. Right. How many business people own the buildings up and down Main Street in Littleton? I was waiting for WMUR to say main street is the site of the “World’s Largest Candy Counter!” Did you know this? It’s called Chatter’s. Excuse me it’s Chutter’s. Well they didn’t say it anyways, they moved on to Lincoln and Plymouth instead. There is a new timeshare development in Lincoln which I’m thinking is good what else would be in Lincoln if there weren’t Massachusetts based tourism.

What would there be in Lincoln? I still can’t believe the prices charged for gasoline in this town.

Then the WMUR closed it out with Plymouth. I‘m understanding enrollment is way down at Plymouth State University;  guess tuition is a bit high for some of the quality ranking, education and parties that occur here. I’m expecting to see a smiling, well spoken President and Dr. Sara Jane Steen say something really prolific, visionary and most of all appropriate. PSU has done a lot in recent times, like the Silver Cultural Arts Center and the new hockey center right across the river. Guess it's going to be heated by geothermal sources that were drilled deep into the bedrock. Quite a project indeed.  

But she never appeared.

It Went To Wisconsin

Recently the Coos County Commissioners met and approved a number of grant applications. One of these applications is for the Fraser Paper Mill in Gorham. “The second project seeks $500,000.00 in economic development loan funds. The county would retain $20,000.00 for administrative costs and sub-grant $480,000.00 to the Northern Community Investment Corporation (NCIC), which, in turn, would retain $10,000.00 for loan servicing costs and loan the balance $470,000.00 to the Fraser Cascade Paper Mill in Gorham to help pay for construction of a 3,600-foot-long natural gas pipeline from a Portland Natural Gas Transmission head located in Berlin.”

This is certainly a quality idea. The Fraser mill will have access to a natural gas fuel source traded on the NYMEX that will hopefully enable the mill to lower or at least control its variable costs making it more competitive in the global marketplace; and in the end create taxbase and jobs for Coos County. I don’t support spending taxpayer money on “loan servicing” costs for organizations that are already taxpayer funded but if this project leads to something much larger, these costs will be worth it.

But then I read on…

“The Fraser grant takes the place of one for which the county commissioners had already voted their approval for developer Greennova, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hingham, Mass. based Woodstone USA.” Their intentions are to relocate a pellet plant into the Berlin Industrial Park. Intentions that are now apparently on hold because of financing. I’m still reading “The progress of a previous CDBG (grant) project that was to have been used to install a biomass boiler system at the Fraser Cascade paper mill in Gorham, in which $1,000,000.00 was loaned $500,000.00 by the County and $500,000.00 by the Town of Gorham. When a complete financing package could not be assembled the by-then specialty built boiler was shipped to a Wisconsin mill.” “NCIC vice president Cathy Conway explained that efforts to collect loan payments from the Wisconsin mill were going forward and a minimum payment had been received.”

I would hope that the Wisconsin mill is making the loan payments. Especially since NH Taxpayers have fronted the money and are taking the risk.

What about a default in the loan payments? The owner of the Wisconsin mill wasn’t stated. Fraser Papers Incorporated in Gorham is already in bankruptcy reorganization proceedings as approved by legal authorities in Ontario, Canada and Wilmington, Delaware.

I think if NH Taxpayers are left holding the short stick when the dust settles that NH officials that were involved with this project including the grant authors and the recipients of the “loan servicing fees.” should be held accountable and/ or criminally charged for their actions. I’ll stop short of calling this direct fraud.

I don’t think NH Taxpayers should be financing projects in Wisconsin.

Source of quotes: Coos County Democrat Newspaper 12/30/09. Page A6.  

How Ayotte Can Lose, Part II

Continued from part I…

In November I received a fundraising letter from the Ayotte campaign, it was a letter asking for money. Money that apparently Ayotte doesn’t have.

But I think where the campaign may be lacking in hard currency it makes up for this in equity, namely in a solid performance as Attorney General and as an insider at the Statehouse means access to capital. And this margin strategy might actually work. Ms. Ayotte stands to turn thousands of dollars into a multimillion dollar U.S. Senate seat.

There’s one immediate problem with this strategy though. And this problem is Manchester attorney Ovide Lamontagne; an experienced candidate that I think could show that the Ayotte campaign is nothing more than a house of cards constructed recklessly on margin. And ultimately that Ayotte is using capital that isn’t hers to try and win this election.

Enter political strategy.

History can and does repeat itself. After two terms in Congress Jackson resident Bill Zelliff decided to make a run for Governor. I remember his pompous staffers spouting statistics, strategy, etc. like New Hampshire is some backwoods place where no one knows anything. At the time this arrogant based fluff and the three syllable words seemed to me to be more like ego stroking rather than a coherent political strategy. Weeks later I would hear the rumor that in the closing weeks of the primary campaign Zelliff simply stopped campaigning, these elitist assholes convinced their candidate that the race had in fact already been won. And guess what happened…

Right after Zelliff gave his concession speech on the night of the primary, I overheard one of Zelliff’s most ardent political supporters Councilor Ray Burton “Well, we mine as well hand this race to Shaheen.” In politics never expect the unexpected.

But endorsements or Republican loyalty or not are neither here nor there. And what is here is a primary battle between Ayotte and Lamontagne in a political conflict that I think pits margin money against grassroots substance. And who will win this race?

I hope the former Attorney General is left by the side of the road covered in dust saying to the effect "Honestly, like nothing there's no winning." "It's definately a lose-lose situation." I think Ms. Ayotte is using way too much margin, too much beltway influence, not enough attention to detail and not enough time with the voters and the real issues.  

And with history as a basis this could happen.

How Ayotte Can Lose

  About seven years ago I found myself standing near the tarmac at the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport in Aspen, Colorado. It was a gorgeous mid winter day in Colorado sunny, dark blue skies, crispy white clouds and a background of snowcapped mountains and dry terrain. It was a Friday and the airport was busy with a number of corporate aircraft making their final descent over the mountains and down onto the medium sized runway, the planes were mainly Lear jets and a few Gulfstream IIIs and IVs. I think graceful and elegant would be the correct terms to describe these aircraft as they taxied from the runways to the balanced, stable whine of the powerful dual jet engines and that seemed to be saying, “This is power and this is success.” Moments later the aircraft rolls to a halt, ground crews quickly chock the wheels, engines shut down and doors start opening. My impression of the people exiting are as impressive as the aircraft itself. For anyone flying in an aircraft like this to an upscale resort area of Colorado must be powerful and successful. Perhaps this is the true meaning of the power of perception, whether it’s reality or not.

Later I would hear an explanation of what I’d just seen. “Not necessarily, the aircraft themselves are leased by large corporations some of which are near bankruptcy and a lot of these people are living on margin, junk bonds and high risk, and for some this is a very dangerous way to live.” said a bartender at a really cool restaurant I found in downtown Aspen within eyesight of the famed ski area. I can’t remember the name but the street it was on reminded of the French Quarter of New Orleans.  Days later I would read in the Wall Street Journal newspaper of the stock price collapse of cable layer Global Crossing and other large corporations like Enron would soon be following…

My definition of perception and margin are essentially the same word. A small amount of cash, equity or an asset that is used as collateral to influence or control something that is much larger than the asset itself. Leverage fits in here quite well too. Perception, margin and leverage are terms that are used all the time in dealmaking and politics, and I think this is definitely going on in the upcoming race for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire and a decisive if not strategic reason why former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte can lose this race.

In November I received a fundraising letter from the Ayotte campaign, it was asking for money that apparently Ayotte doesn’t have.

To Be Continued..

Just Do It.

It’s a freezing cold December morning.

I’m down here at Border’s in Concord its really busy here today. The place is filled with yuppies trying to figure out how to sell things to each other or which consultant should be hired. Sitting right behind me is a young attractive female with long dark hair and beautiful eyes talking on a cellphone and whose use of words consists of: exactly, really and omg! Think Britney Spears omg! Then her boyfriend calls, or at least I'm guessing its her boyfriend, and she starts immediately questioning why he hasn't come to pick her up. She closes out the conversation, if you could call it this, with love you. And thus leaving me wondering if her words of love are sincere or just the new world order replacement for good bye. 

Times they are a changin.

In any case the new year approaches and I like many people will make a new year’s resolution. This year I’ve decided that in my case it’s going to be to just do it. In many cases I think New Year’s resolutions are like NH political campaigns. Often very good ideas and direction for the future, but ultimately these turn out to be promises that are made and promises that are broken.

Have you ever broken a New Year’s resolution?

I’ve come to my new year’s resolution thought an experience I had at the Pilot Travel Center in Pittston, PA in August when I found myself standing near a Donkey Kong video game in a real quandary of whether I should play it or not. I’m on vacation on my way to the Sands Bethworks Casino in Bethlehem and later Atlantic City, N.J. so I’m thinking that this is my favorite video game of all time and playing it would be most awesome.

Of course this isn’t how it worked out.

Then my mind starts over analyzing and I’m actually thinking about the consequences. Imagine what individuals might think of me playing some video game trying to stop some stupid ape. And then using a joystick to get the main character named Mario to jump over barrels to rescue some damsel in distress whose name I don’t even know. Get a life. And now I regret not playing Donkey Kong at the Pilot. I really do.

Just do it.

I should have just played Donkey Kong. Hopefully my New Year’s resolution will help me with this. My decision not to play was the only thing here that was stupid. If anyone has an issue with me playing Donkey Kong who the fuck are they? Maybe some of the people surrounding me now at Borders would have said something but my guess is that they wouldn’t, too self centered and self absorbed and the general attitude that me comes first.

I think some NH politicians act like this too.  Really.

Source: Grab some gears via UTUBE.