Pat McDonald, the chair of the Vermont Republican Party, put the state's Republicans squarely in the Ebenezer Scrooge wing of the party exemplified by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
It's not surprising that Eric Cantor would publicly take the position, “Screw the flood victims! No aid without tax cuts,” but it's a bit surprising that the Republicans in Vermont would take that same line. Sure enough, though, that's what she's doing. As Bob Kinzel reported on VPR this afternoon:
McDonald's so-called action plan, posted on the state Republican Party's web page, calls for freezes and cuts to all other state programs to prepare to return some taxpayer dollars to the state treasury. She also wants to use the crisis to push “education finance reforms” that state Republicans have been pushing for in recent years to attack local control and slash state support for schools, and to raid the Housing and Conservation Board.
Republicans in Congress last week have been threatening to shut down the government because Democrats in the House and Senate want to provide hurricane and flood relief to states that were hit hard by Hurricane Irene, including Vermont, although late developments suggest that a deal may be in the works. As Cantor put it right after the storm went through:
But McDonald? There are people in Vermont still working hard every day to clean up after last month's flooding.
There are people in her own town of Berlin who have been made homeless by the flooding and are still looking for help. But what's her plan? Use the catastrophe that Vermonters are suffering for an opportunity to push her agenda of cutting taxes and undermining public education.
I just have one question for Pat McDonald: Have you no shame?
The answer is no. Pat has no shame. Try as she might, she can’t overcome her evil dark side. She also loves the attention way too much. All those “Atta Pats” from the old GOP white guys must feel good to her. But she’s really just a very large fish in a very, very small pond.
and no common sense.
And at one point in her many years of eating at the public banquet table, she was the Acting Commissioner of Education. I do not recall Pat seeking consolidation of school districts or the cutting of school budgets at that time. What a difference a cup of tea makes!
is that she shows how nasty, rotten & evil she truly is as well as whoever supports these ideas, which is very likely the rest of the VT rightwing cabal. Hopefully Vermonters will see how dark & draconian their agenda still is. Is this what Salmon was speaking of when supposedly giving up his aspirations to re-run for auditor and saying ‘Irene changed things’. This is not much different than the suggestions proposed by Douglas to balance the state budget on the backs of even the most vulnerable. Every event is used as a battering-ram for their agenda, and now at the expense of the victims of tragedy.
Using Irene for political gamesmanship to promote her agenda on the backs of suffering Vermonters, many who have lost everything is proof she’s definately a different breed of vamplire.
She’s in the Freeps this morning. Something about ‘Looking the other way isn’t leadership…’
Wish that the democrats would counter act her nonsense and expose her for what she really is. The gop have no qualms about feeding from the taxpayers as long as it benefits them. Anyone else, especially if they are poor, then it is socialism and all the rest of it. She has no shame at all. She’s been trying to make political hay about this illegal alien stop too. But it is pretty wild how she has the moxie to suggest we cut all other vital programs in order to afford Irene. Her donors must be pleased.