Are you tired of your property taxes rising? Are you tired of not having enough local resources to fund our schools? Then it is time for change in senator for District 8.
Sen. Ruth Ward, Senate Education chairperson, dismissed the findings of the School Funding Commission, a report that taxpayers paid $500,000 for. The Commission found that the current system is unfair to taxpayers and students alike. Sen. Ward also voted against Fiscal Disparity Aid; aid to the property-poorest towns when there was a state surplus this past biennial budget season. Her vote against the fiscal disparity aid cost the city of Claremont nearly $2 million dollars, and the towns of Newport and Charlestown nearly $600,000 each in badly needed revenue.
Sen. Ward also was a proponent of taking needed public school resources to fund vouchers for private, religious schools and home-schooling. This state budget item was overspent by nearly $8 million dollars in its first year leaving us, the taxpayers, to pick up the tab.
Enough is enough and our District 8 deserves real leadership and advocacy in Concord. Which is why we need to vote for Charlene Lovett. Charlene understands the complexity of fairly funding schools and has years of real world experience. She has spent most of her life working in different levels of government, as a Claremont School Board member, Claremont city councilor, Claremont’s mayor, and state representative. She has also served our country for 22 years as an Army Chief Warrant Officer 3, now retired. Charlene is fiscally conservative, yet knows how to work across party lines to get things done for the betterment of her community she is representing with a vision for the future. She supports working class families and believes a child’s educational resources should not be determined by their zip code.
We need Charlene Lovett in Concord to help restore economic prosperity and education funding fairness in District 8. She will work hard to represent and bring our voices down to Concord.
Guenter Hubert
Newport
A lawyer unfit to lead
When I learned that an attorney from Brookfield was running for the Vermont Senate’s Orange District seat, I took note because I have practiced law in Vermont since 1986 and never heard of him. I reviewed John Klar’s writings and concluded he should never be a state senator because his statements are not based on facts and he endorses extreme beliefs.
Some examples from his writings:
“(P)arents are choosing alternatives to public schools, which have deviated away from instructing children in core math and reading skills to focus on gender and race ‘theories’ …”
“Vermont’s legislature has enacted a number of unconstitutional laws and regulations that strip away longstanding protections of private property and liberty rights.”
“The inconvenient truth …. is that third-trimester abortions are commonplace…”
“The war on Christ and Christians is evident around us everywhere.”
None of these statements by Klar is true. Klar’s statements are not just false, they are designed to create fear and outrage.
“Vermont is now America’s Petri dish, incubating a new racist virus that enables opioids to be funneled from the ghettoes to the privileged backwoods redneck children.”
“Governor Scott is essentially advocating for forced busing of adults of color from around the country to Vermont, solely because Vermont is predominantly white.”
“I know the law — it is being violated. … The constitution is being jettisoned before our very eyes while dithering fools panic over a disease created and lied about by the thug government….”
“I will likely never get vaccinated with any COVID products … I know tyranny when I see it — not from studying science, but from studying law.”
Klar relies on his background as an attorney to bolster his rhetoric. Klar has never been licensed to practice law in Vermont. He is licensed in Connecticut, but gave up his practice in 1999 when he moved to Vermont. His status as an attorney does not make his opinions reliable. Klar says that “elected officials with law degrees must be held to high standards — people trust them not to lie about the law, let alone the facts.”
Klar fails his own test. Vote for Mark MacDonald.
Kerry DeWolfe
Corinth
GOP on reproductive health
Chris Sununu has every reason not to want to remind us of the Republican record on reproductive health. Until Roe was decided, the law in New Hampshire was that it was illegal to perform an abortion, even to save the life of the mother, until after quickening. That didn’t make much sense: it was generally believed that someone had got mixed up and written it wrong, adding the word until, or something.
Nevertheless, on the two occasions when the Legislature passed bills to make the law more reasonable, Republican governors vetoed them. The second time was in 1971. I asked a right-to-lifer how she justified a law like that. She said, “Well, They didn’t actually let you die.” While I didn’t know of anyone who actually died, I did know someone who told me that she had bled unconscious at home after two doctors had refused to see her. She lived close to the hospital and her life was saved, but she said the infection caused three weeks of the worst pain she had had in her life.
Going to a back alley abortionist is not the only way to get an infection. They sometimes happen to pregnant women and cause miscarriage. A 24-week abortion ban is reasonable, but the exception for the life of the mother only passed by three votes in the current General Court and Republicans have pretty well weeded out their moderates in the primaries. They proposed a six-week ban which was tabled, but now they know that the way to get Sununu to sign an abortion ban is to put it in the budget bill.
Women are not going to “just get over it.” Some are getting sterilized. Others who want to have families will move to blue states. If there is a national ban, I predict that many will move to Canada. The former land of the free will see its young couples flee and our birth rate will plummet.
Ruth L. Stephenson
Lebanon
Abortion meddling
can go both ways
I believe that women’s health care, including abortion, is a medical issue, and making it into a political issue is a mistake. As Rev. Raphael Warnock, U.S. Senator from Georgia, recently stated, “…I happen to think that a patient’s room is too small a place for a woman, her doctor and the U.S. government. I think there’s too many people in the room.”
Consider this: The authoritarian government of a state (think Texas) says that abortion is now illegal there and a woman may not have an abortion.
Or consider this: In a different scenario, the authoritarian government of a state (could also be Texas, at some different time) says that a woman must have an abortion.
This happened in China a few years ago, when the authoritarian government there was limiting population growth. Abortion was enforced if a family already had one child.
Abortion has been enforced in this country as well. In the 1960s many woman in the military who became pregnant were forced to resign, or to undergo an abortion.
About 100 years ago, during the so-called eugenics movement, many women were forced to have abortions or were forced to be sterilized. This happened right here in Vermont.
Now I need to “ask for the sale”: If you are planning to vote on Election Day — and I hope you are — please give thoughtful consideration of the candidates before you mark your ballot. If you come across a candidate who says “there needs to be a ban on abortion in this country,” consider that such a stand could also go the other way.
Judith L. Howland
Hartland
‘Big Lie’ is a bar to office
Insurrectionists must be barred from running for or holding public office. That’s the important implication of a recent landmark court case in New Mexico where democracy advocacy groups had sought to hold convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionist, “Cowboys for Trump” founder and New Mexico County Commissioner Couy Griffin accountable for his actions against our democracy. Griffin had abused his position to spread Trump’s Big Lie and refused to certify the 2022 primary results in his state for months, based on what he termed a “gut feeling.”
Griffin’s actions could have become the blueprint for the far-right to overturn any result they didn’t like in any future election. Thankfully, the court ruled that, under the 14th Amendment, Griffin must be removed immediately and barred from holding office. The ruling relies on a part of our Constitution added after the Civil War — meant to deny public office to the Confederates who committed treason to maintain slavery. Now, a court has ruled it also applies to Griffin, and anyone else who engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States. Griffin isn’t the only person implicated in the Jan. 6 insurrection who is on the ballot or in office.
Prosecutors should use this important new precedent to seek to bar Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert and other insurrectionists from holding office ever again. The future of our democracy requires that our political system be cleansed of these traitors!
Steve Gehlert
West Newbury, Vt.
Fiery populism is on the ballot
Several weeks back, the political opponent of Liz Cheney, daughter of the sulfurous devil Dick Cheney, gave a fiery, populist campaign speech. This is what she said. “We’re fed up with the green new deal and the socialists who created it. We’re fed up with the attacks on our fossil fuel and energy industries. We’re fed up with an open border. We’re fed up with human trafficking. We’re fed up with the fentanyl flooding our country and we’re fed up with illegal immigration. We’re fed up with critical race theory. We’re fed up with boys competing in girls’ sports. We’re fed up with the liberal media, with Twitter, Facebook and Google blocking conservative speech. We’re fed up with government and universities censoring conservative thought, canceling debate, and rewriting history. We’re fed up with the corruption in the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the FISA courts. We’re fed up with mask mandates, vaccine mandates, the CDC, the NIH, the WHO and the misinformation campaign surrounding COVID-19. And we’re fed up with Anthony Fauci. We’re fed up with the politicians and elitists in D.C. getting rich while the middle class falls further behind every year. We’re fed up with Joe Biden, and with Nancy Pelosi. We’re fed up with the January 6th Commission and those people who think that they can gaslight us. We’re fed up with Liz Cheney. And we’re putting everyone on notice. As of November 8th, we’re taking our country back.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Neil Meliment
Hartland
Send Bourne to Concord
Jason Bourne is the ideal candidate for the Sullivan District 7 seat in the New Hampshire House.
Having known Jason as a colleague, a family man, and a community builder, I can attest that he is an active listener and hard worker whose decision-making process focuses on what best fits our community’s needs. He keenly understands the importance of funding public education.
Furthermore, Bourne is committed to renewable energy in order to make New Hampshire more sustainable both environmentally and financially. I am most impressed by his commitment to ensuring that we have excellent and accessible health care throughout the state for women and families. Bans on women’s health negatively impact the whole health care system. Bourne protects our rights: our voting rights, health care rights, equality rights.
With his deep real-world experience (industry, education, local governance), Jason has the confidence, common sense and work ethic to lead Sullivan County to a safer, more stable and sustainable livelihood.
Kevin Ramos-Glew
Meriden
Hope for New Hampshire
What is our hope for New Hampshire?
Our hope is that it can be a state in which every child can have a quality education.
Our hope is that it can be a state in which a woman has the right to make choices about her own body.
Our hope is that it can be a state in which a human being can love, marry, and raise children with whom he, she, or they desire.
Our hope is that it can be a state in which our beautiful environment can be maintained and improved by promoting clean, inexpensive energy that does not contribute to our destruction of our planet.
Our hope for New Hampshire is Hope Damon and like-minded legislators. We have known Hope for years and have no doubt that she will be a fierce advocate in Concord for education, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and the environment. She is passionate about her causes, articulate, thoughtful and energetic Her successful fight to maintain quality education in her town of Croydon made national news. She has worked tirelessly for the NH Woman’s Foundation to help promote opportunities and equality for women in our state.
If we want our hopes for New Hampshire to come to fruition, we need Hope Damon. Please get out and vote on Nov. 8 and vote for Hope.
Craig and Jeri Cohen
Grantham