They tried. They really tried. Despite all of the efforts ofthe last state legislature, NH only came in third place in a recent MotherJones story about the worst state legislatures. Tennessee and Oklahoma took thecoveted first and second place titles. In Tennessee there was a bill to outlawsaggy pants and one that defined miscarriages as murder. There were more, somany more, including the state rep who sent out an email warning constituentsthat President Obama was planning to stage a fake assassination attempt toprevent the 2012 election from happening.
Oklahoma had GOP state Senator Ralph Shortey’s bill toensure that human fetuses didn’t get into food products, in “their search forartificial flavors.” He had no evidence that any company was doing this, orintended to, but he just wanted to make sure no one was going to have ramennoodles with fetus flavoring.
If you’re thinking that those made the Magna Carta bill andthe WARNING signs at the NH border bill sound almost sane, you’re right. Ilya Gernerof Comedy Central described NH as: "a bunch of part-time real-estate agentsthrowing monkey feces at a wall." As Mother Jones points out, that’s notentirely fair. Some of them are lawyers, too.
NH’s newly elected legislators were sworn in on December 5. A numberof last session’s worst offenders were not re-elected, but some were, and somenew ones were added. Former Speaker of the NH House, Bill O’Brien barelysqueaked out a win in a district gerrymandered to keep him in office. He wasphotographed sitting (ignominiously) in the rear of the House chamber onswear-in day. The former speaker should take heart, though. Gene Chandler wasvoted to be the House Minority Leader, proving that scandal and malfeasancehave a short half-life in our state.
Newly re-elected Rep. Dan McGuire, a Free Stater from Suncook is bringingback a bill that went nowhere last session. HB 1400 allows the DOT commissionerto sell the naming rights (not limited) to bridges, overpasses, exits, andstate buildings. There’s a doctored picture of the Albany covered bridge makingthe rounds on the Internet, wearing a McDonald’s sign. The companies would paysome sort of annual fee for this privilege, and they’d be responsible forputting up the signs and maintaining the signs. Why not have the “Budweiser NHDept. of Safety Building”? From my past as an instructor of the state’s DWIprogram, I know that their products have a role in the commission of drunkdriving offenses in our state.
This bill comes from the same Free Stater who tried to get a billpassed to divert the Suncook River back to where it was before a big storm: in front of his house. Rep. Grifter’sriver diversion bill would have cost the taxpayers of our state over $4million. Dan McGuire is the ultimate poster boy for the FSP. He doesn’t want topay his taxes, but he’ll happily use yours to feather his own nest. In the mindof Free Staters, everything is for sale, and there should be no such thing aspublic property. Next up: Mount Walmartshington!
NH has a new legislature, but we still have the same NHGOP, comprisedof Tea Partiers, Free Staters, and John Birchers. At first glance, these mayseem like disparate groups, but they are all interconnected. In fact, theirorigins can all be traced to the same place. Koch Industries. The Koch Brothersare the financial engine behind the Tea Party. Fred Koch was a founding memberof the John Birch Society, and Free State Project founder Jason Sorens is anaffiliated scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. TheMercatus Center is a think tank funded by the Koch Family Foundation. On theFSP web forum just last month, Sorens was huffy about being portrayed as havingties to Mercatus. Evil forces, apparently, are making this all up. His bio onthe Mercatus Center website must have just landed there by accident. We are alldefined (to some extent) by whom we take money from. He’s a guy who hates allthings public, who teaches at a taxpayer-funded university. Sorens is no stranger to hypocrisy.
Many folks are surprised to find that the John Birch Society stillexists. They associate the JBS with commie scares and being anti-fluoridation.These days they’ve turned their sights on the UN. Apparently the UN is thepurveyor of all that is evil, and is just waiting to turn us into “one world”where we all join hands and sing kumbaya together. Or something. It was rumoredthat there were 12 Birchers in the last legislature. The only one to publiclyacknowledge it was Norm Tregenza, whose re-election bid was unsuccessful. Theothers weren’t brave enough to come out as Birchers. The same is true for theFree Staters, most of whom do not acknowledge their ties to the FSP. Why? Bothgroups are unpopular. They also wish to avoid scrutiny. It wouldn’t help theFSP at all to have their ties to the JBS uncovered and discussed.
For those who don’t remember, the JBS opposed the Civil RightsMovement. Their president, Robert Welch, called Eisenhower a communist and atraitor. Their new hobbyhorse is the UN’s Agenda 21, and they sent a knownwhite supremacist to Conway, to lead a discussion on a film about it.
In fact, the Northeast Regional Field Director of the JBS, HalShurtleff, has been turning up on the Sun’s op-ed pages and FB page. Iowe my thanks to Mr. Shurtleff for his vociferous defense of a former state repand Free Stater, which inspired me to dig for the connections between thegroups. These two groups may have some surface areas of disagreement, but theyspeak at each other’s events and conferences. They share members. They’re twopeas swimming in the same cup of libertea that the Tea Party has been brewing.
It’s not a brew that has the best interests of our state at heart.It’s a selfish, Randian brew, and one that bears watching.
© sbruce 2012
This was published as an op-ed in the December 7, 2012 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.
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