On July 31st the New Hampshire Democrat Party declared open season on Paul Hodes political PAC money so I’m not wasting any time taking up the challenge. The challenge? Find hypocrisy in the donors or the donors to the donors—to Paul Hodes campaign. Let me tell that it’s no challenge making Mr. Hodes and his NHDP supporters look like hypocrites. So courtesy of the NHDP’s new ‘rules’ I am pleased to bring you an ongoing series of campaign finance investigations suitably called the Hodespocrisy.
First up is DANPAC, one of nine leadership PAC’s that have given Mr. Hodes $10,000.00 dollars this election cycle. DANPAC is run by Senator Daniel Inouye, democrat from Hawaii, the chairman of the Senate appropriations committee. DANPAC has given $10,000.00 to Paul Hodes, which Mr. Hodes has accepted despite glaring contradictions.
Contradictions you ask? What might they be?
Mr. Hodes, after ranking 45th out of 435 in the House for the amount of 2010 earmark appropriations requests he’d made, suddenly got the "election year" no-more-earmarks bug. This is like a drunk who promises to stop drinking right after he passes out.
Sober or not, in March, 2010 David Obey (head in the House Appropriations committee) managed to help pass what The Hill called a Republican lead ban on commercial earmarks. But Daniel Inouye, (who if you recall is the chairman of the Senate APPROPRIATION’s committee) when confronted in the Senate with the House provision to ban commercial earmarks couldn’t begin to understand why congress would end the practice. He’s against it and he won’t support it in the Senate.
Against it, but why? I’m glad you asked.
Senator Inouye is ranked number two for 2010 in passing out earmarks in the Senate. So it is not surprising that DANPAC is up to its eyeballs in money from the defense industry and a who’s who of the commercial industry, all of whom benefit from congressional largesse in the form of earmarks. In fact, it is almost impossible to avoid links between the Senator, the PAC, and donors to him who have benefitted or stand to benefit from Inouye’s position as Chair of appropriations given how much of that money they benefit from.
Here’s one I picked at random. David Steward, CEO of World Wide Technologies and his wife gave a total of $10,000.00 in individual contributions to DANPAC. His Company is also number two on the DANPAC donor list with an additional $16,000.00 in donations to DANPAC. So is it any coincidence that World Wide Technologies has received tens of millions of dollars in appropriations and stands to receive more?
That’s one donor picked at random. They probably all look like that.
And we are left with Paul Hodes, so-called earmark champion in the House and wanna-be Senator, accepting $10,000.00 dollars from the Senator who runs the appropriations commitee in the Senate, and will not support Mr. Hodes so-called signature issue on spending reform. Oh wait, it gets better. Inouye has made the House ban irrelevant. Inouye’s move means the House will still end up approving earmarks passed in the Senate. Talk about getting your signature reform neutered. So why not take 10,000.00 in campaign contributions from that guy, right? Bring on the Hodespocrisy baby!
So do the democrat rules for outrage and hypocrisy over donations apply to Paul Hodes? We’ve already got Hodes nailed on at least $40,000.00 in “hypocrite dollars” in the 2010 cycle alone that by NHDP double standards, he should return immediately. ($17K from Rangel, $13K from Goldman, and now $10K from Inouye.) So how long do we have to wait until we hear calls of Hodes Hypocrisy from democrats and demands that he return his ‘tainted dollars?"
Does the phrase “when Hell freezes over” ring a bell?