Flat Earth Mode

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Every year, business network CNBC releases a report called “America’s Top States for Business.” CNBC examines a number of factors (cost of doing business, quality of life, cost of living, etc) and ranks states accordingly. The results of these studies over time (I went back as far as 2006) offer some insight into what NH is doing right, as well as deficiencies that the state continues to ignore.

Texas was rated number one, despite their quality of life being rated as 35th in the nation. They ranked #1 in infrastructure and #2 in technology and innovation, which was enough to offset the rather dismal quality of life. The overall Texas economy was rated 5th in the nation.

NH’s overall rating is 19th in the nation. NH’s quality of life is rated first in the nation. NH ranks 46th in transportation and infrastructure, which is fairly consistent over the years. The rankings for technology and infrastructure put NH in 26th place. More startling was the category of workforce, where NH ranked #44. The workforce rating is based on the education level of the workforce, availability of worker training programs, and union membership. Before those right knees start jerking, it’s important to point out that fewer than 10% of NH workers belong to a labor union. In 2011, NH ranked 40th in workforce, but in 2009 we were in 30th place.

NH ranked 35th in the cost of doing business. That’s a fairly consistent number over the years. CNBC looks at income, property and business taxes, utility costs and the cost of rental space. As we know, NH has some of the highest property taxes and utility costs in the nation. NH ranked 40th in cost of living. That’s been the same since 2006. The numbers are based on housing, food, and energy costs.

There were two surprising categories. We’ve heard a great deal of wailing from the Freebaglicans about how regulations are strangling development in our state. That turns out not to be true. NH ranks SECOND in the nation for being business friendly. Since 2006, we’ve ranked in the single digits in that category. CNBC looks at legal and regulatory frameworks. NH has never ranked lower than in 6th place in this category. The other surprise was the rating of NH’s economy, which came in 34th place. After truly dismal numbers (40th) in 2008, during the big economic collapse, NH rebounded quickly, to #14 in 2009, #12 in 2010, and NH was ranked 10th in the nation in 2011. Falling to 34th place in a year is truly remarkable, especially given that laser like focus on jobs and the economy that was promised us by the GOP majority.

In 2011, the US Chamber of Commerce (not exactly a bunch of raving pinkos) released a report called “Enterprising States; Recovery and Renewal for the 21st Century.” The report found that states investing in infrastructure, as well as education and training for the workforce were the states most successful at bringing in good paying jobs.

This is the exact opposite of what NH has done.

Recent letters from Representatives McCarthy and Tregenza boasted of the many revenue streams and spending cuts the majority made over the last two years. That’s all either of them had to be proud of - cutting state revenue streams. As the US Chamber report points out, “A state, however, can neither cut or tax itself into prosperity.”

NH is trying to cut itself into prosperity. The state funding to our state university systems was cut in half by the Freebaglican majority. The DOT budget was cut so much that we’re no longer lighting up our bridges. Folks will remember that Rep. Gene Chandler had to do some fancy pageant walking after the budget he shilled for resulted in cutbacks to DOT spending on snow plowing. It is now estimated that NH’s 10 year transportation plan will take 30 years to complete, based on current spending.

The US Chamber report cited Vermont and Maine as being the top two states currently investing in telecommunications infrastructure. NH is the 19th century filling in that northern New England sandwich of progress.

NH already ranks in last place for state spending on our state university system. We can continue to strive to be last in infrastructure, too. Of course, it’s entirely possible that we’ll choose to elect a legislature that isn’t stuck in flat earth mode next time around.

From the US Chamber report: “The evidence regarding job creation among the states shows that fiscal probity is an essential ingredient, but states can deal with the fundamental problems they face only by spurring growth and upward mobility.”

Be sure to ask incumbents how they expect to move NH into the future by doing the exact opposite of what is working for other states. Be sure to ask all candidates how they intend to help bring NH into the 21st century.

“In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up - or else we all go down.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt



Links:
CNBC Report
US Chamber of Commerce Report


This was published as an op-ed in the July 20 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.
© sbruce 2012

Tone Deaf, Dumb, Sexist, and a Shitty Husband

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Over at Daily Kos, Markos has a diary that asks: what kind of man ditches his wife out of political fear? He's referring to Mitt Rmoney's attempts at distancing himself from his wife's dressage horse, Rafalca. Rafalca Romney survived being strapped atop the family wagon, driven to London, and is now competing in the Olympic games.

Last year Rafalca generated $77,000 in tax deductions for the Mittster. That's more than most of us made last year. And that, is the problem. Dressage ( a FRENCH term) is an equestrian sport, where horse and rider perform a number of movements that are sometimes (inaccurately) called "horse ballet." It's a highly skilled sport and one that is very costly. In other words - not something the rabble can pursue. The rabble being too busy attempting to keep roofs over their heads.

Mittens is deeply disconnected from the real world. His money insulates him from reality, and even when he and Ann attempt to make themselves sound empathetic, they just sound like they're broadcasting from the Let Them Eat Cake Bakery. When Mitt was a student, they had to * GASP * sell some of their stock portfolio in order to get by. These poor, struggling students couldn't entertain, because they were just getting by, and apparently couldn't afford service for 20 and a chandelier. Last year, Mitt showed how empathetic he is to the little people by telling waitresses at Mary Ann's Diner in Derry NH that he was "unemployed." Then he pretended one of them had pinched his behind. Tone deaf, dumb, and sexist! That's our Mittens.

And speaking of horse's behinds, Rmoney is on the record all over the place for having been very involved with his wife's dressage hobby. For him now to distance himself from it is typical Mittflopping.

Imagine if Mitt stood up and said, "Listen up, people - I know you think that dressage is a silly sport for rich people. I know that my wife's horse costs more than most of you make in a year, and that's a terrible thing at a time when so many people are struggling financially. What you need to understand is this: dressage is very important to my wife, and my wife is very important to me. That means I'm going to be there to support her while her horse competes in the Olympics - because I love my wife." Even a pinko like me would have to admire that.

Instead he says something wussy about how it's her thing, not his, and he won't be there. So not only is he tone deaf, dumb, and sexist - he's also a shitty husband.

Freedumb and Libertea

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The NH Dept. of Education released a report this week on the Status of Higher Education in New Hampshire. Those who believe in higher education and wish to keep our young people in our state will find much to be concerned about in this report. Those who abhor every dime spent on education and believe that colleges are seething hotbeds of liebrulism won’t bother to read the report, and wouldn’t be able to understand it if they did.

One surprising bit of information from the report is that NH’s high school dropout rate has continued to decrease, reaching a low of nearly 1%. I was skeptical of Governor Lynch’s plan to keep kids in school when they didn’t want to be there, but clearly, the plan is working. A high school diploma is essential these days, and so is some form of higher education or training, if one wants to be able to live indoors.

As I’ve written before (endlessly) NH ranks in last place for state funding of higher education. That was true before the last biennium when the Freebaglicans cut the already embarrassingly low level of funding in half.
Tuition at our two and four year colleges is amongst the highest in the nation. NH may be in 50th place for state funding of higher education, but we are number one in student debt. Yay! We’re number one!

The report shows that 5% fewer NH students are staying in state for their education than did a decade ago. In other words: our young people are going out of state for their education in increasing numbers. When they do, they are unlikely to come back. Good jobs are scarce, and our state’s over reliance on the property tax means they can’t afford to buy a house and start a family. And if they did, they’d still have to contend with the ongoing circular drama of how NH Republicans hate education spending at every level. It makes sense in a way. Educated folks have a harder time buying into the constant stream of GOP propaganda. Today’s Freebaglican Party counts on a populace that will repeat the endless sloganeering, without bothering to think an issue through.

A recent letter to the editor of this paper was full of breathless talk of how the Freebaglicans protected our individual liberties and freedoms in the NH legislature over the last biennium. It’s true that the legislature was deeply interested in protecting the rights of white, male, heterosexual gun owners. Women, on the other hand, got a heaping helping of “your uterus belongs to the state.” The writer also repeated the big lie about the $900 million deficit that the Democrats allegedly left behind. It’s a myth. There was stimulus money that the state used during the worst of the depression. It was one-time-only money, and everyone knew it. They knew they’d have to make cuts in the next biennium. The Republicans have spun that into whole cloth, to manufacture a huge “deficit.” Be sure to ask one of ‘em about the $11 million surplus that was left behind that they wanted to move into the state’s Rainy Day Fund in 2011. Then ask yourself how a legislature can have a huge deficit AND a surplus at the same time. As our friends on Sesame St. are fond of singing, “One of these things is not like the other.” The purveyors of freedumb and libertea are counting on you NOT to think.

William O’Brien, Speaker of the NH House, recently appeared on NHPR’s call in show, The Exchange. It’s available to listen to online if you missed it. If you are one of those folks who thinks NHPR is a hotbed of liberalism, I’d encourage you to listen to this interview. Host Laura Knoy failed to ask appropriate follow up questions at every opportunity, failing to challenge O’Brien as he made a number of astounding comments and claims. The 2011 budget cut state spending on the university system almost in half, and O’Brien criticized UNH for increasing tuition. O’Brien finds UNH is “inefficient.” What that really means is that there’s an employees union. The irony here is that O’Brien began his own college years at Framingham State University in Massachusetts: a publicly funded college, with an employees union.

This interview failed on every level. It was most apparent when O’Brien stated that the legislature HAD to pass a “partial birth abortion” law. Knoy didn’t ask him the obvious question – WHY? What was the hurry? She just sat there, letting him spin an intricate guano web, without challenging any of it. It was an amazing performance, rivaling only the interview she did with writer E.L. Doctorow who asked her at one point if she’d ever actually read one of his books. NHPR is the NH GOP’s secret weapon. Everyone knows that the Union Leader is the propaganda wing of the party, but NHPR gets blamed for being biased toward the left, when nothing could be further from the truth.

NH media is a big, sucking, black hole, and O’Brien knows it, and uses it to his advantage. He refused to allow a reporter from the Concord Monitor into his last press conference, because the paper printed a cartoon that made fun of him. It had nothing to do with the reporter in question, but most short despots have very thin skin, and so he refused to allow a reporter into the press conference. All of the other reporters present meekly filed in (including NHPR’s political reporter) and didn’t stand up for a fellow reporter, or for freedom of the press. This never became a big story in NH. Is it because the other media outlets were embarrassed by their own behavior? Or is it because they function on some level as propaganda purveyors for the GOP? Given that this is the first in the nation primary state, we are remarkably ill served by our media. It can only be seen as intentional.


“No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.” Thomas Jefferson


This was published as an op-ed in the August 2, 2012 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.

© sbruce 2012

h/t to Jen Sorenson for the cartoon.

He Did it Without Help...Except for all the Help He Got

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Today's Union Leader has an op-ed by former NH GOP Chair Fergus Cullen. Fergus is going with the silly "I did it MY WAY with no gummint help" that our friends in the GOP clown car seem stuck on. It's a silly meme that is going to continually bite them in the buttocks - but hey - what's wrong with that??

Fergus tells us the tale of Marion Noronha, an immigrant from India who started a business:

Today Noronha is president of Turbocam, the Barringtonbased manufacturing company that employs 550 people in 10 countries, 325 of them in Barrington and Dover. The company has 14 current job openings and plans to add 200 more at a new facility in Barrington.

It's a great story. Noronha came to the US with about $6 (and training as an engineer), and parlayed that into a global business empire. His first job was a volunteer position with a company that was working at Dartmouth College. There he met his future wife, and became a Christian.

After his Dartmouth job ended, he was hired by a shoe manufacturer using CAD (computer aided design) and moved to Madbury with a group of Christian families, to start a church at UNH.

Meanwhile, Noronha kept tinkering with CAD, designing prototypes and renting machining time at plants in Massachusetts at night. Turbocam started in his basement in 1985. He bought his first milling machine in 1987 and rented workspace in Dover a year later.

He sold his first part to General Motors, hand polishing it in the back of the car while Suzie drove to deliver it. By 1993, Turbocam had 25 employees.

Then there's this:

If Noronha had help building Turbocam, it came from a higher office than any found in Washington. Turbocam's mission is stated plainly: “Turbocam exists as a business for the purpose of honoring God, creating wealth for its employees, and supporting Christian service to God and people.”

“The company is an expression of God's blessing on us,” Noronha explains. Forty percent of the firm's revenue goes to salaries, and Noronha is justifiably proud of all the families who have bread on the table because of Turbocam.

“That's a bigger contribution to the community than all the government grants and programs,” Noronha observes.

Fergus makes a point of telling President Obama that Noronha did this all by his lonesome, with no evil help from the gummint.
Except that Dartmouth College is in Hanover, NH - a town that has public water, sewer, plowing, roads, bridges - the infrastructure that we all enjoy, paid for by our tax dollars.

Noronha moved to Madbury to start a church. The US Constitution (the foundation of our government) guarantees Mr. Noronha the right to freedom of religion. That same government also gives churches tax exempt status, so that they can stretch their dollars into doing the work their religion calls them to do - and gives their members the option of making tax deductible contributions. In other words, the government is supporting Christian service to God and people.

Noronha sold his first part to General Motors. Luckily, he can continue to sell parts to GM - thanks to government assistance, GM is alive and well.

Mr. Noronha has 325 employees and intends to add 200 more. Unless he's built his own infrastructure, his employees drive to work on the same roads and bridges that his products travel to market on. Roads and bridges built with our tax dollars. A large number of his employees were undoubtedly educated in public schools and colleges. Some of those employees may avail themselves of our public libraries. Some of them may even engage in recreational activities in our local, state, and national parks.

Mr. Noronha didn't have to cut down trees, clear a pasture, and build his own barn. He wasn't Pa Ingalls out on the prairie. The infrastructure that is part of his success was already in place, thanks to the local, state, and federal government.

Fortunately the same government that is considered unimportant by Mr. Noronha also provides him with the First Amendment, that allows him to criticize that government, without any repercussions. He can say any fool thing he wants, and Fergus Cullen can write piously about it in the Union Leader.

Truth can also rear its ugly head.

Turbocam is one of the US Govt. Small Business Administration's SBA 100, one of the business that has created over 100 jobs since receiving SBA assistance.
Assistance? From a government program??? Oh, say it ain't so! From the SBA website:

Turbocam grew from a modest beginning in Dover, NH. The company has used SBA-guaranteed loans on seven occasions to provide more than $5 million dollars to help support its growth between 1992 and 2009. During this time the number of employees grew from 18 in 1992 to over 250 in 2009.

This just illustrates the point the president was making. None of us succeed in a vacuum. We aren't in this together alone. Mr. Noronha had a great idea, and he used the resources available to him to parlay that idea into a very successful business.

This story illustrates why this is a silly GOP meme that will continue to bite them in the behind. I'd suggest that Fergus and his pals stock up on Neosporin - except that it's produced by a government subsidized drug company. Better stock up on leeches, Fergus.

Bill Kennedy, NH Dem Candidate for Governor Does Not Support Choice

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Dear NH friends:

There are 3 candidates running for governor on the Democratic side: Jackie Cilley, Maggie Hassan, and Bill Kennedy. Some are claiming that all three share similar views on social issues. It's important for everyone to know - and share a very fundamental difference on the issue of choice.

If you know anyone who is thinking of voting for Bill Kennedy, it's important that you let them know that he doesn't believe women are capable of making their own choices on abortion.

Bill Kennedy is in favor of the 24 hour waiting period. He supports forcing a woman to wait 24 hours for a LEGAL medical procedure. He told me that he believes women are often coerced into having abortions. I told him that he needed to make a decision: either women are autonomous, equal human beings or we are chattel, who need men to make our medical/personal decisions for us. I also pointed out that this places a financial hardship on women, forcing them to take at least 2 days off, unnecessarily. He chose to avoid that aspect of the conversation, as you can see from his comments on Blue Hampshire. You can read his comments at Blue Hampshire.