AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. Upcoming Event
Laconia Day of Action: Canvass, and Hillary Clinton Office Opening with Senator Andrew Hosmer
Saturday, November 21
1 pm - 3 pm
Laconia Office
373 Court Street, Laconia, New Hampshire 03246
Map this locationLaconia Office
373 Court Street, Laconia, New Hampshire 03246
Saturday marks 80 days left until we cast our votes for Hillary Clinton in the First in the Nation New Hampshire primary! With just under 3 months left, we're opening a brand new office in Laconia where we can come together to work hard for every vote!
Join your neighbors and Senator Andrew Hosmer for our Official Office Opening and Day of Action Canvass this Saturday! Senator Hosmer will kick off the office opening at 1:00. His remarks will be followed by an office party. Teams will also canvass our neighborhoods to sign up supporters to commit to vote for Hillary. Sign up join us at 1 pm! We can't wait to see you!
Online Sign Up Link - https://www.hillaryclinton.
Contact info: Shelby Wiltz : Organizer - Hillary for New Hampshire
2. Upcoming Event
Organizing Meeting for Bernie Sanders
Friday, November 20th
6:00pm-8:00pm
Barnstead Town Hall, 108 South Barnstead Rd. (Rte. 126), Barnstead, NH
Barnstead Town Hall, 108 South Barnstead Rd. (Rte. 126), Barnstead, NH
Organizing/Informational meeting for presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders.
Please join us to learn what we can do to get Senator Sanders elected.
Please join us to learn what we can do to get Senator Sanders elected.
3. Gov. Hassan and the Refugee Issue
Hassan under fire as only Democratic governor to call for halt in Syrian refugees
by Allie Morris, concordmonitor.com, November 17, 2015
New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan is facing push back over her call for the U.S. to stop accepting Syrian refugees after the Paris terror attacks but hasn’t backed off her position.
Hassan is one of at least 27 governors objecting to the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S., but she sets herself apart as the only Democrat. Hassan, who is running for U.S. Senate, on Monday called for the U.S. to halt acceptance of Syrian refugees until intelligence and defense officials can ensure the vetting process is “as strong as possible.”
Now, Hassan’s stance is coming under fire from legal groups and those within her own party.
“The ACLU of New Hampshire is deeply saddened by Governor Hassan’s call to close America’s door to Syrian refugees fleeing violence and oppression,” said Devon Chaffee, the Executive Director of the ACLU of New Hampshire. “To shut out Syrian families trying to rescue their children from persecution and in some cases starvation, is to refuse to help the victims of the very terrorism we decry.”
Democracy for America Executive Director Charles Chamberlin said Hassan is “caving to the Islamophobic fear-mongering of far-right extremists in attempting to shut New Hampshire’s borders to refugees fleeing blood-chilling violence in Syria.”
More than 4 million Syrians have fled the country since civil war broke out several years ago. President Obama has said the U.S. will accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming year. But, opponents of his resettlement plan say terrorists could pose as refugees from Syria — where ISIS is based — to gain entrance to the U.S.
While more than two dozen Republican governors, including Paul LePage of Maine and Charlie Baker in Massachusetts, have announced this week they will try to block Syrian refugees from resettling in their states, Hassan has not said specifically whether she would take that step.
At least one New Hampshire lawmaker is urging her to do so. Republican U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta wrote to Hassan this week urging she reject the relocation of Syrian and Iraqi refugees to the Granite State.
“The United States has a proud tradition of opening its arms to those in need. However, with the current conflicts raging in the Middle East, we cannot be certain these individuals fleeing the violence in Iraq and Syria pose no threat to Americans,” Guinta wrote.
New Hampshire is currently home to just one Syrian refugee family — a couple in their 60’s and their daughter who relocated to the state last year, according to officials.
Ascentria Care Alliance, which oversees refugee resettlement in Concord and Nashua, doesn’t have any Syrian cases in the pipeline and doesn’t expect to have any throughout the next year, according to Amy Marchildon, the organization’s Director of Services for New Americans. But, she added refugees are some of the most scrutinized travelers to the United States, undergoing at least seven security checks in a process that can last years.
The U.S. refugee resettlement program is administered by the federal government, but relies on cooperation from states and local communities. Since the early 1890’s more than 7,500 refugees have resettled in New Hampshire, according to state figures. The majority of refugees that currently live in New Hampshire relocated from Bhutan.
National advocates Tuesday questioned governors’ efforts to block Syrian refugees from resettling in their states, calling it discrimination.
“I understand that governors want to protect their populations, but they have other things to protect as well,” said Lavinia Limon, President & CEO, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. “I think American freedom and American values are also something governors should be protecting. And one of those values is not to discriminate based on race or ethnicity.”
Limon said about 2,000 Syrian refugees have been relocated in the U.S. during the past three years, and there is no record of any refugees committing terrorist acts.
The issue is poised to take on a role in the upcoming U.S. Senate race where Hassan faces a competitive contest against incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte, who similarly says no Syrian refugees should be brought to the U.S. until the government can ensure they aren’t associated with ISIS.
Meanwhile, Democratic candidates seeking to replace Hassan in the corner office broke from the governor’s position by signaling they will support U.S. efforts to give refugees save haven.
“The best way to protect the security and liberty of the people of New Hampshire is through expanding the extensive person-by-person security and safety screening process that the United States requires today for every refugee — not by adopting a new blanket ban against one nationality or religion that plays into the hands of the ISIS terrorists while giving us a false sense of security,” said Colin Van Ostern, a Concord Democratic running for governor, in a statement.
“While the ultimate authority on this matter rests in the hands of the President, as Governor, I will stand in support of continuing New Hampshire’s tradition of providing a safe pathway for those around the world seeking refuge from crisis and conflict,” said Democratic gubernatorial candidates Mark Connolly in a statement. “As long as the safety and security of Granite State families is ensured, we should continue to do our part to help those in need.”
On the Republican side, gubernatorial candidate Chris Sununu echoed Ayotte’s message, saying in a statement that the U.S. should stop admitting refugees from Syria.
“A governor has no greater priority than the safety and security of their state’s citizens, and New Hampshire must not accept any Syrian refugees unless the U.S. government can 100 percent guarantee they are not ISIS members or supporters,” he said.
4. Going Into the Special Session
Heading Into Substance Abuse Special Session, Some Bipartisan Agreement on Policy Priorities
by staff, nhpr.org, November 17, 2015
With all of the recent posturing at the State House, it might be easy to assume that Gov. Maggie Hassan and Republicans in the Legislature are having trouble finding common ground on how best to tackle substance abuse. But, as lawmakers gear up for a special session devoted to New Hampshire’s opioid epidemic, that’s not necessarily the case.
Yes, Republican leaders at first resisted Hassan’s calls for a special legislative session and have warned that she’s taking too heavy-handed an approach in pushing her proposals. They want to set up a task force to study possible solutions to the state’s substance abuse crisis, with the goal of passing a bill as early as possible when the regular session resumes in January.
Hassan, meanwhile, has warned that the drug problem is too urgent to delay action until January. Last week, she put forward a broad bill to address the issue on several fronts and urged lawmakers to take it up during the special session that begins Wednesday.
But there are at least a few priorities these two sides can agree on — though they might differ on the exact path forward.
Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, who’s been leading the Republicans’ effort to draw up their own substance abuse proposals, said the group’s legislation won’t be ready in time for the special session. But Bradley and his colleagues expect to focus on several of the same areas that Hassan’s identified in her bill.
Here’s an overview of where the sides do and don’t overlap on this issue, based on conversations with lawmakers, public statements and published proposals.
WHERE TO EXPECT CONSENSUS BETWEEN HASSAN AND REPUBLICANS:
- The state should provide financial support to help counties set up drug courts and should set up a statewide office to oversee these programs
- The state should bring criminal penalties for fentanyl in line with those for heroin
- Insurance coverage should cover certain costs of substance abuse treatment
- Pain specialists should be added to the Board of Medicine
- More resources should be offered to state and local law enforcement to increase coordination on drug issues
WHERE THERE MIGHT BE DISAGREEMENT:
THE PROCESS
- Hassan wants legislation as soon as possible; she introduced a multi-part bill for consideration during upcoming special session.'
- Republican leaders in the House and Senate want to form a task force to study a few issues during the special session, rather than moving immediately to vote on any specific bills.
COMMISSION FUNDING
- Hassan proposes $5 million in additional funding for the Governor's Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery over the next two fiscal years.
- Bradley said Republicans aren’t opposed to increasing funding, in theory — but he wants to see how the commission has used the additional funding already offered to them earlier this year and wants to know more about the state’s overall financial picture before making any new appropriations.
DETAILS OF DRUG COURTS
- Hassan’s plan would set up a matching grant program to help counties fund drug courts and would set up a statewide office to oversee the program. Her legislation doesn’t include an end date for the program.
- Bradley and other Republicans are developing a similar bill to expand drug courts that would also offer matching funds to counties, but they’re planning to start out with a six-year authorization of the program before committing to anything more permanent.
LAW ENFORCEMENT/JUDICIAL FUNDING
- Hassan’s bill for the special session includes about $5.9 million in additional funding for use toward several items under these areas — to pay for more probation and parole officers, to fund a statewide drug court office and to help local agencies better coordinate on drug issues, among other things.
- Bradley agrees those priorities are important, but — as with other big spending requests in Hassan’s proposal — he isn’t ready to commit to large expenses until there’s a fuller picture of the state’s finances. Still, he said of the proposals meant to support law enforcement: “I think those, as long as the money is there, they all stand a very good chance of passage.”
PRESCRIBING GUIDELINES
- Hassan faced pushback from the state’s medical community and Republicans when she tried to get the Board of Medicine to adopt new rules for prescribing. Her legislation includes several proposed changes to these rules, including: limiting prescriptions for some controlled drugs to a 34-day supply or 100 dosage units, depending on which is the smaller amount, and limiting prescriptions in emergency and urgent-care settings to a five-day supply.
- Bradley has been particularly critical of Hassan’s attempts to change the prescribing rules, and he said he wants to make sure any changes are “fully vetted” by the medical community before they’re approved.
5. Declining Unemployment Rate
NH Unemployment Rate Drops in October
by staff, unionleader.com, November 17, 2015
CONCORD — The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for October stood at 3.3 percent, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from September, according to the state today.
The October 2014 rate measured 4.1 percent.
Seasonally adjusted estimates for October 2015 said 716,530 residents were employed, a decrease of 1,780 from the previous month and an increase of 5,930 from October 2014.
The number of unemployed residents decreased by 870 from September, to 24,430. That meant 5,760 fewer people were unemployed in October than a year earlier. From September to October this year, the total labor force decreased by 2,650, to 740,960, but increased by 170 from October 2014.
Nationally, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for October came in at 5 percent, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the September rate and a decrease of 0.7 percentage point from the October 2014 rate.
The October 2014 rate measured 4.1 percent.
Seasonally adjusted estimates for October 2015 said 716,530 residents were employed, a decrease of 1,780 from the previous month and an increase of 5,930 from October 2014.
The number of unemployed residents decreased by 870 from September, to 24,430. That meant 5,760 fewer people were unemployed in October than a year earlier. From September to October this year, the total labor force decreased by 2,650, to 740,960, but increased by 170 from October 2014.
Nationally, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for October came in at 5 percent, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the September rate and a decrease of 0.7 percentage point from the October 2014 rate.
6. NH's Workforce Housing Need
Coalition: Need for workforce housing greater than ever
by Judi Currie, fosters.com, November 15, 2015
BERWICK, Maine — The Greater Seacoast is one of the least affordable regions in the country and many cannot afford to live in the communities in which they work, according to the Workforce Housing Coalition.
To try to address the shortage the WHC is engaging in efforts to educate the public and work with communities and developers to advance workforce housing projects. Some of that outreach is funded by grants from New Hampshire Housing, which provides mortgages to low- and moderate-income home-buyers and finances the development of affordable rental housing.
The New Hampshire Legislature in 2008 passed a law that requires every community to provide "reasonable and realistic opportunities" for the development of workforce housing. Under the law, a home is "affordable” if 30 percent or less of the household’s income is spent on housing costs. “Workforce housing” is affordable to a family earning 100 percent of the median income for the area.
Because of these standards, workforce housing includes a broader range of incomes than traditional notions of affordable or “low-income” housing. According to NHH, even in a weaker housing market, the variety of existing housing in the state today does not satisfy the need for workforce housing in many areas.
Ben Frost, director, public and legal affairs for NHH said the law was passed in 2008 but went into effect in 2010 to give communities time to catch up.
“A lot of communities did respond, but the nature of the response is as varied as the communities themselves,” Frost said. “Some communities surveyed their land-use regulations and decided they didn’t need to make any changes and that may have been justified in some cases.”
Frost said no statewide analysis has been conducted to see if communities are complying.
“We have anecdotal evidence," he said. “We have reports of 50 to 60 communities since 2008 that have made changes to their land use regulations.”
Frost said they have not evaluated the quality of those changes so communities may think they have made changes that address the need for workforce housing but in practical effect don’t.
“They may have adopted standards that simply don’t work in the market place so it would be up to a developer to essentially test that ordinance to see if he or she could build workforce housing on the site,” Frost said.
WHC Executive Director Robin Comstock is well acquainted with the challenge. In 2000, when she was head of the Greater Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, Portsmouth Regional Hospital and some of the area hotels were concerned about their ability to employ their workforce. Those discussions grew into the coalition and the issue has become an even larger concern today.
“Workforce housing has become quite cost-prohibitive in many communities,” Comstock said. “Employers have increasing and greater concern about the ability to hold their workforce in the community where the business is located.”
Comstock said the WHC defines the workforce in simple terms as nurses, doctors just starting out, firefighters, teachers, young business professionals and creative types.
WHC holds two charrettes each year, and this year chose Berwick and Barrington, N.H. The charrettes brought together dozens of volunteers sharing a wealth of talent to come up with a conceptual vision for development. In each instance there was a community listening session and a presentation of results.
Comstock said in Barrington the public expressed an interest in a village square since there is no real town center. "They came up with two beautiful concepts, they were a very rural European vision of a small village square that connects Calef's and the Christmas Dove and protects the pond," Comstock said.
In Berwick, residents want housing for mixed ages, incomes and home sizes, even small experimental units. They also wanted small locally-owned restaurants that will bring the community out in the evening.
Comstock said a community is most vibrant when employees can live in the community in which they work and be contributing members, engaged in the interests and activities of the community.
7. Incomplete Northern Pass Application
State officials: Northern Pass has not documented needed property rights
by Dave Solomon, unionleader.com, November 17, 2015
CONCORD — State environmental officials say the application filed by Northern Pass with the state Site Evaluation Committee is incomplete because the developers can’t prove they have the necessary property rights for the project.
The decision by the Department of Environmental Services is a setback for the application submitted to the SEC just weeks ago. The committee, a statewide approval board for major energy projects, has just 60 days from the filing to determine if the application is complete.
The SEC turned to Environmental Services for an advisory letter as to whether the application for the hydroelectric transmission line satisfies the department’s requirements for the necessary wetland, shoreland and terrain alteration permits.
DES had a deadline of Nov. 13 to decide, and on Friday advised the SEC by letter that the Northern Pass application is not complete in large part because it does not contain “proof that the applicant will have a legal right to undertake the project on the properties listed.”
Despite the lack of sufficient information for wetland, shoreland or alternation of terrain permits, the DES said it could proceed with a technical review of the project while those issues were being resolved, assuming they can be resolved.
The letter from DES comes just weeks after lawyers for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests wrote to the environmental agency, claiming, “Northern Pass does not have adequate property rights to apply for this permit because some of the property interests on the proposed route belong to the Forest Society.”
No tax map shown
In a Nov. 8 letter to the DES, society lawyers noted that state regulations require Northern Pass to include a tax map that shows property owned or otherwise controlled by Northern Pass on which the project will be located.
“However, Northern Pass has not, and cannot, produce any proof of any such tax map for those portions of the route where the Forest Society owns land,” the letter states.
The Forest Society has property interests in land that Northern Pass proposes to use abutting and/or underneath Route 3 and the Connecticut River in Clarksville; North Hill Road and Bear Rock Road in Stewartstown; Routes 302 and 18/116 in Bethlehem; Route 18 in Sugar Hill; Route 116 in Easton; and Route 112 in Woodstock.
The New England Power Generators Association, a trade group representing independent power plant owners in the region, weighed in with essentially the same argument in a Nov. 10 letter to the Site Evaluation Committee.
“NEPGA asserts that the Northern Pass application fails to demonstrate site control over the lands necessary for the development of the transmission facilities as required by statute and SEC regulations,” the letter stated.
Legal argument
Eversource spokesman Martin Murray cited an October “project letter” from Northern Pass, which he said, “lays out the legal basis for use of public highways.”
The company’s more recent plans for the project designed to import hydroelectricity from Canada into the New England grid through New Hampshire involve burial along public highways in the North Country. “I expect you’ll note the irony of SPNHF demanding more burial and now attempting to obstruct burial,” Murray said.
The argument outlined in the Oct. 16 Eversource petition to the DOT relies on a legal principle that “Utilities of all varieties, including power lines, have long been recognized as appropriate users of public highways, so long as the facilities do not conflict with the general public’s superior use.”
The letter goes on to argue that, “Power lines transporting or transferring electricity must be assumed to be rightfully occupying easement highway so long as they do not interfere with ordinary public travel. Furthermore, New Hampshire law has long recognized that the public easement extends both above and below the surface of the road.”
“We are confident that our application is complete and meets the SEC standards for determining completeness,” said Northern Pass spokesman Lauren Collins. “We have been in contact with DES and anticipate filing a formal response to them that clarifies the completeness of our application. We expect that any substantive issues will be addressed during the formal SEC proceeding.”
Supplemental draft EIS
The advisory letter from DES on the Northern Pass application came a day after the project developers got some good news — the newest version of a draft Environmental Impact Statement from the Department of Energy.
A coalition of environmental groups, backed by the state’s Congressional delegation, had called for an addendum to the EIS issued earlier this year when Northern Pass unveiled its latest route, which was not one of the options previously analyzed.
The Department of Energy agreed to add the latest route, now called Alernative 7, to its list of options analyzed, and in every respect, found that the impacts would be “similar to or less than impacts disclosed in the draft EIS.”
DOE will conduct public hearings on the Draft EIS and the Supplement to the Draft EIS on Dec. 15 in Whitefield; Dec. 16 in Concord; Dec. 17 in Plymouth.
The decision by the Department of Environmental Services is a setback for the application submitted to the SEC just weeks ago. The committee, a statewide approval board for major energy projects, has just 60 days from the filing to determine if the application is complete.
The SEC turned to Environmental Services for an advisory letter as to whether the application for the hydroelectric transmission line satisfies the department’s requirements for the necessary wetland, shoreland and terrain alteration permits.
DES had a deadline of Nov. 13 to decide, and on Friday advised the SEC by letter that the Northern Pass application is not complete in large part because it does not contain “proof that the applicant will have a legal right to undertake the project on the properties listed.”
Despite the lack of sufficient information for wetland, shoreland or alternation of terrain permits, the DES said it could proceed with a technical review of the project while those issues were being resolved, assuming they can be resolved.
The letter from DES comes just weeks after lawyers for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests wrote to the environmental agency, claiming, “Northern Pass does not have adequate property rights to apply for this permit because some of the property interests on the proposed route belong to the Forest Society.”
No tax map shown
In a Nov. 8 letter to the DES, society lawyers noted that state regulations require Northern Pass to include a tax map that shows property owned or otherwise controlled by Northern Pass on which the project will be located.
“However, Northern Pass has not, and cannot, produce any proof of any such tax map for those portions of the route where the Forest Society owns land,” the letter states.
The Forest Society has property interests in land that Northern Pass proposes to use abutting and/or underneath Route 3 and the Connecticut River in Clarksville; North Hill Road and Bear Rock Road in Stewartstown; Routes 302 and 18/116 in Bethlehem; Route 18 in Sugar Hill; Route 116 in Easton; and Route 112 in Woodstock.
The New England Power Generators Association, a trade group representing independent power plant owners in the region, weighed in with essentially the same argument in a Nov. 10 letter to the Site Evaluation Committee.
“NEPGA asserts that the Northern Pass application fails to demonstrate site control over the lands necessary for the development of the transmission facilities as required by statute and SEC regulations,” the letter stated.
Legal argument
Eversource spokesman Martin Murray cited an October “project letter” from Northern Pass, which he said, “lays out the legal basis for use of public highways.”
The company’s more recent plans for the project designed to import hydroelectricity from Canada into the New England grid through New Hampshire involve burial along public highways in the North Country. “I expect you’ll note the irony of SPNHF demanding more burial and now attempting to obstruct burial,” Murray said.
The argument outlined in the Oct. 16 Eversource petition to the DOT relies on a legal principle that “Utilities of all varieties, including power lines, have long been recognized as appropriate users of public highways, so long as the facilities do not conflict with the general public’s superior use.”
The letter goes on to argue that, “Power lines transporting or transferring electricity must be assumed to be rightfully occupying easement highway so long as they do not interfere with ordinary public travel. Furthermore, New Hampshire law has long recognized that the public easement extends both above and below the surface of the road.”
“We are confident that our application is complete and meets the SEC standards for determining completeness,” said Northern Pass spokesman Lauren Collins. “We have been in contact with DES and anticipate filing a formal response to them that clarifies the completeness of our application. We expect that any substantive issues will be addressed during the formal SEC proceeding.”
Supplemental draft EIS
The advisory letter from DES on the Northern Pass application came a day after the project developers got some good news — the newest version of a draft Environmental Impact Statement from the Department of Energy.
A coalition of environmental groups, backed by the state’s Congressional delegation, had called for an addendum to the EIS issued earlier this year when Northern Pass unveiled its latest route, which was not one of the options previously analyzed.
The Department of Energy agreed to add the latest route, now called Alernative 7, to its list of options analyzed, and in every respect, found that the impacts would be “similar to or less than impacts disclosed in the draft EIS.”
DOE will conduct public hearings on the Draft EIS and the Supplement to the Draft EIS on Dec. 15 in Whitefield; Dec. 16 in Concord; Dec. 17 in Plymouth.
8. Executive Council Candidate
Andru Volinsky announces candidacy for executive council
Concord attorney, Democratic activist first to formally run for open seat
by John DiStaso, wmur.com, November 17, 2015
CONCORD, N.H. —After deliberating for several weeks on whether to seek the open District 2 executive council seat in 2016, attorney Andru Volinsky is making it official: He’s running.
For Volinsky, a Concord resident who is a shareholder and general counsel at the Bernstein Shur law firm in Manchester, it is his first run for public office after many years as a party activist.
Volinsky, 59, has focused on commercial and employment-related litigation during his long career, but he has also used his legal expertise to pursue social causes.
Before the age of 30, he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and won the reversal of a death sentence in Mississippi.
But he is perhaps best known in New Hampshire as the lead attorney for the victorious property-poor plaintiff school districts in the historic Claremont school funding lawsuit of the mid-1990s. He is currently representing the City of Dover in its lawsuit against the state contending that the cap on state adequacy money to school districts violates the state constitution.
He is also on the legal team of Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.
Volinsky is the first person to announce his candidacy to represent the mostly Democratic seat to succeed Colin Van Ostern, who is a candidate for governor. Considering running for the council seat are two other Democrats, former state Senate President Sylvia Larsen of Concord and Somersworth Mayor Dana Hilliard.
In a statement to be generally released later on Tuesday, Volinsky said:
“After much thought and discussion with my family, I’m proud to announce today that I’m running for executive council in District 2, which goes from Keene to the Seacoast.”
“New Hampshire needs executive councilors who will serve as champions for all our citizens, as protectors of transparency and efficiency in government, and as advocates for the appointment of the best possible judges and members of our state boards and commissions,” Volinsky said.
“As an executive councilor, I will continue the fight I’ve undertaken as a lawyer for sound public policies that benefit all of New Hampshire’s citizens. I understand the importance of a strong, transparent, and well-informed process for approving judicial appointments and contracts,” he said.
“I will work to approve qualified appointees to state boards and commissions who will work to protect public education funding and the retirement security of our state employees, not undermine them. As a board member of the Manchester Community Health Center, I know the importance of a strong public health system, which is why I will work to restore vital family planning funds to Planned Parenthood health centers across our state and protect the increased access to affordable health care made possible by Medicaid expansion."
In an interview earlier this month, as Volinsky was considering a candidacy, he told WMUR.com: “I’ve been a fighter on issues that affect people for more than 30 years. The Claremont education suit is one example, but there have been plenty of others.”
“In this state, we’ve made decisions about pension reform for state workers and public workers that hurt people, and I think we need to take a look at that,” Volinsky said. “I think we’ve made a bad decision on (defunding) Planned Parenthood, and we need to look at that, as well.”
But Volinsky called public education “my first love.”
AND NATIONALLY
9. Encouraging Investment and a Focus on the Longer Term
Long-Termism or Lemons
The Role of Public Policy in Promoting Long-Term Investments
by Marc Jarsulic, Brendan Duke & Michael Madowitz, americanprogress.org, October 21, 2015
The U.S. middle class is stuck in a rut: The U.S. Census Bureau recently revealed that real median household income failed to grow between 2013 and 2014—the fifth consecutive year in which it either shrank or did not grow. But this is not just the story of a weak recovery; it is also the story of a weak 2001–2007 expansion. Despite six years of economic growth, the share of prime-age workers with a job fell, and real median household income did not grow past its 2000 level during that expansion.
One of the primary reasons for anemic middle-class income growth in both post-2001 recoveries is a retreat in business investment, which has remained well below its historic trend. (see Figure 1) This is especially perplexing because corporate profits are robust and borrowing costs are historically low. (see Figure 2)
Slow business investment growth predates the Great Recession and presents a major challenge to both the demand and supply sides of the U.S. economy. For the demand side, lower investment means that companies are purchasing fewer goods and services, which in turn reduces employment and wages. For the supply side, less investment means slower productivity growth.
As White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman has shown, lack of investment is the primary driver behind the recent productivity growth slowdown. While the failure of middle-class compensation to keep up with economy-wide productivity demonstrates that higher productivity does not automatically translate into middle-class income growth, economists and policymakers almost universally acknowledge that it is still necessary for long-term growth in living standards.
Some policymakers and analysts have argued that the key to increasing investment is cutting taxes on capital since that would boost the incentive to save and invest in new capital goods. This argument misses that higher after-tax returns also allow investors to do just as well in the future while saving and investing at a lower rate. Moreover, tax cuts themselves can lead to higher deficits, which reduce national saving. The balance of research on tax policy changes over the past four decades suggests that lower taxes on capital do not increase investment. Unfortunately, the nation’s decades-long experiment with tax cuts for the wealthy has produced only lackluster economic results at an exorbitant fiscal cost.
There are several public investments the country could make that would actually boost future productivity. A robust public investment agenda would include spending $100 billion per year on infrastructure investment, making college debt free, and increasing families’ access to high-quality child care, as the Center for American Progress previously proposed. These are important physical and human capital investments that would pay dividends down the road.
But another challenge is motivating the private sector to invest when the cost of borrowing money has never been lower. One possible explanation for the 15-year business investment drought is that managers and investors have become so focused on short-term profits that they are not making long-term investments that will increase the value of their companies. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink recently wrote a letter to the CEOs of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index companies arguing that this so-called short-termism has become a real problem:
As I am sure you recognize, the effects of the short-termist phenomenon are troubling both to those seeking to save for long-term goals such as retirement and for our broader economy. In the face of these pressures, more and more corporate leaders have responded with actions that can deliver immediate returns to shareholders, such as buybacks or dividend increases, while underinvesting in innovation, skilled workforces or essential capital expenditures necessary to sustain long-term growth.
This report examines the evidence of short-termism among publicly traded firms, finding that Fink’s worries are well founded. It next examines the role of three important players in modern equity markets—managers, short-term traders, and institutional investors—in the growth of short-termism.
The threat that short-termism poses to inclusive prosperity is a form of the “lemons market”—or asymmetric information—problem described by Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof. In a market, sellers know a product’s quality and try to fool buyers into paying full price for low-quality “lemons.” Savvy buyers refuse to pay top dollar because doing so no longer guarantees top-quality products. This generates a cascading effect in which sellers who cannot get top dollar stop selling their high-quality products until only the low-quality lemons remain on the market. Similarly, managers of public companies know more than investors do. Since higher short-term earnings signal higher long-run value, some managers may attempt to fool investors by engaging in short-termism to raise current earnings. This poses the danger that investors will believe the stock market is a lemons market, forcing even long-termist managers into short-termism in order to appear as profitable as short-termist firms. Taken to its logical extreme, this dynamic could cause growing firms to forgo or even exit public markets entirely.
Properly functioning markets are a powerful agent for inclusive prosperity, but properly functioning markets do not simply fall from the sky and cannot be taken for granted. The Center for American Progress proposes a policy agenda that would nudge financial markets toward a focus on the long term while paying dividends for managers, shareholders, and the middle class.
[To read the full report, click on the following link:
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10. The Importance of Glass-Steagall
Five Reasons Glass-Steagall Matters
by Richard Eskow, ourfuture.org, November 17, 2015
The Glass-Steagall Act came up as a major point of disagreement between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton during Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate. The act, which was originally enacted in 1933, separated risky trading and investment from traditional banking activities like business lending and consumer finance.
1933. “Anthony Adverse” and “Magnificent Obsession” were topping the bestseller lists. “King Kong” and the Marx Brothers were big at the box office. What does a law passed back then have to do with the 21st century economy?
As it turns out, a lot.
Bernie Sanders wants to implement a new version of the law, which was repealed in 1999 after having been in effect for more than 75 years. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is not calling for its reinstatement.
Sen. Sanders is right. Here are five reasons why it is important to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
1. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger, riskier and more ungovernable than ever
America’s largest banking institutions are even larger now than they were before the 2008 financial crisis. The nation’s six largest banks issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards and more than a third of all mortgages. They control 95 percent of all derivatives and hold more than 40 percent of all U.S. bank deposits.
Simon Johnson, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, points out that Glass-Steagall is needed as part of a broad effort to make these banks “simpler and more transparent.” Johnson also observes that:
“In the run-up to the 2008 crisis, the largest U.S. banks had around 4% equity relative to their assets. This was not enough to withstand the storm … Now, under the most generous possible calculation, the surviving megabanks have on average about 5% equity … that is, they are 95% financed with debt.”
As Johnson makes clear, these banks continue to pose a grave risk to the economy. He also notes that they have continued to engage in sanctions violations and money laundering – behavior that suggests that they are still out of control.
2. The argument that the absence of Glass-Steagall didn’t cause the 2008 financial crisis is wrong.
Hillary Clinton told the Des Moines Register that “a lot of what caused the risk that led to the collapse came from institutions that were not big banks.” This is part of a longstanding pattern, in which she largely absolves the big banks from culpability for the 2008 crisis while emphasizing “shadow banking” in her own Wall Street plan.
Secretary Clinton returned to that theme during Saturday’s debate, pointing an accusing finger at non-bank entities like AIG and Lehman Brothers while giving a pass to Wall Street’s biggest banks for their role in the crisis.
Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s former labor secretary, summarized the anti-Glass-Steagall argument as follows (without naming Hillary Clinton specifically):
“To this day some Wall Street apologists argue Glass-Steagall wouldn’t have prevented the 2008 crisis because the real culprits were nonbanks like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.”
He follows that with a one-word response: “Baloney.”
Reich makes an important point: Yes, “shadow banks” like AIG and Lehman, which largely function outside the normal bank regulatory system, are a major problem. But the 2008 financial crisis became a systemic threat specifically because too-big-to-fail banks were underwriting the risky bets these companies made. And why were the big banks able to do that?
Because Glass-Steagall had been repealed.
3. Repeal of Glass-Steagall has not worked as promised.
Given the risks associated with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, what about the benefits? Turns out there aren’t many.
We were told that repealing Glass-Steagall would lead to more efficiency and lower costs, but neither of these promises has come true. No less an expert than John Reed, former CEO of Citigroup, now says those claims were wrong. Reed wrote in a recent op-ed (behind a firewall) that “there are very few cost efficiencies that come from the merger of functions – indeed, there may be none at all.”
In fact, says Reed, it is possible that this combination of functions actually makes banking services more expensive.
4. The repeal of Glass-Steagall is further corrupting the culture of banking – if such a thing is possible.
Sanders was right when he said on Saturday night that “the business model of Wall Street is fraud.” The traditional practice of what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) calls “boring” banking – opening savings accounts, reviewing loans and providing other customer services – has largely been supplanted by high-risk gambling and the aggressive hustling of dubious investments to unwary clients.
The level of fraud unearthed since the 2008 crisis is nothing short of breathtaking. (The fact that no senior banking executive has gone to prison for that fraud is, if anything, even more breathtaking.) How did that happen?
Citigroup’s Reed wrote that the repeal of Glass-Steagall led to the “very serious” problem of “mixing incompatible cultures” – which, he said, “makes the entire banking industry more fragile.” He discussed the relationship-based, sociable culture of traditional banking, emphasizing its incompatibility with the risk-seeking, “short termist” mentality of investment bankers who seek “immediate rewards.”
Reed makes a very important point – although he’s being overly kind about it. Yes, traditional bankers tend to be risk-averse and customer-focused. That’s very different from the high-stakes gambling mentality of investment banking.
But what Reed fails to note – or is too polite to mention – is the extent to which today’s culture of investment banking is predicated on outright fraud. That’s reflected in polling of the banking community itself, as well as in the industry’s appalling record of documented illegality. It is this mentality, which is present in banks from the “C” suite on down, which has given rise to Wall Street’s tsunami of misdeeds.
This greed-driven fraud mentality is like a virus, consuming too-big-to-fail banks even as they exert ever-greater control over our economy – and our political system.
5. Too-big-to-fail banks are a threat to our democracy.
These megabanks aren’t just a “systemic threat” to our economy. Through their enormous wealth, and because of the ruthlessness with which they’re willing to wield their influence, they are also a systemic threat to democracy itself.
That threat can be seen in the workings of last year’s Congress, which saw the successful insertion of a lobbyist-drafted “Citigroup amendment” into a last-minute budget bill.
It can be seen in a political climate where the Republican head of a congressional committee can say that “Washington and the regulators are here to serve the banks.”
It can be seen in Wall Street political contributions that flow to powerful and familiar names, Republican or Democratic.
Banks have acquired too much power. They must be broken up vertically (by line of business) and horizontally (by size), even as their corrupting influence over our government is ended through a system of fundamental election reform.
In today’s environment, reinstating Glass-Steagall is not just the right policy – although it is certainly that. It’s also an excellent litmus test for politicians who say they’re willing to take on Wall Street.
11. Stacking the Deck
The Rigging of the American Market
by Robert Reich, robertreich.org, November 1, 2015
Much of the national debate about widening inequality focuses on whether and how much to tax the rich and redistribute their income downward.
But this debate ignores the upward redistributions going on every day, from the rest of us to the rich. These redistributions are hidden inside the market.
The only way to stop them is to prevent big corporations and Wall Street banks from rigging the market.
For example, Americans pay more for pharmaceuticals than do the citizens of any other developed nation.
That’s partly because it’s perfectly legal in the U.S. (but not in most other nations) for the makers of branded drugs to pay the makers of generic drugs to delay introducing cheaper unbranded equivalents, after patents on the brands have expired.
This costs you and me an estimated $3.5 billion a year – a hidden upward redistribution of our incomes to Pfizer, Merck, and other big proprietary drug companies, their executives, and major shareholders.
We also pay more for Internet service than do the inhabitants of any other developed nation.
The average cable bill in the United States rose 5 percent in 2012 (the latest year available), nearly triple the rate of inflation.
Why? Because 80 percent of us have no choice of Internet service provider, which allows them to charge us more.
Internet service here costs 3 and-a-half times more than it does in France, for example, where the typical customer can choose between 7 providers.
And U.S. cable companies are intent on keeping their monopoly.
It’s another hidden upward distribution – from us to Comcast, Verizon, or another giant cable company, its executives and major shareholders.
Likewise, the interest we pay on home mortgages or college loans is higher than it would be if the big banks that now dominate the financial industry had to work harder to get our business.
As recently as 2000, America’s five largest banks held 25 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Now they hold 44 percent – which gives them a lock on many such loans.
If we can’t repay, forget using bankruptcy. Donald Trump can go bankrupt four times and walk away from his debts, but the bankruptcy code doesn’t allow homeowners or graduates to reorganize unmanageable debts.
So beleaguered homeowners and graduates don’t have any bargaining leverage with creditors – exactly what the financial industry wants.
The net result: another hidden upward redistribution – this one, from us to the big banks, their executives, and major shareholders.
Some of these upward redistributions seem to defy gravity. Why have average domestic airfares risen 2.5% over the past, and are now at their the highest level since the government began tracking them in 1995 – while fuel prices, the largest single cost for the airlines, have plummeted?
Because America went from nine major carriers ten years ago to just four now. Many airports are now served by one or two.
This makes it easy for airlines to coordinate their fares and keep them high – resulting in another upward redistribution.
Why have food prices been rising faster than inflation, while crop prices are now at a six-year low?
Because the giant corporations that process food have the power to raise prices. Four food companies control 82 percent of beef packing, 85 percent of soybean processing, 63 percent of pork packing, and 53 percent of chicken processing.
Result: A redistribution from average consumers to Big Agriculture.
Finally, why do you suppose health insurance is costing us more, and co-payments and deductibles are rising?
One reason is big insurers are consolidating into giants with the power to raise prices. They say these combinations make their companies more efficient, but they really just give them power to charge more.
Health insurers are hiking rates 20 to 40 percent next year, and their stock values are skyrocketing (the Standard & Poor’s 500 Managed Health Care Index recently hit its highest level in more than twenty years.)
Add it up – the extra money we’re paying for pharmaceuticals, Internet communications, home mortgages, student loans, airline tickets, food, and health insurance – and you get a hefty portion of the average family’s budget.
Democrats and Republicans spend endless time battling over how much to tax the rich and then redistribute the money downward.
But if we didn’t have so much upward redistribution inside the market, we wouldn’t need as much downward redistribution through taxes and transfer payments.
Yet as long as the big corporations, Wall Street banks, their top executives and wealthy shareholders have the political power to do so, they’ll keep redistributing much of the nation’s income upward to themselves.
Which is why the rest of us must gain political power to stop the collusion, bust up the monopolies, and put an end to the rigging of the American market.
12. Thanks, W. And You Too Dick Cheney
How the Bush Wars Opened the Door for ISIS
by Michael Kinsley, canityfair.com, April 2015 issue
It’s been a long quarter-century since the first President Bush put the U.S. on the road to an Iraq-Afghanistan quagmire. It’s been barely a year since ISIS became a national obsession. Michael Kinsley remembers what happened in between.
It has been an unbelievable 25 years since George H. W. Bush started us on the adventure that still isn’t over in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are American soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East right now who weren’t even born when Bush the Elder declared the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait to be an intolerable situation and sent roughly half a million Americans halfway around the world to reverse it.
Twenty-five years down the road is not a bad moment to stop and ask, What the heck was that all about? And what did we accomplish for our pains, especially the sacrifices of individual American soldiers? We now say “Thank you for your service” to anyone in a military uniform. This is a nice new civic custom that hasn’t, to my surprise, turned into an interest-group free-for-all. What about policemen? And firemen? Or the immigrants who keep Southern California shiny? Aren’t we grateful to them for their service? Sure, but we recognize that the military is different, and special. And I’ve never understood how it honors dead and wounded troops to perpetuate mistaken wars, in which their numbers can only increase.
Kuwait wasn’t a democracy before Saddam Hussein’s army marched in, in 1990, and Kuwait isn’t really a democracy today. No doubt it’s a nicer place to live than Iraq, either during the Saddam era or during the subsequent American protectorate. But then, immiserating the Iraqi people—making it hard for ordinary citizens to get food, energy, health care, and other staples of life—was a purposeful part of the American strategy. And that part worked. So did the part about getting rid of Saddam Hussein—the main goal of George the Younger’s prosecution of the war.
The other goal, which had democracy spreading from Iraq to Saudi Arabia to Syria and beyond, never came close to being realized. Egypt bounced longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak and gave democracy a brief whirl around the dance floor but didn’t care for the result, which was soon discarded in favor of more military rule. The Arab Middle East today offers various forms of government. There is “royalty” of dubious provenance, as in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait—generally pro-American but ungrateful and untrustworthy. There are strongmen, but they can be longevity-challenged. Some regimes last weeks, others last decades, and none is a totally reliable ally. Then there is government by no government: the chaos of anarchy punctuated by atrocities in places like Syria, Libya, and much of Iraq. What you don’t find, a quarter-century after this experiment began, are many robust democracies in the region (except for the ones that were already there—Israel and Turkey). The violent groups, needless to say, don’t care much for the United States and, in fact, have spent years quarreling over whether the proper target for terrorist acts is the Great Satan far away or the Little Satans closer by.
George Bush the Younger decided to finish the job his father had left half done and dispose of Saddam, not to mention find and destroy those famous weapons of mass destruction. Nothing better exposes the disingenuousness (or, at best, the confusion) of America’s motives in the past 25 years than the palpable disappointment of Bush and his administration—notably Vice President Dick Cheney—at not finding weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s possession of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons was supposed to be a bad thing, remember? If they had already been destroyed or never existed, then that was a good thing, right? Bush became so desperate to find weapons of mass destruction that, when a couple of suspicious mobile trailers turned up in northern Iraq, he announced he’d found some at last, though we soon learned that the trailers were for making hydrogen to inflate artillery balloons.
Bush’s eventual defense regarding the intelligence failures was basically “Look, everyone makes mistakes.” Which is perfectly true and perfectly reasonable, actually. But if the war was a mistake, even an innocent or well-intentioned mistake, any justification for staying on and on has disappeared as well. More than a decade later, why are we still there? Max Boot, writing in Time magazine, used the word “credibility” to explain why we had to stay somewhere we never should have gone. I thought that, after Vietnam, we had pretty much killed that notion. But no, it’s back.
And yes, the number of Americans in Iraq is relatively trivial, but President Obama has already agreed under pressure to increase troop levels, just long enough, you understand, to help wipe out the latest—and, seemingly, the worst—malefactor, the terrorist group known as ISIS.
ISIS is merely the most recent in a parade of horrible groups, Shiite and Sunni, religious and secular, murderous and even more murderous, to which we have been introduced through the years. They sometimes are our friends, though secretly helping the other side, or they are sworn enemies of the imperialist aggressor (that is, us), but still secretly taking bribes from the C.I.A. They are often splinters from some larger tree, either “brand extension” by the original group or its sworn enemy due to ideological or religious differences that are impossible to fathom.
Some members of these groups even come from the West. The news article about the child of middle-class immigrant strivers in a place like Cleveland or Liverpool who inexplicably withdraws from society and spends his days locked in his room reading the Koran and listening to rock music, only to emerge and resurface at some border crossing, trying to join a radical group that believes in, oh, I dunno, human sacrifice perhaps—news articles like that have become a cliché by now. “He was such a quiet, polite boy,” says a neighbor. “He used to write long love letters to Arianna Huffington and post them on Facebook.” (“Of course I remember him, darling,” says Arianna. “I had to hire two private guards to keep him away from me. But I gave him a blog anyhow. Why not?”)
Where did ISIS come from? What ever happened to the other Middle East groups we used to know? Where is al-Qaeda? How about the Taliban? Does anyone remember the mujahideen? If you do, you’re really showing your age. The mujahideen were the freedom fighters we armed and trained in order to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan—a shrewd bank shot, everyone agreed, until, after the Soviets slunk away, we counted the leftover Stinger missiles in the freedom fighters’ broom closet and realized that many were now in the hands of unfriendly elements. And a lot of the mujahideen had gone with them.
It may be hard to believe, now that the media are all-ISIS-all-the-time, but the first reference to ISIS in any major news outlet—at least the first one referring to the now notorious terrorist group and not to Lord Grantham’s yellow Labrador, on Downton Abbey—was in the summer of 2013. This is not to criticize the media for being late to the party, or to suggest that the threat to Americans posed by ISIS is currently being exaggerated. It is merely to note that the number of analyses pouring out of Washington think tanks and experts available to CNN about who the heck these people are and what they want is pretty impressive, given that almost no one had heard of them a year ago. And it is also to note how fast the cast of characters in this drama can change, amid the anarchy we helped create—which is another reason not to leap to the assumption that anything further we might do would be of help.
Twenty-five years of this! And we were almost out of there when ISIS came along, through a door we opened to them in the first place.
FINALLY
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