Observation on the nature of a Progressive and Progressivism: Jeanne Shaheen - Granite Grok

Observation on the nature of a Progressive and Progressivism: Jeanne Shaheen

Shaheen gas tax
Bureaucrats before bridges

Steve has a most important post up today where he brings up that Jeanne Shaheen, regardless of her campaign ads or sound bytes, is not really interested in the people of NH (but gets it very slightly wrong).  Emphasis mine, a bit of reformatting:

I can’t say it often enough.  We need to elect Senators and congress-people who are less interested in taking credit for getting some fraction of our money back and more interested in making sure it never leaves New Hampshire in the first place.  We send them to DC to ensure that we, as a state, have the most opportunity to decide our own destiny, be it roads and bridges, health care, education, property rights, or the defense of our natural rights.  But Democrats go to DC to do exactly the opposite.  They consistently vote to bring more money through DC, to make more decisions in the US capitol, and to keep our tax dollar running through that offshore-bankrupt District of Columbia instead of in Concord or your home town.

This vote is just one more example of who Democrats like Jeanne Shaheen really represent; lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats.  Preferably, as far away from us as possible.

Steve is EXACTLY right – the money that is made in NH (which IS earned private property), the wealth that created, should stay in NH and not taken from us.  The Founders, with their sense of Federalism that put the States first, would approve of his outlook – me, too.  The best control is when local people have it – and not when it is translated to far away.    He is right in that Democrats get elected “to make more decisions in the US capitol” than at the State level if elected to the national level.  They also do it at the State level – to paraphrase Steve, “to make more decisions in the State capitol, Concord” than at local level if elected to the State level.  Correspondingly, it also works at the City or town level than by individual or families make their own decisions.

Where I slightly disagree with him is  in the reason why Jeanne Shaheen acts in the manner she does – it is not that Jeanne Shaheen represents “lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats” – she merely uses them soley for who (or actually, what) she represents: a “fundamentally transformed” America (look how she “fundamentally transformed healthcare here in NH with promises akin to Obama’s Obamacare ones that turned out radically wrong) they are merely useful idiots; tools, not constituents.  Why?

She is first and foremost a Progressive – it is not that she represents NH (in fact, it is the opposite way: she’s the Federal Government’s Ambassador to NH) or its people but is for Progressivism.  As a State Senator, then as a Governor, and then as US Senator, she NEVER operated in a way that allowed for more Liberty at the sole level she disdains – the individual person really doesn’t matter.  Progressives move that Power and decision making up as high as possible – for individuals CAN’T be allowed to make the important decisions for one Progressive reason – they believe that we are incapable of doing so.  We individuals are just cogs in the “societal machine” – they are entitled to throw the levers and push the buttons and we just are to follow the commands and do as Jeanne Shaheen directs.

To b sure, she’s running ads that make it seem like she’s all in for the “little guy” but the impact of her legislation and votes show those examples to be the exception and not the norm.  She lives and campaigns to do one thing – concentrate power and decision making AWAY from the lower levels of government and people.  The ads on TV she is campaigning with work BECAUSE it is her policies (and Obama’s as she has voted for them 99% of the time) that put these people at risk in the first place.  She takes credit for helping those folks even as her policies, directly and indirectly, have helped cause the individual problems in the first place.  This is what Progressivism is – take away control and create the bad outcomes.  Then take credit for when only the highest levels of Government (as she is its Representative).

Sorry, but this is not “making the trains run on time” – and Steve is right that Jeanne Shaheen had the chance to show us that she really cared about NH by letting us keep our own money to prioritize our own needs as a State – and once again, let the Progressive mask slip (by dint of her vote) and tell us “I do not trust you with your own money, I do not trust you to make that set of decisions for yourselves“.  That’s not the NH way – but it is the way that leads to an unconnected Government way.  The NH way is to be as local as possible – that is my adopted heritage in the Live Free or Die coming from the Progressive state of MA.  Yet, Jeanne Shaheen, even as she touts that message, quietly acts the opposite – sounding NH acting Progressive.

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