Welcome to the Real World.
This famous cinematic quote suits the moment as the Concord Monitor, the pragmatic-socialist New Hampshire “paper-of-record,” finds itself on the receiving end of progressive-bureaucrat obfuscation.
In the movie, Morpheus has pulled the wool of the Matrix from Neo’s eyes. The modern world as he knows it does not exist. In reality it is a barren waste. He is nothing more than a battery powering a machine. This is an apt metaphor for the Monitor which toes the pragmatic-socialist line with enthusiasm, and will continue to do so, but for this sliver in time it has made a reasonable request of Democrat Governor Hassan and her administration has chosen to treat them like the rest of the peasants.
The problem is simple, but then it is not. The Monitor has issued Right to Know Requests to pry information from New Hampshire’s Democrat chief executive about efficiencies to the budget, the chief efficiency of which we know is to execute a plan to make someone else responsible for efficiency. Governor Hassan thinks we can save a lot more money if we create a new paid position and position that person to put paid the problem of inefficient government. We need a COO, a Chief operating officer. Someone whose job it would be to do her job so she can go about the business of being New Hampshire’s version of the golfer-in-chief minus the golf.
One of the big ideas in Gov. Maggie Hassan’s $11.5 billion state budget is to create a new executive position charged with making government more efficient.
A good place for this new cost-saver to start would be with the ideas state department heads have already offered to make state government more efficient.
The Concord Monitor seems fine with the governor delegating her job to someone else. Government needs experts to run things and the more experts the merrier. But we’ve got some of those experts in place now and they’ve made suggestions on how to make the state more efficient. If the Monitor is to maintain the charade of “news organization” they need to report some news. Whatever the department heads are suggesting to make New Hampshire more efficient is news and they’d like to report it. But something is amiss. All those years of covering for Senator and then Governor Maggie Hassan’s incompetence has not gained them a seat at this table. They asked and she said no and now not even the almighty 91-A can pry these secrets from New Hampshire’s golfer-in-chief minus the golf.
Stick meet eye.
Hassan even went one step beyond denying the Monitor’s requests, we have now learned after filing other Right to Know requests to state departments. Hassan’s staff sent a memo to all state departments warning them if they were asked for the efficiency proposals to refer all requests to her office.
That’s hardly transparent. That’s actively blocking the release of information.
Welcome to the real world.
Note to the Monitor. If we had the ‘new cost saver’ their job would be to stiff you on the RTK’s at Hassan’s direction and her “job” would be to publicly promise to look into it as part of her renewed commitment to transparency. A problem she would be addressing with the help of a budget request to fund a new department of navel-gazers transparency in the executive branch of State Government. Their job would be to tie up your right to know request while they investigated whatever it was you couldn’t get some other agency to tell you because someone no one will ever find told them not to tell you. No one would learn anything ever again but we’d be paying more experts for less and that is an important part of what progressive government is all about.
That is how this would work, and how it will work if we allow the golfer-in-chief minus the golf to dispose of her responsibilities in this manner.
Now, every governor before her has managed these duties, to the best of my knowledge, by working with the executive council, department heads, and legislature, so the real question isn’t “what did the department heads suggest” it is this: is Hassan as weak and incompetent a leader as Obama?
The smartest man in DC didn’t add 30 plus czars between himself and a cabinet because he likes the company. He’s completely out of his depth and has been ‘since day one.’ Governor Hassan’s big idea to add a COO is solid proof that she is out of her depth as well. If that’s not enough look at her budgets.
Or, does she just want to pinch taxpayers for more dough to pay a stiff to cover for her so she can be like the campaigner in chief?
If the Monitor spent a bit more time exploring those angles they might find the Governor a bit more forthcoming with any potential evidence to the contrary. Her office would bail on the “we’re ignoring your right to know request to protect some state employees” narrative to protect the current state employee who wants to be a federal employee in the US Senate – her.
I know, I know, you think what you are doing now is putting on the heat but this is weak sauce. You are still looking at the world through their eyes, living in the progressive-pragmatic Matrix. Treat her (treat them all) like you would a Governor Bill O’Brien and see what happens.
Hassan could never handle that and you might just get what you are looking for.
You’d certainly sell a lot more newspapers.
