Mash Notes, Hate Mail & Other Correspondence

To the Editor: The privileged class of Congress has spoken. What kind of America will we be? Republican Senators voting to acquit ex-President Trump have steered our country toward rocky reefs of autocracy, where oaths of office mean nothing but the means to power. Their votes have proclaimed they no longer stand for values and principles encoded in the lives and writings of our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) in 1787, nor the brave women and men who have fought and died for America throughout our history. To the Republican wing of the Senate, facts and truth continue to be irrelevant. Democratic House managers provided America …

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[Note: Mr. William Cooper was kind enough to offer, unsolicited, the following assessment of the mind of the world’s richest man. We have some experience with that exalted strata of humankind, having relieved the world’s ninth richest man of this newspaper in 1989. Before Mr. Cooper takes the floor, we want to advise readers—who may momentarily be confused at finding a pirate of the worst sort praised in the pages of this paper—that our rebuttal follows. — The Ed.] How Jeff Bezos Thinks, by William Cooper Jeff Bezos announced last week that he is stepping down as Amazon’s CEO. He built Amazon from scratch. He also …

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To the Editor: Last November, Republican and Democratic voters may not have understood the political influence of their votes in future elections will depend on the extent to which the Republican majority in 2021 utilizes the “art” of slicing and dicing of political districts. Current Executive Council District #2 is a heavily Democrat-leaning district created by Republicans in 2011, extending from the Seacoast to Vermont. With wings added, it mimics a dragon in shape, and intentionally sacrifices the value of the votes of tens of thousands of Republican voters in the 49 municipalities within the district. It enabled drawing of Republican-leaning districts elsewhere, which intentionally …

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“It is delightful to observe how, whenever communism is discussed, its adversaries’ fears instinctively lead them to this unavoidable piece of furniture! ‘Who will empty the chamber pot?’ This is always their first cry. ‘Who will empty my chamber pot?’ is what they really mean to say. But they are wise enough not to use the possessive pronoun, and generously direct all their fears to posterity.” – Louis Auguste Blanqui –=≈=– “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” – Thomas Paine  

To the Editor: What does “the New Hampshire way” mean? Ingenuity, self-reliance, local control, frugality, community, loving the land. These values are under attack from House Bill 315, which could aptly be renamed “The Monopoly Protection Act.” Last year Governor Sununu signed the Community Power Law, allowing cities and towns to choose where their electricity comes from. Here was “the New Hampshire way.” Community Power promotes Yankee ingenuity: Nashua would create power from its multiple hydro-electric dams; Lebanon would turn landfill gas into energy. Communities deciding for themselves how to meet their electricity needs? That’s local control and self-reliance! As technologies advance, each town or …

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Cooper asks, “How did Bezos do it?” A more apt question would be, “How did he get away with it?” Bezos began by making special deals with book publishers, so he could undercut the prices of independent bookstores. He profited at the expense of the nation—financially and intellectually. Having successfully attacked one sector of the economy, he metastasized his business into others. As his business grew he crushed innumerable small businesses across the country. Taking advantage of Congress’s pro-business, anti-worker policies, he was able, in effect, to force states and municipalities to pay him subsidies as his workers relied on public assistance. Amazon workers in …

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