January 10, 2020
Part 1
We interviewed Scott Braddock of the Quorum Report in Texas. We discussed the general climate of anxiety prevalent in the US, now due to the current conflict with Iran, due the assassination. In the US, Senators are disappointed with the brevity and lack of detail in the briefing delivered by the White House. Several items were noted: the coincidence of the timing of the assassination during the impeachment proceedings. It appears that rationality and reality are gone, and no one believes the explanation of the rationale or what will happen next. The ISIS fight is suspended, even though more troops are being deployed to the region.
The Democrats are continuing quest for nomination. Bloomberg has spent $4M in the Houston market. He is not bothering with the primaries, but his focus on Texas shows that he recognizes the demographic changes that have taken place in Texas, and how this will affect national elections in future. Castro has endorsed Elizabeth Warren. Castro, though has ended his campaign, has shown strength among women voters. They have supported him financially.
Part 2
We interviewed Kevin Landrigan , who writes for the Union Leader, He reported that the NH Legislature has just voted to increase the minimum wage to $15. Currently, the minimum wage in NH is $7.25, the federal minimum wage. The expectation is that Governor Sununu will veto this. Unfortunately, NH is in the position of losing workers. We have a labor shortage. But the Republican platform firmly opposes minimum wage.
A second piece of legislation under consideration is a Red Flag law to prevent unstable or known violent people obtaining or owning guns. Once a red flag complaint has been invoked, the person is registered in the National Crime Database. NH legislators would like to make the NH law a “temporary case” law, where the registration would be rescinded once the danger was past. However, there is no protocol for this, and people in the database would be registered forever, without the protocol. As expected, all the gun rights groups participated and continue to block such legislation.
We also talked about the upcoming Senate race, with Jeanne Shaheen facing the winner of a Republican primary.
