AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. Odds & Ends
Senate GOP backing off attack on state's drug czar
NH Political Report, by Kevin Landrigan, nh1.com, October 16, 2015
CONCORD - Apparently, the State Senate GOP leadership has decided the latest attack on Gov. Maggie Hassan’s effort dealing with the drug epidemic was a little over the top.
We speak of the call from Farmington Republican Sen. Sam Cataldo for drug czar Jack Wozmak to resign immediately for failing to properly meet with leaders of the New Hampshire Medical Society.
Cataldo was reacting to a story in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the comments of Medical Society President Dr. Lukas Kolm.,
Kolm said he was looking for "more state leadership" on the issue and that Wozmak "failed to reach out to physicians."
Sen. Andy Sanborn, R-Bedford, had called for Wozmak’s head after Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas complained about a delay in getting an audience with him.
Republican State Chairwoman Jennifer Horn piled on.
"Governor Hassan's drug czar has a well-documented history of mishandling relationships with substance abuse prevention stakeholders, and it is unacceptable that the governor has turned a blind eye to public revelations of his incompetence and mismanagement," Horn said in a statement.
But the Senate GOP yanked Cataldo off the speaking tour.
NH1 News had scheduled an on-camera interview with Cataldo about the controversy Thursday morning but three hours later at its appointed time the subject begged off.
"I’ve been told no more interviews about this," Cataldo told the New Hampshire Political Report.
Meanwhile, the Union-Leader of New Hampshire clarified its own story on the topic with Kolm admitted that the drug czar had met with some doctors.
"Dr. Lukas Kolm said Wozmak has met with individual members, but not the society’s leadership group as a whole," the newspaper wrote.
Kolm said he "doesn’t want the process driven by politics."
Too late for that, doc.
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Let’s dispense with the notion outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid "apologized" for his intemperate comments about New Hampshire having "very few minorities; nobody lives there."
Here’s the Reid statement in its entirety.
"I worked to have Nevada moved up in the presidential nominating process. It is the first state in the process that truly represents the demographic composition of America," Reid said.
"Iowa and New Hampshire have been established as our first caucus and primary states for quite some time and I have not and am not advocating switching that order."
Yes, Reid threw his weight around with the Democratic National Committee to get Nevada artificially moved up on the calendar despite having not much of a record at all of high voter participation or early primary contests.
Let’s hope his likely replacement, New York Sen. Chuck Shumer has a little more respect for a tradition that the candidates and national media seem to like well enough because they keep coming in record numbers.
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We heard from one unsatisfied contestant, 2004 New Hampshire primary runner-up Howard Dean. The former Vermont governor and chairman of the Democratic National Committee decided this week to go postal on longtime Secretary of State Bill Gardner, the longest serving, state election official in the country,.
"You guys need a new Secretary of State," Dean told WKXL Concord News Radio when asked about the comments of Reid and outgoing GOP National Chairman Reince Priebus who said there should be "no sacred cows" leading off the primaries every four years.
Gardner has "been there too long" and has "become autocratic," Dean complained.
"You’ve got to not make people mad at you all the time, and my own view is that you need a new Secretary of State who’s perceived as more fair, less autocratic, more reasonable. But I think he’s the only person that’s jeopardizing the New Hampshire primary."
One thing Gardner does remember, however, it was Dean who tried to diminish New Hampshire when he ran the DNC after his disappointing loss here to Secretary of State John Kerry.
"When he was chairman of the DNC he did everything he could to diminish the role of the New Hampshire presidential primary," Gardner said.
"He wanted to diminish the role of New Hampshire, and he never wanted to come out and say that but that was his position and that was the position of Harry Reid back then, too."
GOP Chairwoman Horn came to Gardner’s aide though no Democrats put out any statements in response to Dean’s comments.
"Secretary of State Bill Gardner is a respected bipartisan leader that has protected New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation presidential primary for decades," Horn said.
Horn noted Dean was on the local radio station as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton and called on the Democratic hopeful to distance herself from his comments.
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When you look at the US Senate race, assume Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, like any pretty popular incumbent would be installed as the slight favorite over Gov. Maggie Hassan.
Consider this sobering statistic from a well-known Republican and Ayotte supporter given that Ayotte is now running for re-election in a presidential year.
"Based on the voter modeling and the last four presidential election years, Kelly starts out with a deficit of 59,000 votes," the GOP insider confided to the New Hampshire Political Report.
Keep in mind Ayotte first won the seat by wiping the floor with then-Democratic Congressman Paul Hodes in a non-presidential election in 2010.
Can Ayotte overcome this historical edge for the Dems? You bet she can but it helps insure this race has gotten negative and will stay that way over the next 13 months.
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Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern isn’t waiting for anyone else to get into the Democratic race for governor.
This week he released a list of more than 500 grassroots supporters from nearly 100 towns backing his campaign.
"Across New Hampshire, hundreds of community leaders and volunteers are excited to work together to build an even brighter future and stronger economy for the people of our state, and I’m proud and grateful for this extraordinary support," Van Ostern said in a statement. "This will be a grassroots powered campaign from Day One, and as Governor I will always focus on doing what’s right for the people of New Hampshire and the future we will build together."
Van Ostern has the backing of Congresswoman Annie Kuster - he ran her 2010 campaign for the seat [-] seven, current and former state senators and more than 30 House members and two ex-chairs of the party - Kathy Sullivan and Ned Helms and former House Democratic Leader Peter Burling.
You can view the full list at: http://vanostern.com/wp-
Meanwhile, Stefany Shaheen has told friends she will decide soon and while just completing her first term on the Portsmouth City Council is very serious in exploring this.
With Hassan running for the Senate, Kuster and Shea-Porter running for the House some activists would like to see a woman seeking the corner office as well.
Still there are some activists urging Shaheen to aim lower and run for the Executive Council Dist. 3 seat that Newfields Republican Chris Sununu is exiting to run for governor.
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If Shaheen goes that route, the NH Political Report confirms she’ll have company.
Salem lawyer and former State Senate hopeful Beth Roth is stepping out to confirm her own council bid to try and replace Sununu.
"I am announcing early in order to do the most thorough job I can talking to voters and learning about the needs of the entire district, which spans from the Seacoast to Pelham,” Roth said. "I’m ready to take on the challenge of a regional campaign, and plan to devote the energy and time to earning the votes of people in this district who deserve to be heard."
Roth said Sununu’s vote against state grants for Planned Parenthood moved her into this race.
"It is critical that the NH Executive Council return its focus of overseeing state funding without partisan interference of national moneyed interests influencing their votes," Roth said.
An appropriation made by the legislature, and with proper contract terms reached with state departments for the delivery of necessary services for the families of New Hampshire should not be undermined for personal or political self- interest,” she said.
Senate President Chuck Morse, R-Salem, defeated Roth in their previous showdown.
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Does anyone else think that some Republican presidential hopefuls have big problems if they can’t raise as much money as a Democrat who’s not even on the campaign trail.
That’s the fate of LA Gov. Bobby Jindal ($579,000), ex-PA Sen. Rick Santorum ($387,000) and former New York Gov. George Pataki ($153,000), all of whom raised less than ex-VA Sen. Jim Webb who pulled in $696,000.
KY Sen. Rand Paul’s $2.5 million didn’t turn many heads since it was ninth best among GOP candidates.
That’s why Campaign Manager Chip Englander and Chief Strategist Doug Stafford released an upbeat memo the same day these downer number came out that hyped Paul’s political organization in the Granite State where he won a recent straw poll.
"In New Hampshire, where Senator Rand Poll (abbreviated SRP in the memo) won over the weekend, our organization has a statewide Leadership Team of over 300 members-nearly triple the size of our closest rival," they wrote.
"This well-respected team of veteran grassroots organizers were the catalyst of this weekend's win and will be vital to future victories.
SRP's strength in New Hampshire comes from his continued legwork in the state. He's been there more than most of the candidates. He was there last weekend, he will be there next weekend, and he will be there a third time at the end of this month. Like John McCain in 2008, Senator Paul's campaign isn't showing up in October polling, but will be there when it counts-on Election Day."
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Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, has no intention letting a gender gap grow unchecked in her 2016 race with Gov. Maggie Hassan.
That’s why allies to Ayotte’s have already aired ads of her own touting her support for women’s health care.
And they touched off an angry response from Planned Parenthood of Northern New England critical of Ayotte and accusing her of "lying about her record on women’s health."
"Kelly Ayotte and her outside allies are lying to New Hampshire women about her long record of undermining women’s health," said PPNNE Vice President Jennifer Frizzell.
"When it’s time for an election, she claims she supported women’s access to health care – but when it mattered most over the past five years, when she had to make a choice as a senator, she voted repeatedly to cut women’s access to health care."
The Ayotte campaign fired back,.
"This attack by Governor Hassan and the special interests propping up her campaign is yet another attempt to mislead voters about Kelly’s real record on women’s health," said Ayotte spokeswoman Chloe Rockow
"Kelly cares deeply about ensuring all women have access to health services, which is why she’s worked to expand access to over the counter contraceptives, led efforts to protect access to mammograms, and voted to fund community health centers that provide key health services for New Hampshire women."
The Ayotte camp went on its own offensive against Hassan’s support for the Iran nuclear deal.
"I’d like to know where (Hassan) stands on this latest launch of the missile by Iran in terms of its violation of existing UN resolutions and also in this agreement that she is supporting we’re saying legitimately that they can have (ICBMs), go forward in eight years and lift these resolutions, but they’re already violating them right now," Ayotte said.
Hassan maintains the Iran nuke agreement is the best option to prevent that country from building a bomb.
And the state GOP sent out a fund-raising e-mail based on Ayotte’s attack of Hassan.
Gov. Hassan's continued support for President Obama's deal with Iran shows that she is just as woefully naïve and foolish as he is. Tell Maggie Hassan she will never represent our state in the United States Senate and donate today!
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It sure didn’t take very long for the Senate race to get very snarky.
The Hassan campaign promoted a critical piece of Ayotte on Wonkette, a certainly left-of-center satirical blog started in 2004 by a founder of Gawker.
Here’s the link to it. http://wonkette.com/
Here’s how the conservative, America Rising PAC reacted to it.
"Citing wildly biased sources” isn’t new for Hassan’s campaign. A press release sent out on Tuesday linked to ThinkProgress.org – affiliated with the far-left Center for American Progress – as a source for another attack,’’ America Rising’s statement read.
"With the bar set this low, one has to wonder if Hassan’s campaign will start blasting out Democratic Underground comments next?’’
The Democratic response?
"The bottom line is not one Republican disputed a single fact in the piece, which is a very thorough rundown of her dismal record on women's econ issues. And the reaction on Twitter from Team Ayotte, NHGOP and the Rising folks makes clear they're very scared of this issue," one partisan source answered.
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Potential, Republican First District candidate Dan Innis claimed the $110,000 he raised in the past quarter exceeded that of Congressman Frank Guinta and ex-Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter and noted he didn’t take PAC money while they did.
"I am grateful for the strong support I have received in my exploration. It is clear that voters are tired of the revolving door in NH CD1, as well as politics as usual in Washington, DC," Innis said in a statement.
"It's time to send someone to Congress who will represent the views of the people of New Hampshire and work to solve problems responsibly in Congress, and I look forward to the opportunity to serve our district, our state, and the nation."
The total barely edged out what Guinta raised.
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This is a big week for the two, high-profile mayoral races in New Hampshire.
The Nashua mayor’s race takes center stage Tuesday night at Nashua South High School where former Mayor Jim Donchess faces off against Republican Chris Williams for the non-partisan post.
The League of Women Voters is sponsoring this debate.
"This race is a 50-50," said one Nashua Democrat.
Then on Wednesday and Friday are the fourth and fifth of the six mayoral forums in Manchester pitting Mayor Ted Gatsas versus challenge Joyce Craig.
This race got very chippy last week when Gatsas complained that Craig was breaking the forum rules by using a steno-pad.
Observers on both sides acknowledge the Queen City mayoral seat is very much up for grabs in a little over three weeks.
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Right or wrong every decision Governor Hassan makes now will be viewed through the Senate prism.
She’s been a consistent supporter of the Exit 4-A project off Interstate 93 since taking office.
Hassan called this week to push the expensive construction work up forward on the 10-year plan
Now both Derry and Londonderry are big boosters of the project and critical swing towns in the Senate race.
Going back more than 20 years, Democrats who win Derry usually win statewide - ask Jeanne Shaheen, John Lynch and yes Maggie Hassan when she first ran and won for governor against Manchester Republican Ovide Lamontagne.
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You don’t see the state’s largest business lobby jump ugly about agency rules but that’s what we saw on Thursday.
The Business and Industry Association considered propose Site Evaluation Committee rules on energy capacity too restrictive for power companies.
President Jim Roche called the rules ``burdensome, lengthen the process for filing, invite challenges and litigation, and may go beyond statutory authority.’’
"This is incredibly disconcerting to businesses, New Hampshire’s job creators. Rules for siting energy infrastructure projects in New Hampshire must be fair, balanced, clear and expeditious, not the reverse," he added.
The Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules took the proposal under advisement with no final action on it this week.
2. Forum on NH's Housing Problems
Summit Brings N.H. Housing Issues into Focus
by Casey McFermott, nhpr.org, October 16, 2015
It’s hard to find housing in New Hampshire, according to those who spoke at a summit on the issue in Manchester on Friday — but it’s particularly challenging for young professionals, older adults and those with limited incomes.
Addressing this is a key part of ensuring the state’s economic viability in the long run, according to the local officials who spoke at the event.
A group of policymakers, presidential candidates and others with a stake in the housing landscape convened at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics for a daylong conference focused on housing issues at the local and federal level. The J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families, which counts former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown as a member of its executive committee, hosted the event.
One panel focused specifically on New Hampshire’s housing challenges. Speakers underscored a handful of factors complicating access to housing and the implications for the state as a whole. Among the major challenges identified at the forum:
- A shortage of rental housing
The statewide vacancy rate for two-bedroom units in New Hampshire has been on the decline since 2009 and now sits at 2.2 percent. According to the most recent report from the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, the squeeze is especially tight in Belknap, Merrimack and Rockingham Counties, where the vacancy rate is below 2 percent.
CREDIT NEW HAMPSHIRE HOUSING FINANCE AUTHORITY 2015 RESIDENTIAL RENTAL COST SURVEY
- A shortage of affordable rental housing
As noted at Friday’s summit, it’s not just a challenge for people to find available housing — it’s also hard to find places within their budget. Only about 11 percent of two-bedroom rental units statewide fall below “affordable” rent levels, according to the most recent data from the NHHFA.
CREDIT NEW HAMPSHIRE HOUSING FINANCE AUTHORITY 2015 RESIDENTIAL RENTAL COST SURVEY
- A lack of options for young professionals
Taylor Caswell, with the Community Development Finance Authority, relayed one conversation he had with a 30-something professional who works at a biotech company in the Upper Valley —he has a lot of ambitious people working for him, but a lot of them are having trouble finding places to live.
“Every place I go in the state, that’s the common denominator whenever we talk about, how are we going to get these younger crowds to stay in New Hampshire and build their businesses — well, where the heck are they going to live?”
Indeed, the problem extends into other regions of the state, too. Kevin Smith, the town manager for Londonderry, pointed to the economic development underway in his community as a factor driving demand for more housing for young professionals. The town isn’t necessarily able to meet that demand right now, he said, but they’re working on it.
- A lack of options for elderly residents who are looking to stay in their communities
It’s becoming increasingly important for communities to provide options that allow senior citizens to stay close to home as they age, Smith noted. Londonderry has tried to adapt to increasing demand in this area by overseeing the development of elderly apartments and an assisted living facility, Smith said, but affordability in this area is also an ongoing challenge.
“Even though we have senior housing apartments going up, the rents start at about $1,500,” Smith said. “And what we heard from a lot of seniors is, that’s just not viable for them.”
To address this, Smith said the town tried to incentivize the development of more affordable senior housing in the area by offering land at next-to-nothing to a developer who has handled similar projects in other New Hampshire communities.
Statewide solutions in the works
As for potential solutions to these challenges, state Sen. Dan Feltes and others called attention to a few state-level efforts during a separate panel at the summit. Feltes pointed to a bill meant to prevent towns from banning “accessory dwelling units” — residential units attached to an existing single-family home — as one way to expand housing options for the elderly, caregivers and young professionals. The law would allow some flexibility for communities in terms of establishing rules around these units, Feltes said. But towns wouldn’t be able to prohibit them outright.
He also pointed to the state’s Affordable Housing Fund as an important resource to ensure access to housing for low-income residents.
According to a recent poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center in connection with the group behind Friday’s housing summit, 88 percent of respondents said housing was at least a “minor” problem in the state — and, within that, 34 percent characterized it as a “very serious problem.” A majority of respondents also said it’s difficult to find affordable housing in the state and suggested that presidential candidates should place some focus on this issue.
3. Maybe They Can't Buy NH
by William Tucker, miscellanyblue.com, October 16, 2015
An all-out effort by Americans for Prosperity to turn out voters for a special election failed this week.
Residents of Derry, a town that supported Mitt Romney by a 51% to 47% margin in last year’s presidential election, went to the polls in record numbers Tuesday and overturned deep budget cuts that would have lowered their property taxes.
The voters approved eight ballot initiatives that overturned cutbacks approved by the town council on May 19. By a narrow 4-3 vote, the councilors cut the tax rate by reducing staff in the police, fire and public works departments, cancelling overtime, eliminating the human resource director’s position and closing a fire station.
Protesting residents responded by obtaining over 800 signatures on petitions asking the council to reverse the cuts or hold a special election. When councilors failed to act, the residents went to court and a Superior Court judge ordered the town to hold the special election.
The Koch-funded effort to save the budget cuts
Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy arm of billionaire conservatives Charles and David Koch, led a sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort in support of the budget cuts that included sign-waving visibilities, door-to-door canvassing and volunteer phonebanks.
The group scheduled and promoted the activities on social media. “Thank you to the 30 NH activists who made calls to fight against Derry property tax hikes last night!” the organizers wrote after one phone bank session. “We made over 4,000 calls thanks to YOU!”
The effort in Derry was part of a larger national initiative that the Washington Post describes as “a long-term effort to undercut the left’s long-standing dominance in grass-roots organizing.” In a confidential donorprospectus obtained by Politico, AFP identified New Hampshire as one of 14 states where the group would be “devoting additional resources” in 2015.
The prospectus described the group’s grassroots activities. “AFP staff and activists utilize a mobile canvassing platform that integrates household data, GPS mapping and survey software to map canvass routes and log responses in real-time on their mobile devices,” it read.
“Americans not reached by AFP’s door efforts are called by activists utilizing our online ‘Freedom Phone’ predictive dialing system,” the prospectus continued. “Volunteers log-in from any WiFi hot-spot where they can view the name of the call recipient, call script and survey questions on a personal ‘dashboard.’
Complaints from residents suggested AFP used the “Freedom Phone” in the run-up to the election in Derry. The Union Leader reported “residents said the group Americans for Prosperity is using callers from Florida to try to sway Derry voters… But even though the calls are coming from out of state, the phone numbers are showing up as local, the residents said.”
New Hampshire AFP director Greg Moore denied out-of-staters called Derry residents. “The reality was all of the calls were made from Manchester, New Hampshire, with a 603 number,” he told the Union Leader. "Moore said some residents who favor overturning the budget cuts seem to be creating a ‘mythology’ about the phone calls.”
AND NATIONALLY
4. Needing Each Other
Why Democrats Need Both Clinton and Sanders
by Harold Meyerson, prospect.org, October 15, 2015
In the fall of 1991, a Democratic presidential candidate I was covering as he campaigned across New Hampshire had a line in his speeches that surprised me. He commended to his listeners something called the “Swedish active labor market”—a program, established by Sweden’s Social Democrats as part of their full-employment policy, that trained unemployed workers at the government’s expense and linked them up with available jobs.
That candidate was Bill Clinton.
On Tuesday night, I was forcefully reminded of the then-Arkansas governor’s unanticipated endorsement of Scandinavian democratic socialist policy by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s takedown of Senator Bernie Sanders’s invocation of Denmark as a model for progressive change in the United States. My point isn’t that Bill Clinton was a socialist in liberal garb; his support for increasing the size and clout of the financial sector is proof positive that he wasn’t. It’s that the relationship between the European social democracy that Sanders extols and the American progressivism that Hillary Clinton champions is complicated and at times symbiotic, with clear areas of overlap and difference.
The social democracies of Northern Europe have higher and more progressive tax rates than we do, which fund a far greater range of social benefits than we do as well. U.S. liberals also favor more progressive taxation and greater social benefits (paid sick days, expanded health coverage). To the extent that this is not just a quantitative but a qualitative distinction, it’s because the European social democratic belief in citizens’ rights extends deeper into the economic realm—particularly the workplace—than American liberalism’s does.
The great irony of Northern European social democracy is that it has produced perhaps the world’s most successful capitalist economies. The Swedish full-employment policy that so intrigued Bill Clinton, for instance, made workers confident that they could get jobs with at least comparable pay if their companies failed, thereby eliminating popular resistance to shuttering moribund industries and incubating new ones. The German economy—by any measure the most successful of any advanced capitalist nation over the past decade—confers on employees considerable say in company policy by giving their representatives half the seats on corporate boards. It is also home to the world’s most successful small and medium-size businesses, the Mittelstand, the kind of small manufacturers whose numbers have diminished in the United States as Wall Street has pressured our big retailers and manufacturers to offshore their suppliers.
The crucial distinction between Europe’s social democrats and the Democratic Party in the United States is that the former have institutionalized worker power to a far greater degree than have our Democrats, who are quintessentially a party of both capital and labor. This has mattered most particularly in the post-1970 era of globalization. While the major corporations of all Western nations have gone global, those in Northern Europe have, as a result of the power that workers wield, retained the best jobs in their home nations and still identify themselves with their home countries. The vast majority of U.S. corporations, by contrast, identify themselves as global, seem content to offshore jobs and don’t invest much, if anything, in training workers for highly skilled jobs here. That’s not because U.S. corporate chief executives are less patriotic than their European counterparts, but because social democratic parties have vested workers with the power to constrain corporate conduct, and crafted policies that favor their home nations’ economies through, for instance, increased public investment. They have limited the size and sway of finance, whose demand for profits accords no special status to the notion of a “home country.”
All that said, both Sanders and Hillary Clinton favor extending Americans’ economic rights, as their support for policies such as paid family leave makes clear. Both favor economies with vibrant small businesses, which Sanders helped incubate when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and which is entirely consistent with social democratic theory and practice. Both favor constraining the economic and political power of banks, though Sanders clearly more so.
The difference—the socialist difference, if you will—is that Sanders understands the inherent threat that Wall Street poses to the U.S. economy, and that bolstering worker power and rights has to become the Democrats’ defining mission in good times and bad. He also understands that the kind of movement his campaign is building is essential to realizing not just his “revolutionary” agenda, but Clinton’s “progressive” agenda as well. The great bursts of progressive reform in the 1930s and 1960s were the joint product of liberal presidents and turmoil in the streets—general strikes in the ’30s, civil rights protests in the ’60s. In the United States, liberalism advances only when radicalism is bubbling, which is why Clinton and Sanders need each other, and why the Democrats need them both.
5. Deficit Dunces
AUSTERITY 101: The Three Reasons Republican Deficit Hawks Are Wrong
by Robert Reich, robertreich.org, October 15, 2015
Congress is heading into another big brawl over the federal budget deficit, the national debt, and the debt ceiling.
Republicans are already talking about holding Social Security and Medicare “hostage” during negotiations—hell-bent on getting cuts in exchange for a debt limit hike.
Days ago, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew asked whether our nation would “muster the political will to avoid the self-inflicted wounds that come from a political stalemate.”
It’s a fair question. And there’s only one economically sound answer: Congress must raise the debt ceiling, end the sequester, put more people to work, and increase our investment in education and infrastructure.
Here are the three reasons why Republican deficit hawks are wrong. (Please watch and share our attached video.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
FIRST: Deficit and debt numbers are meaningless on their own. They have to be viewed as a percent of the national economy.
That ratio is critical. As long as the yearly deficit continues to drop as a percent of the national economy, as it’s been doing for several years now, we can more easily pay what we owe.
SECOND: America needs to run larger deficits when lots of people are unemployed or underemployed – as they still are today, when millions remain too discouraged to look for jobs and millions more are in part-time jobs and need full-time work.
As we’ve known for years – in every economic downturn and in every struggling recovery – more government spending helps create jobs – teachers, fire fighters, police officers, social workers, people to rebuild roads and bridges and parks. And the people in these jobs create far more jobs when they spend their paychecks.
This kind of spending thereby grows the economy – thereby increasing tax revenues and allowing the deficit to shrink in proportion.
Doing the opposite – cutting back spending when a lot of people are still out of work – as Congress has done with the sequester, as much of Europe has done – causes economies to slow or even shrink, which makes the deficit larger in proportion.
This is why austerity economics is a recipe for disaster, as it’s been in Greece. Creditors and institutions worried about Greece’s debt forced it to cut spending, the spending cuts led to a huge economic recession, which reduced tax revenues, and made the debt crisis there worse.
THIRD AND FINALLY: Deficit spending on investments like education and infrastructure is different than other forms of spending, because this spending builds productivity and future economic growth.
It’s like a family borrowing money to send a kid to college or start a business. If the likely return on the investment exceeds the borrowing costs, it should be done.
Keep these three principles in mind and you won’t be fooled by scare tactics of the deficit hawks.
And you’ll understand why we have to raise the debt ceiling, end the sequester, put more people to work, and increase rather than decrease spending on vital public investments like education and infrastructure.
6. Fighting the NRA's Power
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Taking on the N.R.A.
by James Surowiecki, newyorker.com, October 19, 2015 issue
In the wake of the massacre at Umpqua Community College, in Oregon, Hillary Clinton promised that if she is elected President she will use executive power to make it harder for people to buy guns without background checks. Meanwhile, Ben Carson, one of the Republican Presidential candidates, said, “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.” The two responses could hardly have been more different, but both were testaments to the power of a single organization: the National Rifle Association. Clinton invoked executive action because the N.R.A. has made it unthinkable that a Republican-controlled Congress could pass meaningful gun-control legislation. Carson found it expedient to make his comment because the N.R.A. has shaped the public discourse around guns, in one of the most successful P.R. (or propaganda, depending on your perspective) campaigns of all time.
In many accounts, the power of the N.R.A. comes down to money. The organization has an annual operating budget of some quarter of a billion dollars, and between 2000 and 2010 it spent fifteen times as much on campaign contributions as gun-control advocates did. But money is less crucial than you’d think. The N.R.A.’s annual lobbying budget is around three million dollars, which is about a fifteenth of what, say, the National Association of Realtors spends. The N.R.A.’s biggest asset isn’t cash but the devotion of its members. Adam Winkler, a law professor at U.C.L.A. and the author of the 2011 book “Gunfight,” told me, “N.R.A. members are politically engaged and politically active. They call and write elected officials, they show up to vote, and they vote based on the gun issue.” In one revealing study, people who were in favor of permits for gun owners described themselves as more invested in the issue than gun-rights supporters did. Yet people in the latter group were four times as likely to have donated money and written a politician about the issue.
The N.R.A.’s ability to mobilize is a classic example of what the advertising guru David Ogilvy called the power of one “big idea.” Beginning in the nineteen-seventies, the N.R.A. relentlessly promoted the view that the right to own a gun is sacrosanct. Playing on fear of rising crime rates and distrust of government, it transformed the terms of the debate. As Ladd Everitt, of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told me, “Gun-control people were rattling off public-health statistics to make their case, while the N.R.A. was connecting gun rights to core American values like individualism and personal liberty.” The success of this strategy explains things that otherwise look anomalous, such as the refusal to be conciliatory even after killings that you’d think would be P.R. disasters. After the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, the N.R.A.’s C.E.O. sent a series of e-mails to his members warning them that anti-gun forces were going to use it to “ban your guns” and “destroy the Second Amendment.”
The idea that gun rights are perpetually under threat has been a staple of the N.R.A.’s message for the past four decades. Yet, for most of that period, the gun-control movement was disorganized and ineffective. Today, the landscape is changing. “Newtown really marked a major turning point in America’s gun debate,” Winkler said. “We’ve seen a completely new, reinvigorated gun-control movement, one that has much more grassroots support, and that’s now being backed by real money.” Michael Bloomberg’s Super PAC, Independence USA, has spent millions backing gun-control candidates, and he’s pledged fifty million dollars to the cause. Campaigners have become more effective in pushing for gun-control measures, particularly at the local and state level: in Washington State last year, a referendum to expand background checks got almost sixty per cent of the vote. There are even signs that the N.R.A.’s ability to make or break politicians could be waning; senators it has given F ratings have been reëlected in purple states. Indeed, Hillary Clinton’s embrace of gun control is telling: previously, Democratic Presidential candidates tended to shy away from the issue.
These shifts, plus the fact that demographics are not in the N.R.A.’s favor (Latino and urban voters mostly support gun control), might make it seem that the N.R.A.’s dominance is ebbing. But, if so, that has yet to show up in the numbers. A Pew survey last December found that a majority of Americans thought protecting gun rights was more important than gun control. Fifteen years before, the same poll found that sixty-six per cent of Americans thought that gun control mattered more. And last year, despite all the new money and the grassroots campaigns, states passed more laws expanding gun rights than restricting them.
What is true is that the N.R.A. at last has worthy opponents. The gun-control movement is far more pragmatic than it once was. When the N.R.A. took up the banner of gun rights, in the seventies, gun-control advocates were openly prohibitionist. (The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence was originally called the National Coalition to Ban Handguns.) Today, they’re respectful of gun owners and focussed on screening and background checks. That’s a sensible strategy. It’s also an accommodation to the political reality that the N.R.A. created.
7. One Approach to Closing Gun Loopholes
Here's a novel way to limit gun sales
by Arkadi Gerney and Chelsea Parsons, latimes.com, October 15, 2015
Polling demonstrates that roughly 90% of Americans would like Congress to pass a law requiring background checks on all gun sales, including those by unlicensed sellers at gun shows, or online, or anywhere else. But even in the wake of a string of horrific mass shootings over the last few months, Congress appears no closer to acting than it was after the Newtown, Conn., shooting in 2012, when such a bill fell five votes short of the 60 required to advance in the Senate.
Last week, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton put forward a new idea: use executive power to require more gun sellers to get a federal license, which would, in turn, require them to perform background checks. This proposal, which President Obama is reportedly weighing as well, hinges on the definition of what it means to be "engaged in the business" of selling guns.
Under current law, only licensed gun dealers are required to perform background checks for all gun sales, and only those individuals deemed to be "engaged in the business" of dealing in guns are required to obtain a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. But the definition of "engaged in the business" is vague. It says that a dealer must be licensed if he or she devotes "time, attention and labor" to selling firearms "as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit." Those who engage in "occasional sales" or who buy and sell guns as a "hobby" or to add to a "personal collection" are exempt.
This weak definition has allowed individuals to sell guns at a high volume without becoming licensed and without conducting background checks.
As policymakers look to rewrite the definition of what "engaged in the business" means in the context of gun sales, there is a strong set of rules already in place in many states that could provide guidance: state sales tax laws.
Nearly every state imposes a sales tax on goods sold, and in many states, sellers are exempt from collecting the tax only if they engage in low-volume or infrequent sales. In determining what type of sale is exempt from taxation, many states have adopted a nuanced, specific approach that considers not only the number of products sold but the overall nature of the business.
For example, Missouri considers whether sellers advertise or otherwise represent themselves as a retailer. It looks at frequency and duration of sales activity and the nature of the market for the good being sold. Additionally, any individual who earns more than $3,000 a year through his or her sales activity must collect sales tax.
Meanwhile, in West Virginia, individuals who engage in "isolated transactions" — defined as no more than four sales transactions a year and by sellers who don't regularly sell that type of product — are not required to collect sales tax. And in Florida, sellers are exempt only if they meet a long list of criteria: They paid sales tax when they first bought the item that is for sale, they do not engage in sales activity more than twice a year, the property was not originally purchased for the purpose of resale, they don't sell goods at locations where they are competing with other retailers who are required to collect sales tax, and the sale is not made through an agent who is required to collect sales tax.
Using the state sales tax approach, a new definition of what constitutes gun dealing could include some combination of these criteria: the number of guns sold; the frequency of sales; the dollar amount of the proceeds; whether sellers advertise, rent tables at gun shows or operate an online store; whether they sell guns new in the package; and whether they sell multiple guns of the same make and model.
Rather than falling back into the usual patterns of the debate over gun laws, which result in lots of talk and zero action, Obama should use the power of his office to apply the blueprint offered by state sales tax laws to gun dealing. It would be a modest step forward in closing the private sale loophole and increasing background checks.
FINALLY
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