The “Shrill Kathy” Sullivan has a bee in her bonnet over Executive Councilor’s St. Hillaire, Sununu and Wheeler’s “vote to table” the April 13 agenda items two, three and four regarding the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority request for a public guarantee for small business loans.
An in her normal, usual and customary fashion of pandering, demagoguery and straw politics, the Shrill Kathy pens her diatribe in the Union Leader Op-Ed section, grossly mischaracterizing the meeting vote as being anti-small business and anti-job creation.
The Shrill Kathy’s first shot is at District 5 Executive Councilor Dave Wheeler and she quips, “Wheeler’s votes often lack thoughtfulness…” Really? How thoughtless? Councilor Wheeler posited the following question, “What does the thirty-five million look like to the bonding companies regarding state debt? and Wheeler adds, “We increased state debt tremendously in the last four years…how does this fit into that picture?” To which the response was given, “This is reflected as a ‘contingent liability.'”
In that context, we should define, “contingent liability“. A contingent liability is The possibility existent of an obligation to pay certain sums dependent on future events. Liability which is difficult to quantify, or which may or may not come to pass, such as an outstanding lawsuit or a guarantee such as this.
Councilor Wheeler then stated he’d like some time to talk with the state treasurer about this. Where Councilor Wheeler seeks to have a fuller understanding of the ultimate consequence of putting the state on the hook in the case a loan fails, this is somehow demonstrative of a lack of thoughtfulness? So how then do we best characterize the Shrill Kathy and her ilk for the wanton reckless spending over the last four years?
The Shrill Kathy then takes a pot-shot at Councilor Sununu with a terribly contorted, plastic fruit, apples and oranges comparison where she essentially asserts his hypocrisy for voting to table. The Shrill Kathy tries to convince us that Sununu’s business, the Waterville Valley Ski Resort located on public land, is the same or like circumstance as the BFA approving loans for Trudy and David Abood’s gift basket business. What a joke! If a person start a business and signs a lease for commercial space…and the landlord is the government…and that person pays those fees for the use, how is that like putting the taxpayer on the hook if the business should fail?
But Councilor St. Hillaire wasn’t to be left out of the mix. While she soft-balled him she made the claim he voted against the interests of his constituents and followed her rounded criticism with some assertion that the vote was somehow an attempt to rewrite the laws of the state. I’m not even going to waste the time and space on such a charlatanistic claim. Just more of the “template.”
But the Shrill Kathy does make one connection that rings consistent: When it comes to government, it is good for Government to always have its hand in the pot, regardless of whether it is putting the taxpayer on the hook for potential failures (contingent liabilities) within the BFA ..or whether the taxpayer is “making money” (yes! Sununu’s business pays the government money for its activities).
Perhaps the Shrill Kathy ought to wait until the next council meeting and the vote is taken before she rants and raves in the Union Leader making such outrageous claims…and the Shrill Kathy might lay off the Kool-Aid for a spell.
