Also on today’s menu:
Supreme Court To Take Up Trump’s Ineligibility To Serve
Marianne Williamson Drops Out Of Democratic Race
District 4 Executive Councilor Ted Gatsas expressed what many have concluded about Commissioner Charlie Arlinghaus of the New Hampshire Department of Administrative Services: His lack of due diligence in recommending a developer with a history of unfinished projects and legal challenges to undertake the complicated and expensive task of redeveloping the state-owned property formerly operated as the Laconia State School is proof that Arlinghaus has the wrong job.
“New Hampshire will be in good hands with Charlie Arlinghaus leading the Department of Administrative Services,” Governor Chris Sununu said when he nominated him for the position in 2017. Sununu later seized control of the Laconia State School property from the legislatively established Lakeshore Redevelopment Planning Commission which had been charged with creating a comprehensive mixed-use development that would include housing. Led by George Bald, the planning commission was taking a measured approach similar to the planning process for the former Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth. That process was not fast enough for Sununu, and he placed Arlinghaus in charge.
The Executive Council approved Arlinghaus’ recommendation to sell the 220-acre property to Legacy at Laconia for $21.5 million in December 2022, with a closing originally planned for September 2023. The closing was pushed back to November, then December, then set for January 15. When the Executive Council convened on January 31, Adam Drapcho reports, no papers had been signed, and Gatsas expressed frustration that the buyer could still walk away from the project.
Sununu asked Arlinghaus, “Do you feel confident that we’re going to get to a closing?” Arlinghaus said he was. Gatsas pointed out, “He’s said that to the council for the last five months.”
Discussion: The State School property was in good hands with the Lakeshore Redevelopment Planning Commission, which was working through the challenges of a site with hazardous materials and buildings the state had failed to properly maintain. Bald’s proven track record should have been enough, but Sununu wanted to assert himself and provide a high-profile job to his crony. Arlinghaus had served as president of the Josiah Bartlett Center before becoming Sununu’s budget director, and he probably was good at those tasks. However, Administrative Services takes much more than budget expertise, and Arlinghaus has failed miserably at the job. City officials are saying progress is being made, but I think we can expect more delays until the developer finally pulls out or, even worse, fails to create a development that makes best use of the property.
Supreme Court To Take Up Trump’s Ineligibility To Serve
The US Supreme Court will take up the question of whether Colorado can keep Donald Trump off its ballot today on the grounds that the former president engaged in insurrection by promoting the march on the US Capitol that resulted in a riot as part of his efforts to invalidate the results of the 2020 election.
Historian Eric Foner drew attention to the insurrection clause in Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment in an article appearing in the Washington Post. That section of the US Constitution bans oath-breaking insurrectionists from holding office, and legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen provided a legal perspective on the need for disqualification in Trump’s case in subsequent article.
Timothy Snyder explains in Thinking About, “The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 were looking back at a dreadful rebellion. They knew that the horrors of the Civil War had begun as an insurrection, and that some of the insurrectionists (like Trump today) held federal office when they broke their oaths. In late 1860 and early 1861, before a shot had been fired, high officers of the federal government broke their oaths and took the side of the rebellion.
“Section 3 targeted a very specific group of people: not all insurrectionists, not all oath-breakers, but very precisely oath-breaking insurrectionists. There is wisdom in this precision, since Section 3 was forward-looking. Section 3 was meant as an emergency tool to be used to halt an oath-breaking insurrectionist before his actions led to a far worse conflict, or even the end of the republic. It catches us right where we are, and places the tool that we need in our hands.”
Discussion: The danger of a second Trump presidency is self-evident. While in office, he violated the Constitution by refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election. Since then, he has forced government officials to resign or face death threats, and has intimidated those still serving to do his bidding, such as holding off on immigration reform to keep it an issue he can exploit in his presidential run. He has verbally attacked election officials and court officers, resulting in them receiving death threats and harassment. He has admitted that he will go after political opponents if he regains a seat in the White House. He is an existential danger to the United States. If the Supreme Court is to uphold its duties, it must determine that Trump is ineligible to serve.
Marianne Williamson Drops Out Of Democratic Race
Self-help writer Marianne Williamson, who once served as Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual advisor, has suspended her bid for the Democratic nomination to the presidency, acknowledging that “the level of our failure is obvious to all.” She won just 4% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, while Dean Phillips won nearly 20% of the vote. And, of course, President Joe Biden Jr. received nearly 64% of New Hampshire’s vote, even though he shunned the state and supported efforts to deny Granite State Democrats any delegates to the national convention.
Williamson told supporters in her Substack that her campaign had not “been in vain”.
“We articulated deeper, more authentic truths than those regularly acknowledged by the political establishment. And I’m not only glad we did that; I’m proud of it. We spoke for those most ignored in America today and whose wounds are most in need of healing. I wish I could have reached them. I know we would have provided hope.”
Discussion: Marianne Williamson was not qualified to be president, but she should remain publicly active to promote the important ideas she brought to the table. Last February she expressed support for “a moral commitment to the tenets of liberty espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, a realization of the Democratic Party’s shift away from the party of President Franklin Roosevelt, and the systemic economic injustices endured by millions of Americans by the undue influence of corporate money on our political system.” Beyond that, she noted the deterioration of the health system, with the U.S. government spending far less than peer countries on preventive medicine and social welfare generally.