Also on today’s menu at the News Café:
NH Legislature Overrides Some of Governor’s Vetoes
Federal Debt Under Trump Now Exceeds $40 Trillion
Newfound Memorial High School’s Class of 1971 will hold its 55th class reunion at Timberloch Lodge in Bridgewater on Saturday, September 19, at 3 p.m.
This is the class that (with notable help from the classes of ’72 and ’73) launched The Lead Balloon, an irreverent, student-run school newspaper at the high school (the building now known as Newfound Memorial Middle School, after the school district built Newfound Regional High School in Bristol to accommodate the growing school population at the time). In a sense, The News Café is a continuation of that newspaper with a little less irreverence but at least as much skepticism about what is going on in the world. (Yes, I was an editor of The Lead Balloon.)
Organized by classmates Candace Chase Skurnik, Bonnie Masi, and Dan Clark, the reunion will give everyone a chance to catch up with what other (surviving) classmates have been doing. They are asking for a $50 per person donation to cover “food, wine, beer and music” and are asking for a head count by September 12 so they can order the proper amount of food. “You do not have to send money now, just bring it to the event.”
Discussion: Note that another classmate, Jack Weir, is the proprietor of Timberloch, and has welcomed multi-class reunions in the past, so we can be confident of having a good time.
NH Legislature Overrides Some of Governor’s Vetoes
New Hampshire House and Senate members overrode seven vetoes Governor Kelly Ayotte had made, including increases in state park entrance fees and turnpike tolls and an exemption to allow convicted felons to seek a retrial if evidence emerges of their innocence.
Effective December 1, House Bill 2026 increases highway tolls except for those with New Hampshire E-Z Pass Transponders, which will be offered free of charge for 210 days after enactment of the new law. It also provides for periodic toll adjustments to meet projected inflation rates to support the state’s 10-Year Highway Plan, which now includes providing improved sight distance and bicycle and pedestrian access on US 3 in Plymouth, widening Interstate 93 in Bow and Concord, and an overhaul of exits 6 and 7 on Interstate 293 in Manchester.
House Bill 1102 allows the New Hampshire Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to set rates for campsite reservations and entry fees, requiring non-New Hampshire residents to pay at least twice as much as in-state residents.
In vetoing House Bill 1422, Ayotte wrote that she “understand[s] the need to pursue and deliver justice,” but allowing convicts to seek retrials based on new evidence would “create a novel approach” that she said was unnecessary. Representative Bob Lynn argued for an override of the veto, saying, “Obviously here we’re not in the business here of letting innocent people stay in jail, but the way the law stands right now, if the newly discovered evidence occurred beyond three years, you have that potential, and there’s no constitutional violation; you have the potential of saying, ‘too bad.’”
Discussion: The NH Legislature made the right decisions in overriding the vetoes. While it is wrong to penalize out-of-staters with the new toll rates, increases are necessary to maintain the highways; and ignoring evidence that could leave an innocent person in prison is certainly wrong.
Federal Debt Under Trump Now Exceeds $40 Trillion
Just five months after the federal debt exceeded $39 trillion, the US Treasury reported on August 19 that the debt had reached $40 trillion, now outstripping revenue by more than $2 trillion a year. The government is spending more than a trillion dollars a year on interest alone, with interest costs in the first 10 months of this fiscal year being 15 percent higher than they were in the same period a year ago. That debt now is the government’s second-largest expense after repaying the Social Security Trust Fund that Congress has raided for several decades.
The situation has led to a 19-year high on the yield for 30-year Treasury bonds, which raises borrowing costs for everyone else, since mortgage rates and other interest rates tend to follow. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage approached 6.7 percent last week, according to Freddie Mac.
President Donald Trump promised to eliminate the national debt by the end of his second term, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been forced to acknowledge that it is heading in the wrong direction. He blamed the war in Iran, tariff refunds ordered by the NH Supreme Court, and the tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Acr.
Discussion: The Trump administration has been disastrous in many ways, and now Congress is considering reducing the Social Security benefits that Americans have paid into for decades, instead of removing the payroll tax cap and increasing the tax rate to make up for a smaller population paying into the fund.
Café Chatter
On TACO: Graham. Sheesh.
— Candace Skurnik