Lawmakers who don’t listen

Here’s a detail everyone should know: Regardless of your wishes as a voter in New Hampshire, a big majority of Republicans won’t listen to you. They are beholden to multiple national libertarian, right-wing organizations, including Young Americans for Liberty (a Texas-based, billionaire-funded group that contributed to Republican campaigns last year), the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and the Liberty Alliance (the political arm of the Free State Project). Their goal is to defund all public services including public health, schools, and environmental protection.

See below for the most up-to-date list of Republican legislators from Grafton and Sullivan Counties who have received funding or endorsement from YAL or the Liberty Alliance.

Senate 1, David Rochefort; Senate 3, Mark McConkey; Senate 11, Tim McGough; Senate 16, Keith Murphy; Senate 18, Victoria Sullivan; Grafton 11, Lex Berezhny; Grafton 18, Donald McFarlane; Sullivan 3, Walter Spilsbury; Sullivan 4, Judy Aron; Sullivan 8, Michael Aron.

Non-listening House Republicans are in all other counties including Belknap (5), Carroll (1), Cheshire (3), Coos (3), Hillsborough (28), Merrimack (12), Rockingham (19), and Strafford (11).

Some Republicans don’t attend committee meetings to discuss bills because they have already been told how to vote by their out-of-state libertarian power centers.

House Bill 115 seeks to make the education voucher program, which supplies taxpayer money for families to use for homeschooling, private or religious schools, available to any family even if they’re wealthy. During a January public hearing on HB115 the online voting was 4 to 1 in opposition. The Republican House majority voted to pass it anyway.

House Bill 524 seeks to abolish the New Hampshire Vaccine Association, a nonprofit the Legislature established more than 20 years ago to provide discounted childhood vaccines. The online voting had 3,552 opposed and 193 supporting. The Republican House majority passed it anyway.

Some elected Republicans are not beholden to outsiders. Ask your representatives who they’re listening to. The answer should be you.

Leslie S. MacGregor

Grantham

Donald the menace

The president of the United States is a menace to our Constitution, to the world and to the other two branches of goverment. Has that ever happened before?

On inauguration day he put his hand on a Bible and swore to defend the Constitution. That ritual meant nothing to him. He does whatever he wants, ignoring our nation’s rules limiting presidential power. I often see a Trump banner hanging next to an American flag. A torn copy of the Constitution would be a more fitting symbol for a true Trump worshipper.

He is turning our country into an extension of his own persona; a narcissistic nation prone to arrogance, belligerence and a callous disregard for harm done to others. He has openly threatened Canada and Greenland. He has discontinued the foreign aid programs that showed the world that America was a source of “good will toward men.” Now he’s behaving like Russia’s Putin. Will future historians put him in the same category as Stalin and Hitler ? It could happen.

The Republicans in control of Congress seem spineless in their toleration of his abuse of power. The Supreme Court is stacked with judges appointed during Trump’s first term. Both houses of Congress and the majority on the Supreme Court seem in full compliance with Trump’s value system of loyalty to him taking precedence over competence, compassion and ethical principles.

The president is a menace on multiple levels. Why did so many of my fellow citizens let this happen?

E.J. Tretter

Lebanon