No Confidence In Chief
Franklin Police Patrolman’s Association Also Names Lieutenants, City Manager
Also on today’s menu:
Republican House Majority Now 201-199
Easing Electricity Rate Spikes
Escalating Rhetoric, Perhaps More
The 10-member Franklin Police Patrolman’s Association issued a statement of no confidence against Police Chief David Goldstein, saying his “absentee leadership has led to retaliatory and unjust treatment of union members.”
“Preferential treatment and cronyism run amok under [Goldstein’s] supervision,” the statement said. “A member who speaks out or attempts to acknowledge such is ostracized either directly by Chief Goldstein and or his subordinate leaders.”
InDepthNH.org, which published the news, noted that the no-confidence vote also names lieutenants Daniel Poirier and Ralph Hale Jr., along with City Manager Judie Milner, but none of them immediately responded to requests for comment.
Republican House Majority Now 201-199
Democrat Chuck Grassie defeated Republican David Walker, 568-451, in a special election in Rochester’s Ward 4 for the Strafford District 8 seat on the New Hampshire House of Representatives.
Last November’s elections gave New Hampshire Republicans a 201-198 majority in the House, with the District 8 seat still up for grabs. Walker beat Grassie by one vote, 971-970, in the general election, but a recount resulted in a tie. Now, with Grassie’s win, the Republicans have only a two-seat majority.
Prior to the election, Grassie and Walker made it clear that the result of the special election would not damage their long-standing friendship. Walker had once served as Rochester mayor, and both had served on the Rochester City Council.
Easing Electricity Rate Spikes
Representative Rebecca McWilliams (D-Concord) has introduced House Bill 159 which would establish a five-year rolling average to recalculate the default electric service rate for electric utility customers, based on retail rates for the New England region as posted by grid operator ISO-New England. The bill’s aim is to reduce the wild fluctuations in energy costs due to the default electric service rate, which changes twice per year to reflect how much a utility spends to procure energy amidst changing market forces. McWilliams hopes the bill will lead to conversations about “changing the way that we address pricing and the way the spikes impact individuals and businesses here in the state.”
State Energy Program Manager Griffin Roberge opposed the bill as written because nuances in the language could be “legally problematic,” but he said that the Department of Energy is willing to take part in a conversation.
Michael Licata, director of government affairs at Eversource, said the utility company “certainly has thoughts and ideas” about working toward more price stability, noting the Public Utilities Commission already is looking into the matter.
Escalating Rhetoric, Perhaps More
Banners in the streets ominously proclaim “Russia has no border.” President Vladimir Putin announces that Russia has suspended participation in discussions about a new Strategic Arms Treaty. The Russian leader issues a decree on “putting new ground-based strategic complexes on combat standby duty” and says Russia is ready to resume nuclear weapons testing. “Of course, we will not do it first,” Putin said, “but if the U.S. conducts tests, we will do it as well.”
Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said, “This is more about nuclear blackmail, but it is extremely dangerous because we cannot predict how Putin will behave in the future and what is in his mind.”
Oleg Sheyn in Russian Dissent writes, “Democratic control over state power and the creation of a multi-party system after the fashion of ‘liberal democracies’ meant there was at least the possibility of redistribution from the rich to the poor. Therefore, not even a year had passed after the collapse of the USSR when democracy began to be curtailed.”
The country turned out to be too complicated for those who were placed in control of it. Complex systems are built on the principle of developed and independent institutions (the executive, the parliament, courts, parties, trade unions, the media, etc), delegation of authority, civic engagement, and regular renewal of the seat of power. Decisions in such systems are made slowly, but errors are minimized. Here it is necessary to convince, and is impossible to force….
But much easier than this is direct, vertical control. Without the need to convince anyone, you can start from scratch; in other words, without competent preparation or any need to elaborate a solution. But while this method is simpler, it is far less effective. The number of errors and the cost of correcting them increase sharply. Not to mention the fact that most incoming criticisms generally remain unanswered, and are put off for an endless “later” — if fewer people have any real power, then fewer issues will be meaningfully contested.
It cannot be said that the vertical power has accomplished nothing, but the lion’s share of the funds under its control went into mega-projects, such as the Sochi Olympics, or the construction of pipelines bypassing Ukraine and snaking into China, built under conditions that foreclosed any possibility of payback.
Hence Putin’s problem in initiating a war in Ukraine. For Russians, Sheyn says, “This is a dead end. The slide down will be long and by no means bloodless. War will come here too; although it will not necessarily be accompanied by bombing and shelling, but will certainly manifest itself in the form of a long-term decline in living standards, accelerated extinction of the population, fragmentation of the system of unified state administration, and general chaos.”
Café Chatter
On Book-Banning Bill: Oh my goodness. Please, please, don’t let this book banning infect New Hampshire. Believe me, you and New Hampshire have no idea how disturbing this bill can be. Here in Florida, because of a similar bill (NH is probably based on it, like other states) it has caused all books to be taken out of school classrooms and school libraries due to no one having a true idea as to what obscene might be. In the eyes of the beholder. Florida does not have an academic group reviewing these books. I can guarantee it will not stop with this. Mom’s for Liberty are an extreme right wing group that is influencing states all across the country. Especially states with Republican governors. Like yours. I ask everyone in NH to call your representatives to defeat this bill. The bill sponsors do a good job scaring parents. Here it has continued to include books like The Kite Runner, Slaughter House Five, Thirteen Reasons Why, Charlottes Web, also, biography of Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, and others. Heaven forbid someone might be queer. Please, please call your representatives.
— Candace Skurnik
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