The reason I’m rarely blogging here is because I have spent most of my time over the past 6 months blogging at NH Insider.

Please navigate there for my latest posts.

http://www.nhinsider.com/steve-mac-donald/

or go to http://www.blognetnews.com/new_hampshire/

I will resume posting here as well at some future date.

Thanks.

At about 11:00AM this morning the New Hampshire House voted along party lines (Final vote 216 to 150) to kill Don Itse’s amendment, HCR6 that essentially reminds the Federal government that their powers are few and limited, and that the peoples are many, clarifying New Hampshire’s sovereignty based on the 10th amendment of the US Constitution. 

A packed gallery booed the final vote, some observers promising to make those who voted in favor of the ITL committee ruling pay for their failure to stand up for New Hampshire’s Live Free or Die motto.   The cat calling was so prolonged that the State police assigned to monitor the gallery had to remind people to quiet down or leave the gallery.

The Republicans did request and receive a roll call vote, wanting very much to have this vote on the record. 

For those of you interested in seeing which way your reps went, you can go to the state web page and check it out once its posted.  Remember that voting yes to an ITL means you want to kill the bill.  So a yes vote on HCR6 was a vote against the amendment.

It is no secret that the desire to convict Bush and Cheney of crimes against humanity is near if not on the top of the To-Do list for Obama’s liberal supporters.  Liberals have been chewing at the edges for years proposing various resolutions that recommend impeachment or worse.  So as a favor to even the not so far left fringe, and as a balance for any reality checks that prevent rhetoric from becoming reality, Obama will give them the checkbox they so desperately desire by signing America up to the oversight of the international criminal court.

Much the way he allowed Pelosi to create a stimulus full of left wing handouts but lacked the strength to call it what it was, much the same way he can claim to be against the fairness doctrine yet will still allow the FCC to enforce the local programming rules that accomplish the exact same ends, I beleive Obama will sign us up for the ICC, and let the World Court bring Bush and Cheney to trial.

Two things are immediately apparent on the road to Change ™; why democrats are convinced The Rich® don’t pay taxes, (Obama’s elitist left wing brain trust is overflowing with people who don’t pay their taxes), and why Republicans have been beaten like a bunch of two-dollar whores in the past two elections; the difference between a donkey and an ass is what exactly?  It’s called the RINO virus.

Find out if Stimulus is right for you.

Can John Lynch capitalize on the slim advantage of Keynesian economics?  .

First off, Obama is couching his spending addiction in Keynesian economics.  He has to realise that it won’t actually work unless he has spending a) on projects that will have a positive economic impact on long term growth outside of government, and b) tax cuts that actually expand economic opportunity and stimulate short term growth in the business community now.

Tax cuts are the key.  They create long term stability and attract business and investment that will eventually increase revenue to offset the initial deficit spending.  Government spending never creates more revenue for the government, so when deficit intolerance intrudes on poor spending choices, taxes are raised–killing growth–and the Keynesian model collapses, creating economic stagnation, and a drawn out recession.

President Obama’s stimulus is destined to fail without a major retool because his spending is loaded with handouts that do no significant long term economic good, and what he calls tax cuts are actually welfare checks that do no short term lasting good.    Keynesian spending was never meant to fund art or special interest groups and if Obama persists he will have stimulated nothing of lasting value, including his usefulness as a leader. 

But John Lynch has an opportunity to make New Hampshire the place to do business—partly on the Federal dime–if he has the sense to take a chance and makes the right decisions.  He may get up to 300 million, and if he handles it properly, he might save New Hampshire some of the pain other New England states are pre-destined to suffer because of their tax policies.

First off, the Governors current plan to cut government back down to size and to trim the budget should continue and  expand.  The spending portion of the Keynesian model was never really meant to enlarge government—because big government is inefficient  and wastes resources better spent on projects that enhance infrastructure like widening roads, and repairing bridges, or improving air-ports; anything that makes commerce easier or cheaper is a good spending project for a Keynesian model.   But guaranteed raises for the growing bureaucracy or an expanding state payroll do not create business growth so Lynch needs to cut deep to make the most of what he has, and he needs to sustain that model until the job picture improves.

Second, 260 million doesn’t solve New Hampshire’s spending problem anyway, which no handout will honestly resolve if bad spending habits are not corrected, so to try and use federal dollars to balance bloated budgets is a mistake.  Departments need to shed jobs and programs that do not support basic civic needs.  They should also plan to project-out cuts to limit payrolls and expenses for 2-5 years now, so that they do not suck on any improved revenue from tax cut stimulated growth two to five years down the road. 

State employees have to accept that having a paying job is better than no job, and if the state employees resist, Lynch has to cut them loose; there’s plenty of professionals in this kind of economy willing to do their job at a better price if it needs to be done, and that job pool gets bigger the longer we allow the government to waste its resources—which will only result in more job losses later in every sector.  Government does not create lasting job growth, and government employees and taxpayers are better served if those people find jobs in an expanding private sector.

That 260 million also—if it’s coming—can provide some much needed leverage in making some of the infrastructure investments that attract business, particularly given our current funding dilemmas.  Don’t think of it as creating jobs for people who actually build the infrastructure because most studies indicate that while it may save some jobs, it’s not likely to create many if any—think of it as creating a framework that attracts the kind of businesses that bring jobs and opportunity here.  If we don’t use the money to enhance the business environment—we will have wasted it. 

And making New Hampshire more appealing than any other place in the North East is the only thing that will save jobs, (eventually create new jobs), soften the affects of the recession, and increase tax revenue without creating new taxes; new taxes stifle growth and extend recessions without exception.   If you don’t believe me, study Japan’s 10 year economic drought for harsh lessons learned.

That brings us to tax cuts.  Business operates best when its cost of doing business is limited to things they can control like labor and materials.  Regulation and taxation are a huge impediment to growth in any economy, but doubly destructive in a recession.  They are also a lousy selling point for a state that needs to create jobs that will outlast the taxpayer’s ability to fund them, or the handouts from up on high that are supposed to “create” them.   (Let’s face facts here.  No amount of government money is going to create a job that taxpayers won’t have to continue paying taxes to support and without more revenue sources—more business and more employees—that load falls on a diminishing few the longer you try to sustain it.)  So the governor and the legislature need to make a hard choice; they need to cut New Hampshire’s business taxes to make the state the only island of opportunity in a part of the world that has relied too heavily on taxation to make ends meet.

If other states raise taxes, or don’t see the value in cutting them now, a business looking to survive is going to find New Hampshire an even better value with lower business taxes than it already is.   If you attract more businesses you will employ more people, create more wealth (or bring more wealth here) and generate more revenue for the state, while supporting the broad range of other services that employed residents rely on.   But you have to be willing (or able) to run and manage a deficit (or a very lean budget) for a few years, until the business base builds and the increased revenue overcomes the planned deficit spending, eventually creating a surplus of state revenue.

Whenever you choose to build more government, you are simply dragging an anchor behind you that will reduce or obscure any positive impact from the broader base of businesses that elect to take advantage of your improved business environment.

I know—we can’t run a deficit, and most states wont, but that does not make the model unusable, so we need to balance the budget, but instead of using our own money to spend—creating a deficit at the state level—use the federal dollars to accomplish some of the same thing while making government more efficient and freeing up dollars to shore up the initial decrease in business taxes over the first 18 months of the plan.  Will it work?  It will if we can offset decreased business taxes, no matter how much we have for infrastructure, to make New Hampshire more attractive and create more jobs.

So we may need to find other temoprary streams of revenue, because while the federal dollars can be utilized to widen highways and make land zoned for business more accessible, (and 260 million isn’t much) the state may still need additional money to operate it’s tooled down government structure and support more projects during the initial lull in business tax revenue.

Given the current cost of fuel, a short term gas tax might offer an opportunity if it is small, and has built in triggers that terminate it; like when other revenues meet specific plateaus, or if oil and gas rise above a certain price.  Sin-taxes are also good (yes regressive) but a suitable target for short term revenue growth if the same rules apply.  Otherwise you are simply adding a long term tax burden on a declining revenue scale–people will stop buying cigarettes and liquor; you just want short term sources to offset revenue you gave up to jump start business growth. 

There may be other places to improve revenue, but as long as they are timed to expire, and coordinated with long term reductions in business taxes, (and government stays small) the Keynesian model can be made to work, if the spending actually attracts job-creating resources to the state.

Will it happen?  I don’t know if anyone has the will, but whether you agree with any of this or not.  Jobs do not come from the government, and business will not grow in lousy soil.  Whatever we do in New Hampshire, we have to attract business, keep more of the ones we have, and reduce the taxes and regulation that drain resources that might otherwise go to jobs (to keep jobs) or to the kind of business spending that creates jobs in other sectors.

One more thing.  Lynch needs to suspend RGGI and the Renewable energy resouces mandate for 2-5 years to remove the crippling price pressure they put on business byincreasing energy costs–which significantly affect the cost of business, and will stifle growth.

Obama’s got it wrong.  Lynch could try to do it right.

The Stimu-less bill the NH twain rubber-stamped on Wednesday included a provision that would require all those supposed shovel-ready projects to get their steel from American companies.  That’s right, no foreign steel.

And you thought they cut the 400 million for “protection” out of the bill.

So is this how Obama heals our tarnished image with the global community.  Trade protectionism.   Who said experience doesn’t matter?

Well, the foreign governments got the message.  They are already lining up to give Mr. Obama piece of their mind, suggesting that similar actions against us would have to follow if the provision manages to survive and become law.  (Is this the test Biden warned us about?)

Preliminary estimates by several fortune 500 companies peg the potential job losses from a slew of global trade barriers in the tens of millions as the increased cost of global goods, and the problems in acquiring them strain an already fragile US economy.

So yeah,  Hodes and Shea-Porter voted for a stimu-less bill filled with lefty handouts, and hundreds of billions in non-stimulus spending, but they also  supported trade protectionism on top of it.   This must be part of that helping the middle class mantra, right?

So I am of course assuming that they actually knew what they were voting for.   I mean you don’t actually vote for 800 billion in pointless handouts after whining about fiscal responsibility and accountability, or about the culture of corruption you’re going to help clean up, do you?  You don’t blindly support trade barriers in a global economy that will affect every job sector while you are claiming to create jobs for (your union buddies) do you? Do you? 

Is it possible they never even pulled Pelosi’s sunshine yellow  post-it off the front, the one that said “just vote yes?”  Are their copies filed away in the ‘Victory’ drawer without even one dog-eared page?

No matter how it played out, as the bill meets stiffer opposition in the Senate, the public is learning a lot more about just how bad this bill really is, something our House Reps–the fiscal conscience of congress, seemed unconcerned with in their rush to give Obama a quick victory.

It’s good to know where their priorities lie.  Of course we always knew didn’t we, yet for some reason they got re-elected anyway.  So you know the old saying, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice…

A good tyrant kills off any pretenders to his throne to protect and secure his power.  While that’s not exactly how it’s done these days, President Obama may be executing a strategy that accomplishes the same thing.

Roll Call is reporting that Senator Judd Gregg is aware of a potential nomination by Obama to be the next commerce secretary.  Gregg, who has been warming to Obamanomics, and appears to be cozying up to the new administration, has never been considered long on republican principles by conservatives, and likely to have a fight on his hands in two years to seperate himslef form any Democrat rival.  (Or any serious conservative primary cadndaites) So It’s not difficult to see him taking the job.   

But is he willing to make that kind of mark on history?   He could forever be known as the Republican who helped give Mr. Obama and his massive liberal agenda  with a filibuster-proof Senate. 

And there-in lies the subterfuge (if genius isn’t the right word) of the Obama administration.

Picking any Republican Senator (but Gregg in particular)—whom any democrat led Senate committee would confirm for obvious reasons—allows Democrat Governor John Lynch to appoint his replacement until the 2010 election when Greggs term expires.  It’s a pick destined to be a Democrat, most likely a congressional house member from New Hampshire like Paul Hodes.

Now there are those who claim that Lynch might exercise his “independent streak” and appoint a Republican, but that’s total nonsense.  Lynch is as doe-eyed for Washington as Gregg is, and being the democrat who could have given Obama a filibuster-proof senate but decided not to because of some ‘independent streak,’  is not something he wants on his resume.  Lynch would appoint a democrat given the chance and I suspect Obama knows this.

So if Judd Gregg is on the short list, and he gets a shot at being Commerce Secretary, he has a big decision to make.  Will he kick his party to the curb and give the liberals their shot at a utopian collectivist agenda, or stand tall for the resistance?

Rumor has it that the Obama administration is preparing to use its executive authority to have the EPA declare a naturally occurring gas a pollutant.

That’s right, the stuff you exhale every minute of your life, the same gas that plants love, is going to be tagged as a pollutant so it falls under the regulatory authority of the Environmental Protection agency.

What environment exactly are they protecting if the stuff plants breath is declared a pollutant?  The moon?  Can we send Al Gore there to do a meet and greet?

And now I’m wondering how this might affect the Swiss governments Bill of Rights for Plants.  Seems to me we are risking some tin-foil hat policy overlap with this one.

Wait, I figured it out.  If decreasing CO2 means fewer plants, that’s more like little plant abortions, which as we all know is not the immoral killing of  a life because if the plant is not actually breathing yet, it’s just someone else making a choice.

Of course that still leaves us with the EPA regulating naturally occurring elements in the atmposphere to advance the Presidents political agenda.  Better watch out Obama.  If it turns out that CO2 is not a WMD (weapon of man-made destruction) your going to have some esplaining to do.

Might I suggest staying away from banners that read “Mission Accomplished.”