Back from Orlando, and tan, rested and ready. OK maybe not that tan or rested, but certainly ready — an all new Ed Mosca Show, including:
By Rep. Steve Vaillancourt:
Exactly one year from the day that the New Hampshire House voted 295-72 to kill a gambling bill, orange shirts were out in force in Reps Hall as senators lined up to support a very similar bill, sponsored by–you can guess it–Manchester’s Lou D’Allesandro. The crowd was so large that senators moved the hearing from room 100 to the more spacious digs upstairs, and orange was the color du jour.
Who paid for the orange shirts? Here’s a hint. Emblazoned on them in black lettering were the words “Jobs Now” and then in bigger and bolder black lettering “Expand Gambling” and then in the biggest and boldest of black lettering “NOW”.
My guess is that all these people didn’t go out and buy the shirts, but rather that they were provided by the same people who’ve spent tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to get slots and other gambling games at New Hampshire tracks, in the North Country, and now at a special Hudson emporium.
It was the Full Monty before the New Hampshire Senate for a full five hours, and by the time the dog and pony show was over, even long-time gambling opponents admitted that the Senate has the votes to pass this “economic development” bill. That’s the mantra Senator Slots and his colleagues, desperate for an influx of money to state coffers, have latched on to this time around.
Along with D’Allesandro, six other senators co-sponsored the bill (Gallus, Downing, Lasky, Gilmour, Sgambati, and DeVries) and Londonderry Senator Sharon Carson, an opponent of gambling in the past, testified in favor of the bill. Yes, the Hudson emporium is in her Senate district.
Last year, D’Allesandro never joined forces with those advocating a full-fledged casino in Hudson. He held out for slots only at the existing tracks and in the North Country, but this year, realizing he needed more support certainly in the House if not the Senate, he’s included the Hudson emporium in his bill.
It now seems to be a question not of if, but of when (crossover day when all bills must move from one body to the other is March 25), this bill will pass the Senate and come on over to the House Local and Regulated Revenues Committee which considered a very similar bill last year, the one sponsored by current gubernatorial candidate Frank Emiro. Yes, that would be House Bill 593, the one that failed by that 223 vote margin on March 2, 2009.
Divide 223 by two, and all other things being equal, about 113 House members would have to change their positions for the bill to pass this year. Newport Republican Bev Rodeschin became the first to take the plunge. Buying the economic development argument, she switched from anti to pro gambling.
Now, the forces in orange shirts, those who would let New Hampshire keep not 49 percent of revenues but only 39 percent this time around, those forces need merely to change the minds of another 112 or so Representatives.
Could it happen?
Of course, anything is possible.
Is it likely to happen?
Certainly not unless John Lynch sticks his finger in the air and decides that he’ll be hurt more by cutting $140 million in state spending than by jumping aboard the gambling express.
Rep. Jim Craig, who in exchange for supporting the governor’s budget last spring was appointed to the gambling study commission, told the Senate today that the panel should have its report by the end of May, but of course, if the governor wants the report earlier, what do you wanna bet, he’ll get it.
Without Lynch’s support, with both House Democratic and Republican leadership traditionally against expanded gambling, it has about as much chance to pass the House as it does to fail in the Senate, that is to say none.
This bill is laden with dedicated funds, something House leaders from both parties have opposed in the past. Senator Sgambati offered an amendment for yet another dedicated fund this morning. Sgambati, a former high ranking employee in the health and human services department, wants the first $50 million generated from the bill (most likely from Las Vegas-based Millenium, chief orchestrator of the Fully Monty) to go to…
Why don’t you take a guess…?
You got it; she wants the first $5o million to go to the Health and Human Services Department.
Your humble correspondent, a long-time supporter of gambling albeit not a gambling plan which stretches the intent of the Constitution by providing a monopoly to certain out of state interests, kids you not.
As anti gambling opponents, including the State Attorney General who again testified against the plan today, have long suggested…there’s so much money behind these plans that our entire political process could be corrupted…
Or maybe it already has been.
since the special election for State Senate District 16. I will not be able to tape a new MCAM show this week, so last week’s show, which has my analysis of the election will re-run.
Anybody who has bothered to look into Jeffrey Goley’s voting record knows that on fiscal issues he is to the left of Fidel Castro and Karl Marx. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. For ten years, Goley has been pushing a radical hard-left education agenda.
Here are a few blasts from the past that young Jeffrey isn’t exactly touting these days:
Goley voted that parents should have no rights to decide what public schools their children attend. HB 701 (4/14/99); HB 633 (5/20/99).
Goley also voted to allow the politicians in Concord to take over local school districts. HB 1521 (3/9/00); SB 219 (5/4/00).
It is truly frightening that such a hard-left ideologue could be the next State Senator for District 16.
A few years ago, it was front page news in the Concord Monitor when a Republican State Representative had some motor vehicle violation issues. On February 11th, the Concord Monitor enthusiastically endorsed Democrat State Representative Jeff Goley for State Senate. The endorsement did not contain even a mention of Mr. Goley’s motor vehicle violation issues. Reproduced below is part of an article from the October 9, 2002 Manchester Union Leader regarding Mr. Goley’s issues:
City Hall:
Rep. Goley hopes DWI
won’t cost him election
By MARK HAYWARD and MICHAEL COUSINEAU
Union Leader Staff
MANCHESTER state Rep. Jeff Goley has lost his license for 90 days and has paid a $420 fine for a drunken driving conviction.
Goley, a Democrat, said this is the first time he has been charged with DWI. He said he does not have a drinking problem and still drinks on occasion.
“It was poor judgment on my part,” said Goley, 35, who is in his second term. “I would hope voters look at the issues I’ve fought for and my voting record.
“I would hope one mistake shouldn’t sway their decision on the ability of me to do my job.”
Goley represents Ward 1 and is running for election in House District 49, the district formed by the redistricting merger of Wards 1 and 12.
New Hampshire State Police pulled him over on Interstate 93 in Canterbury April 15. He was driving a 1991 Oldsmobile that belongs to him, but his legislative plates were on another car, he said.
He said no one else was in the car.
Goley said the suspension has not affected his legislative duties. The suspension was effective July 26 and will be completed by the end of this month. Legislative business slows down in the summer and fall of election years.
Goley, a Manchester firefighter, is unable to drive a fire truck during the suspension, he said.
HERE IS THE LINK, if you want to see it on-line. What a double standard!
The Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers really takes Goley to task for the unbelievable whoppers he has been telling on the campaign trail:
On tonight’s and Sunday’s Ed Mosca Show — Jeff Goley and DWI. How Jeff Goley’s stupid and reckless action put New Hampshire motorists in grave danger. The story that Ray Buckley doesn’t want anyone to know.
February 11, 2010
To the Union Leader
To The Editor:
Your reporter Tom Fahey, who years ago physically assaulted me in the State House (it’s actually on video and is out there on the web somewhere) is wrong when he reports that I refused to discuss my campaign to defend free speech in the New Hampshire House with the Union Leader.
I did no such thing. In fact, I have been writing about this abuse of power by Speaker Terie Norelli and Local and Regulated Revenues Committee Chair Mary Beth Walz for the past two weeks. Publisher Joe W. McQuaid and editorial page director Drew Cline are among the first to get everything I write or say about it, and it’s been posted on redhampshire. I simply refuse to talk with someone who has a history of assault and who never apologized for it (he actually drew blood; and the only reason I didn’t press charges at the time is that I’m such a nice person). The fact that he approached me as I was leaving the State House yesterday with the sarcastic jibe,”Hey, Senator” is further evidence of his malignant intent.
Maybe it’s time Union Leader hires a reporter who doesn’t assault elected officials and then go out of his way to malign them at every opportunity.
Should you choose to run the whole truth behind the crusade to force Speaker Norelli to stop censoring people (totally new ground for a New Hampshire Speaker), you are welcome to print this as an op-ed piece, but then while I’ve had numerous op-ed pieces printed in papers throughout the state in recent years, Mssrs. McQauid and Cline have ignored everything I’ve written for citizens of my own home city. (While censorship is never acceptable from a House Speaker, it’s something we’ve sadly come to expect from your newspaper).
I didn’t enter into this crusade to defend basic liberties for my own benefit. The bill in question wasn’t mine but rather was that of a former Speaker, the current Republican leader, a Salem Rep elected in a 40,000 person district, and a State Senator who served two terms in the United State Congress). I stepped forward not only for them and the people who elected them but also for every member of any minority ever denied a voice, and I might add for Democrats who are sure to attain minority status (and thus risk being censored) next year. Rest assured, I will be just as passionate in defending their rights should a Republican Speaker be unwise enough to attempt to do what Norelli and Walz did.
Newspaper malice is often represented by the pictures used. That certainly is the case with the photo you chose to use of me on page one. It was obviously a file photo, sitting around for use when you wished to make me look bad. How do I know? Because I wasn’t wearing a white tie yesterday; in honor of Speaker Norelli’s tactics, I was wearing a specially purchased Mickey Mouse tie. My portrait is available on the House web site, but then that wouldn’t suit your malignant purposes.
Seldom have so many trees given their lives for such an inside baseball story, especially one so ineptly reported. The tactic of pulling things from consent calendar was something I learned 15 years ago at the feet of former leaders, not Republicans but Democrat masters Rick Trombley and Ray Buckley, so let’s not hear of Democratic complaints. I simply stored it in the back of my head to employ when an injustice was so great that the only option was to “go all in” in protest.
You won’t get away with blaming me for delaying the lyme vote. That could have been special ordered to the start of the calendar at any time. In fact, bill proponent Claudia Chase told me the reason such an attempt was not made is that since it involved an was an attempt to overturn a committee, she needed all the support she could get and didn’t want to alienate Democratic leadership by moving it up (more inside baseball). A good reporter would have known that, but Fahey is probably the most incompetent scribe ever to draw breath in the Don Tibbetts press room (he’s no Norma Love–Love that Norma!).
It was when I pointed out on the House floor that this all could have been settled at 10 a.m.that Democrats booed (the truth hurts!), not as your caption states, when I declared victory.
In fact, it was a victory for people who cherish free speech everywhere. After visiting Bebelplatz for a re-enactment of Josef Goebbels presiding over the burning of 2500 books in Berlin on May 20, 1933, I vowed never idly sit by while freedom of thought is trampled on. I will fight for free speech to my last breath, despite the slings and errors from a thug reporter like Fahey.
The German phrase I quoted on the House floor (from German philosopher Heinrich Heine) translates as, “Where books are burned, so too shall people burn.” Indeed, I have visited numerous sites in and around Berlin where people were literally burned. Another German phrase should serve as a cautionary tale for our times, “Nie Wieder!” Never again should decent people sit back and watch freedoms be trampled.
The Norellis, Faheys, would be petty despots, and newspaper thugs of the world may not heed the caution, but your readers are smart enough to. The good people of New Hampshire are smart enough to.
Sincerely,
Rep. Steve Vaillancourt
The traditional media, in my opinion, has done a woeful job covering the special election for State Senate District 16. This is very troubling because there is one candidate who is actively covering up his record. Fortunately, we no longer have to depend on the traditional media for information. The information below was taken from the vote tabulation prepared by the Office of the House Clerk.
The date was April 1, 1999. The bill number was HB 84. The bill would have established a minimum mandatory prison term for a third conviction for DWI. Representative Jeff Goley voted NO.
Guess what’s not on the Jeff Goley for State Senate website. If you said even a mention of where he stands on the issues or his voting record, you guessed right.
Instead, all there is the usual platitudes about helping “working families” and “reducing health care costs,” lies all.
But who can blame young Jeffrey’s handlers. For ten long years, young Jeffrey has been a one-man tax-and-spend machine who is the first to say “how high” whenever Ray Buckley or some other political or union boss tells him to jump.