NH 2nd District Democratic Platform (Kuster)

In the 2nd District we have Anne Kuster (d) going up against Charlie Bass (r). Here is Kuster's platform, take from her campaign website (kusterforcongress.com). Here are a lot of reasons to vote for Charlie Bass.


Kuster wants to build a new Veteran’s hospital in NH.

Kuster wants to eliminate capital gains taxes on small businesses. This is a disguised tax hike. Income that doesn’t qualify as capital gains gets taxed at the higher ordinary income rate. Just what we need to get out of Great Depression 2.0

Kuster wants to spend more tax money on “clean energy”. She doesn’t define “clean” so let us guess she means wind and solar. That means she is in favor of electric power that fails when the sun goes down or the wind stops blowing. When the power goes off my furnace goes off and my pipes freeze. How about yours?

Kuster wants to raise taxes on corporations. She calls this “closing tax loopholes”. Just what we need to get out of Great Depression 2.0

Kuster wants to raise tariffs on imports. She calls this “fair trade” or “proper currency valuation”.

She thinks Great Depression 2.0 was caused by the repeal of the 1930’s era Glass Steagell act. Actually it was caused by government sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac doing too many junk mortgages with taxpayer money.

Kuster wants to limit executive pay. Well, I would too, but do you want to grant the federal government the power to set wages? First they come for the bank executives, and then they come for the rest of us. Pretty soon everybody’s pay is set by Washington. They used set everyone’s pay in Moscow in the old Soviet Union.

She opposes the war in Iraq and Afghanistan

She supports Obamacare. She claims it will cut the deficit by $130 billion over 10 years. She wants to expand Obamacare by having the government offer its own insurance directly to consumers. And Obamacare should be expanded to cover abortion services.

Pro choice. Enthusiastically so. Has won awards from pro choice organizations

She is in favor of raising taxes on all incomes over $250,000. You and I might not be up there today, but inflation will push everyone into that tax bracket in a few years.

Kuster is a global warmer and will tax our furnace oil and gasoline in the belief that she is saving the world from warming. She wants to tax oil and gas companies harder.

Kuster is anti nuclear power.

Kuster favors a “path to citizenship” aka amnesty in immigration. And getting tougher on businesses about checking immigration status of their employees.

Kuster supports Affirmation Action, LGBT equality, gender equality. She opposes Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the Defense of Marriage Act.

Kuster supports Net Neutrality. She isn’t too clear on what that is, but she is in favor of it.

Druids draw level with the Church of England

In England of course. A whole lot of stiff upper lips must have quivered about this one.

Gubernatorial Debates

John Stephans (r) and John Lynch (D) debated on NH Public Radio Friday morning. When asked about the FRM scam, where apparently three different state agencies had some kind of jurisdiction, both candidates said "I will increase coordination between state agencies"
Wrong answer. Assign ONE state agency to handle FRM type scams and pillory them unmercifully if they fail to prevent scamming. For this scam, since three agencies were responsible, hang all three agencies.
The only way to keep regulators working hard is a good healthy fear of loss of job, loss of pension, and loss of cushy benefits package if they sluff off on the job.

Church goers are Republican?

Heard a man on NH PR just this morning claiming that church goers are all Republicans. Funny, the congregation at every church I ever belonged to was/is resoundingly liberal and votes Democratic.
I wonder where this guy goes to church.

NH State employment

Just a few numbers from Charlie Arlinghaus's talk last week. The state of New Hampshire has approx 12000 people on the payroll. That's one state worker for every 108 New Hampshire citizens. Not outrageous I suppose, but then I don't use many state services. I drive on state maintained roads and I buy liquor. Does it take one state worker to maintain the roads and sell the booze to 108 of us citizens?
State workers make an average of $48000 a year. That's just pay, benefits are $250 million more, or about $20,000 per worker. So each worker costs us citizens $68000 of tax money.
Overall the state payroll runs $900 million a year. So even with a ruthless purge of state workers, we won't be able to close the $800 million budget gap that will be upon us next year.

Atlantic thinks airports have no competition

Megan McCardle, of the Atlantic, who oughta know better, was blaming the sometimes shabby service at airports on the lack of competition.
She is clearly out of touch. Airports compete with other airports. For instance, Boston's Logan airport competes with Manchester NH, Worcester MA, and Providence RI. Although Logan may be closer to center city, the regional airports offer cheap and plentiful parking, a shorter walk from parking to the gate, and less traffic congestion. From the north of Boston suburbs it's quicker and easier to pick up a passenger from Manchester than from Logan.

So what happened in DC?

Washington DC suffers from the worst public school system in the nation, high rents, unemployment and gang activity. This despite the river of US taxpayer money flowing into the national capital. DC's one and only industry is government and government is booming.
Fenty, a black reform mayor was doing what he could to improve things. He hired Michelle Rhee, a tough superintendent of schools. Rhee set right in, fired a couple of hundred dead wood teachers and received super favorable press coverage from the Wall St Journal and Time magazine. Test scores were rising, dropout rates were falling. There is still a long long way to go, but the DC system was moving and moving in the right direction.
Then came the election. Fenty lost, beaten by a black city counsel member name Gray. Rhee is looking for a job, she has publicly stated that she cannot work for Gray.
So what went wrong for Fenty and the reformers? So far, the press and my DC sources cannot point to anything substantive they did wrong. They talk about Fenty favoring the white voters over black voters, but this is a smoke screen. Any mayor anywhere is going to attempt to remain on speaking terms with all the voters. No one has offered any specific examples of Fenty or Rhee saying or doing anything outrageous, or even a little bit insensitive.
Far as I can see, the only thing done wrong was firing a load of deadwood. The deadwood has friends, and a union and lawyers. Which says that school reform is going to be hard and getting harder. If reformers cannot fire teachers for cause in the worse system in the country, they won't be able to fire them anywhere.
Anyhow, next time someone gets all worked up about the miserable state of DC public schools, I will say, "They voted for them".