To the Editor:

Big deal! So what! Evergreens grow all over the state of NH. Everyone mostly takes for granted the stately pines that so majestically shade us and provide a year round canopy of gratifying green. It is the use of these Evergreens that provide an interesting story with many twists and turns.

These trees have been harvested in the past, especially in the North Country, for structural timber. These timbers were used to build the homes and factories that used to provide manufacturing jobs for so many state residents. It is now possible to go “up nawth” and visit the museums in Berlin that depict the era of commercial logging and how rugged residents used to “ride the logs” to the mills.

Many residents will not miss the smell of “stinkin” Lincoln and the paper pulp mills, however. It is academic at this point to discuss the paper and timber industry because that has gone the way of so many other large NH manufacturing industries. They have been outsourced to lower wage countries.

Some of the paper produced in those NH mills was used to produce dollar bills such as those pictured in the embedded graphic. Older residents will remember the silver certificates of that era, which represented one dollar “payable in silver coin to the bearer on demand.” 

The other “United States Note” was last issued in 1963 by President Kennedy to ostensibly compete with the quasi-private Central Bank currency “Federal Reserve Note” that was “printed” to buy US Debt such as Treasury Notes and Bonds. Look in your wallet at the top of your current “dollar bill.”

The 1963 US Note was immediately withdrawn from circulation after President Kennedy’s death.

Today the US Government only issues debt authorized by Congress and “printed” on paper as US Treasury Notes and Bonds. These notes and bonds are then bought and sold in an “open market.”

Congress raises deficit ceiling = Treasury bonds & notes = higher US Debt = US Money = Inflation

Silver certificates where stopped in 1971 by President Nixon when the US ran out of silver with which to redeem them. Silver had restrained the US from the unlimited printing of money to fund wars.

This was necessary because the 60’s Johnson era “guns and butter” policy bankrupted the US. Think Vietnam! Wars are very expensive to fight and the US tendency is not to tax people directly for wars.

After 1971, there was no restraint on the unlimited “printing of money” (a metaphor) to fund wars.

The restraint on unlimited “money printing” was removed; the “purchasing power” of money dropped; prices and wages went up; manufacturing moved to lower wage countries; more government jobs were created; public sector compensation went up; NH property taxes went up; the unemployment rate went up; unemployment benefits went up; house prices went up; inflation set in; congress attempted to “bail out” people; congress raised deficit ceiling; printed more debt, etc.

In NH there is another type of “Evergreen” that residents may need to consider: The Evergreen Law.

“In July of 2008, NEA-New Hampshire successfully lobbied on behalf of our members to pass House Bill 1436, the Evergreen Law, guaranteeing that collectively bargained salary schedules continue in full force and effect at the expiration of the current contract until a new contract is negotiated.”

This law is currently not in effect for certain existing town contracts…yet! Forewarned is forearmed!

I just thought that you had a “Right to Know (R2K).

Ivan Beliveau
Goffstown