What Just Happened in New Hampshire?
A very odd thing happened in New Hampshire this week.
Fourth Graders from Hampton Falls, New Hampshire wrote a bill to make the Red Tail Hawk as New Hampshire’s State Raptor. The bill sailed through the Environmental Committee and was defeated in the house by a 133-160 vote.
I am not that concerned by the defeat of the bill. That’s democracy. I am a bit perplexed by the behavior of some of the lawmakers during the general debate session and I can confirm this is an issue of being disappointed at people on both sides.
Democrat Christy Bartlett said that the Environmental Committee “caved” to the 4th graders.
Republican Warren Groen went even more bizarre and debated that the Red Tail Hawk should be the mascot for Planned Parenthood. “It grasps them with its talons then uses its razor sharp beak to basically tear it apart limb by limb, and I guess the shame about making this a state bird is it would serve as a much better mascot for Planned Parenthood.” Warren Groen is apparently in government primarily to rail against abortion and same-sex marriage.
Why is this good behavior on the part of the legislatures? The bill seems like a charming and harmless way to teach children about civics and the legislative process and maybe a bit about rhetoric and debate and it can be topped off with a nice class trip. Saying that the environmental committee “caved” just sounds like being really sour. Groen’s behavior is even more absurd. How can adult think this was an appropriate time to ride a hobby-horse?
I guess the kids learned about realpolitik but still there is a time and place for everything and this was not the time and place for the actions of Barlett or Groen.
The best defense one can make of Ms. Bartlett’s statement about caving to fourth graders is that she believes that politics is a serious business and not a place for politicians to indulge kids. That would require me to be charitable and I’m not inclined to be so in this case. This sort of thing has been part of politics forever, its nothing more than an extension of the being pictured with a baby on a campaign trial. Its’ how politicians show their cuddly features to the electorate if they so deem it proper. Its a sort of God, mom, and apple pie thing. She needs to get a life. Democratic politics in the small-d sense requires moments of feel good levity to. Its an important part of maintaining a healthy body politic.
About Mr. Groen’s statement, the less said the better.Report
The bill seems like a charming and harmless way to teach children about civics and the legislative process and maybe a bit about rhetoric and debate
And it worked better than anyone expected!Report
I was going to make this exact same joke.Report
And it worked better than anyone expected!Report
I do think we need to be mindful about using house of government as “teaching tools”. What happens if a 3rd grade class from to towns over wants to draft a bill changing the state raptor to something else? I know that might seem like needless pearl clutching about silly slippery slopes but our legislators are inefficientenough as it is. There are better ways to teach kids about civics (and this arguably miainforma them unless the legislature regularly debates motions submitted by citizen groups) and formal processes foe how these things are done. And seeing as how we can’t trust our “leaders” to even get this shit right, it’s probably better to keep kids out of the government and leave that work to the truly immature.Report
Kazzy, I think you should read the first link. While the New Hampashire house rejected this proposal, they also approved another proposal from other 4th graders to make the bobcat New Hampshire’s wild cat in the same week.Report
It shows the New Hampshire state house shall not be swayed by the influence of Big Bird.Report
That’s kinda my point, @leeesq . At what point do we say, “No more children’s letters to the legislature”?Report
@kolohe you may think that “Big Bird” holds no sway with our government – but whose lobbyists do you think drafted the Guano Act?!Report
People who couldn’t give a sh**. So they took someone else’s.Report
@leeesq “they also approved another proposal from other 4th graders to make the bobcat New Hampshire’s wild cat in the same week.”
That’s outrageous, and it shows how little today’s children know about the bobcat.
The bobcat grasps its prey with its adorable, mitten-like clawed paws, and then uses its sharp-toothed, whiskered little mouth to play with it like a kitten after string. And I guess the shame about making this a state wild cat is it would serve as a much better mascot for NAMBLA.Report
Some people are just curmugdeons. Some people are monomaniacally focused on things that really don’t matter and lack perspective on the real world.
And given that New Hampshire selects 400 members for its House of Representatives, meaning something like one in every 3,000 residents of New Hampshire serves in the House, it’s pretty likely that you’re going to find a few who simply cannot restrain themselves from habitually violating the Wheaton Rule.
Red tailed hawks are cool-looking. And they’re plentiful in New Hampshire once again, in no small part thanks to a generation’s worth of effort to rehabilitate natural habitats. New Hampshirians (New Hampshirites? New Hampshivirians?) ought to enjoy such a fine bird symbolizing their state.Report
I’m really wondering why this merits a posting on OT. Is this just clickbait?Report
The story has been making the rounds on both my twitter and Facebook feeds. Under different circumstances, I might have posted on it myself.Report
That’s why I’m rarely on FB and never on twitter.Report
@damon
This post was an educational tool to teach children about the effects of political debate on blogs.
As usual, Saul is parroting the pro-RTH talking points from Barry Sotero, while Real Americans know that it was Hitler who kept a RTH, as a gift from Joseph Stalin.Report
Makes me wish Jason K. was still here so that everyone could just claim this was written on marching orders from the Koch brothers.
(sigh)Report
The New Hampshire house is part time and the largest in the country while covering I state with a relatively low population state (there is one reprehensive for every 3,291 residents compared to 465,674 in California). When you combine the chance of getting a few crackpots.Report
That’s theoretically part of why the porcupines moved there.Report
@will-truman This is the second time today I’ve seen you reference “the porcupines.” I am not familiar wit this term.
Who are the porcupines? Or is it the actual animal, and have quilled rodentia recently been migrating in hopes to live free or die?Report
The porcupines are the members of the Free State Project who moved to New Hampshire when it was chosen as the destination.Report
I had never heard of the Free State Project until I googled it just now.
So, it’s kind of like the Rajneeshpuram but with more guns and copies of Fountainhead, yes?Report
Orrin Judd (an anti-libertarian conservative) mentions them periodically, suspecting they are behind some of the kooky “news of the weird” things that happen from time to time. Like some hair-care professional dumping all of their scissors in the middle of the street to protest business taxes.
Mother Jones has an excellent write-up, if you didn’t run across it in your google.
I still think they should have chosen Wyoming (or Montana or one of the Dakotas – but mostly Wyoming).Report
Is it possible to “porcupine in place” as I’m pretty sure zic doesn’t want me as a neighbor.Report
@will-truman My stepfather once told me that porcupines, the slowest of all northeastern mammals, was starvation food because you could ALWAYS catch them, the problem was skinning ’em. He showed me how to do both.
Just thought you should know.Report
Zic,
I once had a lady friend who I had nicknamed “Porky” when talking about her with friends. She had a very common name, so we agreed amongst ourselves that everyone who had that name would get a nickname. When she discovered this, she was dumbfounded. She wasn’t overweight in the least, she knew that I didn’t think she was (and that, appearance-wise, we both knew she was like three grades above me), so what the hell?
Well, the inconvenient answer was that Porky was short for “Porcupine”… she had a very prickly personality and was very difficult to handle without getting jabbed.
So what could I say? I told her the truth. Besides, she was always mad at me anyway for something or another I unwittingly did wrong. It turned out, she thought it was great and said “I think you just named my spirit animal” and the short thereafter, she signed her emails “Porky.”
It was a moment of levity in a relationship that did not contain many. She dumped me shortly thereafter when I misinterpreted a poem that she wrote, and I was actually pretty relieved when she did. But we always had The Porcupine Moment.Report
@will-truman funny. But porcupines are only prickly physically; mentally, they strike me as some pretty laid-back animals. They don’t really need to get upset and wary about stuff because they’re well defended.
@citizen you give yourself too much credit.Report
ugg sorry about the typos in that postReport
“Reprehensive” works really well in that sentence.
I like it. I’ve a soft spot for serendipity.Report
I consider it evidence of “you get what you pay for” applied to political office. If your not willing to give decent salaries to your legislators than you aren’t going to get good legislators.Report
Seems like the kids learned a valuable life lesson that (many) adults are just assholes.Report
To be fair, I know some kids who are total assholes too.Report
They get it from their parents.Report
Nope, they catch it from other kids. I’m working on a vaccine, PfizerhomeschoolzeneReport
Seems to me we can at least agree the condition is highly contagious.Report