There is ample evidence that Paul Hodes toes the line, is a Kool Aid drinker, and a reliable party hack. Each effort to sell himself as having fiscal integrity or ethics is met with an abundance of contradictory evidence. So to suggest that he is an independent thinker lacks veracity unless you mean independent from reality. To further demonstrate this break Hodes spokesman Bergman (not Ingrid but Mark) defended his paymaster from a recent attack on his record. (From the Union Leader)
Hodes spokesman Mark Bergman said Hodes voted for the stimulus to boost the economy and save jobs. Bergman disputed the ad’s claim that the government took over health care.
“We don’t believe it’s a trillion- dollar takeover,” Bergman said yesterday. “We’re arguing that this is an outside group that has helped Kelly Ayotte’s campaign. She’s getting another Washington establishment bailout.”
Bergman said Hodes voted for federal cap-and-trade legislation because he believes it will reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil and lead to alternative energy jobs in New Hampshire.
Mr. Hodes doesn’t even know what is in these bills so what they "believe" is irrelevant. And that’s actually the point.
Hodes is on the record spending trillions of our dollars. He has insisted repeatedly that almost every spending bill creates jobs, or will create jobs. Yet almost two years along and the job picture is stagnant and getting worse. Mr. Hodes can believe anything he wants but Keynes was wrong and we are living with the error of his ways. No amount of spending by him or anyone else in government can extract us from the current circumstances and if he read something other than the donkey flash cards the party gives him he might know this.
As for cap and trade, Bergman’s response is absurd. The bill was never designed to reduce dependence on foreign oil or improve the environment and if Hodes (or even Bergman) had taken the time to read it they would know that. It is a giant energy tax designed to extract trillions out of the economy and the pockets of regular Americans and redistribute it to the privileged players with inside connections. Big Washington and Big Energy are the winners, America and the environment are losers. So while Hodes might be able to play dumb–sorry we know he can do that, ignorance is no excuse for making law. Cap and trade would kill jobs, raise costs, lower the standard of living, reduce GDP, and at best reduce the global temperature by 0.05 degrees over 40 years. Even if it was still a desirable end, doing it in the middle of "the biggest recession in history" is arrogant, ignorant, and unconscionable.
But it is formula. It is no different than the expensive jobs bill that doesn’t create jobs, or the economic recovery package that doesn’t lead to recovery. It is adding 30 billion in debt every few months for unemployment welfare to fend off a revolt of Hodes modern middle aged Dickensian orphans. The issue isn’t the issue, it’s about perception not results.
So Hodes biggest problem is that he is a liberal hack. He thinks three things that are wrong and dangerous. He believes government can solve everything through regulation and control and that freedom and liberty are suitable sacrifices to achieve any desired end. He is certain that failure is merely the result of failing to apply enough of your hard earned dollars (which he will happily tax out of you) or a lack of suitable federal oversight to any program or policy he himself can’t even be bother to understand himself. And that if neither of these are true, if he can keep talking out his ass long enough you’ll go with the evil you do know instead of daring to face one you do not.
So he’s playing you like a guitar. (something he’s actually very good at.)
F. A. Hayek had Hodes and his socialist democrats nailed half a century ago. In the progression to permanent one party socialist rule legislators are not asked to act where they can agree–but to produce agreement on everything. The way you do that is by letting leadership produce onerous incomprehensible legislation then forcing everyone on board. The burden of responsibility (and the power of actual law making) is then shuffled off to the executive and the elite bureaucracy relieving the legislator of any traceable responsibility. They are reduced to useful idiots rubber stamping whatever the party puts before them. This then allows people like Hodes to change colors in every elections cycle, suggest remedies with no hope of serious action,because nothing is really their fault; he (and they) then embed themselves into the body politic like a tick sucking on our life blood as they deposit poisons into the crumbling remains of our once great republic.
The legislature is reduced to a useless organ whose sole function is to give the perception that the people have any voice at all in their government. Seems like we’re already there.
Maybe you don’t want that? Well grab some tweezers. On November second we have to pluck Paul Hodes off the rump of government so he can serenade himself into political history.
