NH's Rand Paul

New Hampshire has a primary election in September that will winnow the field of candidates for some of the races. One of the GOP gubernatorial hopefuls recently stopped by the Conway Daily Sun, for an interview. Jack Kimball is a seacoast area businessman, who described himself as the “warrior” in the race. (Some men never recover from high school football.) He was honest enough to say that he’s not “the establishment” candidate. This is true. He’s called Glenn Beck an “American hero,” which reportedly provoked a fresh outburst of Beck tears. Kimball is a tea partier, and a member of Beck’s 912 Project. This is the same Glenn Beck who said, “But when I see 9/11 victim family, you know, on television, or whatever, I’m just like, ‘Oh, shut up.’ I’m so sick of them. Because they’re always complaining.” Some hero.

Jack Kimball achieved national notoriety on April 15, when he spoke at the Concord Tax Day Tea Party rally. That day the tea partiers had a number of events around the state to show their ire at paying taxes. They were in Market Square in Portsmouth, at the docks in Wolfeboro, and in front of the State House in Concord. All of these are public places, paid for by – you guessed it! The very same tax dollars that the tea partiers are so opposed to paying. The Concord Monitor quoted Kimball:

In Concord, gubernatorial candidate Jack Kimball drew cheers with an anti-tax message. He decried the state's taxation of business while criticizing its relatively low level of services."I don't mind paying my fair share, folks," he said. "I don't think any of us do. But I do mind when I'm raped. It's awful."

News outlets and blogs around the nation picked up on Mr. Kimball’s trivialization of a serious crime, used to score cheap political points. If Kimball ever had a man put a gun to his head and rape him, or a group of men beat him up, hold him down and gang rape him, he wouldn’t be using the term so blithely. One in six women is raped during her lifetime. One in four women on college campuses is raped. One in three women serving in the US military in Iraq is going to be raped by a fellow soldier. One in 33 men will be raped in his lifetime. The Concord Monitor got so much mail about the story on Kimball, he felt compelled to offer up a very GOP apology:

“I used the term ‘rape’ talking about taxation at the Tea Party in Concord. I think the Concord Monitor took the remark out of context and there has been a lot of negative reaction. People that know me know that I don’t say things to purposefully hurt people. “I want to apologize to anyone that is offended. My remark was clearly not intended to offend people.”

Not exactly a foray into the land of personal responsibility. I’ve listened to the tape. That is exactly what he said – that is the context. In this insincere excuse Kimball blames the CM for taking his remarks out of context. He blames people for being offended. The one thing he doesn’t do is offer a sincere apology.

Jack Kimball is also well known for the reader board sign in front of his business on the Route 1 Bypass in Portsmouth. He uses the sign to express his beliefs like, “NH has the highest business taxes in the US.” According to the Small Business and Entrepreneurial Council, NH doesn’t even make the top ten list of states with the highest business taxes. Four New England states make their top ten list, but NH isn’t one of them. New Jersey is number one. This dishonest bit of hyperbole is especially disappointing coming from one of Beck’s 912 Project acolytes. The third of the project’s nine principles is: “I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.” It does say try. No mention of succeed.

Kimball’s website is all that one would expect from a far right Republitealican. Lots of commentary about liberty and freedom from gummint interference, while informing us that he’s against a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and opposed to marriage equality. All that liberty and freedom is for folks who aren’t female or gay. He recites the standard issue NH GOP mantra, “NH doesn’t have a revenue problem, NH has a spending problem.” He blames business taxes for everything. No mention of property taxes. No mention of the role that the Bush administration played in destroying the US economy. The magic slate of Bush responsibility was wiped clean the day Obama took office -isn’t that right, Ralph from Eaton?

Kimball has a lot to say about socialism, so I was shocked to learn that he actually supports socialist practices. The free market doesn’t support nuclear power, which is why no plants have been built in over 30 years. The US Dept. of Energy has $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for nuke plant builders in 2010. Obama has asked for $35.5 billion in the 2011 budget. Included in the emergency supplemental bill passed by the House on July 1 was $9 billion more for new nuke loans. Let’s be clear – these are loans. If the loans are defaulted upon, we the taxpayers pick up the tab. As I’ve pointed out before, the nuclear industry is one long taxpayer subsidy from inception to decommissioning. The taxpayers pay for the building of the plant, pay for insuring the plant, pay for the cleanup if there’s an accident, and pay for the decommissioning, which is always more than the owners have saved up for. The only thing the taxpayers don’t get is a share in the profits. The most devoted free marketers seem to find socialist nuclear power perfectly acceptable.

Kimball’s list of endorsements is full of people you’ve never heard of. The NH GOP seems to be lining up behind John Stephen. Stephen, though better known, is joining the ranks of Jim Coburn and Joe Kenney as the latest sacrificial lamb to be led slaughter against the popular Governor Lynch. I’m betting that NH GOP Chairman John Sununu Sr. would be about as happy to have Kimball win the primary as the Republicans in Kentucky were to end up with Rand Paul. The tea partiers are even nuttier than the standard issue GOP, and that’s saying something.

“Finally a guy who says what the people who aren’t thinking are thinking.” Jon Stewart


Published in the Conway Daily Sun on July 9, 2010
© sbruce 2010