Dan Eaton Holds Kids Hostage - Granite Grok

Dan Eaton Holds Kids Hostage

Image Credit: The Marketeer - Get the five.comNew Hampshire House Democrat Dan Eaton left office under investigation for intimidation and corruption.  He returned under the umbrella of returning civility to Concord.  Yet Eaton is proof that there never was any, not from the NH Democrat Leadership.  And now that he’s back and in charge of the powerful finance committee, he’s being who Dan Eaton is.  Someone who uses his office to help…Dan Eaton.

That is why Dan Eaton took a bill everyone likes, that would fix the charter school situation, and should have breezed out of the legislature and into law, and held it hostage.

Jason Bedrick, writing at the CATO blog, put Eaton’s actions into perspective.

Without the fix, the five new charter schools that are already in the governor’s budget cannot be authorized. Even a delay until the budget negotiations in June will jeopardize the ability of these charter schools to be ready to open in September.

In the same article, Jason quotes Charlie Arlignhaus from the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Consider what he’s (Dan Eaton is) saying: He liked the bill and supports the policy, but he believes he can use the bill as part of a hostage negotiation with the Senate. He wants to say to the Senate “I know you want this, but we’ll kill it even though we like it too unless you do something else we want that is completely unrelated.”

Without question, some give and take and normal compromise will be part of a budget process. Everyone expects the House and Senate to pass different budgets and to then negotiate over the details of what gets included. But this bill isn’t part of that process and wouldn’t be part of that negotiation unless Eaton gets to keep it captive in a back room. In effect, he’s looking at charter schools and saying, “I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire, but I think I can sell you for a good price.”

And Eaton?

“I’m looking at this as political. We have a [budget] negotiation [with the state senate] coming up in June and I want to have a trump card or two, and this is … a very healthy trump card.”

Arlinghaus called Eaton’s remarks ‘a rare moment of candor,’ and that is true in a general sense, but that is not a new idea to Eaton.  During the Democrats last brush with majority rule Eaton remarked that it makes sense to know how much you’re spending before you decide how much money to raise.”  He’s talking about spending other people’s money.

What matters to Dan Eaton takes precedence over what matters to anyone else, including their own paychecks, which Eaton will pilfer to whatever degree he deems fit once he has decided how much of your money he needs.  So for him to hold students hostage in exchange for his (or Democrat Leaderships) spending aspirations, is par for their course.  The trump card is just some kid’s education.

So Bedrick’s blog title says it all.  ‘Nice Charter School Bill You Got There…Shame if Anything Were to Happen To It.’

And before you start in with the “this is how the game is played” nonsense, tell me this leftopia?  If Bill O’Brien held Charter Schools hostage so he could ‘get something’ from Democrats later on, would you be sitting on your hands making excuses or tripping over each other to announce ad nauseum that O’Brien was an evil tyrant playing politics with our children’s futures?

Don’t lie.  You’d be milking that cow 24/7 and blaming any Republican who failed to denounce it, all the way to the next election.

Not a bad idea actually.  I’m so glad Eaton is a Democrat.

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