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Sunday, October 31, 2010

Coming down to the wire!

What's it like toward the end of campaign?   Busy, fun, windy!

Thursday, October 21, 2010

They want you to stay home on Nov. 2nd!

If you haven’t just turned off the TV and radio by now, you will have heard and seen a lot of very negative political ads this year.   While you may not believe the distortions and lies (yup, lies) that these ads are touting, while you may not notice that you have no idea who is paying for them (and if you tried you probably couldn’t find out), they have another, more insidious and dangerous effect.  You may be thinking, “This is so awful, I don’t even want to vote!”
BINGO!  The ads are working.  The cynical pundits who write op eds in the newspapers, the chattering talking heads on TV, they are celebrating.  They don’t want YOU in the political process, you, who is hanging on to middle-class status with your fingernails, you who really would like a break from the destruction and the obstruction that has left you wondering what your future and the future of your family could possibly be, they want you to stay home on Nov. 2nd.
They want you to stay home, because if you find out on Nov. 3rd that we are going back to the policies that created the mess we are in, in the first place, it will be too late for you to say, “Oh, wait, no, that’s not what I voted for.”  You didn’t vote.  The big money that paid for those ads did.  You lose.  You no longer have representatives that work for you, you have representatives who work for someone in another state, or maybe even another country, who paid big bucks to discourage you from exercising the ultimate right of an American citizen, the right to vote.
It’s your choice.  It’s always your choice.  See you Nov. 2. 

Monday, October 18, 2010

Absentee ballots

Here's how to find an absentee ballot application.  You can mail, fax or drop off at your town clerk's office.

What I learned at a house party

What a really interesting group of people I met at the house party at Rebecca Hutchinson’s Sunday afternoon!  We talked about a wide range of topics, and I was left with the sense that if there are many more people with such a grasp of the real issues and commitment to their communities in our area, we are going to be moving forward toward a better future.

One was a gentleman who helped build some of the original passive solar houses in NH.  He told me that when they assess homes built with thick, super-insulated walls, they count the outside measurements and figure the inside dimensions, that is floor space, as if the building had regular walls.  This adds enough to the assessment that property taxes can eat up the efficiency savings the houses provide in terms of heating and cooling.  Maybe the legislature could look at that issue, since we should be building efficient, green buildings as part of our energy future, and that should be rewarded, not penalized.

We talked about expanding gambling as a revenue source, the pros and cons.  We didn’t really come to a conclusion on that one, which tells me that in this small group, there are still a lot of questions out there.  As far as other revenue sources, one idea that surfaced was an income tax solely dedicated to reducing property taxes on primary residences by a percentage, such as half.

The discussion of education really made me think again about exactly what we are doing and why.  Our public education system has a legacy of many different objectives, basic literacy, preparing the work force, keeping teens out of the job market, getting kids ready for higher education, making it possible for both parents to work, encouraging good citizenship, etc.  It’s an enormous system, with a lot of inertia, and my fear is that that inertia makes it slow to react to changing needs.  So how do we transition from a time when there were just some things that people really needed to learn, and the future, which I see as a time when critical thinking skills, the ability to know when one is being fed a line, ability to quickly change course and find new information when it is needed will be essential?  How do we build a flexible, efficient, timely educational system?

And I received an excellent analysis of where exactly the national debt comes from, with interest on the debt allocated properly to the party that ran up the debt on which it is being paid.  It’s a remarkable piece of work, and unfortunately for those who insist Obama is to blame, it shows that since the presidency of Gerald Ford, when the national debt left over from WWII mostly was $6.35 trillion dollars, Republican presidencies have added $6.75 trillion to the debt, and Democratic presidencies have added $0.1 trillion.

Here’s the breakdown:

US DEBT WITH ACCUMULATED INTEREST BY PRESIDENTIAL TERM

The total US debt owed as of 6/30/10 was $13.2 Trillion.  Since Ford left office the total interest payments on the debt have amounted to $8.9 Trillion.  This shows how the debt has gone up or down with the yearly interest allocated to the Ford balance and to the deficit spending during each subsequent presidential administration.  



Debt Increase Without Interest
Interest Allocation 
Total Debt
Ford Balance
0.65T
5.70T
6.35T
Carter
0.05T
0.43T
0.48T
Reagan
0.55T
2.41T
2.96T
G H Bush
0.41T
0.89T
1.30T
Clinton
(1.22T)
(1.02T)
(2.24T)
G W Bush
2.06T
0.43T
2.50T
Obama
1.77T
0.09T
1.86T
Total
4.28T
8.92T
13.20T

Recap



Ford Balance
0.65T
5.70T
6.35T
Last three Dems
0.60T
(0.50T)
0.1T
Last three Reps
3.02T
3.72T
6.75T
Total Recap
4.28T
8.92T
13.20T
Computations and analysis courtesy of a resident of Deerfield.  

Monday, October 11, 2010

Campaign money

One of the many things I have to do as a candidate for state representative is to file disclosure forms with the state about who is donating to my campaign and what I am spending the money on.  So I was very surprised when the US Supreme Court decided early this year that unlimited sums of money could be donated anonymously to groups who would use it to support or oppose candidates for office.

It seems odd that some unknown corporation or individual far away from NH, maybe even overseas, can give enormous sums of money to a group with a nice name and that group can buy ads in NH that don’t even have to have any connection with the facts about a candidate’s positions or character.  Meanwhile I have to list every person who gives me more than $25!  And may I say I am very grateful to those who have supported my campaign.

We are all going to see a lot of TV ads in the next few weeks.  We all know the candidates have to approve their ads, but we don’t know much about who approves these attack ads.  Some of the campaigns have estimated that up to $10,000,000 will be spent in NH this fall!  That’s a lot of money for a small state.  I really would love to know where that money comes from.

We’ve all heard about “buying votes.”  This takes it to a whole new level.  Is your vote for sale?  Do you know who you are selling it to?  What do you think you will get in return?  Will you be represented by the candidate you support, or will the deep-pocketed donors in another state get the ear of your Congressperson, Senator or Governor?

Monday, September 27, 2010

DIRT, THE MOVIE

Thoughts on DIRT, THE MOVIE

Our planet has a skin, and just like our skin it is necessary for the proper functioning of the organism as a whole.  We can look at the living world and understand it as a complex organism, much more complicated than a human being.  To predict the future of our tenure here, this idea works much better than simply seeing the planet as a lump of inanimate matter for us to use and misuse. Since all life on earth depends on the ability of plants to use sunlight, water, carbon dioxide and minerals to make the food the whole chain of life depends on, we would do well to make sure we keep the dirt plants grow in available and healthy.

Recently I attended a showing of “DIRT, THE MOVIE,” presented by the Northwood Area Land Management Collaborative (NALMC) and the Deerfield Conservation Commission at Camp Yavneh in Northwood.  It’s a fascinating and emotionally draining movie, uplifting, scary, painful, hopeful.  KInd of a metaphor for our times.

It is easy to forget when we shop in a modern supermarket that ALL that food is dependent for its production on that layer of dirt that covers much of the land masses of the planet.  Nor do we usually consider that the quality of nutrition we get from our food is dependent on the health of the soil in which it grows.  To make sure we can continue to feed ourselves, we need to make some changes in how we treat “dirt.”

To illustrate how we can make changes, I am going to look at a local phenomenon that appeared in the last couple of years in our area, the explosive growth in the number of farmers markets. Those of us who take time out of our already busy lives to get farmers markets started, who support local agriculture and local small-scale food processors, are looking for several advantages to eating and shopping “local.”  One thing is quality, knowing the person who grew or made the product, and often being able to visit the places where the food is grown or the kitchen where the bread is baked.  Another is sustaining the environment that supports us.  A third is to provide local jobs, to promote economic development on a scale that suits smaller rural towns.

Perhaps, most of all for me, local food provides some security. I am more comfortable if I know I don’t have to depend on almost all my food coming from far away, subject to sudden rises in transportation costs or interruptions in supply from natural disasters.  While I don’t expect we will produce all the food we need here in New England, we could produce a lot more than we do.  John Carroll at UNH says, in his book Pastures of Plenty, that we have some wonderful grazing land in New England, and we could branch out from dairy farming to grass-fed beef, sheep, pigs, and other livestock, with breeds which do well in our climate.  We can grow many things in greenhouses and other protected growing areas, as well as in open fields.

Small scale agriculture preserves the soil.  The demand for organic food, or even food that isn’t grown with a lot of chemicals, increases every year.  A farmer learns quickly that having healthy dirt makes much less work, and is less expensive than trying to fix it once it is leached of its nutrients and filled with toxins.  There is more to food than volume and cheapness.  Better to eat less and eat better.

There are many, many more issues concerning dirt, from mountain-top removal and associated poisoning of water supplies, to deforestation, from drought associated with climate change to erosion that carries the soil away into the oceans and resource wars as people migrate to escape starvation.  It all seems overwhelming, but the movie ends with the reminder that if each of us does a small part, we can accomplish things that seem impossible at first.  However, this does require some changes in attitude, the ability to see that no particular way of doing things needs to be the end all and be all forever, a willingness to work together, rather than each of us grasping for our own at the expense of others, and leadership in our communities.

I singled out the local agriculture movement as an example of working in a small way to solve a big problem because we are all familiar with it in NH now.  It is part of a response to a major issue that will take many different approaches to solve.  There are no magic bullets for the big problems we face, we need to be creative, and find things to do that, added together, make the difference.  This is actually a good thing, because it gives us all a part to play, and getting involved in the community is a lot of fun.  You meet the best people if you will give it a try.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

I love libraries!

I stopped today at the Chesley Memorial Library in Northwood for their Open House.  I asked the librarians what I could do as a state representative for libraries, knowing that in some states the libraries are being cut way back.   Both of them told me that I should support the state library services to the town libraries, since they depend so much on interlibrary loans which are done through the state library to get the books that are requested by patrons that they don't have on their shelves.

In hard times, libraries are a great resource for all of us.  Here's a great link to ideas on how to save money using your public library.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Cost-shifting

As we look for ways to support the functions that our state can more efficiently and effectively do for us all than we can do for ourselves, it is important not to be taken in by cost-cutting measures that do not really solve our problem.  Very often what looks like cost-cutting turns out to be cost-shifting, because there are things that simply need to be taken care of by government, and if we are not careful, our towns end up with the burden.  We all know how we fund towns.  Yes, property taxes.


Did you know that our towns are mandated to be the first line in caring for those of our citizens who run into trouble getting food, a roof over their heads, and medical care when they fall upon hard times?  While we always try to find other sources of immediate aid, and we do require repayment if at all possible down the line, we still have to have our welfare budget, and in the recession those have been substantial.

Don’t let yourself be distracted by the apparent ease of some fiscal proposals.  Make sure you do your research and ask some town and county officials what effect those supposedly easy cost-cutting measures have on us as property tax payers.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

I support

Sustainability: we know how to meet present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs, the definition of sustainability. I will propose and support legislation that promotes local economic development on our scale and provides opportunities for new businesses for entrepreneurs in our towns.
These new enterprises should include agriculture to provide some measure of food security, preserve our water supplies and wildlife habitat and give us the flexibility to respond to climate change, population growth and technological advances.  We have one of the most beautiful and accessible landscapes anywhere, but it will be lost without our efforts.


Campaign finance reform: this is both a desperate and a worthy goal that will allow us to vote as equals, and make all our voices heard as we decide together how to pool our resources and do the things we cannot do effectively and efficiently alone.
We have gone a too far toward making corporations more powerful “people” than the real human beings who live here.  We need to give power back to the people, the voters, and we need to bring more people into the process.

Reform of NH’s tax structure: it worked well for an agrarian society where land was wealth, but it is too rigid and cumbersome for a more complex society. We need a tax structure that will give us the flexibility to support a healthy, well-educated population, one that spans all age groups sharing their resources to grow communities that provide for all their citizens. Our tax structure hits low income people the hardest, young families and the elderly.  There are also, despite our "business-friendly" reputation, an awful lot of taxes and fees on our business activity.  The first step is to agree to have an honest conversation about how we pay for our joint efforts as a state.


Jobs: the new healthcare legislation, when fully implemented,  will make it possible for new businesses to be formed without their owners having to worry that an illness or accident would leave them bankrupt. It will also make it possible for existing businesses to have options available for both owners and employees to stay healthy and take care of medical challenges.
Opportunities to make use of emerging technologies and practices in energy generation, both local and regional, communications, transportation, agriculture and other areas we haven’t even thought of, will widen our horizons and make our towns and our region vibrant and thriving, if we don’t turn our backs on the future.  In the  past we were known for our “can do” attitude, don’t tell us we can’t!  Future job growth springs up from our small businesses.  It doesn’t trickle down from a few of the wealthiest among us.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Local Control

Many of us believe that depending on the property tax to fund our schools helps us maintain local control.  But any hard look at the full budget documents of our schools, something that I had to do as a member of our municipal budget committee, really raises a lot of questions about how much control we do have.

The Claremont decision effectively moved some of the funding for regular education to the state.  Special education has long been separate from local control, with Federal mandates, state mandates, Medicaid mandates, etc., and the famous refusal of the federal government to fund the 40% that was their promised share for their mandates when the IDEA law passed.  That’s the one Judd Gregg kept promising to fix but we never got over 20%.

As long as we accept funding from outside of our towns and cities for educational costs, or for that matter, any other local costs, we lose that complete local control that we apparently value so much.  Also, NH law does not allow home rule, towns must abide by state law, and cannot do anything that is not explicitly allowed by state law.

There is a constant lament from the staff at school district meetings that whenever the voters decide to cut the school budget, so much of it is mandated by outside forces and contracts, that the only place they really can cut, after they go for the arts, in our town the fabled “science camp” (an opportunity for 6th graders to all go away for a several day stay at a camp to learn some hands-on science in the great outdoors), music, and seldom after school sports, all that is left to cut is regular education, reducing staff, reducing supplies (anyone who knows a teacher knows how much they spend out of their own pockets to provide enough classroom supplies to do an adequate job), and reducing support staff.  Next step, larger classes, less instructional time, no programs for the gifted, on and on.

My grandchildren happen to have been educated in public schools in Maryland, where all the government services are provided at a county level.  While there is not as much local control, there are definitely economies of scale, and the schools there provide a much wider range of learning experiences for their students.  It might be argued that Maryland is a richer state than New Hampshire, but in 2008 there really wasn’t much difference in median per capita income. (There are some other interesting state rankings at this link.)  As we move forward we might want to just take a look at this side of the education funding puzzle.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

NH Republicans would do well to read this

Anne Applebaum is no liberal, but even she can see that there is a limit to how much misinformation we can digest.

Parties, of course, can change; politicians can see the light; lessons can be learned; and perhaps some Republicans have learned them. But you cannot start from scratch. You cannot forget history. You cannot pretend that the Republican Party has not supported big and wasteful spending programs -- energy subsidies, farm subsidies, unnecessary homeland security projects, profligate defense contracts, you name it -- for the past decade. Before the GOP can have credibility on any spending issues whatsoever, Republican leaders need to speak frankly about the mistakes of the past.
They also must be extremely specific about which policies and programs they are planning to cut. What will it be? Social Security or the military budget? Medicare or the Transportation Security Administration? Vague "anti-government" rhetoric doesn't cut it anymore: If you want a smaller government, you have to tell us how you will create one.
And to add insult to injury
In the interim, teachers will lose their jobs, and get a lesson in how Republican officials are slowly chipping away at the ability of our institutions to function.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Don't ever bet against the American people

President Obama said in his Saturday talk to the nation today not to bet against the American people, because we CAN do it.  I entirely agree.  I am tired of hearing that we can't do anything different than we ever did.  How do they think we ever got to where we were when this country was the best place to live and the most admired in the world?  We tried new things, we changed the old ways, and we can find new ways and do new things again.  So stop saying "No, you can't"  and join us in saying "Yes, we can."
"So to all the naysayers out there, I say this:  Don’t ever bet against the American people.  Because we don’t take the easy way out.  That’s not how we deal with challenge.  That’s not how we build this country into the greatest economic power the world has ever known.  We did it by summoning the courage to persevere, and adapt, and push this country forward, inch by inch. " 

One of the reasons I am a Democrat

One of the reasons I am a Democrat is because we care about the common welfare.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Why I won't pledge to raise your property taxes

I had the pleasure recently of attending the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition training for candidates:  Talking About Taxes.  While I have had a lot of experience with town budgets, as a selectwoman and a member of the budget committee, the state budget is of course bigger and more complicated, although a lot of the basic issues, such as revenue, are the same.  Thanks to an excellent presentation on what we spend money on, where it comes from, and what parts of the budget are growing fastest, I have a clearer picture.  We also had a presentation on education funding, which for the first time gave me a sense of the narrative of the issue over the past few decades.  I came away with a sobering view of what I and my fellow candidates will be facing over the next two years if we are elected.

I would like to address some of the issues and perceptions related to NH taxes over the next couple of weeks on this blog.  I will also give you a link to an article I wrote for The Forum on the Pledge and how I see it affecting the small towns in NH.

And that’s a good place to start.  We often hear that if only we could get all our elected officials to take the pledge and live by it, our tax problems would be solved.  But the pledge to enact no new taxes really means a pledge to have the taxes we already have go up.  We all know where most of the money for town and state budgets comes from in NH, the property tax, approximately 60%. So the pledge is a promise to raise our property taxes as the state grows.  We aren’t making any more land.  Property taxes made sense when your property was the source of your income.  While I hope that agriculture makes a big comeback here for a lot of reasons, I hope we aren’t all going to be farmers.

The other solution we are hearing a lot about in political ads this year is cutting spending.  Since NH has the 4th lowest per capita STATE spending in the country, I really, really wish the people who call for this would explain exactly what they would cut.  I have watched towns do this sort of budgeting, and I hear some of our solutions, like un-paving the town roads, are spreading across the country.    Either they are just plain uncaring about their fellow humans, or they simply have never had to be responsible for a budget bigger than their household or small business.  They certainly are not people who think about the future of their communities when they propose putting off maintenance and capital investments to lower this year’s tax rate, and next year’s, and the year after, until the chickens come home to roost.

Next time we’ll talk about local control.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Why reporting precipitation is so important

As many of you know, I am a local precipitation reporter for CoCoRaHS.  I just got an e-mail from the coordinator, who lives in Colorado, explaining why what we are doing is so important.  Anyone willing to spend a small amount of money on a rain gauge can join and I encourage you to do so.  As our weather gets less and less predictable due to climate change, we need eyes everywhere.

Here's what Nolan had to say:


Dear CoCoRaHS volunteers, friends, foes and family,


Yes, indeed, it‚s July 21-- the dog days of summer. For many parts of
the country this is the hottest, humidest (is that a word?), stillest
(least windy) time of year. As a child, it was my favorite time even
though my upstairs bedroom was painfully hot. It was the time to hang
out with all the neighborhood boys in tiny Royal, IL -- playing
baseball, listening to the Cubs on the radio, and trying to sell
lemonade on main street where only a few cars came even on busy days. At
a nickel a glass and sharing the profits 5 ways, we didn't get rich.
Then, of course, was the daily ritual of cloud gazing and listening for
the first rumbles of thunder. I loved doing that already by the time I
was 7. Then we would watch for distant lightning after sunset with the
hopes of the cool refreshment of a summer storm. I find myself longing
now for those simple pleasures. Fall seemed so far away then, and summer
seemed wonderfully endless. It is odd how perspectives change with age
and responsibility. Now it seems like summer will soon be over and the
new school year will begin way too soon -- and then come the high winter
utility bills.

A reminder about why CoCoRaHS is important

Here in our part of the country (Colorado) the next 3 weeks hold more
potential (based on historic rainfall data) for local intense rains than
any other time of year. This is thanks to subtropical moisture carried
northward by the North American monsoon, a very warm atmosphere capable
of "holding" copious amounts of moisture, and a weak jet stream -- which
means the storms that develop will move slowly. Even today, the air is
ripe with moisture, and the potential for local heavy rains is clearly
stated in the National Weather Service forecast.

This resembles the weather that first motivated CoCoRaHS several years
ago. On July 28, 1997, one of those localized moisture-laden
thunderheads parked itself over west Fort Collins (where I live and
work) and dropped over a foot of rain while other areas just a few miles
away were dry or enjoying a pleasant summer shower. In those few hours,
as the rain poured down 2-3" per hour for over 4 hours straight in what
is normally a semi-arid region, our world briefly but chaotically turned
upside down. Houses flooded, cars floated away, our university was
partially wrecked, there were hundreds of emergency rescues, a train
wreck, gas explosions -- and unfortunately 5 fatalities. It all happened
so fast. 12 years earlier, on August 1, 1985 (the day after our first
child was born), Cheyenne, Wyoming was in the bulls eye of a similar
local storm -- and again, many fatalities and millions of dollars in
damage. And then, of course, the nightmarish Big Thompson Canyon flash
flood of July 31, 1976 -- over 140 souls lost in what was supposed to be
the grand celebration of Colorado's statehood centennial the next day.

That is some of the motivation behind CoCoRaHS and why we care so much.
With a small effort from many weather enthusiasts, we can gather
critical rainfall data, avoid panic storm surprises, and let people know
just how bad a storm is so that warnings can be posted and evacuations
can take place sooner. We can even help engineers and planners do a
better job planning and designing drainage, gutters, culverts and storm
sewers. We can encourage more people to avoid driving into flood waters.
And gradually, working together, we all gain a better understanding of
storms and their behavior. This is the ideal and its worth the effort.

As more and more people join CoCoRaHS across the country, we are making
a difference. Check out the recent "Significant Weather Reports", the
"Drought Impact Reports" and the hail reports under „View Data‰
http://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/

Yesterday, several stations in southern Iowa and northeast Missouri were
dumped on by over 6" of rain. The peak was of 9.13" near Kirksville, MO.
Today, another area will see heavy rains and tomorrow yet another area.
Each time our rain gauge reports will be helpful and perhaps essential.
Meanwhile, abnormally dry conditions continue to expand in other parts
of the country missed by the July storms. Our rainfall reports, wet or
dry, really do make a difference. Thanks so much for participating and
helping out.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Some Thoughts on the Role of Government

One of the biggest differences between political philosophies these days is the perception of the role of government in our society.  I come to this from the perspective of a student of anthropology, sociology, political history and economics.  Some of my knowledge and belief system comes from schooling, much from reading extensively, and some from discussions with others involved in the political process.  Much of it comes from actually getting involved.

I am not a person who does sound bites well, so I will ask you to stick with me for a bit, rather than turning me off when I can’t give you instant and simple reasons for my beliefs.  I do not believe these things because I am a Democrat, I am a Democrat because this is what I understand about the world I live in.

29 years ago Ronald Reagan made his famous pronouncement, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”  This has been interpreted by many as a license to attack government whenever possible, even while asking to be elected to run such a government.  For some the goal is to “shrink government enough to drown it in a bathtub,” another famous quote from Grover Norquist, lobbyist extraordinaire.

I have a very different vision of my government that comes from getting involved at the local level with town committees and boards, including the selectboard.  Learning about town budgets, employees, taxes, etc. as the person responsible for making it work gave me a different perspective. Standing outside and criticizing is easy.  Actually making it work is very difficult.  However, it is also very, very rewarding.  And I don’t mean monetarily!

The rewards come from the people I have met, truly wonderful, smart, caring, thoughtful people who volunteer their time to make a town run.  The pay stinks, but the rewards come when I have managed to involve some others in the process, because although we all moan about how hard it is, I know have introduced them to something that will enrich their lives and empower them to see what I see, that government is ultimately ours, and we make it or break it.

But when people hear over and over again that government is a problem, that “they” are  taking away from, not adding to our lives, and that the best thing to do is elect people who promise to dismantle what, unfortunately, turns out to be the only thing between the voters and the rapacity of the greedy in all too much of our recent history, what are they to believe?  It is easy to blame someone in “the government,” but we really are responsible, in our system, for electing those in the government and using care in doing so.

The people who founded this country and wrote our constitution did have a vision of how they wanted this to work.  Their vision was of an educated public, who knew something of history and current affairs.  This knowledge came from the written word, books, self-published pamphlets and newspapers.  Today we have many, many ways to get information.  So how do we get ourselves to the point where we actually consider electing people who think government is a problem, to run that government?

Part of it is schooling, and part of it is that explosion of ways to find out about how things work.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of the written word involved for too many of us.  Most people now get their news from television, and there are a number of problems with that.  Some of them have to do with the corporate ownership of the media, and some have to do with the way the brain reacts to TV.  Part of our biological heredity is how movement in our field of vision affects us.  We are instinctively compelled to focus on moving images, because back in the day when we were creatures in the wild, anything moving in the area was either food, or something that wanted to make food of us, or potential mates, all things we needed to pay attention to immediately.

Television is an endless series of movements to the visual field.  Reading a book, or a magazine or newspaper or even articles on my laptop, I find it easy to pull myself away from the written word. But if there is a TV in the room it is constantly catching my attention and drawing my eyes, and I find myself sitting there almost hypnotized.  Yes, hypnotized.  Passive, waiting for direction.  So what does that mean in an article about government?

If people are getting most of their information about how to choose their government from a medium that makes them passive, rather than interacting with the information, choosing what to read, stopping and thinking about it, maybe even writing about it, are they not vulnerable to being manipulated?  If you watch TV for hours a day, you certainly are not likely to get involved.  And if you are not involved, at least to some extent, is it not easy to see the government as not being of much importance to you and your life.

And yet everyday, governments at all levels of our society are making decisions that affect our lives.  If our only interaction is once a year, or every two years, or even every 4 years, at the voting booth - and many of us choose not to even do that - how much effort are we going to put into finding out what is really going on?  It is so much easier to sit in front of the TV and watch whatever we happen to find, including 30 second political ads, getting our emotions stimulated, and perhaps even being manipulated into voting against our own self-interest and the interests of the communities we live in.  I don’t think we are lazy, I know we are tired and overworked, which is a subject for another post.  I do suspect we are being used by clever people to find government a distant body that either has little to do with our lives or that actually is hurting us.

But that is not what our founders intended!  And it is not what inevitably has to be.  So when that neighbor of yours runs for office, or asks you to get involved, don’t say, “Oh, I don’t want to get involved in politics, it’s a dirty nasty business.”  It is the business our founders intended us to be involved in deeply and thoughtfully.  It’s our government.

My thanks to Al Gore who called my attention to the TV phenomenon in his book, The Assault on Reason.

The Forum: Serving the Towns in the Shadow of Pawtuckaway

One of the most exciting things to happen in our region was the founding, five years ago, by a group of local residents of The Forum, our local on-line and print newspaper.  Staffed by volunteers, it covers Candia, Deerfield, Northwood and Nottingham, which happen to be the towns in our state rep district, Rockingham One.  While Northwood had some coverage by the Suncook Valley Sun, a weekly out of Pittsfield, most of the towns had spotty, if any, news coverage, being in the middle between Foster's Daily Democrat, The Concord Monitor, and the Union Leader.  As the budgets of regular newspapers have decreased, there are fewer and fewer reporters to cover the small towns on the fringes of their areas.

The Forum publishes a print edition which goes to every household in the four towns, free, three times a year.  They make the sure the print editions correspond to every election, municipal, state or national, where there are local candidates running.  They depend on grants and donations, plus advertising, to keep the site and the print editions available to us all.

It has been my pleasure and privilege to report from Northwood for The Forum, as my time allows, and to voice my opinions, submit many pictures and the occasional poem, and I am a faithful reader.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

How the new health care law benefits seniors

This is really important to me personally, since I will be retiring at the end of this year and my husband and I will switch from employer provided health insurance to Medicare.


HOW THE NEW HEALTH REFORM LAW BENEFITS SENIORS
Provides relief to seniors who fall into the Medicare “doughnut hole” to help you cover the cost of prescriptions Already, the first round of $250 rebate checks are in the mail to help seniors who have been hitting the gap in Medicare Part D prescription coverage. Next year, prescription drug prices will be cut in half for seniors who hit the coverage gap.
Protects guaranteed Medicare benefits
Guaranteed benefits are protected regardless of whether you are in Original Medicare or Medicare Advantage. You’ll also see new benefits and cost savings to help ensure you get the care you need.
Makes preventive care and annual physicals for seniors free of charge
Currently, seniors are forced to pay as much as 20 percent of the cost of preventive services such as colorectal cancer screenings and mammograms.
Curbs costs and strengthens Medicare by cracking down on fraud and waste
Reform will cut the rate of fraudulent Medicare payments in half by 2012, extending the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by 12 years and curbing costs for seniors.
Prevents insurance companies from instituting unreasonable rate hikes that pad their profits and increase Medicare costs for seniors The new law strengthens the administration’s and states’ ability to combat unfair insurance premium rate hikes.
Promotes affordable long-term care options for seniors
Reform institutes a voluntary program to help seniors and people with disabilities get support to remain in their homes for as long as possible.
Protects seniors by helping to eliminate elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation Health reform provides funding for projects that provide greater protection to those in long-term care facilities and requires the immediate reporting of suspected crimes to law enforcement officials.
Improves quality of care in nursing homes
The new law creates a standardized complaint form for residents and establishes a nationwide program for background checks of nursing home employees.








Saturday, June 19, 2010

Local food

Are you hooked into the local food network in NH?  The "explosion" of farmers markets, small farms both organic and local, restaurants using local ingredients and providing fare we just don't find elsewhere - all a thing of wonder to someone who was looked at as if I had two heads when I raised the issue of local agriculture as economic development not so long ago.  No one thought there was any chance that agriculture would return to NH the way it has.  And wasn't there plenty of food from out west?  We weren't worried about transportation costs or natural disasters interfering with getting the food from out there to here.  Big agribusiness far away would provide us with cheap food.
But now food security is an issue, both getting it here and getting food that isn't going to make us sick.  And economic development is an issue.  And energy conservation, and climate change, and all these things make local food look very, very good.
And it tastes wonderful.  As a founding member of the Northwood Farmers Market, I can't tell you the joy I feel every Thursday afternoon when I visit our market, see all the vendors from the local area being so creative with their offerings, and hearing how much this market adds to the sense of community in a town that stretches out along Rt. 4.  It has been so much fun and I have met so many new great people.

Carol Shea Porter

I love my congresswoman!  She is courageous, caring, thoughtful and very, very hard working.  She is a power of example for me.  She is a public servant who works so hard to take care of all NH residents, as well as being a strong national advocate for human rights and dignity.  She is respected by her peers in Congress, her opinion matters and she shapes legislation.  She is a woman I can identify with, one of us, representing us. Thank you, Carol, for everything you do and stand for.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Who are those dogs?

My husband Ben and I live with several adopted animals.  Foxy, the foxy lady, is a Shiba Inu mixed with who knows what, and she was adopted at 6 months of age from Cocheco Valley Humane Society in Dover.  Morgan, the gentleman, is probably a very, very large Labrador retriever, and was adopted from the same place at the age of 6.  They both have the same birthday month and year, March, 1999.  The picture was taken at the Otis family cemetery on the Blue Hills Foundation lands in Strafford.
We also have a cat who was left in the entry way at our vet's place.  Sophie is a couple years old, we think, grey tiger and white, a ferocious mouser and the owner of the house.  We have had several other animals over the years, mostly adopted, and we support CVHS.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Why I am running

I am running for state representative in Rockingham District 1, the towns of Candia, Deerfield, Northwood and Nottingham.  I will bring my experience with the strengths and challenges of small town government to the legislature.  I have served as a selectwoman for Northwood, and on many of the town’s volunteer boards and committees.  I have participated in the visioning for the town’s Master Plan, the creation of a public access broadcasting program, and the establishment of the Northwood Farmers Market as a founding member of the market association.  I am part of a network of volunteers who keep a local newspaper available on-line and in print.

I bring the perspective of the small rural town to the table.  The past decade has been very hard on the smaller communities.  Many of our police and firefighters are in the National Guard and have served multiple tours of duty overseas, leaving the towns short-staffed.  The ever-increasing cost of education and the funding of schools with property taxes have made young families and the elderly especially vulnerable to economic shocks.  Attempts to keep the tax rates down have led to neglect of infrastructure, such as the roads and public buildings which are part of the assets of the community, not to mention the recurring damage from our recent severe weather events.  We face threats to our water supplies.  And New Hampshire has a lot of small towns like the ones in my district.

One thing that residents of small towns cherish is the rural character of the landscape and the history in every building, barn and stone wall.  I have worked for conservation of these priceless assets that make living here very special.  Finding ways to do economic development while keeping the character of the communities is a special challenge that I embrace.  I am particularly interested in the possibilities of a return to small farms for food security and local jobs.

I would, if elected, work with others to make sure the voice and the values of these communities would be heard, because we are a great deal of what makes New Hampshire New Hampshire.  There is more to this state than the “New Hampshire advantage” of our tax structure, and if we do not take care, the “New Hampshire advantage” may cause us to lose exactly what makes this state such a special place to live.  We must not let the short-sighted view rob us of a future that holds a great deal of promise for us, our children and our grandchildren, if we can only explore and create new ways of working together to meet our challenges today.