Pun Salad

Background for people (understandably) not paying attention to New Hampshire politics: Our state's senior senator, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, is not running for reelection in 2026. So my CongressCritter, Democrat Chris Pappas is running to replace her. Which means New Hampshire Congressional District One is up for grabs. Which (in turn) is drawing clowns eager to join the DC circus.

And it appears one of those clowns is…

I haven’t decided yet about a run in #NH1, but as we see, the right is already on the attack.

I’m not afraid to take this message anywhere: Democrats must forcefully oppose Trump. #nhpolitics https://t.co/vXETOHLuUb

— Hanna Trudo (@HCTrudo) May 5, 2025

Let's give Hanna credit for linking to a National Review article by Brittany Bernstein: Reporter Moves from Covering Dems to Running as One. (Here's a gifted link if you need it.)

There's a certain amount of self-dramatization here. Hanna's not afraid! Even though she's being attacked by the right!

In fact, Brittany's article is pretty far from an "attack"; it consists mainly of sketching Hanna's journalistic career, and quotes her extensively and accurately. (I left a comment on Hanna's tweet to that effect, with no response.) Let's take a look:

Writing with fire! And spitting it!

Continuing the rhetoric:

Well, you get the idea. The closest Brittany comes to an "attack" is pointing out the thinly disguised partisanship of her past journalism.

If you're interested, this NHJournal article has more on Hanna and the local political scene. As I type, the only announced Democrat candidate for NH01 is Maura Sullivan.

Also of note:

• Sorry, Mark, you lost this one. The last time Pun Salad featured NH pol Mark Fernald was back in 2011 when he penned a silly op-ed column with a bunch of ideas on how to balance the federal budget. Which involved tax increases, and no spending decreases.

  Mark's op-ed silliness continues, years later, in my lousy local paper: How vouchers will destroy public education. It's the usual, mostly. For example:

  The voucher system advocated by New Hampshire Republicans is a dagger aimed at the heart of public education—and therefore, at the heart of our democracy—by creating a system that disfavors our public schools.

  The public schools are subject to minimum standards set by the state; they must provide special education services; they must accept all comers; they are free; and they administer standardized tests each year in grades 3 through 8.

  Schools taking the voucher money have no such requirements. There are no rules, no accountability, and they are free to reject students who are difficult or expensive to educate.

  Note that Mark has the usual Democrat definition of "free": paid for by taxpayers.

  But his claim that non-government schools have "no rules"? That's a lie. Tsk. In just a few seconds of Googling, I found New Hampshire's Office of Nonpublic Schools which contains (among other resources) a 19-page PDF CHAPTER Ed 400 APPROVAL OF NONPUBLIC SCHOOLS which has plenty of rules.

  But what really gets my goat:

  With new money being offered for private school education, you can be sure the market will respond. New private schools will open, and existing private schools will expand, to take advantage of the free state money.

  And therein lies the danger.

  >Public school enrollment will decline, as middle class families choose the voucher money. As families leave the public schools, support will dwindle at the polls, and school budgets will be cut, causing more middle class families to leave the public schools.

  Mark avoids the issue. If public schools were as great as he claims, parents would not send their kiddos to private schools even under a "voucher" system. Why would they bother?

  Mark is essentially admitting that given even minimal incentives, parents would choose to yank their children out of public school, and undergo the hassle and additional expense of private (or home) schooling.

  Meanwhile, as our local TV station reports: NH Republicans advance bill to expand Education Freedom Accounts

• Contra Fernald. The Josiah Bartlett Center has FAQs about "Education Freedom Accounts", the school choice program at issue here in NH. For example: Is an EFA a voucher?

  No. A voucher is a payment from the government directly to an education provider. With an EFA, the state approves a list of providers, but does not pay the provider directly. Each student’s state adequate education grant amount is deposited in an account managed by a state-approved vendor, in this case the Children’s Scholarship Fund NH. When a parent chooses a provider from the approved list, the parent submits an invoice to the Children’s Scholarship Fund for payment. The payment can be for tuition or tutoring services, or for individual educational expenses allowable by law under RSA 194-F:2. The payment is made from the Children’s Scholarship Fund to the vendor. Every payment is scrutinized for compliance with state rules.

  Or: Would EFAs defund public schools?

  Opponents of school choice have long predicted that giving parents the option to leave their assigned public school would trigger a mass exodus that would collapse school budgets. That low opinion of district public schools is not shared by most parents. “As yet, the growing trend of giving parents public funds for private education hasn’t decimated school budgets,” Education Week reported last year. “Even in states where private school choice is open to all students, the overwhelming majority of K-12 students still attend public school.” A New Hampshire state representative opposed to EFAs acknowledged in legislative testimony this year that “very, very, very, very few students are actually leaving their public school district to take a voucher.” Data compiled by EdChoice show that at the start of 2025 only 2.2% of students nationwide participated in a school choice program. In Florida, which has the highest school choice participation rate, 82.5% of students have enrolled in a public school of some kind, whether a district, magnet or charter school. In Arizona, 86.3% of students have chosen public schools. Just as public schools aren’t a good fit for every child, neither are EFAs. The EFA program is designed to be an alternative for students who need it, not to replace public schools.

  I'm pretty sure Josiah Bartlett has the better of this argument.

• Just another reminder of what a jerk President Biden was. Kimberley A. Strassel tells of Biden’s Energy-Loan Free-For-All (gifted link).

  It’s no secret Joe Biden’s team spent its final days shoveling money out the door, and in ways designed to limit Donald Trump’s ability to claw it back. Officials working under Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright have now completed a review of the Loan Programs Office (LPO)—the government entity that brought you Solyndra— and the extent of the shenanigans is remarkable.

  Figures and documents provided to me show a loan free-for-all: More than $90 billion showered on entities in a matter of months, a lot of it to companies of questionable taxpayer value. The highlights of DOE’s review:

  Unprecedented sums: LPO was created in 2005 under George W. Bush, though it was ramped up by Barack Obama’s 2009 “stimulus” package (which funded Solyndra, Abound Solar and other failures). Biden built on that history, earmarking hundreds of billions from his Covid-era spending packages for green-energy loans. After Kamala Harris lost the election, LPO went in overdrive. From 2009 to the final quarter of 2024, LPO had obligated some $42 billion in loans. From Election Day 2024 through Inauguration Day 2025, LPO closed on $53 billion in loans and made an additional $40 billion in commitments—or more than double what it has spent over the prior 15 years.

  As Kimberly goes on to point out, some of those "loans and commitments" have gone to firms that are already in danger of going belly-up. But not before absconding with the taxpayer largesse.