LIST OF ISSUES
Education and Citizenry
Public education is one of the most important responsibilities of our state and local government.
High expectations and attention to skills in reading, science and math is the best promoter of success throughout the history of this nation. Statewide skills tests with standard expectations and correct accommodations would help to decrease differences between school districts in curriculum.
Personal finance and civics classes would be helpful to encourage financial responsibility and community civic responsibility. Civics classes are an essential part of the educated citizen learning about how our Constitutional Federal Republic was born, how our systems and institutions work, and how this form of government has resulted in the greatest standard of living and greatest force for good throughout the world in history. Citizens educated in the foundation principles are the best route to civil and productive political discourse, and the solution to many of the political divisions that plaque us today.
The tradition of education to welcome patriotic assimilation into our "can do" American culture should be encouraged.
School should be a place to teach and encourage responsibility.
Healthcare
Access to healthcare is important, but more important is access to great healthcare when you really need it. Universal health care does not ensure this. In fact, it limits access. Emphasis on government controlled, universal single payer eliminates quality, and puts control and decision making in the hands of bureaucrats, eliminating recourse and limiting availability or access.
Governments systems control cost by limiting access to cutting edge technology, high cost medicines and fixing prices of doctors, procedures, and medicines. When you fix prices, you necessarily make them scarce. ( If the government fixes the prices of pharmaceuticals, the private financing of late stage drug development will decrease, and the US will no longer be the largest source of drug research and development in the world.) It is no mistake that the best system in the world is in the United States. People rarely leave the United States for Canada or Europe for health care, but the opposite is a common occurrence.
Competition and transparency are two factors that guarantee the best access to the highest level of care. We must improve price transparency, allow more competition, (with imaging centers for example) and decrease the bureaucracy that impedes access, with a system that protects patients first. Fierce competition of insurers for First party payers, where the person who pays is also the consumer, guarantees both price and quality; conversely third party payers do not care about price if they are not paying, and do not care about quality if they are not consuming. Government has no incentive to care about either price or quality, because they are spending your tax money for a service they don't consume. The Affordable Care Act may have increased the number of insured, and helped with preexisting conditions but it failed terribly to reduce costs. The ACA also decreased transparency and incentive for quality with third party payer dynamics.
The abortion debate has been addressed by the state in the last session under a Republican Governor, Senate and House. As of January 2022 abortions up to 24 weeks are legal in New Hampshire. There are exceptions to the 24 week restriction if the life or health of the patient seeking the abortion is at risk, or if a fatal fetal anomaly has been detected. As technology improves and evolves, opinions shift. All voices along the continuum of this debate deserve to be heard and deeply considered. Education, prevention of unwanted pregnancy and technological advances in birth control are and will continue to be very helpful.
Patient and family protections in the hospital setting:
It is a fundamental right to visit and be with loved ones and family in NH hospitals. No patient should endure treatments without family advocates, or be forced to die alone.
Economy
America's economic success and the success of the individual is based on a free market system. Economic freedom, respect for property rights and adherence to the rule of law is necessary for the free enterprise system to function.
Job growth and economic growth is more robust in states with economic freedom, lower taxes and less bureaucratic regulation.
Real wage growth occurs when productivity of the worker improves or worker output increases. As we have all seen lately, legislation of increased wages only serves to decrease employment and increase prices of goods overall. The market has done a good job setting wages of late. An entry level blue collar job today is closer to $18 than the minimum wage today.
No government has ever taxed their population into prosperity. Human nature dictates behaviors. If you increase taxes on people who work, and pay people not to work, you get a lot of people who don't work. Incentives matter, and the private sector — not the government sector — drives the economy.
Government spending does not create wealth or increase economic volume; however, over the long term it serves to stifle growth, inhibit innovation and misappropriate capital. Government's role in regulation should be for appropriate guide posts without stifling innovation, freedom or property rights. To maintain and grow our economy in NH we need to keep NH tax free, improve real education at all levels and be mindful of excess bureaucratic regulations.
Elections
Integrity of the election system is part of what separates the US from other countries that we observe and often criticize.
We should all agree that free and fair elections and trust in the election system are the most important variables in preserving our nation's founding principles of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. This is true throughout history all over the world. Any fraud, no matter how large the margin of victory, creates a claim of illegitimacy. This favors neither party. The loser feels cheated and the winner suffers with the claim of illegitimacy. We need to do better, to avoid confidence-depleting trials such as those arising out of the 2020 election. Public confidence necessitates ironclad methods of voting.
Toward this end voter rolls must be examined with regularity for ineligibility in the form of death, moving or incarceration.
Fraudulent registrations, duplicate voting, and fraudulent use of mail-in and absentee ballots cannot be tolerated.
Safeguards against fraud are not suppression; rather, they are a simple and necessary insurance of fairness. An overwhelming majority of Americans support voter identification requirements.
Widespread, unrequested mail-in voting creates a chain of custody issue that is irreconcilable.
Government
Overall, we need to be clear about the productive role of government in our federated republic. State government should be more practical than political, promising little and encouraging success. It is important to move deliberately with evidence, rather than rely on experimental conviction to guide what should be infrequent interventions.
The state government in our Federalist Republic system is the constitutional bulwark against federal overreach that undermines individual rights.
Much of the success of New Hampshire is based on relative fiscal responsibility compared to our neighbors. We should maintain and expand on that, treating the taxpayer's money with care and respect to honor the individual sacrifice that it takes to make that money.
I believe that every level of Government should have voter representation which is made more accountable to the voters by term limits.
Environment
Like many in the Upper Valley, I appreciate living in an area of great natural beauty. This love of nature means that I want to maintain and preserve our land and water. At the same time, we need to recognize the great advantage that we have as a nation so rich in energy resources.
We need to promote responsible harvesting of energy locally and nationally, at prices allowing our citizenry to prosper; meanwhile, we must sensibly promote the cost-competitive move toward cleaner energy based on available and advancing technology. We need to plan for a future with higher electricity demand, in the setting of an aging Seabrook Nuclear plant, so that the ratepayers are not hostage to imported electricity rates. This should include incremental replacement of Seabrook's baseload with a latest technology nuclear energy plant which functions at a fraction of the cost and improved safety over prior technology.
