Telegraph slaps Court over cable ruling

The Nashua Telegraph takes issue with a recent New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling, which decided that a landlord could not cut off an illegal cable hookup from a tenant who had stopped paying the rent.

That’s seems a bit of a stretch. Television and Internet service are not cited in the legislation, and although telephone service is protected, there is no indication that cable was a telephone provider in this case.

If the connection was illegal, as the landlord claims, then it should have been disconnected anyway, making this a poor case upon which to set such a broad precedent if that was the court’s objective.

With this ruling, the court has essentially put cable television in the same category as essentials like water, light and electricity. What’s next? “Cable stamps” for those who can’t afford a hook-up; or Internet assistance for those who qualify for fuel assistance and subsidized school lunch?

State Supreme Court ready to rule on legality of tax caps

Foster's reports on the State Supreme Court taking up the question of tax caps in New Hampshire cities.

The state's highest court is set to rule on the legality of tax caps, possibly ending months of legal wrangling that has killed citizen petitions and jeopardized the spending limits in numerous Granite State communities.

On Tuesday, a Hillsborough County Superior Court judge recommended the state Supreme Court rule on a petition challenging the legality of a proposed tax cap in Manchester.

Keep Manchester Moving, an anti-tax cap group, filed the petition and is pushing for a Supreme Court decision to be reached by the November election.

NH Supreme Court rules against Big Yogurt

In a ruling sure to inspire cynics who thought our state was firmly in the grasp of Big Yogurt's control, the New Hampshire Supreme Court today denied the appeal of Stonyfield Yogurt and other PSNH critics who sought to block installation of a mercury scrubber at the Merrimack Station Power Plant. The six-page decision found that the plaintiffs didn't have standing to block the move, since it won't affect rates unless and until the Public Utilities Commission agrees to higher rates.

Such future harm is insufficient, as a matter of law, to confer standing upon the petitioners to appeal the PUC’s decision. Accordingly, we dismiss the appeal.

Complete Ruling

Charlie Arlinghaus has documented Stonyfield's efforts to stop PSNH from burning coal. Installation of the scrubber was mandated by the state, after the very same critics complained about mercury pollution from the coal burning power plant. Once the scrubber was mandated, they shifted their argument from the environmental to the financial, claiming that the pollution controls they wanted made the power plant too expensive to operate.

This is coming from a group of plaintiffs that don't want the United States to burn coal for electricity. I would have more sympathy for their point of view if they were honest about their goals, instead of pretending to stand up for us as ratepayers.