Rich Ashooh issued the following press release announcing his candidacy for Congress:
MANCHESTER – Today, Rich Ashooh announced his candidacy for New Hampshire’s First Congressional District. Ashooh, a resident of Bedford and an executive with BAE Systems, made his decision to enter the race after an exploratory process that began in December.
“I’ve met with people throughout the First District, and the support and encouragement I’ve received has been very compelling,” said Ashooh. “The common theme among voters is their desire for real leadership on the issues affecting their lives – unemployment, runaway spending, taxes and health care. I will bring conservative, common sense to Washington, and restore fiscal restraint and the economic principles that will create private sector jobs.”
Ashooh, 45, stated that he will be a leader on fiscal and budget issues in Congress, focusing on reducing the national deficit and debt, and advocating for small business. He added that his budget experience in government, leadership position with the state’s largest manufacturer, national security expertise, and service in higher education will serve him well in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The excessive spending in Washington and incomprehensible national debt have awakened voters to the reckless policies being pursued by Congressional Democrats. If we are to overcome the enormous challenges that lie ahead, we must elect leaders who will listen to their constituents, make tough decisions, and solve problems without accruing massive debt, raising taxes, suppressing innovation, and stifling job creation.” Ashooh continued, stating, “Before we can address issues such as improving health care, we must first get our fiscal house in order.”
“Voters are frustrated with their current representative, because their concerns have not been heard. In my campaign, I’ll be accessible, and I will meet and hear from as many voters as possible. They will surely get to know me, and I will get to know them.”
“Having grown up in New Hampshire, I value our quality of life, and have worked to preserve and protect it. And, once elected to Congress, I will continue to do so.”
Rich Ashooh was born and raised in Manchester and is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire. He lives in Bedford with his wife, Lori, and they have five children, Sofie, Emma, Elias, Maya, and Sam.
The White House has released the following excerpts from President Obama’s speech in Nashua this afternoon:
Jobs will be our number one focus in 2010. And we’re going to start where most new jobs do – with small businesses. These are the companies that begin in basements and garages when an entrepreneur takes a chance on his dream, or a worker decides it’s time she became her own boss.
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Small businesses like this have created roughly 65 percent of all new jobs over the past decade and a half. And I think we should make it easier for them to open their doors, expand their operations, and hire more workers. That’s why I’ve proposed a new tax credit for more than one million small businesses that hire new workers or raise wages – and a tax incentive for all businesses to invest in new plants and equipment. And while we’re at it, we should eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment, so these folks can get the capital they need to grow and create jobs.
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That’s particularly critical right now, as bank lending standards have tightened, and many small businesses are struggling to get loans.
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That’s why today, I’m announcing a proposal to take $30 billion of the money that was repaid by Wall Street banks, and use it to create a new Small Business Lending Fund that will provide capital for community banks on Main Street. These are the small, local banks that work most closely with our small businesses – that provide them their first loan, and watch them grow through good times and bad. The more loans these banks provide to creditworthy small businesses, the better a deal we’ll give them on capital from this Fund. Combined with my proposal back in December to continue waiving fees and increasing guarantees for SBA-backed loans, this will help small banks do even more of what our economy needs – ensure that small businesses are once again the engine of job growth in America.
Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson mentions Judd Gregg in his new book. Gregg’s office sent out this bit from the book, page 305:
Saturday, September 28, 2008
We arrived at the Dirksen Senate Office Building at about 2:00 p.m. and gathered in the vice president’s office for last-minute preparations before we headed up to Nancy Pelosi’s conference room and that same long table where, little more than a week before, Ben Bernanke, Chris Cox, and I had made our case for quick congressional action. Kevin Fromer, Neel Kashkari, Bob Hoyt, and I sat between Judd Gregg and Roy Blunt, the lead negotiators on the Republican side, facing House and Senate Democrats. Perhaps 30 staff members lined the walls.
Mitch McConnell had put Gregg in charge of Senate GOP negotiations when Richard Shelby elected to sit out the debate. It was a fortunate, and inspired, choice. Judd was a respected New Hampshire conservative who possessed one of the sharpest minds in the Senate, knew the issues cold, and was a superb negotiator; he commanded the respect of Senate Republicans. He understood that the system was endangered and wanted results. Ray Blunt had taken Spencer Bachus’s place at the table, and this, too, pleased me. The Missouri congressman was a careful listener with a smooth manner, who would do a good job of representing House Republicans. Like Gregg, he knew we needed to get something done.
Sen. Judd Gregg’s response to Obama’s budget: “more of the same”:
“This country is sinking into a fiscal quagmire – the President’s stimulus plan has not resulted in job growth, this year’s deficit is expected to reach $1.6 trillion, and Congress just agreed to extend the federal credit limit to more than $14 trillion. At the same time, liberals in Congress continue to pass massive spending bills that are financed on the backs of our children. These circumstances call for a bold, game-changing budget that will turn things around, put in place a plan to restrain spending, reduce the debt and tackle the big entitlement programs that are growing out-of-control. Instead, the President has sent us more of the same – a budget that claims to be fiscally responsible, but just below the surface contains more spending, more borrowing and more taxes. After a year in office that has put us on a pace to double the debt by 2013, the President should have a tougher plan to address our fiscal crisis, because this budget will solve nothing.”
The NH Supreme Court this morning affirmed the lower court ruling that the state cannot take money from the Joint Underwriting Association.
The court ruled that the state law taking the JUA funds “constitutes a retrospective law that results in impairment of contract rights in violation of the New Hampshire Constitution.”
UPDATE: I erred in the first version of this post. I mistook language in the dissent for the majority opinion. The court did rule that the JUA policyholders had a contractual right to the money in the fund. Justices Duggan and Dalianas, however, dissented and claimed that the policyholders had no right to the money. I’ll write more on it later, but for now I removed the erroneous analysis.
I’ve heard that the Supreme Court’s Joint Underwriting Association decision, expected Thursday morning, will be in favor of the state. Will find out in 9.5 hours.
Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic has a copy of McDonnell’s GOP response to Obama’s State of the Union speech: http://twurl.nl/vomdyv
Read it before you see the SOTU
I’ll be livetweeting the State of the Union address tonight, for the fun of it. Twitter ID is Drewhampshire.
Then, tomorrow morning I’ll be on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal via phone to talk about the SOTU for a few minutes.
Mockery welcome, as always. Also, if you have any ideas for a theme song for the SOTU, I’d like to hear them. At the moment, I’m thinking of B.B. King’s “You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now.”
UPDATE: No C-SPAN tomorrow morning after all. The focus of the show changed slightly. So I’ll be in early to torment you instead.
Steve Forbes has just endorsed Ovid Lamontagne in the GOP U.S. Senate primary, which is a coup for Ovide and a blow to Kelly Ayotte. Here is the Forbes statement as released by Lamontagne’s campaign:
“I am proud to lend my name as a strong supporter of Ovide Lamontagne and his campaign for U.S. Senate. Having considered the candidates for Senate in New Hampshire, it is clear that Ovide is the strongest conservative, and the one choice who we can rely on as a truly independent voice in Washington. Ovide is a proven conservative leader of principle and conviction, and we can count on him as a friend to taxpayers everywhere; someone who will fight against wasteful spending and the rampant growth of the federal government. The election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts proves that independent minded conservatives can succeed against the entrenched establishment in 2010. We need to elect leaders like Ovide.”
According to rankings by the National Taxpayers Union, in 2008 there were 42 U.S. senators who racked up more liberal voting records than Bernie Sanders of Vermont. That’s significant because Bernie Sanders is a self-described socialist.
Sure, the NTU is a conservative organization. But the year before, National Journal ranked Barack Obama as the most liberal member of the Senate — higher than Bernie Sanders.
As Charles Green, editor of National Journal, wrote:
“Anyone who follows the Senate knows that Obama isn’t as liberal as, say, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Barbara Boxer of California, and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin.
It’s true that those senators are generally perceived as being more liberal than Obama. But our ratings are based on actual votes, not perceptions; and in 2007, Sanders, Boxer, and Feingold cast a slightly lower percentage of liberal votes than Obama did.”
The Democrats’ last presidential nominee before Obama, John Kerry, also was rated by the National Journal as being the most liberal member of the Senate, again more liberal than the Senate’s lone admitted socialist. (Although Kerry missed some votes, and that might have raised his ranking.)
Now, when Democrats bristle at conservatives calling them socialist, I get it. By the textbook definition, the Democratic Party today is not technically socialist. But if Democrats wonder why a lot of people keep using that word in reference to the party or the President, the answer really isn’t hard to come by. A lot of elected Democrats are really, really, really liberal. A lot actually vote more liberal than the one former Democrat who admits to being a socialist. That’s a pretty good way to make people suspicious of your ultimate agenda.
Based on interviews with some folks in Milford, The New York Times declares: “In New Hampshire, An Angry Tide Swells.” I love how it’s “anger” when people who lean to the right want their government to change, but “hope and change” when people on the left do.
A great read on what went wrong with health care reform, from Mickey Kaus.
The White House has NO IDEA what happened in Massachusetts. David Axelrod continues Obama’s narrative that
“The same forces that we saw at play in Massachusetts were the ones that propelled [Obama] to office.” He actually said, ”
There’s no reinventing any message here. It’s a reaffirmation of a message.”
No surprise whatsoever: Bogus global warming claims on glacier melt used to get massive private and government grants.
Private-sector union membership fell last year to the point that government union members now outnumber private-sector union members.
At her town hall meeting in Manchester this morning, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter was asked about the partisanship in D.C. and why members of Congress don’t listen to their constituents and find a middle ground for getting good legislation passed. She said she completely agreed that partisanship was out of control, and she said men were the problem.
“If we sent the men home we could get something done,” she said after telling how the women members complain in the restroom about the men. She wasn’t joking. Women “collaborate,” she said, so they would be able to solve the country’s problems if only they didn’t have the men around to prevent them from working together.
UPDATE: The Hill has linked to the video. Uh-oh.
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About Andrew Cline
Cline has been editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union
Leader since October of 2001. His writing has appeared in more than 100
newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The
Washington Post, and National Review.
Write Andrew at cline@unionleader.com
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