“A pox on all their houses.” That’s basically what New Hampshire Libertarian Party leader John Babiarz said in a statement released regarding the ongoing squabble between Republicans and Democrats at the State House over the expansion of the state’s Medicaid program. Babiarz accused Republicans in the Senate of working with Governor Margaret Wood Hassan and Democrats in the House to expand the program. He said both parties’ plans will convert Medicaid from a program that helps the disabled to one based solely on income. That, said Babiarz, will require the state to impose an income or sales tax to pay for it. Quote: “As the Republicans work hard to show their ture colors, there is home for limited government and pro-liberty individuals still voting for Republicans and Democrats,” said Babiaraz who went on to invite folks to run and vote Libertarian in the coming election. We’ve published Babiarz’s statement with this newscast at Girard at Large dot com. Meanwhile, the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers and Tea Party groups around the state have asked their faithful to contact their state senators, especially the Republican ones, to oppose either plan to expand the program, also arguing that either is an unsustainable burden on New Hampshire that will lead to a statewide income or sales tax. We’ve linked to one of the more easy to read bulletins posted with this newscast at Girard at Large dot com. Finally, on this topic, the State Republican Committee issued a statement trumpeting what they consider an admission by the New Hampshire Department of Insurance that Obamacare has caused health care costs to soar. State G O P Executive Director Matt Mowers said a recent press release by the D O I admits people will either pay more for what they have if they can keep it or be forced into a plan that will provide less, also at greater cost. He said this the exact opposite of what the Democrats promised and hammered Governor Hassan for trying to expand Medicaid and subject more families to it. We’ve, of course, published the statement.
News from our own backyard continues after this.
U S senators Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois teamed up with congressmen Joe Barton, Republican of Texas and Bobby Rush, Democrat of Illinois to introduce the Do Not Track Kids Act on Thursday. The bill would extend protections in law, which require parental consent before any personal or locational data can be obtained from kids up to age twelve, as well as introduce other protections, such as requiring consent before companies can market to teens and establishing a quote unquote “eraser button” that would enable the removal of personal information about the teen from the Web. Markey has recently spoken out against what many consider to be invasive and unnecessary data collection practices associated with the Common Core testing consortia and local opponents of the Core, who tipped us off to this story, see this as a step toward granting parents consent rights over data collected by the testing companies. We’ve linked to the story from the Winchester Patch on line newspaper with this newscast at Girard at Large dot com. Our thanks to yet another listener in our own backyard!
The Manchester School District has added an R S S feed to its Web site to enable folks to get various announcements they might want as they are posted to the site. This feature will be available for the pages dedicated to T-MAS development, that’s the The Manchester Academic Standards page. We’d suggested the feature to better enable the public to follow along with T-MAS and we appreciate that they acted on our suggestion. We’ve put the links and instructions with this newscast at Girard at Large dot com. For the Manchester Academic Standards go to http://curriculum.mansd.org/curriculum-updates and click on the 
button to sign up for updates to that page.
The Merrimack Chamber of Commerce is seeking businesses interested in donating a service or item to the fourth annual Turkey Shoot, a fundraiser to benefit the town’s public library. And, no, nobody will actually shoot Tom Turkey or any of his friends. The Turkey Shoot is an event that’s fun, fast paced, and always well attended by the greater Merrimack community. The event is this Thursday, November 21st and we’ve posted the details with this newscast at Girard at Large dot com.
That’s news from our own backyard, Girard at Large hour ___ begins 30 seconds from now!
