Four Years All For Naught?

ABC news has it here.  A quote from Carol Shea "Che" "SEIU" Porter.

“I have listened to people on television say things like, ‘Well, everybody’s on the take in Washington,’ as if that’s a given fact.  And I think it just makes people more cynical about the whole process,”  Shea-Porter said.  “That’s not true.  That’s not true at all.”

 Really Carol?

“It’s been just awful watching this over the past four years. I think it’s strangling us. I think that when the American public feels cynical about that, they’re right. The special interests — you see them — they’re in the halls of Congress everywhere. We need to clean Washington up. We desperately need to clean them out.

I have just three thoughts to share for the moment (out of dozens); Carol had four years in a democrat majority congress--which promised to clean up the swamp, two of them with a democrat president, and I do not see any attempt by her party or by Carol herself (she is defined legislatively as a follower not a leader) to address this or anything else outside the big blue box of liberal progressive agenda items.

The second thought?  Carol is in hock to unions, and unions are a special interest. Her party spent the past two years dumping billions of our dollars into their hands to help elect their majority and advance their agenda--which as noted above was not remotely concerned with the problem of special interests.

My final thought.  What Carol really means is that there is a problem in Washington that her special interest money could not overcome and the answer is to regulate their opponents and the opposition's supporters.  That is what is strangling.....Carol and the democrat party.

Cross Posted

The Biggest Special Interest Of All

There’s something you might want to keep in mind about the state level Democrat wind machine as we move forward toward 2012.  It has been their practice to ignore their own out of state campaign dollars as they attack anyone or anything on the Republican side with even the most tenuous connection to influence from outside the state.  Even the governor has stood up and declared that he is against the influence of money from outside the state, while hundreds of thousands have poured into his pockets from places farther  and wider than the political borders of the Granite State.  But that’s all superficial by comparison to this.

How do governor Lynch, Chairman Buckley, presumptive democrat candidates for 2012 at every level, the whole of the democrat party, even their RINO sympathizers, explain why they embrace massive infusions of out of state money and all the disruptive influence it has at the state and local level…from the federal government?

No ‘special interest’ has deeper pockets, more strings, or a more corrosive effect on the relationship between the people and their local government, than the Federal government.  But democrats in New Hampshire can’t seem to “balance” a budget without it.  Not only are they committed to the relationship, their congressional candidates insist, (the ones they have already scrubbed of the state party website) that we need to get our money back from Washington—limitations, rules, strings, and problems attached—rather than working to keep it here in the first place.

Talk about co-dependent.

So the next time (how about every time) a democrat starts talking about the influence of ‘outside money,’ aside from the standard hypocrisy you’ll find on their campaign finance reports,  ask them to explain their plan for protecting New Hampshire from the biggest special interest of all; the federal bureaucracy.



Cross posted

John Lynch's Missing 18 Minutes

Do the people of New Hampshire realize that they have a governor who runs off in the cover of darkness to secret meetings with wealthy special interests, giving speeches about who knows what? 

Do they know that money from many of these well heeled millionaires he just happened to be meeting with in secret has been finding its way into the state in large donations for years?

Are they familiar with the protestations from the governor and the democrat leadership about the ills of out of state money and political influence?

They should be.

They also deserve to know what was in the speech their governor gave to 200 wealthy special interest donors.  But it's missing.  It's as if it didn't even exist.

Doesn't New Hampshire have a right to know what their Governor was up to at the Political OutGiving confab?  Or is your position that they do not deserve to know?

Shouldn't we work together John?  We don't want outsiders meddling in our affairs do we John?  Isn't that what you said? New Hampshire works best when we work together right?

Or does it work better with 200 wealthy special interest out of state donors at a secret conference in Chicago?  That sounds like meddling to me.

It's been 58 days.  Where are your missing "18 minutes" Mr. Lynch?  Where's the text of that  speech Governor? It was just a luncheon speech, right?  Or are you hiding something else?

Cross Posted at Granite Grok

Seperation Anxiety

People in NY 23 are fed up with all the special interest groups.  I can’t say I blame them, but  I guess they should have held a primary instead of letting the local GOP anoint their candidate.  Last time I checked people in New Hampshire (in both parties) were not fond of the GOP at any level anointing Republican candidates.  No word on whether the democrats like it when the NHDP or the DNC anoints candidates for them. 

In New Hampshire of course we have confidence that the democrats will find a “republican” to force a primary if we don’t come up with one ourselves—but they are usually a Scozzafava sort of candidate.  Someone who is as likely to vote with the democrats as not.

But back to the point.  The special interest groups in question, are conservative stalwarts looking to deny Pelosi another rubber stamp.  In principle one more vote probably won’t matter but you take them back one at a time, so now it does. 

And the underlying issue in NY-23, aside from the lack of a primary when there were two Republicans interested in the seat, is that the one they chose was getting national party support to the tune of $900,000 dollars.  When the party you donate to endorses a candidate who has only a tenuous connection to the platform you are financing, you get the privilege of objecting.  Your only recourse is to get behind the guy they should have been supporting and make your presence known. 

That is what happened in NY-23.  No one cared much beyond the normal amount of interest until they saw the national GOP’s cash commitments as contrary to the foundations of the party they supported.  So they revolted.  They got behind the conservative candidate to express their support for the platform and their objection to the Party check writers who were spending their money on someone who they did not view as even a moderate republican.   

The special interest here is the desire to invest in value, as in values.  If they are not there, the people who fund the party—just like taxpayers who rebel at the abuse of federal spending—feel obligated to defend the values and the value of their dollars.  And we will continue to see that.

And for the moderate Republicans who feel they should defend their dollars as well, by all means please do. 

Doug Hoffman may not win, but the GOP learned a lesson it had best remember.  There are a significant number of republicans looking for some separation between their candidates and ours.  It's a problem that should be worked out in the primary, and between donors to the national party who may--in the future--do what I do.  Support individual candidates instead of giving money to some top down central clearinghouse for the "campaigns" they view most deserving.

We don't want it from our government.  Why would we support it in our party?