Monday, September 28, 2015

Mon. Sept. 28


AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
 
 
 
1.  This and That
 
 
NH Political Report. Real ID law is already more than a threat to NH
 
by Kevin Landrigan,   nh1.com,   September 26, 2015
 
CONCORD - The dirty little secret about Real ID is this isn’t a threat hanging over New Hampshire.
Business owners, some visitors, even first responders have already faced the penalty of the federal government coming down on the Granite State for not yet adopting the national identification card standard.
The Office of Homeland Security is expected at the end of September to announce a date for when New Hampshire and three other states will no longer have their in-state driver licenses recognized for air travel throughout the United States.
The New Hampshire Political Report obtained a memo from the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, MD where emergency personnel from across the country go to train.
Starting Oct. 15, New Hampshire residents ``will not be able to access the campus’’ without a passport or a federal ID card.
Director of Motor Vehicles Richard Bailey confirmed to us that at nuclear power plants visitors with only a New Hampshire license have already had to produce other paperwork.
"We have gotten reports that meetings at certain federal offices down in Washington have barred admittance to New Hampshire residents who only had a license," Bailey said.
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The Real ID fix is much easier than people assume.
Here’s why.
New Hampshire’s Motor Vehicle Division has had legal authority to upgrade its license to include security features over the years. And they have.
"We’ve taken full advance of our authority to keep our license current from a security standpoint," Bailey explained.
Indeed as of January the newest version of our license will have so many built-in security holograms and other tricks that it will be Real ID compliant.
So what else has to happen with legislation in 2016.
Well, there are three things:
  • The law has to permit New Hampshire to join the program
  • For those who want a Real ID it will be the same driver’s license but without the state law feature that now allows anyone to have their picture or their Social Security number removed from a statewide database.
  • It has to be fully implemented within five years to coincide how license renewal is staggered for our near one million motorists so they don’t flood the motor vehicle substations all in a single calendar year.
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He’d better get this one right.
U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta, R-NH, is still standing despite a campaign finance scandal that might have driven others out of office by now.
Sure, he’ll face a tough re-election both in the GOP primary from Daniel Innis and perhaps other Republicans and from ex-Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, D-NH, or her primary foe, Shawn O’Connor.
But Guinta has a bigger imperative first.
Pick right among the Republicans who will now scramble to replace shocking retiring Speaker John Boehner.
Guinta has been with Boehner in every race and it hasn’t hurt. Indeed if he wasn’t so loyal, is there any doubt Boehner by now would have said publicly that Guinta’s got to answer to the FEC campaign charges and should resign his seat.
At any rate, Guinta can’t misfire if he expects to get the full support of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee in 2016, a year you know the Democratic counterpart will be all in assuming big money can topple a vulnerable incumbent.
So why won’t Guinta just go with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, who Boehner endorsed on Friday.
Hold on for a second, McCarthy has his detractors like radio talk show host Mark Levin who says he’s not a principled conservative and says he’s like ex-Majority Leader Eric Cantor "except with 10 fewer IQ points."
Think carefully about this one, congressman, then move with decisiveness because the correct response could really pay off.
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Senate President Chuck Morse, R-Salem, and Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, know that these days when it comes to whether a gift is reportable or not, ask for advice.
So they requested an opinion of the Legislative Ethics Committee when the pair were guests of the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee for a two-day seminar in Boston this summer.
Legislative Committee Chairman and ex-House Speaker Donna Sytek informed both that this counted as a clear exemption to the state’s gift ban and they could accept lodging and meals provided for free to the Senate leaders.
Not so by the way for legislators who recently took part on a focus group.
The unidentified legislator asked if he or she had to report a $100 donation that was made to the charity of that person’s choice for accepting the assignment.
The ethics panel said indeed that even though the lawmaker did not personally profit, the honor of the donation made it an honorarium that could be accepted but must be publicly disclosed.\
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Clearly, Gov. Maggie Hassan needed some time once she resolved the state budget feud to publicly say what she’ll do in 2016.
Republican advocates insist Hassan was the one who blinked with legislative leaders and needs the time and space to spin her about-face and decision to embrace a compromise and to allow the Legislature to override her budget veto.
Here’s another important reason for the delay.
Saying nothing about a US Senate race until after next Wednesday means she got through the latest reporting period under the Federal Election Commission.
This means if she declares her intent to run for the Senate against Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte - looking more and more likely of late - there’s no question she will not have to report any of her campaign fundraising until the end of January 2016.
Ayotte and all other candidates have a report coming up Oct. 15 which includes all spending and receipts through September.
You get the idea.
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They are not back but their ideas are.
We won’t be seeing the Legislature return into regular sessions until January.
But the ramped-up dates required all House members to put in their roughed-out requests for legislation.
Now, the first year of the two-year biennial session is like eating your peas [-] dominated by the state budget it’s full of important content and political nutrition but often something you feel you have to ingest.
The second or election year is another thing entirely as the sexy topics aimed at pushing the buttons of both political parties.
Credit Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, with coining this appropriate phase: ``God, guns and gays.’’
Here’s the New Hampshire Political Report’s exclusive first look at some of our early favorites:
  • Income tax along with repealing statewide property tax and further business tax cuts: Rep. Paul Henle, D-Concord;
  • Banning sale of fetal body parts: Rep. Kathleen Souza, R-Manchester:
  • Taxing marijuana revenues: Rep. Michael Brewster, R-Barnstead;
  • A registry for anyone convicted of selling heroin: House Majority Leader Jack Flanagan, R-Brookline;
  • Allowing a military student to wear his/her uniform at graduation: Rep. Frank Edelblut, R-Wilton;
  • Requiring probable cause to pull someone over for cell phone violation while driving: Rep. Dan Tamburello, R-Londonderry;
  • Extending New Hampshire Health Protection Program: Rep. Thomas Sherman, R-Rye and,
  • Independent redistricting commission: Rep. David Cote, D-Nashua.

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The retirement of Donald Shumway at the end of the year will truly be the end of an era. Sorry it is a cliché, but it fits this 13-year head of the Crotched Mountain Foundation in Greenfield who has lived several careers in human services.
There was his stint as commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services, the state’s largest agency, who presided over its growth and dominance.
But even more significant were the three terms he spent as the director of mental health and developmental services. Shumway was one of those most responsible for maintaining and growing even more robust the community of services that allowed the mentally ill to leave the warehouse that was the Laconia State School and be placed much closer to their home.
He also co-directed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Office for “Self-Determination for Persons with Developmental Disabilities” which was the startup of a national social movement for client-centered care.
That’s quite a legacy.
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The stage is set for the first of six town halls between the two finalists for mayor of Manchester this Thursday at the McDonough Elementary School in Ward 4.
Mayor Ted Gatsas, a Republican, had wanted a dozen events with Alderwoman Joyce Craig, a Democrat.
Why? Insiders confirm the incumbent considers Craig a weaker speaker than he and feels the more face-to-face encounters, the better he comes off.
Whether that’s true or not, each of these will start at 6:30 and last 45 minutes.
Gatsas reacted by announcing he will hold 12 forums with voters, one in each ward.
The key question for November: Where will supporters of third-place finisher Patrick Arnold go?
The assumption is the troops for Arnold, a fellow Democrat, will just move over to Craig.
May be true for some but those close to Arnold are well aware that he approached Craig before this race began about letting him have a clean shot at Gatsas.
Arnold had done surprisingly well two years ago and reportedly asked Craig for one more chance and to have Craig run in two years if Gatsas won again.
Sources confirm Craig won.
Will at least some closely connected to Arnold not vote for Gatsas but either not vote at all or write in Arnold’s name.
We’ll see soon enough.
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The sharp elbows are still flying over some of the state budget details.
How about changes to the retiree health insurance program meant to deal with up to a $10 million deficit.
The Republican-led Legislative Fiscal Committee put on hold changes from the Department of Administrative Services.
"Many retirees over 65 live within tight budgets and any increase in healthcare costs could put them in an unfair, unexpected, and unstable financial situation when they were originally promised a certain level of health benefit coverage by the state before making the decision to retire," said Sen. Andy Sanborn, R-Bedford.
"The Fiscal Committee will continue to study these issues and the concerns of retirees and help develop a long-term plan that does not place burden of additional healthcare related costs on the over 65 retiree population."
William Hinkle, Gov. Hassan’s communications director, says it’s a little late for GOP senators to be grandstanding when they should have been offering other ideas during the 2015 session.
"Since the proposal to make changes to the state’s Retiree Health Benefit Plan was presented during the budget process this spring, the Legislature has had ample opportunity to study the issue and propose alternatives.
"If the Legislature is willing to appropriate additional funds, we would happily revise the plan to reduce costs for retirees.’’
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Capitalizing on more than 4,000 coming to their party convention, the Senate Democratic Caucus holds a fund-raiser Oct. 14 at O’s Steak & Seafood in Concord Oct. 14.
"After passing a budget compromise under Governor Hassan's leadership, we are getting ready for the next session and the 2016 election, which is barely more than a year away," Senate Democratic leaders wrote in the invite.
 
 
 
2.  Proposed Bills on Opioid Issues
 
 
Lawmakers pitch drug-related bills for ’16
 
by Chris Garofolo,  nashuatelegraph.com,   September 28, 2015
 
As the state continues its fight against opioid addiction, New Hampshire lawmakers intend to introduce new legislation in the next session.
Roughly a dozen legislative service requests (LSR) have been filed in an attempt to reduce the growing number of heroin-related overdoses across the state and region. Most would stiffen penalties for heroin possession and sales and add new options in terms of treatment programs.
An LSR is a request to have a bill drafted and does not necessarily mean the Legislature will take up the measure. Multiple lawmakers in Greater Nashua, however, say fighting the drug crisis is a top priority for the next session.
House Majority Leader Jack Flanagan, R-Brookline, has a pending bill that would establish a registry for those convicted of selling heroin. The measure, still a work in progress he admits, would identify dealers who do not have any identifiable remorse and make it challenging for them to obtain state benefits or seek housing.
There is a similar LSR that would require drug dealers to register with the state.
"And if anything, we make it a little uncomfortable for them to do business in the state of New Hampshire," Flanagan said. "This is one business that we're not embracing."
State Rep. Eric Estevez, a Republican covering Hudson and Pelham, has pitched a bill he calls one of the strongest and most comprehensive anti-drug measures in New Hampshire history.
His LSR would increase the penalty for the possession, use or sale of fentanyl, a powerful narcotic drug oftentimes laced with heroin. If passed, it would charge dealers with a Class A felony if fentanyl is found within narcotics.
"I believe it will be a deterrent for those who want to sell drugs. I think drug dealers will think twice about lacing heroin with deadly fentanyl and I think it's a step in the right direction," he said. "It's a bipartisan bill, and I think saving lives in fighting this heroin crisis is a nonpartisan issue and I believe it will get support from both parties."
Efforts to combat the drug epidemic is a "moral responsibility," he said, and this bill holds drug dealers that lace drugs with the deadly fentanyl accountable for their actions.
"It will also provide a deterrent not to deal in New Hampshire," Estevez said. "This bill will not solve the heroin epidemic, but is a start in the right direction. If this bill can save a life, it is a success."
New Hampshire recorded 321 drug-related deaths in 2014, according to the state medical examiner's office. But Estevez said that number could rise because they are still awaiting the results of toxicology tests in other deaths.
Of the confirmed 321 deaths, 97 were caused by heroin alone or a combination of heroin and other drugs, he said, and another 143 were related to the painkiller fentanyl.
Lawmakers intend to promote new annulments for nonviolent drug offenses, as well as decriminalizing the possession and use of certain controlled narcotics.
Nashua Democrat Cindy Rosenwald has submitted an LSR to take a multifaceted approach to regulating prescribing of opiates and opioids.
"I think there is a general recognition that drug abuse, including both prescription drugs and illegal drugs, is a crisis in New Hampshire," Rosenwald said.
"It's in all of our communities, and, with a mounting death toll, it is more urgent than ever to invest in various methods of prevention and treatment. One of the key debates will be around reauthorizing Medicaid expansion, which will bring resources to this fight for up to 50,000 individuals," she added.
Other early bills include Seabrook Republican Max Abramson's to allow New Hampshire counties to establish heroin prevention and treatment programs and a proposed change from James Gray, R-Rochester, to include libraries that provide children's programming in the definition of a drug-free school zone.
 
 
3.  Coming to the Legislature This Session
 
Click on the following link for a list of the Legislative Service Requests (LSR's) filed for the upcoming legislative session.  There are 679 of them.  Each LSR gives the subject as well as the lead sponsor
 
 
 
 
 
4.  From the TinFoil Hatters
 
 
 
by William Tucker,   miscellanyblue.com,   September 17, 2015
 
A Republican state representative has filed legislation calling for the removal of Gov. Maggie Hassan, five members of the Executive Council, two Superior Court judges and a court clerk.
State Rep. Michael Brewster, a one-term lawmaker from Pittsfield involved in a long-running feud with the state, began the process of impeachment by filing Legislative Service Requests calling for the nine officials to be removed from office.
The New Hampshire Constitution grants the House of Representatives the power to impeach state officials for bribery, corruption, malpractice or maladministration. The charges and details that will be included in Brewster’s House addresses are not yet available.
Brewster has filed 25 LSRs for the 2016 session, the first step in the process of drafting legislation. Many involve judges and the judicial system. Another sure-to-be controversial bill is one making an appropriation to pay the jury trial filing fee for Edward Brown, the Plainfield tax evader who was involved in a nine-month armed standoff with federal officials.
Screenshot: NH General Court
A 2011 Petition for Redress of Grievance, filed on Brewster’s behalf by Rep. Dan Itse (R-Fremont), described Brewster’s feud with the state from his perspective:
Michael Brewster reported his ex-wife for neglect of his daughter due to her drug addiction. Initially Mr. Brewster was given custody, until without explanation his custody was revoked and his daughter was put in foster care. Mr. Brewster’s requests to know the charges against him were refused. He was required to make a limited number of child support payments. His request to obtain a record of his payments and their distribution has been refused. As a result of his requests to obtain this information, a restraining order has been enforced against Mr. Brewster on behalf of the Child Support Division. As a result of this restraining order, Mr. Brewster was arrested for attending a public hearing and convicted of a misdemeanor.
‘A very awkward situation’
After an unsuccessful 2010 House campaign running as a Democrat, last year Brewster won the seat representing Epsom and Pittsfield running as a Republican. The carpenter by trade is seated on the House floor with the Bill O’Brien loyalists in “Murderers’ Row” and generally votes in line with the dissident conservative caucus.
Rep. Dan McGuire, Brewster’s district-mate representing Epsom and Pittsfield, refused to endorse Brewster in last year’s general election. “Unfortunately this year I cannot endorse every Republican on the ballot,” McGuire wrote in a letter published by the Suncook Valley Sun.
“We have a very awkward situation in the Epsom-Pittsfield two-Rep district,” McGuire explained. “The other Republican is Michael Brewster, and his aggressive behavior simply isn’t suitable for the State House. He’s been convicted in court of harassment of a state employee. I fear that if elected his tantrums would disrupt the House.”
 
 
 
 
AND NATIONALLY
 
 
 
 
 
5.  Regulation is Not a Four Letter Word
 
 
The Faulty Logic of Jeb Bush's Anti-Regulation Argument
 
by Eric Harris Bernstein,   nextnewdeal.net,   September 23, 2015
 
In today's Wall Street Journal, Jeb Bush makes the blockbuster claim that "regulations impose a $1.88 trillion silent tax on the U.S. economy each year." That, he points out, averages out to $15,000 per family.  
The startling figure comes from a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which suggests that federal regulations represent a crippling impediment to growth. But before too many readers start picketting the FDA, let's make sure the math checks out.
 
Why are we suspicious? Well, for starters, here is a verbatim quote from the report:
WARNING: Estimates herein will exhibit laissez-faire bias, adding of apples and oranges, use of both compliance and economic cost, haphazard distinctions between consumer and employer impacts, consideration of economic transfers as well as compliance and efficiency costs, use of both high-end estimates and best-estimates, old data set syndrome, and a disdain for general equilibrium analysis.
As if that were not enough, a 2013 Washington Post article that listed some key CEI donors can be matched nearly industry-by-industry to the sectors their report finds to be some of the hardest hit by regulation. These are the same sectors that Bush singles out for mention in his op-ed: energy, agriculture, and communications. 
In light of this, it should be easy to understand why we suspect that any numbers found in this report are questionable at best. But, for the sake of argument, we will put that concern aside and address a broader problem with Jeb's analysis:
 
He seeks to argue, once again, that government intervention only obstructs the free market and general well-being when, in reality, government rules not only serve to protect Americans, but also, in fact, create the market.
 
The study Bush cites, which elucidates his thinking on these issues, treats all regulations as costs, with no consideration for the enormous benefits they provide.
But, some might ask, what could be positive about costly regulation? Well, as the Roosevelt Institute pointed out in Rewriting the Rules, no economy can function without  them. Regulations structure ownership claims, limit harmful financial risk, and ensure that manufacturers don't make a car with brakes that only last 1,000 miles. Even if they were as costly as Bush believes, it would be money well spent. But, according to the Office of Management and Budget, federal regulation actually results in a substantial net benefit to the economy.
 
Of course, we do not believe that laws alone prevent American businesses from engaging in harmful practices. Many, if not most, businesses perform enormously useful economic and social functions. But laws and regulations were passed for a reason, so dismissing the cost of enforcement out of hand is intellectually irresponsible. A more honest rubric for judging regulation would be a transparent, qualitative discussion about which statutes are necessary and which are not. 
 
It is clear that neither Bush nor the authors of the CEI study performed any such analysis: Included in this estimate and in Bush's op-ed are the cost of compliance on gender pay equity laws, anti-insurance discrimination rules, protections from toxic and risky financial products, and environmental standards that limit emissions and ensure safe drinking water. These are protections Americans need to remain physically and economically healthy.
 
No one likes paperwork, but the alternative can be a lot worse. 
 
Don't believe us? Here's a video of a woman with flammable tap water. And here is one about neighborhoods devastated by foreclosure following the 2008 financial crisis, caused by harmful and unregulated Wall Street trading practices. 
 
Bush's implication that slashing regulations would be good for the common man is plainly cynical; the only beneficiaries of removing "coal-ash standards for power plants" would be corporate managers and wealthy investors. 
 
Many, including the White House, have recognized the burden of unnecessary regulation and suggested that lawmakers should look for ways to streamline and eliminate  it. Any sensible person should agree. But before Jeb launches his next attack on regulation in general, he should check his sources and the implications of his arguments. 
 
 
 
Dewey, Cheatem & Howe
 
by Paul Krugman,   nytimes.com,   September 25, 2015
 
Item: The C.E.O. of Volkswagen has resigned after revelations that his company committed fraud on an epic scale, installing software on its diesel cars that detected when their emissions were being tested, and produced deceptively low results.
Item: The former president of a peanut company has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for knowingly shipping tainted products that later killed nine people and sickened 700.
Item: Rights to a drug used to treat parasitic infections were acquired byTuring Pharmaceuticals, which specializes not in developing new drugs but in buying existing drugs and jacking up their prices. In this case, the price went from $13.50 a tablet to $750.
In other words, it has been a good few days for connoisseurs of business predators.
No doubt I, like anyone who points out ethical lapses on the part of some companies, will be accused of demonizing business. But I’m not claiming that all businesspeople are demons, just that some of them aren’t angels.
There are, it turns out, people in the corporate world who will do whatever it takes, including fraud that kills people, in order to make a buck. And we need effective regulation to police that kind of bad behavior, not least so that ethical businesspeople aren’t at a disadvantage when competing with less scrupulous types. But we knew that, right?
Well, we used to know it, thanks to the muckrakers and reformers of the Progressive Era. But Ronald Reagan insisted that government is always the problem, never the solution, and this has become dogma on the right.
As a result, an important part of America’s political class has declared war on even the most obviously necessary regulations. Too many important players now argue, in effect, that business can do no wrong and that government has no role to play in limiting misbehavior.
A case in point: This week Jeb Bush, who has an uncanny talent for bad timing, chose to publish an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal denouncing the Obama administration for issuing “a flood of creativity-crushing and job-killing rules.” Never mind his misuse of cherry-picked statistics, or the fact that private-sector employment has grown much faster under President Obama’s “job killing” policies than it did under Mr. Bush’s brother’s administration.
What are the terrible, unjustified regulations Mr. Bush proposes to scrap?
Carbon regulation must go, of course, because doing nothing about climate change has become an essential part of the Republican identity. So must Obamacare.
But Mr. Bush also proposes doing away with rules regarding the disposal of coal ash, a byproduct of coal-burning power plants that contains mercury, arsenic and other contaminants that can cause serious health problems if they leak into groundwater or are blown into the air as dust. Does trying to limit these risks sound like an arbitrary, pointless action?
Then there’s for-profit education, an industry wracked by fraud — because it’s very hard for students to assess what they’re getting — that leaves all too many young Americans with heavy debt burdens and no real prospect of better jobs. But Mr. Bush denounces attempts at a cleanup.
Oh, and he denounces the administration for “regulating the Internet as a public utility,” which can sound odd until you realize that what’s actually being regulated are Internet service providers, who face little or no competition in many local markets. Did I mention that in Europe, where Internet providers are required to accommodate competition, broadband is much faster and much cheaper than it is here?
Last but not least, Mr. Bush calls for a rollback of financial regulation, repeating the thoroughly debunked claim that the Dodd-Frank law actually encourages banks to become too big to fail. (Markets disagree: Judging by their borrowing costs, big banks have lost, not gained, since Dodd-Frank went into effect.) Because why should we think that letting banks run wild poses any risks?
The thing is, Mr. Bush isn’t wrong to suggest that there has been a move back toward more regulation under Mr. Obama, a move that will probably continue if a Democrat wins next year. After all, Hillary Clinton released a plan to limit drug prices at the same time Mr. Bush was unleashing his anti-regulation diatribe.
But the regulatory rebound is taking place for a reason. Maybe we had too much regulation in the 1970s, but we’ve now spent 35 years trusting business to do the right thing with minimal oversight — and it hasn’t worked.
So what has been happening lately is an attempt to redress that imbalance, to replace knee-jerk opposition to regulation with the judicious use of regulation where there is good reason to believe that businesses might act in destructive ways. Will we see this effort continue? Next year’s election will  tell.
 
 
 
6.  Fiorina Doubles Down on the Lies
 
 
Fiorina Super-PAC Makes Own Antiabortion Video Using Questionable Editing
 
by Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy,   yahoo.com,   September 24, 2015
 
 
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina was almost universally thought by pundits to have won last week’s Republican debate and has since catapulted herself to second place in the polls of Republican candidates, right behind Donald Trump.
One of the most dramatic parts of Fiorina’s compelling debate performance was her authoritative stance for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, a measure approved by the House last week, which was blocked by the Senate on Thursday.
During the debate, Fiorina looked straight into the camera and said:
“Anyone who has watched this videotape — I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, to watch these tapes — watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’ This is about the character of our nation, and if we do not stand up and force President Obama to veto this bill, shame on us.”
Almost immediately, many journalists, including those at Yahoo Health, called attention to the fact that the video Fiorina described during her debate performance does not exist.
In response, Fiorina’s super-PAC has now manufactured its own version of the alleged tape and posted it on their YouTube channel, which you can view below:
[note:  click on link above if you want to see the video.]
The video was made to prove Fiorina correct in the debate, but in reality, it resorts to the same methods as the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), the antiabortion activist group that used deceptive editing to create its now-discredited videos attacking Planned Parenthood. 
The video contains spliced-together video and audio from five separate places — all in the name of creating the footage Fiorina insisted existed during the past debate. The footage, she continues to insist, not only warrants the federal defunding of Planned Parenthood, but also serves as evidence for why Roe v. Wade should be overturned and abortion should be made illegal.
A video released by the CMP on Aug. 19 utilized footage not from Planned Parenthood but from the Grantham Collection, an antiabortion resource website. At the end of the footage, a fetus is shown to be moving slightly. Medical experts have confirmed to Yahoo Health that, just as in following the death of an adult human, there can still be involuntary movements in fetuses. It’s also unclear where this footage comes from — if it’s after an abortion or a stillbirth.
In addition to the Grantham Collection tape, the Aug. 19 CMP video utilizes a photo of a Pennsylvania woman’s stillborn son, which was used without her permission and was falsely passed off as an aborted fetus in an earlier video.
Fiorina’s newly released one-minute video contains both the Grantham Collection footage and the stillborn photograph that was reproduced without permission. Not only were neither of these pieces of footage taken at any Planned Parenthood facility, but Fiorina’s team has also made additional edits to the already highly edited CMP video to get its desired, and professed, results.
The footage from the Grantham Collection that appears in the Aug. 19 video has had its original audio stripped on the Fiorina tape and is played twice, replaced the first time by Fiorina’s comments during last week’s debate and the second time by a voiceover from an unrelated CMP tape that contains conversation with Novogenix Laboratories.
The stillborn image is also stripped of its original CMP audio and replaced with voiceover from a Planned Parenthood staff member, taken from yet another, separate CMP video. Columbia Journalism School professor and director of the school’s digital media program Duy Linh Tu told Yahoo Health, “I’m not quite sure what Fiorina’s new video proves. It’s a series of quick cuts of fetuses, combined with her statements at the CNN debate. Makes for a great political ad, but there’s no sequencing to the shots that gives the viewer any better idea of what the raw footage really showed. If Fiorina wants to put this issue to rest, she should find and release any unedited footage. Anyone can take footage of the pope and make him look like the devil with the right editing.”
The video concludes with footage of Holly O’Donnell, the StemExpress employee who was staffed by the biomedical material procurement company at several Planned Parenthood locations in California during the 34 days she was employed by the company. In the clip, O’Donnell describes a scene that allegedly happened while she was staffed at a Planned Parenthood affiliate in regards to fetal tissue procurement.
StemExpress and a family member of O’Donnell’s have both previously confirmed to Yahoo Healththat O’Donnell did not apply for a phlebotomist position with StemExpress, as she asserts in the CMP tapes, but rather for the tissue procurement position in which she claims in the CMP tapes to have been unwittingly placed. The family member also told Yahoo Health that O’Donnell “is lying” in all of her statements in the CMP tapes.
Yesterday, Dawn Laguens, vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, sent a letter to Fiorina at her campaign headquarters asking the candidate to “stop making false and offensive claims about Planned Parenthood.”
In her letter, Laguens also acknowledges Fiorina’s committed antiabortion beliefs and invites her to meet with her, visit a Planned Parenthood health center, and have an “honest conversation about whether abortion should be safe and legal in this country.” 
Laguens asks Fiorina to discuss her antiabortion beliefs in a fact-based and upright right and to “not come at it dishonestly, with patently false statements about what Planned Parenthood does.”
At publishing time, neither Fiorina’s campaign nor the Carly for America super PAC had responded to Yahoo Health’s request for comment. But in a response to Mother Jones, Fiorina campaign spokeswomen Sarah Isgur Flores wrote in an email, “Carly is a cancer survivor and doesn’t need to be lectured on women’s health by anyone. Over their long and factually incorrect letter, Planned Parenthood doesn’t and can’t deny they butchering babies and selling their organs [sic]. This is about the character of our nation.”
 
 
 
7.  A Trump Stamp on The Election
 
 
Hurricane Trump
 
by Thomas B. Edsall,   nytimes.com,   September 23, 2015
 
“A political storm is not coming. It is already here,” Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster, wrote last week on the website of his firm, Public Opinion Strategies.
The anger voters feel at corporations and the political class has reached heights not seen since the Great Depression.
However long Donald Trump lasts, the forces that prompted his ascent may be more politically consequential than a mere outburst of discontent from Americans in the early stage of a presidential election would suggest. Trump’s improbable success so far may have the potential to shift politics and the policy agenda.
In Trump, Republican primary voters have picked an unexpected standard-bearer for a protest against money in politics. Counterintuitively, the billionaire provocateur boasts of using campaign contributions to buy politicians: “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”
I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, and they are there for me.
Trump has contributed $1.5 million to candidates and parties over the past two decades — $584,850 to Democrats and $961,140 to Republicans. He also brags about his influence-buying prowess, with lobbyists inWashington, New York, New Jersey and Illinois:
Hey, I have lobbyists. I have to tell you. I have lobbyists that can produce anything for me. They’re great.
Others have noticed the crazy situation in which Trump’s pronouncements about his participation in a corrupt system are taken by his fans as evidence of his incorruptibility.
Trump’s signal appeal, according to Bolger, stems from voters’ belief that “the deck is stacked against them by politics and politicians, big business and bankers, the media, and other American and world institutions.”
Bolger tells Republican officeholders – the core of his clientele – to:
Go to the lower-middle-income parts of your district and meet with base voters there. If those voters turn against you as well as against Washington, it increases the likelihood that a primary challenger could get legs.
“There is a belief,” Bolger adds, “that Washington, D.C., is not working because the politicians have been sidetracked by power, money and Potomac Fever.”
Trump, for the moment, appears to be exempt from these critiques, insulated — in the eyes of his supporters – by his own vast wealth from special interest pressures.
At a news conference on July 26, Trump declared that his ability to pay for his own campaign frees him from fealty to donors:
Bush is controlled by those people. Walker is controlled by those people. Hillary Clinton is controlled by those people. Trump has none of those people. I’m not controlled. I do what’s right for the people.
Trump embodies precisely what his supporters say they hate – the exploitation of money and lobbyists to get his way. Nonetheless, he seems to have turned this to advantage by openly acknowledging how he has worked the system. His promise is to control the system on behalf of those who vote for him, rather than being controlled by it.
“It’s a collective middle finger to the establishment,” a Trump supportertold the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf. “Trump has never lied to me whereas all of the other Republican politicians (like McConnell & Boehner) have,” wrote another reader, who added, “Nobody fights for my side. Trump fights. Trump wins. I want an Alpha Male who is going to take it to the enemy.” A third Trump loyalist wrote: “This is a guy who isn’t afraid to abuse the abuser. He has and will continue to humiliate the establishment politicians who try to stand up to him by exposing them for who they are. “
Along parallel lines, Leigh Ann Crouse of Dubuque, Ia., told The Associated Press: “He has a backbone and he cannot be bought.”
In an August Harvard Business Review article titled “Why People Are Drawn to Narcissists Like Donald Trump,” Michael Maccoby, a corporate consultant, wrote:
No one pushes Trump around, and no insult goes unanswered. He fights back. He is not cautious or fearful of offending a critic or any of America’s adversaries. In this, Trump has a personality type that’s common to the charismatic leaders who emerge in times of turmoil and uncertainty, when people are ready to follow a strong leader who promises to lead them to greatness.
Maccoby calls such leaders people “productive narcissists” and describes them as “not vulnerable to intimidation.” They are characterized by “a large amount of aggressive energy and a bias for action.” In an earlier Harvard Business Review article, he noted that
Narcissists are almost unimaginably thin-skinned. They cannot tolerate dissent. In fact, they can be extremely abrasive with employees who doubt them or with subordinates who are tough enough to fight back. One serious consequence of this oversensitivity to criticism is that narcissistic leaders often do not listen when they feel threatened or attacked.
Of course, Trump is not the only candidate catapulted or crushed by voters’ rage.Their resentment of the political status quo targets both Democrats and  Republicans. Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said in a phone interview that voters “see both parties as equally corrupt.” He described current attitudes as “a huge change. This is not a ‘goo-goo’ good government issue” driven by upscale reformers. “It’s a real issue.”
Steve Israel, a Democratic congressman who represents parts of Queens and Long Island, is chairman of policy and communications for the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. He has been using the party’s pollsters, focus group specialists and consultants to conduct an extensive study of voters.
Israel told me that most voters see their own position as fragile, vulnerable to collapse in hard times. People who in the past blamed structural forces for their difficulties, including globalization and trade, now “blame politicians.”
Voters, Israel says, are making “an obscene gesture to Washington. D.C.”
Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster, echoed Democratic talking points in his emailed analysis of the contemporary electorate.
Members of the middle class
are living paycheck to paycheck, they are anxious about terrorism coming to their own backyard, and they believe that the rule of ‘if you work hard and play by the rules, you can get ahead’ is in danger of disappearing from the American ethos. Most important, the middle class believes that the rich play by a different set of rules and just get richer, but they also believe that the poor get all the programs and benefits, and all they get is the bill.
Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory, contends that common ground can be found among Democrats, Republicans and independents in a contempory variant of populism.
Westen provided The Times with a graphic illustrating how voters of both parties and independents responded positively or negatively, using hand-held metered dials, as a one-minute and 15 second statement was read aloud:
The American dream used to mean something – that you could count on good American wages and benefits for a hard day’s work. But that’s changing as big corporation  have been shipping our jobs overseas and lobbyists have been rewriting all the rules. In just the last eight years, the average white family has lost about one-eighth of its wealth and seen its income drop for the first time in 80 years. If you were African-American or Latino just starting to catch up through hard work and determination, you’ve lost more than half of everything you put away. Ordinary people, whether white, black or brown, shouldn’t be paying for a crash they didn’t cause. We can’t afford to be a nation of haves and have-nots, where young people can’t find their first job and middle-aged construction workers may have seen their last. We can’t afford to be a nation where white kids are living in their parents’ basements, where too many young men color are living on the streets. It’s time to return to America where everyone willing to work and play by the rules can count on a fair shot. Opportunity should knock on every door no matter how humble the home, or who lives in it. That’s what I promised my children, that’s the American dream.
The accompanying chart illustrates how focus group participants, listening to these words, expressed steadily increasing support, whether they were Republicans, Democrats, or independents.
The downward trajectories of Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, the two mainstream establishment candidates, provide the strongest evidence yet of voter skepticism of customary political promises.
Clinton and Bush have offered the public just what they thought they were supposed to. In a July 13 speech in New York, Clinton told voters that “wages need to rise to keep up with costs, paychecks need to grow. Families who work hard and do their part deserve to get ahead and stay ahead.” Bush, in turn, declared on Sept. 9 in North Carolina that the “new normal is a comfortable ride for the affluent people that live off their portfolios,” pledging that his “plan will help those who live on their paychecks, who haven’t seen a raise in a while.”
Instead of rising in the polls, Clinton and Bush are faltering. On the day Clinton gave her most explicitly populist speech, July 23, she stood at 62.8 percent in the polls for the Democratic nomination. Today, she stands at 44.7 percent, an 18.1 point drop among voters in her own party. Bush, who as recently as July 15 led the Republican field standing at 17 percent, has fallen to a weak third place, now standing at 7.8 percent, according to RealClearPolitics.
Some analysts argue that the unexpected developments over the past nine months will fade in importance as mainstream candidates develop effective campaign strategies to restore their legitimacy.
David Winston, a Republican pollster, observed in an email that the Trump spectacle is likely to dim once other candidates focus their attention on economic issues and “address those concerns in a way that people think could actually work.”
Conventional candidates are likely, however, to face difficulty in making credible claims that they will improve the lot of the middle class. As Neil Irwin of The Times reported on Sept. 16:
The 2014 real median income number is 6.5 percent below its 2007, pre-crisis level. It is 7.2 percent below the number in 1999. A middle-income American family, in other words, makes substantially less money in inflation-adjusted terms than it did 15 years ago.
Bush and Clinton have something more in common: a long history of collecting millions of dollars from powerful interests, both individual and corporate, and deep roots in political dynasties. Their fund-raising success threatens to be a significant liability in the current climate.
The Republican primary process, of all places, has become a test of the balance of power between elites and the affluent on the one hand, and middle- and working-class voters on the other.
For those who would like to see the middle and working classes politically empowered, Donald Trump, the overbearing, narcissistic, xenophobic casino and real estate magnate, would seem to be a weak reed to grasp. It would be the irony of ironies if this particular billionaire gave voice to the millions of voters who find themselves well outside the circle of power.
 
FINALLY
 
 
 
 

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