Millionaire crank bankrolls GOP candidates

Enigmatic millionaire Fred Tausch has contributed $3,000 to every Republican candidate running for the Manchester (NH) Board of Aldermen in this fall's municipal election.

Tausch, a fortyish investor, is the founder of the rabidly anti-Obama group STEWARD of Prosperity. What's weird is that the guy supposedly supported Obama but turned on him as soon as he took office. he also made enormous independent expenditures on behalf of Mike Gravel's presidential campaign. Suffice to say that Fred is less than solidly grounded.

Keep in mind that each of Manchester's wards has about 10,000 residents, so $3,000 is a substantial amount of money. I waged a successful campaign for not much more than that two years ago.

Tausch has never lived in Manchester, never worked in Manchester, never been involved in the life of the community. All he wants to do is help buy City Hall for fellow millionaire, mayoral candidate Ted Gatsas and Gatsas' political allies.

Here's the part that slays me. For all of their talk about fiscal conservatism, Gatsas authored a city budget that has raised property taxes by 8% during a vicious recession, while gutting funding for transit, public education, the library, and community policing. These guys are "big government conservatives", that most noxious of creatures.

If Tausch really cared about Manchester, he'd spend that money on doubling the library accquisition budget, take some unemployed families to a Monarchs hockey game, or pay for some needed repairs at the shelter for homeless families.