The New Hampshire Gazette, Friday, May 21, 2021 — Page 1 We Put the Vol. CCLXV, No. 18 The New Hampshire Gazette May 21, 2021 The Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ • Editor: Steven Fowle • Founded 1756 by Daniel Fowle Free! PO Box 756, Portsmouth, NH 03802 • [email protected] • www.nhgazette.com in Free Press The Fortnightly Rant The Storm’s Not Coming—It’s Here ew Englanders are familiar lished that a person’s right to in- with the scene: video shows fluence elections should increase in Nrain falling sideways and random proportion to their net worth. objects flying through the air. Crash- Shelby County v. Holder, in 2013, ing waves beat furiously against the ruled that, since the Republican Par- shore. Finally the land crumbles. A ty had not been found guilty recent- house falls, beaten to smithereens, ly of criminally intimidating poor, and ceases to exist. non-white voters, the law that had Traditionally it’s been a hurricane been preventing them from doing so or a bad nor’easter, and the process could now be discarded. takes a few hours. Lately, it’s politics. Now that they have achieved such The end hasn’t come for America’s dominance, one might think that democracy yet, but things don’t look Republicans could relax a bit. Cer- particularly good. tainly life in these allegedly United Nobody builds on the edge of a States has been relatively and re- cliff, of course.* Things just creep up freshingly placid since Jack Dorsey on you: the Atlantic Ocean, the Re- threw a certain someone off Twit- publican Party…. ter and Sleepy Joe moved into the Say what you want about Repub- White House. It no longer seems licans,† they have a plan, and they like the daily news has been scripted stick to it. by Chuck Barris of “Gong Show” “In some cases, we actually draft They passed a bill in the House— effect. As we become more and For at least forty years they’ve fame. [the bills] for them,” she said, “or we H.R. 1, the For the People Act— more disorganized and discombob- been obsessed with packing the Such thinking, though, is not for have a sentinel on our behalf give which would defend and expand ulated, the likelihood increases that Supreme Court with their kind of Republicans. Eugene V. Debs said, them the model legislation so it has voting rights, tighten campaign fi- Grenada or Panama—or a coalition judge. They have their own official “While there is a lower class, I am in that grassroots, from-the-bottom- nance laws, limit partisan gerryman- made up of every country south of cabal, just for that purpose. Tens it, while there is a criminal element, up type of vibe.” dering, and create new ethics rules the border that we’ve ever invad- of millions of dollars pour into the I am of it, and while there is a soul Do you want artisanal feudalism? for federal officeholders. ed—will be tempted to try and take Federalist Society every year—in in prison, I am not free.” Republi- Because this is how you get artisanal Sounds good, right? It is good. It’s revenge. tax-free donations, no less, diverted cans are similarly determined, but feudalism. More than 360 Republi- so good that 68 percent of Ameri- Considering the state we’re in, from the U.S. Treasury. Its apologists with the opposite intent. As long as can-backed voter suppression bills cans want to see it passed. Partisan they might get it, too. Given how will point to its other programs, but a poor, non-white person insists on have been filed in 47 state legisla- hacks working for the Koch political our deranged government has been its core mission is to control who sits voting for Democrats, that needs to tures. As one might expect, many machine were caught on tape admit- blocking action on climate change, on the Supreme Court. be made a felony. of these bills are quite outrageous: ting as much. maybe they should, in self defense. With six out of the nine sitting Last month Jessica Anderson, “You gave a drink of water to a per- Before it can become law, though, Perhaps somehow we’ll get Justices being present or former executive director of Heritage Ac- son who stood in line for hours in its counterpart, S. 1, must pass in the through this. Stranger things have members, the Federalist Society has tion—yet another tax-free cabal the hot sun to vote? OK, felon.” Senate. There it faces an obstacle happened. Earlier this month nearly swept the table. for free-spending oligarchs—was To a citizen’s way of thinking, that demonstrates its importance. It Shakuntala Gaikwad, a 76-year What sort of Court have those caught on tape speaking to a group most of these laws are probably un- only takes 41 Senators—who repre- old woman from Baramati, India, rich white folks bought? Surprise! It of the usual suspects: people with an constitutional as well as outrageous. sent, as Ari Berman points out, just who was thought to have died from favors rich white men. odd million or two to spare, which That’s why only Federalist Society 21 percent of the the country—to Covid, was moments away from be- Citizens United, in 2010, estab- they would hate to see frittered away alumni get to make that determi- block this bill or any other with a ing cremated but was taken back to on infrastructure, or education, or nation. filibuster. This is the same crew, re- the hospital instead, after she began * Nobody normal, anyway. We have heard health care, or veterans. Anderson Nobody is all bad, of course. We member, that turns a blind eye to the to cry. some strange tales about people with more money than sense building monuments to described how Heritage is working can credit Republicans with per- January 6th coup attempt. It would be wrong to say we know their egos on oceanfront property in fash- hard to ensure that they will contin- forming at least one important pub- We’re beginning to think that how she felt, but surely we can em- ionable locations. ue to have the upper hand: by writ- lic service: their attack on democracy this process of bananafication our pathize. † No, on second thought, don’t: this is a ing voter suppression laws around has been so aggressive that it got the government has been going through With a lot of luck, perhaps we, family paper…. the country. Democrats’ attention. could eventually have a boomerang too, might be spared. The Alleged News® Who Actually Owns the Formerly-Award-Winning Local Daily? rom time to time a farmer the sobriquet, often acronymized as Having created this morass of Murdoch—infamous for, among In 2017, Ken Doctor at the Nie- feels compelled to waste half a AWLD, both out of habit and be- confusion, we resolved to clarify the other things, having introduced man Journalism Lab explained [Fday wrestling a rock out of a location cause it seemed to have become part matter; let us hope that, in doing so, photos of nude girls on page three where GateHouse got the money: where its continued presence is a con- of the local vernacular. we do not make it worse. of The Sun, his London tabloid— “Institutional and mutual fund stant aggravation which can no longer A few years ago an astute mem- The Herald lost its claim to local began eyeing their asset. Prolonged shareholders…own at least 70 per- be borne. Such is the nature of the fol- ber of our team pointed out that the ownership in the late 1960s, when negotiations were consummated in cent of the company. They find its lowing patch of text. Readers need not term “local,” as we had been using the heirs of Justin Downing Hart- 2007; Murdoch induced the Ban- dividend—just increased to 35 cents apologize for skipping over it; we apol- it, was misleading. Though we had ford [1898 – 1963] sold the paper. crofts to overcome their disdain for per quarter—attractive. There’s rich ogize for its length. Once we got this initially intended it to refer to the The purchaser was Roy Thomson, a crude Australians through the clev- irony here: The retirement funds of rock rolling…. In our defense, it could paper’s purported news coverage, in Canadian barber’s son whose success er tactic of offering yet more money. those in the news industry, among have been even longer. – The Ed.] this context “local” seemed to sug- in the newspaper racket was so spec- The Dow Jones papers—including many others, helps fund these New Elsewhere in this issue we cite a gest that the seat of its controlling tacular that it earned him a British the forlorn Herald—became part of Media takeovers, which in turn re- statement which was recently pub- powers lay somewhere within this title: 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet. Murdoch’s News Corp. sult in more job cutbacks and the lished in the Portsmouth Herald—a Zip Code. Such, of course, was not At some point Thomson sold to Five years later News Corpse— thinning of journalism in commu- newspaper which we used to call the case, nor had it been for many Ottaway, which was then absorbed please pardon the accuracy—sold nities from coast to coast. Those “The Award-Winning Local Daily.” years. by Dow Jones. In plain English, the Dow papers to GateHouse nice dividend checks mean fewer The moniker had been earned by the Somehow, the alleged editor “Dow Jones” is a legal fiction—a Media for $87 million.