Entries by Andrew Cline

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Burning money

Every time you pay your electricity or heating bill, you’re lighting your money on fire. That is, you’re trading money for the energy released by burning some combustible material — natural gas, home heating oil, wood pellets, etc. So in effect, you’re burning your money. That’s OK, it’s how a market economy works. You don’t […]

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Energy and housing’s self-inflicted wounds

New Hampshire Public Radio reported this week on a study showing that rural New Englanders pay a higher percentage of their income on energy. This isn’t really new information. But it was a slow news week and the report’s recommended solutions seemed written to get NPR listeners to spill their morning coffees from their pledge […]

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The lumberjacks are not OK

How many lumberjacks live in New Hampshire? Given the debate over Gov. Chris Sununu’s vetoes of two bills to further subsidize the state’s forest products industry, it’s an important question. No one seems to know the answer. Supporters of the two bills, Senate Bills 365 and 446, say the subsidies would save 900 jobs. Sometimes […]

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A turning point for public sector unions

Labor Day weekend is a time for last trips to the beach, first trips to apple orchards, and getting into heated political arguments over the role organized labor in the 21st century. Ah, autumn. This is the first Labor Day after the U.S. Supreme Court’s famous June 27 Janus decisionin which the court held that […]

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Diversifying New Hampshire

New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine are so white that if a map of the United States were colored according to the skin pigmentation of its residents, Northern New England would look like a snow-covered peak. We could go as a ghost for Halloween without even dressing up. And that’s a potential problem. Some New Hampshire business […]

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New Hampshire can’t freeze the timber industry in time

Economic progress, like progress in any field, cannot be achieved by freezing the status quo in place. Government attempts to do so result only in delaying rather than advancing progress. Following Gov. Chris Sununu’s June 19 veto of two bills to subsidize New Hampshire’s biomass power plants, three of those plants announced that they were […]

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Why the ARMI subsidy is so important

Making exceptions to general rules can seem harmless or even essential in the moment. When exceptions are made to achieve a short-term goal, the argument is that this one little violation of our collective standards or norms will quickly fade into history and everything will soon return to normal.  Life doesn’t always work that way. […]

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Gangster Tactics

If you live in New Hampshire and enjoy wine, there’s something you should know (besides how approach a tasting). Your own state government, which sells wine, wants to be your primary supplier. Really, it wants to be your only supplier, but the Legislature won’t allow that. So to satisfy its impulse to smash all enemies, […]