Are Both New Hampshire Representatives Spending Tax Dollars Illegally?
Cross posted at Grizzly Groundswell
The Union Leader recently ran this article about some questionable mailings that Rep. Paul Hodes (D-2nd district) and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-1st district) sent out. A follow up article can be read here. 
There would normally be nothing wrong with sending out these mailers using taxpayers dollars. I said usually, but their is some controversy over whether these particular mailing were legal and ethical.
House rules allow the mailing of pamphlets by house members as long as they don’t self promote and these mailings clearly do.
Fergus Cullen, chairman of the state Republican Party, says there is evidence to suggest that Democratic Reps. Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes’s mailings were targeted based on political considerations, which, if true, may be a violation of a House regulation on the use of the congressional frank. Chiefs of staff for Hodes and Shea-Porter flatly deny Cullen’s charge, however.
A House regulation says franking is prohibited for “mail matter which specifically solicits political support for the sender or any other person or any political party, or a vote or financial assistance for any candidate for public office.”
There is also the matter of how the two Democrats got the mailing lists of their constituents, they were purchased from the New Hampshire Democrat party.
both congressional offices last year directly or indirectly purchased from the state Democratic Party the state-generated voter mailing lists, which, under state law, should be made available only to entities that use them solely for “election or political campaign” purposes.
The lists were purchased and can only be used for election or campaign purposes. The mailings can not be used for campaign purposes. So not only are the mailings a violation of house rules, so is the usage of the lists that these two representatives bought using taxpayers dollars.
Here is New Hampshire GOP chairman, Fergus Cullen’s response:
“Today’s Union Leader stories make clear that Representatives Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter have used taxpayer dollars to send targeted, politically-driven mail from their Federal congressional offices at taxpayer expense.”
“They purchased a political list from the New Hampshire Democratic Party using tax dollars, and used that list to send taxpayer-funded mail to targeted voters.”
“Hodes, Shea-Porter, and the New Hampshire Democrats can’t have it both ways. New Hampshire Democrats say it’s legal to sell the voter file for campaign-related purposes. If that’s true, what were Hodes and Shea-Porter doing with the list in their congressional offices except using it for campaign-related purposes at taxpayer expense?”
New Hampshire’s two freshman congressmen ran on a platform that included changing Washington, stopping wasteful spending, and bringing New Hampshire values to Washington.
They have delivered on none of those promises. Rep. Paul Hodes, and Rep. Shea-Porter have fallen in line with their Democrat counter-parts and have become part of the political machine. Instead of bringing New Hampshire values to Washington, they have let Washington values overtake them.
There is a reason why Fergus Cullen dubbed Hodes and shea-Porter the “Pelosi Twins”, and it is an accurate representation.
You can read more about at the New Hampshire Republican Party website.
Ron Paul Blasts John McCain at CPAC Convention
At the CPAC convention Ron Paul took the time to lay into John McCain for basically the same things that many conservatives have been saying.
Presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) told conservatives gathered here on Thursday that the Republican Party is “acting too much like Democrats,” especially the party’s frontrunner Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
“If you think he can lead this country back to conservative principles, fiscal soundness, and a decent sized government, you’ve got another thing coming, because it’s not going to happen,” he said.
“If we continue to do what we have been doing, we are going to run into a financial crisis,” Paul added. “We spend too much money everywhere. The only answer is to be conservative.”
“Today we allow big government to grow, whether it’s the conservative side or the liberal side,” he said. “We are acting too much like Democrats.”
He said Republicans, and John McCain in particular, were acting too much like Democrats, and he was right. Republicans in Washington have lost their way and they need to come home to us. We do not need to take a left hand turn to meet up with the New Republican party. John McCain is now the figurehead of the New Republican party, he symbolizes everything that is wrong with the party and as such I suppose he deserves to lead this new edition of the Republican party.
John McCain is the person most responsible for splitting the Republican party and now he is going to try to repair the damage that he created. It doesn’t seem to be working as we can see by Ron Paul’s words. John McCain almost changed his party affiliation to Democrat but decided against it. Instead he changed his ideology to be more in tune with the Democrats.
I thought is was great to hear John McCain called out by Ron Paul, especially at the CPAC convention. The soon to come tactical maneuvering to the right by John McCain will not fool anybody.
Read my source material here.
Mitt Romney Drops out, Republicans Urged to Step in Line
Cross posted at Grizzly Groundswell
As everyone knows by now, Mitt Romney has dropped out of the race. I have been a Romney supporter for a while now, and he was our best chance to send a conservative to Washington. Now we have no chance. The reason we don’t have a chance is not because McCain can’t win, although I don’t think he can, the reason we can’t send a conservative to Washington is because McCain isn’t one.
I don’t give a damn what his conservative voting rating is, this man has been on the wrong side of all the important issues we have faced in the last eight years. I am not going to go into all the issues again, I have done that enough already and a search of my blog will show you what issues I am talking about.
I am still not sure where we go from here, there is nothing left for us now. We must re-group and start anew, it is going to be a long drawn out process, but it is a process that needs to begin soon. But I do know one thing, and that is that we do not have to rally around Juan McCain.
I understand the sentiment out there among conservatives that Juan McCain would be better than any of the Democrats, and I disagree whole-heartedly. Juan McCain was considering abandoning the Republican party and now he is our, or closer to the truth, the Republican party’s nominee? He will never be MY nominee.
It sickens me that all of the top Republicans, the same Republicans who Juan McCain shit on for the last eight years are now coming home to roost for the front-runner. It sickens me because they choose to ignore what this man has done to obstruct the conservative agenda all these years. Now Republican leaders are beginning to tell us we need to rally around “our” nominee, we need to step in line for the good of the party. FUCK THE PARTY. Juan McCain has said “fuck the party” all these years and now we are just supposed to accept him? BULLSHIT!
Juan McCain has ignored us for the last eight years, and he has ignored us during this primary season. He has gone after moderate and liberal votes by becoming more like moderates and liberals. That is the opposite of what Ronald Reagan did, Reagan managed to convince Democrats to come over to our side, he did not become like them. Now we hear McCain say that it is time for conservatives to “calm down” and come back to him? Hey Juan, we didn’t leave you so we can’t come back to you. You left us, now you want us to follow you? No way!
Juan McCain has taken conservatives for granted during this election. He has decided that in order for him to win he needs to gain the support of moderates and independents. He has always just assumed that once the nomination was secured the conservatives would naturally come back to him because they had no other choice. I find this to be arrogant, and presumptuous. We do have a choice, we can stand on principles and not vote for McCain. We may lose this election in the short term, but by not selling out our principles we may win in the long haul.
It is time for conservatives to unite and begin a grassroots revolution. I don’t know how it will begin or if it will succeed, but it must begin and it must begin soon.
I will not “calm down” just because McCain tells me to. I will not just step in line because power hungry Republicans tell me to. This is not about Democrat or Republican, this is about liberal versus conservative and I will not abandon my ideals because Juan McCain or any other Republican tells me to.
I just don’t know where to go from here, but I know where I won’t go.
A top aide to Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick, was arrested for having sex with a fifteen year old boy in a sauna in Florida. This should not come as a surprise that the governor of Massachusetts would hang with this type of person, after all he made his living defending and actually coming to the aide of this kind of scumbag.
From one of my previous posts on Massachusetts esteemed governor I give you this to show the type of human being that Deval Patrick is sympathetic to:
When I look into his past I see a man who is very soft on crime. I see a man who is compassionate to violent criminals. He worked under the Clinton administration, there are the Clinton’s again, it’s just a coincidence though, it always is with the Clinton’s, as assistant attorney general.
Patrick’s representation of Carl Ray Songer, who was convicted of the 1973 killing of a Florida highway patrolman. In the 1980s, while working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Patrick successfully argued that Songer had been denied opportunity to present details about his background and upbringing before a jury awarded him a death sentence.
Patrick won a stay of execution for an admitted cop killer hours before he was to be executed because the jury wasn’t allowed to hear about his troubled childhood. Was this also a failure to understand and love a cop killer?
Then there is the case about Benjamin LaGuer. LaGuer tied up with telephone cords and beat and raped his 57 year old neighbor for over eight hours. He left her thinking she was dead. She wasn’t, she identified him as the attacker having known him as her neighbor. He has maintained his innocence and said a DNA test would prove it. What role does Patrick play in this?
Patrick had petitioned the parole board in 1998 and 2000 for LaGuer’s freedom and had contributed financially to the DNA testing. In his letters to the parole board Patrick characterized LaGuer as “thoughtful and eloquent.”
LaGuer is thoughtful and eloquent, wonderful. Ask his neighbor how thoughtful he is. Patrick helped pay for the DNA test, which proved LaGuer’s guilt.
Now I give you one last piece of his background and it goes back to the Clinton’s again. This time we are talking about the government attacking and killing a mother while she is holding her infant baby. That’s right, Ruby Ridge.
As the Justice Department’s chief civil rights prosecutor, Deval Patrick made the controversial decision not to criminally prosecute an FBI sniper who shot and killed an unarmed woman as she held her infant daughter in her arms during a 1992 standoff in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.The incident, in which U.S. Marshall William F. Degan of Quincy and the wife and son of white separatist Randy Weaver were killed during an 11-day standoff, is cited by experts as the spark that started the anti-government militia movement that exploded after the standoff in Waco, Texas, less than a year later. In 1994, Patrick, the Democratic candidate for governor who was then assistant attorney general, concluded there was insufficient basis to prosecute FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi for shooting and killing 43-year-old Vicki Weaver. Horiuchi had testified that he opened fire on the woman’s husband and his friend, Kevin Harris, when he thought they were about to fire on an FBI helicopter.
If that isn’t enough to show you what type of man this moonbat is, I give you his words during last years speech on September 11th, a speech that was meant to remember the dead from that day:
Because among many other things, 9/11 was a failure of human understanding. It was mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States. But it was also about the failure of human beings to understand each other, and to learn to love each other. And it seems to me that that lesson and that warning is something that we must carry with us everyday
Yes, he basically said America failed to understand how the terrorists feel, that we need to learn to accept the terrorists and understand them better so they will leave us alone.
So I find it perfectly reasonable that Deval Patrick knew this man, who by the way cheated on his husband when he raped this boy, knew about this man’s proclivities and thought of them as a badge of honor. And judging by former Massachusetts congressman Gerry Studds, Deval Patrick is probably right:
1983 case of Rep. Gerry Studds, the former Democrat congressman of Massachusetts, when he was censured by the House for a sexual affair with a male teenage page. The Democratic Party did not pressure Studds to resign, and he served thirteen more years in liberal Massachusetts.
Studds served thirteen more terms after kidnapping a minor, taking him to Europe, getting him drunk, and then, well you can guess the rest.
Massachusetts voters were well aware that Deval Patrick was soft on crime, and they should have been aware that he was actually sympathetic towards criminals, and they voted for him anyway, it will come as no surprise to me to see this man back on Governor Patrick’s payroll just as soon as possible.
Read more about Governor Patricks aide being arrested here.
Healthy People are the Biggest Burden to the Health Care System
The funny thing about nanny state regulations, I guess I shouldn’t say funny, the thing about nanny state regulations is the fact that there is no end in sight to where the nanny staters will go next. We all know the chronological order with the latest victims being the overweight. I recently wrote a post about Mississippi lawmakers who are proposing a ban on overweight people in restaurants. Naturally, this would be for their own good, that’s what it is always about with the nanny staters. Protecting people from their unhealthy habits and unsafe actions is what these people are all about.
One of the reasons we often here when the nanny staters begin their bigoted, obesophobic, hate filled assault on the rights of the overweight is that besides being unhealthy the overweight become a burden on the healthcare system. We now here politicians rant that we need a healthcare system that focuses on preventative care to help keep the cost of healthcare down. The same is said of the smokers.
Suddenly though comes this study, and it just shows us how these people will just run themselves into circles if you let them outside to play for too long.
There are a lot of good reasons for people to lose weight and stop smoking — but saving money on lifetime health care costs isn’t one of them, according to a study out of the Netherlands.
The researchers found that healthy people cost governments more in the long run because they live years longer: an average of 4.5 years longer than people who are obese, and seven years longer than smokers.
Economist Pieter van Baal, who led the study for the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, talks with Melissa Block about the counter-intuitive idea that a healthy lifestyle costs more in terms of health care.
Van Baal’s study, “Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure,” was published Monday in the online journal Public Library of Science-Medicine.
Now we find out that healthy people cause more of a burden on the healthcare system than do smokers and overweight people. Where do we go from here? People who do not smoke and who are in proper shape are now living too long and causing too much of a burden on the healthcare system.
As I wrote in the first sentence, you can never tell where the next nanny state attack will be aimed next. Could they possible go after the healthy for their own good? Or at least “the common good”? Think about it, healthy people are selfishly living too long, thereby using healthcare money that would be better spent on the less fortunate overweight and smoking people.
This is just hyperbole, but I use it to illustrate how any good news comes with a negative side with these people. The fact that you can live a longer, healthier life should be good news but they can not let it go at that. They have to step in and tell us how even living longer has drastic negative consequences. There is always a “yeah, but” with these people. Their negativity is what really pisses me off.
On a side note, did we really need this study to tell us that healthy people live longer than unhealthy people?
Super Tuesday? Yeah Right!
Last night turned out to be a huge disappointment. It is hard to figure out how I could be so disappointed because I had lowered my expectations so much that I thought I could accept this defeat of conservatism in the Republican party with ease. Not so. I am having trouble finding the words so I give you lyrics from a song called ” I Know It’s Over” by The Smiths:
I know it’s over
Still I cling
I don’t know where else I can go
The worst part about this whole thing is all of the rumors that Mike Hickabee has worked out a backroom deal to be the pick of Juan McCain for vice president. To be clear, I have no intention of voting for McCain if he is the Republican nominee, but any chance that I might change my mind goes out the window with Huckabee as a running mate.
In my opinion a Juan McCain/Mike Huckabee ticket is no better than a Hillary/Obama or Obama/Hillary ticket and I refuse to give either a vote. There is no real difference between either ticket and I will not be held responsible for the disaster of the next four years.
I was originally of the position that at least McCain would be better on national security, but that is not really true. He has opposed waterboarding and agrees with granting GITMO detainees the rights of American citizens, so throw that issue out also.
Where will McCain be better than Hillary or Obama?
Taxes-NO.
Immigration-NO.
Judges-NO
National security-NO
Spending- Probably, whoopdy-freakin-do! I found the one issue. Is this enough for me to cast a vote for him. NO!
The prospect of McCain, who continually assures us he will work with Democrats (read: give in to them), or Hillary or Obama elected president with an almost certain large majority in the house and senate is probably the scariest scenario that could have been painted, and now it is closer to reality.
Welcome to the United Socialists of America.
Middle School Bans Farting
Well, it’s super Tuesday and as I fear it will be a horrible day for conservatism as McCain and Huckabee seem to be doing well so I thought I would lighten up the mood a little bit. And to do this I give you this story.
With all the nanny state regulations and laws being created I thought I would share the story of a school which is banning a natural body function, farting.
“Strange, but true, thanks to a bunch of 8th grade boys, intentional farting has been banned from CRMS,” the newsletter said. “It started out as a funny joke and eventually turned into a game. This is the first rule at CRMS that prevents the use of natural bodily functions. The penalty for intentional farting is a detention, so keep it to yourself!”
Intentional farting? So if your walking down the hall and you are trying to hold it in and it slips out, that’s okay, but if you feel the need to fart and you don’t try to hold it in, detention.
Rush Limbaugh Endorses Mitt Romney
Rush Limbaugh on his website today has endorsed Mitt Romney. This comes as no surprise because of his contempt for both McCain and Huckabee.
Here is the statement as reported by cnsnews.com:
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Tuesday, reversing his previous statement that he believed none of the GOP presidential contenders have all three legs of the conservative stool. In clarifying his statement, Limbaugh said he should have said “that at the outset of our campaign, there wasn’t one who had all three legs.” Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson did, “but he was never really a factor,” he said. “I think now, based on the way the campaign has shaken out, that there probably is a candidate on our side who does embody all three legs of the conservative stool, and that’s Romney,” Limbaugh said in a transcript on his Web site Tuesday. “The three stools or the three legs of the stool are national security/foreign policy, the social conservatives, and the fiscal conservatives. The social conservatives are the cultural people. The fiscal conservatives are the economic crowd: low taxes, smaller government, get out of the way,” he added.
Let’s just hope it isn’t too little too late. I think it is.
Video: Exposing John McCain
Remember this super Tuesday voters when you go to the polls:
Hat Tip: Conservatism With Heart
Cross posted on Vindication Media
Hillary Clinton Will Garnish Wages to Pay for Health Care
Cross posted on Grizzly Groundswell
Does everyone remember Hillary care? Of course we all do. Hillary care was nothing more than socialized medicine. Hillary failed miserably on healthcare when she was the first lady once people realized the control government was going to have over healthcare and the choices of the individual. Hillary, and all the other candidates have retooled their efforts to bring socialism to healthcare. Gone is the term “socialized medicine“, and in is the term “universal healthcare”.
But make no mistake, there is no difference between the ideas of yesterday and the plans being sought after today, only the name has changed. Hillary Clinton is prepared to take your money away from you for the common good.
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.
she said: “I think there are a number of mechanisms” that are possible, including “going after people’s wages, automatic enrollment.”
Going after people’s wages!? This is what she is all about. There will be nothing voluntary about this policy, if you make it she will take it. She wants your money and she will get your money. The old saying is “if you think healthcare is expensive now, wait until it is free.”, I don’t think I have ever heard a more true statement.
Clinton said such measures would apply only to workers who can afford health coverage but refuse to buy it.
This garnishing of wages is unfathomable to me. Can you imagine this. People who CHOOSE not to carry insurance but can afford it will be told by Queen Hillary that they have to purchase something they don’t want. Who the fuck does she think she is?
People in a free society are supposed to be free to make their own personal choices, for better or worse. It is not up to leadership to step in and make the choices for the people on personal issues because leadership feels they know what is best. People should be held accountable for their own actions and choices, it is not up to the government to make those choices for us.
We are constantly be told that the middle class is being squeezed, and that the middle class has been forgotten. We are told that the middle class will soon be non-existent. Don’t you fret middle class, Hillary will remember you, and you will wish she didn’t by the time she is done with you. Somehow taking more of our money involuntarily is going to help us. Somehow having less of the money we earned is good for us.
Hillary is going to force Americans do do what SHE thinks is right because we are the great unwashed and she is the enlightened and who are we to decide for ourselves what we should and shouldn’t buy?
If that means garnishing wages, who are we to argue? She is only doing what is best for us. Someday maybe we will be smart enough to understand. But until then, bend over, here comes Queen Hillary.
Read the source article here.
