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Max Ledoux's Posts
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GOP Debate Live Chat
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Scott Walker, Rick Santorum in Manchester, N.H.
Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and others were in Manchester, New Hampshire on Monday to campaign in advance of a candidate forum hosted by the Union-Leader. I went to the Walker and Santorum events.
Walker met voters at Theo’s Pizzeria. I was seated at a booth with two brothers, Alex and Mike, who had driven to New Hampshire from New York. Alex is a college student and seems slightly more engaged politically than Mike, but both are enthusiastic and eager to meet Walker. Alex wonders how these candidate events work, and — as an old hat by this time — I obligingly explain how I’ve previously met Perry, Fiorina, Carson, and Kasich, though I do have to admit that I moved to New Hampshire from New York City only last year. (I grew up in Maine!) We’re joined by Ricochet’s own James of England before Walker arrives, and we quickly fall into a discussion about the Supreme Court. Alex voices his concern that conservative causes will suffer if the next Supreme Court justices are appointed by a Democrat in the White House.
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Attending John Kasich’s New Hampshire Town Hall
John Kasich is in Wolfeboro, N.H., for a town hall meeting at the Brewster Academy boat house overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee. “Isn’t this beautiful?” He asks. “We love you,” says an older woman sitting in the front row. “Thank you,” says Kasich. “It’s always good to have your aunt in the crowd,” he jokes.
Ben Carson Is Not Interested in Politics
Ben Carson is not interested in politics. “People ask me,” he says to the assembled crowd at a town hall meeting in Barrington, New Hampshire, “what made you interested in politics after such a wonderful career in medicine?” He pauses slightly. “I’m not interested in politics; I’m interested in saving this country.”
His career in medicine has shown him that health is the most valuable thing we have. If you give someone the choice, “you can have a hundred million dollars, but be a quadriplegic, or you can have perfect health and no money, I think the choice is pretty obvious.” That’s why Carson speaks out against Obamacare. America is an incredible nation, founded by incredible people, to be of the people, for the people, by the people. Government is intended only to facilitate our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Carson says. Obamacare reverses that by making government the giver of things. If we accept the government’s ruling the most important thing we have — health — then we’ll accept anything.
There’s hope, though, he says. He has a soft voice and his eyes are half-closed as he stands calmly in front of us. One senses that his would be the temperament you want in a surgeon. “Thomas Jefferson predicted this,” he says quietly. “He was a great man. He said eventually the people would become less vigilant and the government would expand to control everything we did. But just before that, people would wake up and take back control. I hope that this is that time. If this is not that, then it’s over.”
Carly Fiorina in New Hampshire
Carly Fiorina has faith in people. Everyone has God-given gifts, she tells those of us gathered at Turbocam’s manufacturing plant in Barrington, New Hampshire. That means everyone in the world has potential. “So why is our nation better?” Here you have a right to fulfill your potential. That right comes from God. She notes that she started her career as a secretary, answering the phones and typing memos. Only in this nation, she says, could she go from being a secretary to the CEO of a major corporation.
She thanks Turbocam for hosting us and for giving her a tour of their facility. Before Fiorina spoke, a representative of the company addressed the crowd briefly (they are a “a global turbomachinery development and manufacturing company that specializes in 5-axis machining of flowpath components”). Turbocam is proud to help the community. “Say we have a product that costs 90 cents to build, and we sell it for $1,” he says. “We’ll give 1 or 2 cents to charity, say to build a new park. But that’s not the only way we improve the community. Of the 90 cents it cost to build that product, 50 cents went to salary. And our employers then spend that in the community.” Their website also highlights the efforts of the company’s founder and CEO, Marian Noronha, to end slavery in Nepal.
Fiorina notes that Turbocam, like HP, started out as a small business. “We’re at a point where the things in this country that give us the opportunity to fulfill our potential are being crushed by government,” she says. “We are destroying more business than we are creating.” And it’s not big businesses that are being destroyed, she says. Big businesses can afford to do business with big government. “That’s called crony capitalism.” There are more than 70,000 pages in the tax code, she says. Small business owners tell her they’re filing their taxes late because they can’t understand the rules, and sometimes their accountants can’t understand the rules. At the same time, the IRS has announced they won’t be answering everyone’s questions because they “don’t have enough money.” Have you ever noticed, she says, that government always needs more money? Why is that? The TSA has a 95 percent failure rate. They want more money. The VA is unable to serve all our veterans. They want more money.
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Helping the Families of the Mentally Ill
On June 4, Representative Tim Murphy (R., PA) re-introduced the Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act. He has been trying to get the bill passed since December 2013. It has received significant bipartisan support, and now has 77 Republican and 38 Democrat co-sponsors. My representative Frank Guinta (R., NH) is a co-sponsor. Last month, my wife traveled to Washington, D.C., with E. Fuller Torrey’s Treatment Advocacy Center to lobby for it.
I knew something was wrong when my wife started shaking uncontrollably. “We told you this would happen!” she managed to say into the phone, her voice breaking. It was a few years ago, in late in November. A state social worker had just called her to inform her that her brother had stopped taking his medication for schizophrenia. He had disappeared. No one had any idea where he was.
Rachel Dolezal Is a Black Woman
Rachel Dolezal is a black woman who happened to be born into a white body.
A prominent civil rights activist in the United States is facing investigation after her parents accused her of falsely passing herself off as black.
Rachel Dolezal, 37, has been the head of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, or NAACP, in Spokane, Washington, since January. But her parents have now told US media that Ms Dolezal is in fact white – and has spent several years deliberately misleading the public and her colleagues about her race.“She’s our birth daughter and we’re both of European descent,” her father, Larry Dolezal, told Buzzfeed. “We’re puzzled and it’s very sad.”
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Rick Perry’s Fighting Spirit
Rick Perry’s fighting spirit is in strong shape, he says when asked by my wife. We’re standing in someone’s yard in Meredith, New Hampshire, and Perry is making his way through the crowd of approximately 50 people, shaking hands and speaking directly to each person. The event starts at 1PM, and he’s arrived promptly on time. As new residents in the state, my wife and I were somewhat perplexed when we arrived to see that the event was not taking place in some auditorium, or even a parking lot, but on a quiet residential street in — I know I just wrote this at the beginning of the paragraph but it bears repeating — someone’s back yard. This type of thing does not happen in New York.
Perry talks with us for several minutes—telling us he’s energized, that during the last campaign he was coming off of back surgery—then begins to turn away to the next person. But I’m not quite done and say, “I hope you’ll use that energy to go after Democrats, not others on our side.” He turns back says, “You know, you’re right—and I’ve talked with Jeb, and with Marco, and several of the others about that. And Carly. Carly was born in Texas, did you know that?” He goes on to sing Carly Fiorina’s praises. “Oh, she’s smart,” he says. “You know, she was at the head of HP when I was governor.” He talks about California businesses moving to Texas. “I’ve been on the other side of the negotiating table from Carly,” he says. “She’s good.” Finally, he moves on to the next couple.
We find ourselves standing between Mike Thornton, Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam, and Brad Thor, the New York Times best-selling author. Marcus and Morgan, the Luttrell twins, are over by the back, along with several other veterans. Marcus appears to have brought his dog with him.
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Clearing your cache–it’s like rebooting your computer, or punching the steering wheel of your DeLorean time machine. Recently we updated the “POST COMMENT” button, moving it from the left to the right, and changing its color from red (why red?!) to blue. However, if your browser is still using a cached version of the site’s CSS […]
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It was a Sunday, and unusually hot and muggy for a late May day in Maine. I was 13 days past my due date, which had been May 10. The midwife was growing worried. She told my parents that if the baby wasn’t born that day, she’d insist on going to the hospital. My mother […]
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