“If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation …” —Rush Limbaugh
Today’s Union Leader Editorial, entitled, “Free Cops!” points once again to the ills of having a big-government Democrat like Jeanne Shaheen serving the Granite State in the U.S. Senate. Like her liberal counterpart, former Congressperson Carol Shea-Porter, Shaheen brings home the bacon … To wit: a $1.4 million federal grant to pay for six new police officers; Providing four for Manchester and one each for Pelham and Claremont.
Not a new scheme at all. During the Clinton years we see how well it worked here in the Queen city the last time the Federal Nanny doled out money for cops. And as always, there is an end on the horizon for that funding which only segues the bitter fiscal fight also on the horizon. Police administrators, Union hacks and those in city government with a shameless fealty for tax and spend policies to keep those positions, will seek to have them funded on the backs of local taxpayers. Epic Fail. This latest grant is a mere redux of the same scheme.
Senator Shaheen is the epitome a big-government liberal. She does not respect local government, nor the people who elected her. This is a clear second example of such in just a few short months where Shaheen advocated for the Feds to contract locally with Planned Parenthood in the wake of the Executive Council’s vote not to fund Planned Parenthood services in the Granite State. Now she gives Manchester government a back-handed slap.
Shaheen full-well knows that these funding schemes only fuels a future fight down the road for continued local funding of cops hired with these federal grant monies. The Union Leader Editorial writes, “Sen. Jeanne Shaheen has not been paying attention to police staffing issues in Manchester, it seems.” Quite frankly, I think she is well aware, but simply does not care. Her pro big-government drive is surmounts any notion of local control. When she stuck her beak into the whole Kindergarten funding mandate years ago, people should have seen the writing on the wall.
The prior federal stimulus grant funding ten police officers expires in 2012. The Queen City will have to cough up nearly half a million dollars to continue funding those officers. As the UL correctly points out, they cannot be laid off because the city had to agree to a staffing continuation as a condition of federal grant acceptance … Erstwhile, a 15% tax hike is being bandied about in political discussions.
Jeanne Shaheen is not focusing on the fiscal health of the Queen City. She found it objectionable that the Executive Council rejected funding to Planned Parenthood…In response, she curried the Obama Administration to make an end run around the council vote. Now she has done the same thing with Manchester city government.
When city government is forced to engage in austere measures attributable to none other than unsustainable funding levels, The show will be the same: Pandering and demagoguing those who vote against them, calling them soft on crime, name-calling, bullying…the usual stuff. It’s always predictable. And liberals like Shaheen will sit quietly by smiling and accepting the laudations of how they care about the people.
