Monday • November 25 • 2024
Vol.XVI • No.XLVIII
Manchester, N.H.
Firefighters in New York City who expressed their disapproval of election-interfering Attorney-General Latetia James are to be sent to concentration camps … I’m sorry, I mean “education camps” … to be taught that you cannot fight back when the Left politicizes a ceremony by having an election-interfering, Trump-hating communist lecture the masses.
And Arguably, the worst aspect of this incident is that there will be those on the “right” … the same cowards and frauds who accept stealth quotas and discrimination against white males because “diversity is our strength” … will criticize the firefighters for “politicizing” the event. Dear dummies … the Left politicized the event by having the election-interfering, Trump-hating witch as a speaker. The firefighters were simply trying to fight back … something that is anathema to the cowards and frauds who supposedly are on “your side.”
The FDNY firefighters who booed NY AG Letitia James will be punished and face reeducation.
FDNY firefighters are now being asked to turn themselves in or risk being hunted down.
Memos and emails from the Uniformed Fire Officers Association (UFOA) & Uniformed Firefighters… pic.twitter.com/pBq8DccGf8
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 9, 2024
The post Night Cap: The Police State Of America … A New Normal appeared first on Granite Grok.
After our original post on Gov. Sununu’s nomination of Andrew Livernois to the State Superior Court, a number of individuals commented on various aspects of what we’d reported. Along with that came what I can only call whistleblower accusations of suspicious conduct in Belknap County that Andrew Livernois would likely have had to have been aware of.
The EC vote is tomorrow, so this is a bit last minute, but if any part of what the whistleblower infers is true, that vote should be delayed if not rejected.
We have attempted to confirm the whistle-blowers’ claims and are awaiting references for many of them, but the individual who claims to represent others in this declaration assures me that their “research” will prove accurate.
We are publishing a portion of it based on the intricate nature of the accusations. Something is up, and it needs to be worked out, as does any implication that Andrew Livernois was connected to or directed any portion of the circumstances as outlined.
We suggest only that the confirmation vote be delayed until these statements can be investigated and confirmed or denied.
Belknap County is ordering pre-trial and convicted individuals to attend any one or more of the following services/therapy conducted exclusively by a provider that is approved by the Laconia Probation/Parole office. The services are … Anger Management, Batterers intervention, domestic violence intervention, group therapy, individual therapy, and psychological evaluations.
Laconia Probation and Parole is exclusively requiring those “clients” to seek services with Mr. David Garbacz from Granite State Domestic Violence Intervention Services LLC, registered as PO Box 47 Silver Lake NH, 03875. Previously registered as 278 Pleasant St., Concord, NH, which is Riverbend Community Mental Health’s address, and another location of 90 Airport Rd, Concord, NH, Suite 18.
As such, individuals have reached out to Riverbend, which denies that Mr. Garbacz ever worked there, nor did they grant him permission to use their address.
If you do a Google search, several sources still cite Garbacz as working for Riverbend,
The email goes on to suggest the services were cash only, occurred via telehealth, no insurance, and that Garbacz was not properly licensed in NH at the time, but that a significant sum in payments for services moved through Garbacz’s hands.
The whistleblower suggests that hundreds of clients were handled annually, many meeting with Garbacz in large online groups, making actual “therapy” unlikely or impossible.
We were told that the full statement and other evidence had been sent to the Executive Council. The email we received closed as follows.
Mr. Livernois is responsible for the reincarceration of those defendants who do not comply with unethical orders that he and his staff are requesting of defendants, which violates the state and US Constitution for the right to seek a provider of your choice for cash, insurance, or other payment. Not with a cash-only business that isn’t actually providing the service they are selling. This is why insurance won’t pay for the service because none of it is legit.
We neither affirm nor deny these statements and welcome evidence confirming or refuting any or all of them, including links, written testimony, or other eyewitness statements. We hope, at the very least, that the confirmation vote can be delayed while these allegations are investigated if the nominee is not simply rejected by the Council by a majority vote tomorrow.
The post Before You Confirm Andrew Livernois, Please Investigate This! appeared first on Granite Grok.
Democrats are nothing if not predictable. In the wake of Robert Card’s shooting at a crowd of disarmed Mainers, the solution is to disarm them further and grow the government.
Legislators have introduced a handful of bills that you can probably work out without me naming them. They include more money for mental health and restrictions on firearms (waiting periods and enhanced background checks). Maine would also embrace federal regulations and definitions for certain types of firearms.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
The one thing they all have in common is that they do not work. Government interventions and restrictions on the Second Amendment right to self-defense lead inexorably to more crime, from property to violent. There will be more burglaries, muggings, rapes, assaults, and murders, at least in the bigger cities. Most of Maine’s rural landscape, which is enormous, will present opportunities for criminality but only among those who disarm, which is less likely.
Not that the State of Maine won’t try. Democrats are, as I noted in the opening, predictable. And you can’t get where they want to go politically if people are armed. Related: Lessons from Lewiston Maine
But, just like Washington State or Oregon or even California or Illinois, they do not have enough voters in the hinterlands to stop the Dems from following the same failed, bloodstained paths as progressives who have gone before.
Much like Vermont, they are in blue waters and swirling the bowl, making the same mistakes because voters fail to believe the threat or understand the risks of long-term Democrat rule.
Robert Card’s despicable and gruesome success is a result of disarming citizens and a culture that opposes the right to self-defense. That teaches and encourages individuals to not jut give up the right but to fear it.
The further along that road they go, the worse it will get for everyone except criminals whom the same party, Democrats, think better of than law-abiding citizens.
The post Well, Of Course, Maine Dems Are Using a Shooting to Grow Government and Oppress Natural Rights appeared first on Granite Grok.
Erin Friday lives in California and has written checks to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood in accordance with her dutiful liberal worldview. She is also the mother of a seven-year-old daughter who she witnessed get sucked into the orbit of the new gender ideology movement.
It began with her daughter sitting through five hours of sex education at her public school. One entire hour was dedicated to gender selection, where she learned she could be any of a number of identities. How Erin found this out was when her daughter had friends over, she listened to them choosing identities, including pansexual, lesbian, polyamorous, and non-binary. At this time, her daughter was eleven.
Similar to January Littlejohn’s daughter she would be heavily influenced online during the COVID lockdowns. Her natural discomfort with her growing body, instead of normal, was evidence she was trans per her online grooming community. Reiterating her sexual education, she was mis-assigned at birth and needed to be proactive about embracing her true identity. Erin discovered this by overhearing teachers referring to her daughter with a male name and male pronouns as she schooled from home on her iPad. Thus began the nightmarish journey for her and her family.
Despite subtle clues, such as cutting her hair, wearing oversized and boyish clothes to cover up her body, and general despondency, Mrs. Friday took it as normal adolescent development. It wasn’t until she heard her child’s assumed name and pronouns that she realized something seriously wrong was going on.
How wrong? Her school knew about it for quite some time before she did and never bothered to contact her. Angry, she contacted the school only to have them define themselves as “the safe space” for her daughter, who was also not able to define safe space when she asked them what that meant.
She found her child’s online homework had been given with her new name and pronouns for some time before Mrs. Friday found out. Yet another subtle but effective way these groups use apparent authority channels to deceive children into believing their identity crises is being handled by professionals. Since this was during COVID, it all happened online and by teachers who had never met the daughter in person since she was new to the school.
After another phone call where they parroted their “safe space” status and again couldn’t define what they meant, Erin stated, “Well then, I must be unsafe?” Rather than engage her, she was visited by Child Protective Services and the police days later at the urging of the school. They claimed to have seen her daughter looking up “how many Monster drinks to kill a girl,” though they couldn’t produce proof of this claim. Positioning themselves as saviors, in reality, they were spying on her child through publicly funded devices using public safety to intimidate a tax-paying parent. Rather than schools, these parents are financing the cult-rape of their families.
“It happens all the time in our state” she warns the interviewer. Children are being pulled out of class by administrators and counselors who then march them down the path of gender-identity struggle, building a crisis in the child’s life without the parent’s knowledge.
Knowing the public school was the problem, Mrs. Friday immediately removed her and opted to try a Catholic school instead. Despite the better environment, she soon found out that even the Catholic school had been infiltrated with the new ideology.
Believing she’d been born in the wrong body, her daughter sunk into a deep depression convinced her only recourse was to take hormones and remove body parts. As the writer of this article and father to five, I can hardly believe I just typed that, so one can only imagine the rage the Fridays were dealing with while trying to counsel their school-aged daughter, who was now getting an education under-duress. Duress caused by the educators and during incredibly vulnerable years.
Similar to the Littlejohn’s, her daughter was being coached online that her parents didn’t love her and to reject them as parents. She began to call her mom Erin instead of “mom.” This is an essential step in cult psychology formation designed to give greater control to the indoctrinators by alienating essential family bonds. This is not science or sociology; this is cult grooming.
Of course, no grooming is complete without actual separation, which her online handlers were urging her to do – leave her family.
Similar to January Littlejohn, Erin Friday was awarded volunteer of the year and drove children on field trips. She ran the walk or jog event and was essentially as involved as any parent could be in their child’s scholastic life. She also checked her child’s phone, only to find out her child had fake accounts where she could communicate in secret. She warns parents, including those highly involved, that it can happen to any of you.
Friday also notes she has a son two years younger and they would do life as a family. He was never drawn into this web. Yet despite her apparently stellar parenting efforts these manipulators have developed strategies incorporating the ease of social media communication to subvert even the most astute parent.
“Had I known what I know now, I never would have given her an iPhone. I would not have put her in public school. I never would have let her go through sex ed. Those are things I should have done – in hindsight, I would have.”
Echoing Littlejohn, she warns parents the clock is ticking if they suspect their child is susceptible to trans grooming. By the time they turn eighteen your opportunities to protect them reduce dramatically.
The combination of compassion, love, and asserting one’s parental power to guide your child along a path of health and well-being is available, but it takes the courage to reject the new cultural zeitgeist and not be swayed by the pressures of political correctness. Both fear of cultural pushback and that of one’s child not liking you is no reason to keep from setting healthy boundaries and relying on the love lying deep within your child for their parents to overcome these dogmatic activists who live to add to their numbers.
However, the cult is not the only perpetrator of this predation. When considering the “why” of her daughter’s gender malaise, she recalls finding violent pornography on her phone. Among her discoveries were images and videos depicting women being physically abused and subjected to degrading sexual treatment. She believes it caused her daughter to want to shun womanhood, believing this was part of her future. Again, access to this is the click of a button away from today’s children.
To watch her interview, click on this link.
The post Warning to Moms – Part 2 appeared first on Granite Grok.
Homeschooling is this awful, terrible thing where parents and guardians remove children from the failed public school experiment and (drumroll) teach them how to read and do math. A State’s AG has suggested allowing unannounced warrantless searches of homeschoolers… in the name of public safety.
We don’t have the entire conversation (below), but this clip of the Michigan State Board of Education discussing the question is enlightening. The matter at hand appears to be an issue with kids in foster care who are not in public schools, presumably homeschooled, and potentially subject to …safety issues or abuse. The idea is that either the kids or the homeschools need to register so they can be randomly audited or (my words) swatted if the state receives a complaint that there may be abuse occuring.
In other words, the State Justice Department wants to run random warrantless raids against anyone with kids at home who are not attending public schools, probably at the behest of teachers’ unions and the Democrat politicians they bought.
The board members who speak are not only clearly against this idea but for all the right reasons.
The first speaker sets up the discussion and enumerates several problems with the idea. The last (the clip is just under 8 minutes) knocks that pitch out of the park, which is not what I expected when the clip landed in my digital lap.
A few teasers.
As you watch it, ask yourself if the idea of warrantless searches of homeschools is something that could or does happen in your state and whether your school board(s) would condone it. And if it did, what would you be prepared to do about that?
Note: There is a meme circulating that has the warning (warrantless searches) without any of the good stuff from the actual video circulating the internet).
Note 2: I wrote this long before I saw the meme.
Here’s the clip.
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The post School Board Discusses Warrantless Searches on Homeschool Families appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Windham Incident on November 3, 2020 that produced the largest numerical discrepancy in the history of NH between an election day result and a subsequent recount exposed over a hundred violations of election laws and procedures by Windham’s election officials.
Since then, Windham’s election officials have continued to violate election laws and procedures in the subsequent federal election cycles. Those violations are identified in multiple reports that were written by the NH AG, NH SOS, the NH Deputy SOS and NH Assistant SOS.
20220107-Joint Letter-NH-AG-SOS
Official Response 2022 Complaint
2024 Windham Election Monitor Report – January 23, 2024 Presidential Primary
Related: BREAKING: NH AG ADMITS to ANOTHER Seriously Flawed Election In Windham
But instead of taking responsibility, Windham’s election officials and their friends falsely claim they are the victims of baseless attacks, and counter with nasty character assassination attacks against those who simply want accurate elections that follow the laws.
The inability of Windham’s election officials to follow election laws during the November 3, 2020 election led to the dubious distinction of having an election monitor appointed for the September 13, 2022 primary. According to Secretary of State William Gardner, “the appointment of an election monitor to oversee an election in this state is an extremely rare occurrence.”
The violations of election laws in that election led to yet another election monitor appointed for the January 23, 2024 presidential primary election.
With the continued inability of Windham’s election officials to follow election laws in subsequent elections, Windham has now had an unprecedented two “extremely rare occurrences” by having election monitors appointed in two consecutive federal election cycles – and Windham’s election officials still failed to follow election laws and procedures in both of those elections.
The Government Integrity Project (www.gipamerica.org) put together three full page ads (here, here and here) and a direct mailer to inform Windham voters of the recurring failures of Windham’s election officials as identified in the multiple reports mentioned above. Election officials and their friends falsely call them lies and a smear campaign. Honest people know it’s the truth.
Every Windham voter should download and read the reports written by NH’s highest ranking law and election officials regarding Windham’s elections in 2020, 2022 and 2024 from the NH AG’s and SOS’s offices and decide for themselves who is telling the truth… and then cast an informed vote.
20220107-Joint Letter-NH-AG-SOS
Official Response 2022 Complaint
2024 Windham Election Monitor Report – January 23, 2024 Presidential Primary
Here are the ads that were posted in the local paper.
The post Two Dubious “Extremely Rare Occurrences” in Windham’s Elections appeared first on Granite Grok.
And that downer, Monday, makes an appearance again. Hope these lift you up!
Take heart – there will be both a Wednesday and Friday Edition. Last week’s Friday Edition.
Remember, ridicule and mockery are effective weapons:
Now, let the mockery and mayhem begin.
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
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TRUTH. TINVOWOOT IMHO. Alas.
It doesn’t matter. The Potato could sodomize and cannibalize a living infant, on video in front of a live studio audience, and 90% of his fans wouldn’t care. Because he’s not Orange Man. That’s all that matters to these people.
WWIII incoming.
I’ve said before that the virulent anti-White racism that is in our society, recognizing it, was one of the biggest and most bitter pills I’ve had to swallow. See “Pick of the Post” as well.
I’ll chip in for a gallon.
Theft and arson charges I can see… but in this day and age where people steal and burn American flags and get off with no punishment, that tells you who you aren’t allowed to criticize.
I suspect these were trial-balloon essays to see what might pass.
Look, I understand the appeal. Back in my younger (single) days I’d occasionally go to, um, “Adult Entertainment Cabaret” locations. And drop a not-trivial amount of money each time. The dancers, of course, would clear hundreds every night in cash. Over time I got to be friendly – not friends, but conversational-level friendly – with some of the dancers and they’d confided in me that on good weekend nights they’d clear well over $1000 in tips. That’s 30+ years ago. That’s some serious money. Carefully managed and laundered, that’s a nice nest egg.
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PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA
Whether you want it or not, CBDC is coming. The only question, at this point, is how many we can wake up to the danger so that WHEN it is implemented, masses and masses simply don’t comply.
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/glenn-beck-on-cbdc.mp4
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On a local, small-scale level, windmills and solar and such have an appeal and function. A friend of mine has a remote cabin and it’s all solar powered. Good stuff. It’s the plan fact that you cannot power an industrial civilization with this that’s critical point.
I was reading that in the UK kids dying of cancer could not see both parents at the same time.
People fear uncertainly and chaos far more than the absolute level at which they live. People will endure much hardship if it’s consistent.
But… but… but we’ve been assured by our intellectual and moral superiors that the Great Replacement is a myth.
Jury Nullification.
Intentional.
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Link section (some mine, some from my Jarhead friend):
Georgia Bill Makes Property Owners Liable for Injuries in Gun-Free Zones (breitbart.com)
Give them a skin in the game of disarming their customers.
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Former CIA Director John Brennan Says Intel Community will Withhold Key Information From Trump’s Security Briefings This Summer (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila
Who the living F is this traitor to be predicting what will happen? What influence does he still have and, more importantly, why does he have it?
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The CDC Ignores the Causes of Syphilis – American Thinker
Thus proving that Hashem’s wisdom of being abstinent until marriage, and faithful once married, is the best policy.
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Idaho library managers & staff quitting after new Board’s bold action (massresistance.org)
A win!
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House passes the ‘Schumer minibus’ spending bill, and Thomas Massie finds something very interesting buried in the text – American Thinker
Interesting indeed. NO MORE OMNIBUS BILLS.
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The left goes bonkers after Biden calls accused killer of nursing student Laken Riley an ‘illegal’ – American Thinker
So the killing of a college student by someone who doesn’t belong in this country doesn’t bother the left as much as Joe Biden’s use of the word ‘illegal’ to describe him.
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SHOCKING: Oklahoma school students suck and lick toes for charity in more disturbing videos | The Post Millennial | thepostmillennial.com
In OKLAHOMA???? Related to our society’s degeneracy in general:
‘Pizzagate Is Real’: Former UN Executive Director Drops Bomb on Global Elite – The People’s Voice (thepeoplesvoice.tv)
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Due to “bail reform” criminals, EVEN THOSE ON MURDER CHARGES cannot be held in NY. 4 “suspects” in a gruesome dismemberment attack were allowed to WALK FREE:
Ain’t Reform Great? When the Bodies Hit the Floor…You Won’t Need Bail Money If You’re in New York – HotAir
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This article from American Thinker really brought home to me WHY the globalists hate rural America, and why it’s so important to keep doing what we’re doing (living our lives, pointing out the absurdities, worshiping God, etc.) :
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/03/rural_america_is_a_threat_to_the_totalitarian_left.html
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The FBLie ordered the arrest of Steve Baker (a journalist for The Blaze who reported the January 6th protest honestly), then “perp walked” him IN CHAINS before a judge, all for 4 misdemeanor charges! His “real” crime: Exposing the Fed setup on January 6th, and calling out (with evidence) the government involvement in the set-up. But the “real” message is to anyone who continues to expose government involvement in the “Fed-surruction”, and the “message” is this: “Don’t cross us, or we’ll make your life VERY hard”. Folks, this is banana republic stuff!
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/journalist-appears-in-federal-court-in-leg-and-belly-chains-to-face-jan-6-misdemeanors-5598546
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Now the National Science Foundation has been caught using AI and millions of taxpayer $$$ to censor opposing viewpoints. I thought “science” was supposed to be objective and open for debate, but not anymore, it appears:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/how-the-government-used-track-f-to-fund-censorship-tools-report-5594817
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Team Biden has decided that they want to look at everything that American’s invest in, so they can see if you are being a “good little leftist” or putting your money into things like guns and beef. This couldn’t possibly be abused now could it? And what about that pesky 4th Amendment? That doesn’t matter, right?:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/mar/4/team-biden-wants-to-weaponize-stock-market
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A warning from Elon Musk:
Bayou Renaissance Man: A warning from Elon Musk
Here is Senator Ron Johnson (on video) with the highlights of the “Covid cartel” (about 15 minutes):
Senator Ron Johnson on X: “For those who can’t spend 4 hours watching the full roundtable event – Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding – here is a 14-minute edited version that captures many important points. https://t.co/YLpYaLp5gT” / X (twitter.com)
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The WEF is planning a major Cyber attack, possibly in the fall, to disrupt the 2024 elections. Listen how “thrilled” Klause Schwab and his cronies sound when they are laying this out:
WEF Insider: Imminent ‘False Flag’ Cyber Attack Will Disrupt 2024 Election – The People’s Voice (thepeoplesvoice.tv)
Listen to how they are talking about literally being connected to the net 24/7/365 in order to survive in society. Those not connected will be allowed to starve, or outright killed.
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Remember what happened in Maui? Many, MANY people questioned how fires could be so precise as to completely melt down the aluminum in a car, and yet leave a palm tree just a few feet away untouched. One possibility is a Directed Energy Weapon (DEW), but the government pooh-poohed that. However, Slow Joe may have slipped up and let the cat out of the bag:
Did Joe Biden Just CONFIRM Maui Was Hit By DEW Strikes? * 100PercentFedUp.com * by Noah
The Deep State globalists cannot let Trump win; they have too much at stake. If (by some miracle) Trump pulls it off a win by such a large margin that they have to concede, THAT’s when their “backup plan” of a REAL insurrection will kick in:
If Trump wins in November, expect a real insurrection from Democrats – Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman
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The ‘Can We?’ and the ‘Should We?’ of Science – American Thinker
Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
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The Benefits of World Hunger
The WEF deep-sixed this. Good think that it was grabbed. Also see my note about other WEF essays in this post.
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The State of the Union – Surak substack blog
Surak weighs in on SOTU.
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Pick of the post:
I was raised on the “mother’s milk” of MLK Jr. I believed it most of my life, I still want to believe it – at least, the whole judging by the content of an individual’s character. But increasingly pasty-white me is feeling very targeted by the open anti-white rhetoric (let me not get started on the reverse discrimination I experienced as I graduated from college and was looking for a job). I echo the above; I do so with regret, but I cannot be color blind again. Note that this doesn’t mean there aren’t non-whites in my circle; recall I’m married to a non-white person. But it does mean that – yes – in the words of George Clooney’s character in one of his movies, I AM going to stereotype at first sight, not only by race, but by outfit and in-public actions and attitudes.
Increasingly, given the anti-white violence we see, it’s not a racism thing. It’s a survival instinct thing.
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Palate Cleansers:
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Come back Wednesday for another edition. Same Meme Time. Same Meme channel.
Please do consider buying me a coffee.
Buy Me a Coffee
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The post MONDAY MEMES appeared first on Granite Grok.
In March of 2023, I was part of a group of Republicans in Nashua Ward 7 that organized to hand out fliers promoting Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) to our local public elementary schools, Dr. Crisp and Sunset Heights. Dr. Crisp has been recognized as one of the lowest-performing five percent of all schools in the state for the second year in a row. At Dr. Crisp, the vast majority of the parents are poor immigrants, and we wanted to provide these families an opportunity for their kids to escape from their failing school.
The Children’s Scholarship Fund organized a parent information night about EFAs in Nashua. We printed fliers for the event and handed them to the parents as they picked their kids up from school. We were delighted to help the NH Department of Education and the Children’s Scholarship Fund get this information to parents.
In December 2023, our Ward 7 state rep Catherine Sofikitis filed CACR18, a constitutional amendment to remove the tax-exempt status of churches and religious organizations. When she presented the bill to the NH House Ways and Means Committee on January 9, 2024, she testified that she was upset that churches were promoting EFAs, which she believes are harmful to public schools.
There were no churches involved in our promotion of EFAs, but she has fallen victim to the Democrats’ reliance on stereotyping their political enemies with the Alinsky rule: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it” to win political victories without having to do the hard work of understanding those on the other side. She is so immersed in a political bubble that she doesn’t understand who the political opposition is.
She assumed churches are behind all the conservative politics in New Hampshire and wants to strike at the heart of that. She doesn’t realize that conservatives are diverse in New Hampshire. They are Christians, blue-collar workers, small business owners, immigrants from communist countries and other totalitarian countries, former Democrats fed up with the extremism of that party, and many other categories. We come from all walks of life. It would be impossible to shut us all down. But she is so frustrated that she feels she has to do something.
In her testimony, she said that Christians should not be in the public square.
the churches shouldn’t be meddling in the government’s stuff. It’s just you know you stay in your church. You pray and you do what you do, you do you, and the government will do the government
Not because I don’t understand and respect what faith-based groups do in the state of New Hampshire but I just want people to stay in their own sandbox and stay in their lane
She accused us of telling parents that their children attend a “nasty school, a failing school.”
And at the polls and at other times when we have meetings up at that school people who are of the homeschool crowd and the ones who want the public school vouchers tell all the parents this is a nasty school, it’s a failing school, and I want you to know where you can get free money and you can take your children out of this failing school.
We don’t tell parents that. The parents know well the problems at their children’s school and the test results prove that Dr. Crisp is a failing school.
She complains several times in her testimony about people in her ward who aren’t being represented.
And I’m not here to disrespect anything and I know that my knowledge of these things is not deep but it’s just my feeling that since I’ve got to Concord seven years ago that it seems to me that my people in my district are not being represented here. And so this is just an ask that we all consider that people who have words that divide us are very hurtful to people who don’t have the political power to speak for themselves.
But her Democrat voters have her as representation. Republicans in Ward 7 are the ones lacking representation. Nashua Republicans don’t have any political power in the NH House. All of our 27 state reps are Democrats. Ward 7 has a Democrat state senator as well.
The irony of the following statement caught my eye in regards to the time she called Moms for Liberty “Assholes with casseroles, Taliban in a minivan.”
I made an obscure comment about Moms for Liberty. I had hate mail from Florida. And I just want people to stop. You know if your first reaction is something from your stomach out through your mouth then this is not a policy thing. It’s an emotional thing.
She is the one who is not controlling her emotions.
In her testimony, she states, “Stop dividing us up, and let’s all get along for the people that we were elected to represent,” but she is one of the reps who kneeled for the national anthem during a House session. That is extreme divisiveness.
At a previous committee hearing, she said, “I want to be brutally frank. There is not one person of color on this committee — not one. Racism matters,” but she fails to acknowledge that she and her fellow Democrats were successful at keeping Avalon Lewis, a black immigrant from Barbados, from being elected as a state rep from Ward 7. He could been the person of color on that committee that she complained was missing.
Related: That Racist You Are Looking For Might Be In Your Mirror
CACR18 was voted 20-0 by the Ways and Means Committee as inexpedient to legislate, put on the consent calendar, and killed by the NH House. Good riddance to her attack on churches and religious organizations.
There is a whole lot more in Rep. Sofikitis’ testimony that is troubling. Read her testimony here and watch it below.
The post New Hampshire State Rep Wants Christians To Shut Up and Stay out of Politics appeared first on Granite Grok.
A WaPo media machine stenographer has decided to float this trial balloon. All that shoplifting that’s been going on shouldn’t be upsetting middle-class, white-bread supremacists. After all, their descendants stole all this land from someone else.
And if theft is a moral and historical tradition…
Do you know what the problem with capitalism is? It doesn’t want to sell stuff to people. Calling it “a late-capitalism horror story,” the Washington Post’s Maura Judkis might have just written the stupidest possible piece about Blue America’s state-sponsored shoplifting craze.
“Besides, there’s a Robin Hood mentality,” Judkis wrote, that allows thieves (and politicians and well-to-do white progressives) to “assume that a massive corporation can absorb the losses of petty thefts. Some shoplifters view it as a form of anti-capitalist social activism.”
Of course, Robin Hood stole from the government, so there is that (which WaPo’s scribblers would never condone). Still, a better point would be that this behavior, legalized by Democrat DAs, is doing as much or more harm to minority neighborhoods and the community than the Left’s white supremacy narratives. They squeak with pride about social justice, but in practice, the policy creates more crime and leaves the people they claim to protect with less of everything, including access and opportunity.
Blame DemocratsDemocrats robbed them of an education and blamed white people. They defunded their police forces, and when crime rose, they blamed white people. They legalized theft, and when it drives businesses out of minority neighborhoods, they blame white people in cities with hives of oppressive, racist police officers whose leaders have been Democrats for so long that few, if any, living can recall it ever being any different.
Blame white Democrats for that, but not just. Many urban plantations have significant blocks of minority voters (mostly Democrats) and minority elected officials (also Democrats), and things have not improved. Some might say they’ve gotten worse with more drugs and violence.
Sure, you can steal stuff, skip bail, and not go directly to jail. You can get a job working for a gang or other organized crime, lifting sums just large enough to keep you under this soft-on-crime reparations radar, but there’s still a price.
Unlike most who live there, the local pharmacy can leave when unprosecuted crime becomes untenable. That business lost a lot of merchandise, but the community lost jobs and convenient access to everyday needs.
The only tradition anyone needs to consider is that, alongside all the other troubles, Democrats are responsible for that, too.
The post Shoplifters Are Stealing More Than Merchandise appeared first on Granite Grok.
It seems like this should be a concise article. Obviously, a Chinese Cartel is far more dangerous, and every effort should be made to eradicate it. Well, you would be wrong. Why would I write an article comparing the real threat of Chinese Cartels and the myth of parents who protest school boards as terrorists? I am using this space to shine a light on Merrick Garland and the Justice Department for the priority they placed on the parents and their alliance with the Chinese.
I have written numerous articles about the Chinese Pot Farming Cartel that have quickly spread throughout Maine and many other states. We have also pointed out the efforts of local and state law enforcement teams. We have also reported on the pleas of the Maine federal delegation, and then the letter from 50 Senators and Representatives sent to Attorney General Garland asking for help.
These calls for help have been made since August of 2023 and remain unanswered. I have a letter from Senator Susan Collins and one I just received today from Representative Jared Golden telling of the frustration experienced as they wait for a response from Garland. So, how does this antipathy by the AG compare to his response to the call for help with the parents or domestic terrorists?
The pandemic introduced many challenges to our lives, and the decision to shut down our schools may have a more significant impact than masks, shelter in place, or vaccines in the future. Parents were frustrated and became active and vocal about protecting their children. Their presence at school board meetings was an opportunity to voice their concerns. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, saw these parents as a threat to teachers and administrators. She reached out to Garland and Biden for help. Weingarten must have pushed the right button because Garland and Biden jumped and had the FBI jump in unison.
Randi Weingarten not only got the attention of the Administration with one letter but was invited to assist in how the FBI would proceed at targeting parents who would be labeled as Domestic Terrorists. The threat of vocal parents was deemed an immediate threat requiring a quick response, yet the Chinese Cartels have yet to get the attention of the President and AG in eight months.
When I first wrote about the illegal Chinese pot farmers, we thought it was just a Maine situation. We now know that the issue is far more severe than pot, and the problem is national. In addition to the 270 farms identified in Maine, there are thousands in California, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Nevada. These pot farms are causing an environmental problem as they illegally grow and distribute pot. Still, these Chinese nationals, many identified as illegal aliens, are also involved in human and sex trafficking, money laundering, and drug distribution and, in many cases, are funded by cash from federal migrant programs. That fact means that many of these illegal farms were set up with your tax dollars.
This article is not about the specifics of the Chinese Cartel but about the confused priorities of the Administration and Justice Department. It is about letters from 50 members of Congress asking for help but screaming into a void. The longer they ignore requests for help, the more they need to explain why they are complicit with these Chinese operators. We do nothing about spy balloons, Fentanyl, the buying of land around our military installations, TikTok, illegal pot farming, human trafficking, and stealing intellectual property. The inaction indicates the Chinese have this president and Administration in their pocket. I told the story, you decide.
The post Bear Pond Conservative Chronicles: What Is The Bigger Threat: Parents Or A Chinese Cartel appeared first on Granite Grok.
Considering that the RTK Tax, aka HB 1002, still needs to go to the whole House, it’s not yet dead, but in hospice care. I expect Rep Kuttab and Judge Lynn to perform CPR on it from the Reps Hall mic with the same fervor that an ambulance crew responds to a 911 call. It’s just a question of who drives and who tends the patient bedside.
I’ll discuss this battery unit pair from Windham in more detail in a moment, but consider this “Part Deux” of my previous article.
I’ve modified the title for a few reasons. One of them is that it’s already known that anyone can email any senator using their “leg.state.nh.us” email if they so choose, which I recommend at least copying to, hence my focus on just the House. Emailing a government address gets your attempt to make contact on the record. I used the “jury still out” comment anecdotally because I’m talking about lawyers, and there are seemingly way too many of them involved in the People’s Work to count.
A follow-up piece is in order because Granite Staters need and deserve an update on the situation since my last piece. After submitting it, I watched the House Judiciary’s executive session (you can do the same by using this link and advance to 1:32:15 if you have the next hour to spare). That hour is so full of discussion on how hard Kuttab worked on HB 1002, her amendment, and her project of keeping a spreadsheet of all 50 states’ RTK law details.
Um, isn’t that what OLS and staff are for?
I also observed that Mr. Testerman, one committee member who uses a personal email address, played hookey.
Marjorie Smith, the other member who uses personal email INSTEAD OF a government-issued address, revealed to the committee that she’s an active advocate for privacy, hence the preference for personal email, I suppose. That was said at 2:16:59 when she called out Judge Lynn for talking about helping Kuttab with her application to law school!
Yup, he started singing her praises (as a future law student) at 2:10:10, and therefore, I suggest that their relationship be investigated for any impropriety. Before anyone’s imagination runs wild, you don’t have to block the kiddos from reading this. I’m talking in the professional, scholastic, ethical, and political sense.
I could go on to explore other government bodies and which members use government email addresses and those who don’t because I’ve been told it varies. However, I’m keeping my focus on the state legislature, but if someone else wants to focus on local boards, committees, and commissions, I’d be interested in the findings.
Meanwhile, I am still waiting for a reply from Attorney Lehmann and/or the Senate Judiciary members to my early Wednesday morning email that asks if non-government email accounts(of the legislature) are subject to 91A. They might think it’s now moot, but the answer still matters.
The post Night Cap: Private Emails of State Reps and 91A, Is the Jury Still Out? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Friday’s mail brought an anonymous missive following regarding the apparent misuse of public funds by outgoing Gunstock General Manager Tom Day, who, it appears, used the Gunstock postage meter for postage to mail some type of personal payment from him to the City of Portland, Maine.
How do we know it was from Tom Day? Well, his name and return address appear on the envelope.
Assuming he did not reimburse Gunstock for the postage, the obvious next question is whether this misuse of public funds is limited to the general manager only or do other Gunstock employees do the same thing. Standing alone, this single instance is not much money, but multiplying it by a number of employees starts to get to more serious money.
I assume that this was caught and sent by an unnamed Gunstock staff member who saw the outgoing mail with the Gunstock meter stamp and was outraged.
And the Gunstock acolytes emphatically claim that there is no need for a forensic audit!
Note: Letter image rotated for publication. You can see the original here.
The post Gunstock- The Home of No Financial Controls? appeared first on Granite Grok.
As Joe Biden’s dementia becomes increasingly difficult to hide, the Left (by which I mean the media) is doing what you’d expect. Projecting. There has been an increase in chatter about Trump’s mental health, which proves what? Joe is nuts, and there’s no hiding it.
Distract, distract, distract.
As we creep toward November, successive broadsides from a range of third-party actions will attempt to show that Mr. Trump is not mentally competent (among other things) or just dangerous.
We are (each of us) welcome to whatever opinion keeps us warm at night, but the odds are very good that Trump will have enough delegates when the sun rises Wednesday morning. There is no escaping that or this.
New Trump ad absolutely destroys Biden
pic.twitter.com/PWCp2dkUCq
— Alex Bruesewitz (@alexbruesewitz) March 9, 2024
While there is a lot to be said about what you can show people on television if they are not experiencing the hurt the way many Americans do, it won’t be enough. Joe’s public exposure as president is bad, but it is “Joe’s” policies (Democrat policies) that should doom the Left.
It’ll take more than some videos of Joe falling on his face, especially since he won’t be the nominee when the election rolls around, and just about everyone knows it but Joe. So, while it is a neat and necessary trick to show what Democrats will elect (no matter what it does to the country), we need to do more.
I do feel obligated to include the disclaimer that none of that matters if the elections are not cleaned up in key states before November or if the turnout for Trump is not beyond the Left’s ability to steal it. Polling in the margins is not enough, and the Democrats have the Deep State, the Censorship Industrial Complex, the Blob, globalist Western nations, Russia, China, and the media on their side.
We need a plan. Plans within plans.
I have some ideas, but I’m open to suggestions.
The post Watching Joe Biden Slap Stick Won’t Win Us The Election In November appeared first on Granite Grok.
This week, my committee met to recommend eleven bills to the full House. Most had gone to the subcommittee, and as usual, we nearly always agreed with the subcommittee recommendation, and most recommendations were unanimous.
HB 1387, my bill on the state building code adoption process, had a minor amendment to allow consideration of a new code one year after it was released rather than two. The difference is that we now require the legislature to act before a new code is effective, and that takes some time.
HB 1285, merging the Board of Podiatry into the Board of Medicine, was killed without much discussion. HB 1486, requiring state procurement to use proxy carbon pricing, was killed because we didn’t want to distort the procurement process by a bad guess on the proxy price – we’d rather wait until a carbon tax or federal control program establishes the appropriate price.
HB 1190, the interstate compact for social workers, was rather a surprise to me. I moved to kill the bill since I believe it’s unconstitutional to sign up to have the compact rules have the force of law in the state before we know the actual rules. Discussion brought out that some members were concerned that the compact had uncontrolled authority to make rules, buy and sell property, and assess fees from member states; others, that the benefits of the compact were oversold and other compacts have not brought the interstate flexibility that the proponents sought. We voted 12-8 to kill the bill; I expect a floor fight.
HB 1271, converting a number of the smaller regulatory boards to advisory boards, had an amendment from the subcommittee that revised the composition of some boards in response to stakeholder concerns. We were examining it when one member, not on the subcommittee, raised the issue that some parts of this bill conflicted with the language in the non-germane amendment to HB 1095, which had been in subcommittee this morning. That would be a totally unacceptable result, so I stopped the discussion on HB 1271 so that the two bills could be compared and each section be addressed in only one bill!
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HB 1059, updating the state building codes, had an amendment to include code amendments approved at the January meeting and to set the effective date to July 1. We discussed the updated energy code, and despite some reservations, we approved the update which left the energy code at the current revision. HB 1606, requiring contact information on state agency web pages, was killed as an update to most web pages is in process, and the Department of Information Technology agreed with us that contact information needed to be obvious. (I plan to check a few websites after they’re updated – we can always try a bill next year if necessary.)
HB 1411. requiring state agencies to accept cash payments was not as smooth. The testimony was that all state agencies do accept cash; the sticking point was the all electronic tolls on the Spaulding Turnpike. I had spoken to someone familiar with the toll system, and there are several ways to pay cash for the tolls, but all require some effort; the simplest would be to stop in the EZ Pass office once a week and pay the missed tolls – fees start accruing after eight days. And yes, they accept cash! Nonetheless, some members were concerned about either people who didn’t have bank accounts or preferred to deal in cash or people who were too poor to maintain a balance in their EZ Pass account. The vote was 17-3; I’m not entirely sure what the real issue was since using cash with state agencies doesn’t seem to be a problem.
HB 1272, on occupational license reciprocity, was killed because we had passed a very strong license by endorsement (that is, with a license from another state) bill last year, and the rules implementing it are still in process. HB 1408, a bill to merge and reorganize a number of boards, went to interim study as we wanted to deal with the advisory boards in HB 1271 and other statutory cleanup in HB 1095. This bill could conflict with either of them, and that would be unacceptable. Another round of board mergers and reorganizations should wait until we’ve finished with the current one.
Finally, HB 1222, deleting the requirement for physician assistants to have collaboration agreements with physicians, was discussed at some length. The subcommittee presented an amendment to clarify the Veterans’ Administration’s use of PAs, which was unanimously adopted. There was quite a bit of discussion about the equivalence of PAs and advanced practice nurse practitioners, who are allowed to practice independently. We also discussed problems with the collaboration agreements – some doctors “collaborate” at a distance for a fee; others won’t sign any such agreement since the insurance companies seem to sue the doctors as well, despite the law establishing the professional responsibility of the PAs. (I think the insurers are just going after all the deep pockets they can see!) The Board of Medicine, which had initially opposed the bill, was now “neutral.” Finally, we voted 12-8 to pass the bill.
On Thursday, the House met in session. The first order of business was to suspend all our rules to introduce a bill that would force those accused of felonies (specifically, Adam Montgomery, according to the petitioner) to be present in court. This motion passed 286-67; I voted against it because it seemed petty and specific to one person.
CACR 17, establishing the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children, was debated and not killed, 174-184. A floor amendment stating that this right “shall not be infringed” was debated and not passed, 173-189. The constitutional amendment was not passed, 180-183; a representative who voted against it has asked for reconsideration, so we will have another shot at it next week. The 60% requirement to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot (where voters must approve it by 2/3) is a hard bar to meet in a closely divided House.
HB 1006, creating a “family access motion” to have the courts enforce parenting time, had a floor amendment to clarify the language; both the amendment and the bill passed on voice votes. HB 1189, criteria for reporting child support delinquencies to federal agencies, had been rejected by the committee because they thought it was only a problem for the one representative who sponsored the bill; after they voted on it, they got information on how many child support delinquencies are reported – over 12,000, and many of them are for quite small amounts of money. It also happens if they get paid biweekly or monthly, and their support is assessed weekly. So, after some debate, the bill was not killed, 174-191, then passed on a voice vote.
HB 1263, allowing parenting coordinators to be used in high-conflict divorce or custody cases, passed without comment. HB 1266, explicitly allowing recording of open family court proceedings by the parties involved, was debated as to the necessity or usefulness of these recordings, then passed, 191-173. It was not reconsidered, 173-192.
HB 1308, parent’s access to children’s library records, was debated as to the possible expense to the libraries, the need for children’s privacy, and the existence of parent-objectionable material in libraries. It was killed 194-170, with 22 Republicans joining all Democrats in opposition. (If given a chance, I would have supported a floor amendment that clarified that only the books currently taken out by a child were included, with no need for a comprehensive list or any record of books read in the library.)
HB 1392, considering the opinion of the child in determining parenting time, was killed, 219-121, after a brief debate that established that judges could already consult with children before finalizing parenting time.
HB 1527, on criminal trespass, actually proposed that a spray of purple paint meant “no trespassing.” It was debated at some length; supporters insisted that it reinforced property rights, while opponents pointed out that violations (randoms spray painting trees on other people’s property) were impossible to police. In addition, it doesn’t offer the nuanced restrictions that current law allows – just “no.” Some opponents pointed out New Hampshire’s long history of common use, such that it’s normal and expected to hunt on your neighbor’s land. The bill was finally killed, 202-161.
HB 1437 would restructure the state Board of Education to include professional educators. It was minimally amended, 178-176, debated, and not passed, 176-190. Indefinite postponement passed 193-173. It is a citizen board, as it has been since initially structured over 100 years ago.
HB 1695, requiring parents to be notified when personally identifiable information is shared with third parties (private contractors providing special education services, for example), was debated, passed 192-173, and not reconsidered 170-195.The opposition was concerned that school personnel might have more paperwork, but that seemed a reasonable expense to me (and most others).
CACR 14, adding a constitutional provision that the state shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment, was debated at some length. Supporters wanted a commitment to the environment, opponents felt the state already has one and the rather vague language of this amendment would be problematic. The vote was 197-168 to kill it.
CACR 11, allowing sheriffs to serve out their elected term even after they turned 70, was killed on a voice vote without debate.
HB 1029, exempting some people from needing a license to land crab or lobster (taken in federal or another state’s waters) for personal consumption, was debated over the cost of such a license ($50 or $500 – I heard both!) and the need for state control of such activities. It was killed, 186-179 (I voted in favor.)
HB 1100, on coyote hunting, was tabled, 241-123, before the probably lengthy and unpleasant debate.
HB 1194, amending the definition of a non-communicable disease to one that is not transmitted from person to person, would not require immunization for malaria or Covid. An amendment that left the requirement for tetanus vaccines passed without comment, then the debate began. The bill passed 191-171 and was not reconsidered 171-192. HB 1213, eliminating the requirement for childcare centers to maintain records of immunizations of children in their care, was debated with the opposition concerned that it would decrease the vaccination rate for children if parents no longer have to report vaccination status to their childcare center. Proponents reiterated that the requirement for vaccination was unchanged, but having to maintain this data was a serious problem for childcare agencies, particularly the smaller ones. The bill passed 189-173 and was not reconsidered 172-193.
On a voice vote, we special ordered HB 1250, allowing the creation of village districts that cross town lines for the purpose of protecting water bodies. This was debated, with opponents concerned about the power of these districts to gerrymander themselves, including properties far from the water, and levy new taxes. Village districts within one town are common; waterside communities can form voluntary associations to protect our lakes without needing to form a village district. The bill was not passed, 182-182; not tabled, 182-183; killed, 184-180; and not reconsidered, 179-187.
Voting 336-29, we then special ordered HB 1416, which forbade non-electric vehicles from parking in EV charging spaces. The bill allowed anyone to take a picture of a violator, present the picture to law enforcement, and have a ticket issued – not the normal method of enforcement! Before the debate, we voted 189-176 to indefinitely postpone the bill and any similar ones.
HB 1240, adding eating disorders as a qualifying condition for therapeutic cannabis, was tabled 310-54, in agreement with the majority of the committee and the Therapeutic Cannabis Medical Oversight Board. HB 1482, allowing the sale of human blood and organs so that recipients could pay donors, was tabled 326-38 before the debate.
HB 1660, banning gender reassignment surgery for minors from being covered by the Medicaid program, was debated on the expected issues. It was not tabled, 174-188, passed 193-169, and not reconsidered, 171-192. HB 1706, informed consent for circumcision, went to interim study without comment.
CACR 12, replacing the 1784 word “cherish” with the current meaning of “cherish,” was Dan’s attempt to amend the constitution to trigger the Supreme Court to reconsider their original Claremont decision on school funding, and subsequent decisions as well. He spoke on the importance of having school funding – an inherently political process – decided by the legislature, not the courts. The interesting thing about the debate was that the speakers against it agreed with Dan on the effects of this change; they disagreed on whether it was a desirable change! In any event, the amendment was killed, 188-171.
HB 1037, repealing limited liability for firearms manufacturers, was indefinitely postponed, 196-163. HB 1089, repealing the statute of limitations on civil suits over PFAS, went to interim study without comment.
HB 1220, abolishing the collection of racial, ancestral, and educational data on the application for a marriage license, was debated on a floor amendment that was identical to the committee amendment (which passed without comment.) Apparently, the person proposing the amendment hadn’t read it carefully enough since she wanted to collect ancestry data (only)… In any event, these data are self-reported and optional and not used by any state agency for any purpose. The amendment failed 324-33 since it didn’t do anything, and the bill passed 293-64.
HB 1412, repealing the licensing of court reporters, had a floor amendment to make it effective in 90 days rather than 60, which passed without comment. After some debate, including the information that the courts have not used court reporters in decades, the bill passed 188-166, and reconsideration failed on a voice vote. This repeal has failed in my committee multiple times, so I was glad another committee could accomplish it. Advanced recording technology has made it possible to use less skilled transcribers in most cases, and the license now serves mostly to limit competition for the actual court reporter positions.
HB 1629, requiring the Attorney General to report to the legislature when investigating cases of a legislator not living in his district, was tabled 339-19. HR 29, declaring an “economic justice bill of rights,” was killed without comment, as was HB 1086, amending public notice of ZBA hearings.
HB 1120, repealing the requirement that municipal votes (by select board or budget committee) appear on the warrant, was debated and killed on a voice vote – then the speaker asked for reconsideration since one of the debaters had asked for a division vote. So reconsideration passed 188-168, and the bill was killed 264-95.
HB 1125 would require county delegation and commission meetings to comply with the same public access and public comment as town or city meetings. It passed without debate on voice votes. HB 1242, authorizing county-wide communications districts, was debated and killed, 173-172, as unnecessary; Carroll County has created one on an opt-in basis, with 16 towns voting to join, whereas HB 1242 would include all communities involuntarily. HB 1297, requiring all zoning ordinances to be directly related to health and safety, was tabled before debate, 285-65. I can imagine the way various towns would twist their current zoning ordinances to ensure they were related to health or safety.
HB 1359, on appeals of zoning decisions by abutters, clarified who, exactly, counted as an abutter for standing to appeal. It was debated, and a floor amendment to include residents in the town who were not abutters in an appeal was rejected, 130-224. After more debate, citing support from various organizations interested in increasing the housing supply, the bill passed 265-88.
HB 1253, renaming the Blair State Forest as the Jane Kellogg State Forest, was quietly killed; despite her leadership and accomplishments, we try hard not to name things for living people. HB 1510, establishing a commission to encourage electric vehicles, was killed without comment.
HB 1142, requiring people who failed the septic system evaluator test to take additional training or work experience before trying again, passed without debate. HB 1208, making the contractor rather than the landowner responsible for getting all permits before cutting timber, was tabled on a voice vote. HB 1483, allowing subdivision regulations to require a suitable water supply, was briefly debated before going to interim study, 182-165.
HB 1036, potentially allowing a different cost/benefit analysis for energy efficiency programs, passed the committee amendment 176-170, then the debate was over the propriety of changes to the ratepayer-funded program. It passed 184-169; examining methods always makes sense to me.
HB 1623, updating the state energy policy, had a long, dull debate as both sides tried to present all the details of this policy. The committee amendment was adopted, 182-169, then more debate. The bill passed 184-168 and was not reconsidered, 165-179. The new policy is more supportive of all types of energy generation and more resistant to mandates to limit energy in favor of climate change control.
HB 1118, issuance of driver’s licenses for legal aliens, was mostly a reorganization of existing statutes for clarity. Importantly, it also included a requirement that licenses for non-citizens were clearly marked as not valid for voting! The debate was largely on that issue, and the amendment passed, 180-167, the bill passed 179-166, and reconsideration failed, 167-178.
At this point, about 6 pm, all the remaining bills were special ordered for our next session day.
Friday, the county convention (all 45 state representatives from Merrimack County) met to consider the budget. This had started the review process as a 17% increase, but extensive work cut it to 7.6%. It’s still high, but with the end of special federal funding (largely for one-time expenses), less income from the register of deeds as real estate sales shrunk, and high inflation, I could understand it. In addition, the county has kept increases to a minimum for a while – even with this year’s jump, the amount raised by taxes has averaged a 1.5% per year increase for the last seven years. So, I voted for the budget, which passed 26-7.
The county delegation also approved 31-2, the county power aggregation plan. This allows the commissioners to purchase power in bulk for anyone in the county, without the regulations imposed on the electric utilities – so quicker responding to market conditions and hopefully, cheaper. At this point any power customer in the county can sign up to use this plan for their default power. If a town so votes, it would become the default power supplier for everyone in the town – but anyone could opt out in that case. If your town already has a community power plan (Canterbury does; Pembroke, New London, Warner and Webster are starting one this month; six other towns are considering it) that takes precedence for default power, but individuals can always opt for the county plan if they prefer.
It seems to me that this agreement might well save money for the aware consumer; the only risk is that the county might change its goals from “least cost” power to “most sustainable.” That would be a problem, but again, the aware consumer has plenty of options to meet their goals for power. (I want reliability and low cost, myself.)
I also met in subcommittee on two bills on mental health licensing, HB 1131 and HB 1413. We discussed what the problems were, and developed amendments to both bills. HB 1413, on supervisory agreements (mental health counselors require supervised practice before they are eligible for a full license,) instead of repealing the definition of these agreements, will change the language of the supervisor’s responsibility to that used in another section of the statute, which is not objectionable. For HB 1413, instead of adding private clinics to the list of organizations that can hire new graduates without specific supervisory agreements, we defined the responsibilities of an organization that can do so, without worrying about its structure.
The post Your State House appeared first on Granite Grok.
So, truth be told, I didn’t mind The Grok recently publishing legislator attendance records, perhaps because I’d missed approximately zero votes, much less any sessions, during six years at the State House. And yes, I was among those who were frustrated when our red team lost some close floor votes due to Republican lawmakers’ absences.
After The Grok published a list of solons with the highest absentee rates I was kind of hoping that it would also publish a list of those of us with 100% attendance rates, like me.
That is until a House Session was scheduled for Thursday, March 7.
Months ago, I’d planned to be at Camp Pendleton, Calif., that day for the dedication of a memorial monument 40 years after my Marine Corps unit, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, suffered a dreadful tragedy when a helicopter hit a mountain during a night training exercise in Korea. All 29 Marines aboard were killed. I was in a different chopper and, like many others, always carried a touch of survivor’s guilt.
I knew many of the Marines who were killed and would never miss the March 7th reunion, where I could reconnect with old comrades and meet Gold Star families. Our company commander, Captain Jay Paxton, would make special remarks at the commemoration. After a 42-year USMC career, Paxton retired from the Marines in 2016 as a four-star general and Assistant Commandant.
A lot of tears were shed, a lot of folks were remembered, and afterward, there were warm embraces, later laughs, and camaraderie. There was no way I was going to miss the reunion.
But as a Grokster, I soon noticed my name listed in a Grok piece with the number of floor votes I missed on March 7. Fair enough.
Catholic guilt ensued—different from survivor’s guilt. But some humility and wisdom ensued as well. Never again would I judge fellow citizen-legislators who might miss a session for whatever reason. “Stuff” happens—anything from sicknesses to family emergencies to 40th Anniversary USMC Monument Dedications.
Mea culpa.
Live free or die.
The post Excuses, Excuses … and Lima Company appeared first on Granite Grok.
STOP making things so complicated. Things are actually quite simple. Republican good; Democrat bad. That is all you need to know. Just vote Republican … that is all that matters. What? What about primaries? Well, in the case of primaries you vote for the candidate your “leaders” tell you to vote for. Why else would we have “leaders”?!?!?! What a silly question.
What? Another question? Isn’t just voting Republican how we end up with the UniParty … in Concord, as well as DC? What you have a recent example … Senate Republicans joining with the Democrats to pass yet another omnibus:
The #SchumerMinibus passed tonight.
As Senate conservatives, we did everything we possibly could to stop it.
In the end, we were no match for The Uniparty.
Republicans must stop helping Democrats advance Democrat policies.
Now.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) March 9, 2024
This bill is an insult to the American people. The earmarks are all the wasteful spending that you could ever hope to see, and it should be defeated. Read more: https://t.co/Jt8K5iucA4 pic.twitter.com/I5okd4QgDg
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) March 8, 2024
But just think how bad it would have been without the “responsible” Republicans who voted with the Democrats! These statesmen and stateswomen who voted for the latest omnibus represent true conservatism! Same but less is true conservatism! Slava Ukraine! Vote Republican! Slava Ukraine! Vote Republican!
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Vermont taxpayers are screwed. Their Democrat majority government can override any Phil Scott Veto (assuming he’s not also part of the problem) and where there are Democrats, there will be higher taxes and little or nothing to show for the taking. The failed public education experiment is a great example.
Twenty years ago (2004), Vermont had a problem.
A total of 39 schools, or 13 percent, failed to make what is defined as adequate yearly progress this year, Education Commissioner Richard Cate said Tuesday. The results, he said, should be used to better understand how to serve all Vermont students and not to judge schools. “If identification doesn’t mean that terrible things are going to happen, I don’t think we should care quite as much about numbers as we should about the needs of kids,” Cate said. “All I really care about is that all the kids are served.”
If you compare the 2003 troubles reported in that 2004 article to the 2024 troubles (or the 2023 proficiency results), the needs of the kids cost exponentially more while fewer of them are “being served.” Competency is down, and grade-level reading and math are down.
“Bellows Falls Union High School Principal Kelly O’Ryan told the school’s budget committee this week that seven freshmen out of a classroom of 14 students were reading at a first-grade or elementary school level.”
It’s not that only half of the high school students can read to grade level. It’s that half of them can only read to a first-grade level.
It’s not just Bellows Falls but statewide.
As has been reported, Vermont test scores are dropping significantly and have been for over a decade. A recent deep dive revealed that our public schools have been teaching kids to read the wrong way for over a generation. Along that line comes a story from the Brattleboro Reformer, Low Reading Scores Alarm BFUHS Board, in which the Bellows Falls Union High School principal revealed that half of the freshman class “were reading at a first-grade or elementary school level.”
The one thing that IS up is school budgets and spending which brings us to Town meeting 2024. Multiple outlets have reported that a third of towns rejected their school budgets last week. What one commenter suggested might be a historical record.
Well, the reason that so many budgets failed is because property taxes were projected to skyrocket by nearly 20%. And that’s because, collectively, the budgets that were put before voters represented a $230 million increase in education spending. So even before all these budgets went down, lawmakers were already saying, ‘This is a crisis. Something has got to give.’ Tuesday’s results confirmed for them, that they have a mandate for change.
VermontGrok regular Rob Roper wrote about this latest tidal wave tax and the spending last December.
Vermont already spends more per pupil than almost every other state in the Union at the official count of $22,953, but the NEA pegged the number at $25,053 in 2022-23, which is the number you get when you simply divide the education budget by the number of students. And what are we getting for all this increased spending year after year? An unmitigated disaster of falling student outcomes, rising classroom violence, and a shockingly arrogant lack of accountability or common sense by public school officials.
Democrats can’t imagine a solution that doesn’t involve throwing more of your money into a bottomless hole. In the case of public Ed, however, they get some back from union dues to campaign coffers to boots on the ground, and more often than is reported – electioneering. Democrats benefit from recycling your hard-earned dollars through an institution that can’t seem to do much else unless turning generations of kids into helpless illiterate gender queers can be viewed as another positive (though again, you’d be right to wonder for whom).
After spending a barrel of one-time money, Vermont is over a barrel. The state used inflation-driving COVID bailouts to grow school budgets, and taxpayers were left holding the larger bag. That was not an accident. It is a well-honed tactic of government-first progressives: Make government bigger and then cry about how awful things will get if they have to propose cuts. Anyone who dares is smeared, and taxes rise perpetually to fill a space that didn’t exist before the one-time money came along.
Wash, rinse, repeat. When the institution continues to fail, the solution is more money to pay for more failure—a doom loop that few ever escape.
Public education has been in decline for decades, and for just as long, Amininstrators union loudmouths, and politicians have blamed it on money. But the only thing more money can be directly connected to in government schools is dumber children. As the budgets have grown, kids have become less capable, less proficient, and ill-prepared for anything outside that fiscally bloated womb.
It would be nice if you could invest that in something else, but the other problem with electing Democrats is they will do whatever they can to trap your kids in their doom loop.
What exactly you plan to do about that is your decision, but a good start would be to stop electing Democrats for at least as long as your schools have been failing.
The post More Money Will Only Make The “Public Education Problem” Worse appeared first on Granite Grok.
Growing up in China, I never heard of parental rights. Every child in China belongs to the State. After Mao used urban youth Red Guards during his Cultural Revolution, he forced them to be re-educated in the countryside. My uncles were sent hundreds of miles away from home for ten years, and my grandparents had no say.
As a student, I was subjected to forced indoctrination in government schools, centralized curricula, testing, data collection, secret “Student Files,” and mandatory vaccinations.
Student Files for each child included grades, speeches, behaviors, rewards, violations, punishments, physical health, mental health, vaccine shots, religion, family members inf. No parents were allowed to see what was in these files.
Our school day started with chanting “Long Live CHAIRMAN MAO, LONG LIVE CCP” and red songs like “My parents are dear, but Chairman Mao is dearer.” We were required to memorize Mao’s quotations, writing dairies reviewed by teachers, report on our family and neighbors for anti-gov speeches, and confess our own incorrect thoughts.
There were posters in schools and communities in front of your eyes everywhere.
Our music and art classes were about showing affection and loyalty to Mao, demonizing the oppressors. I never questioned anything. It was effective in convincing people that if you see something and hear something daily, it must be the truth. I would see Mao’s face in the clouds and in the fire under our wok, smiling at me. I thought Mao was a God until he died when I was 12. That was my first awaking moment.
What happened in China is happening here in the US. I opposed Common Core, centralized education standards, testing, and data collection over ten years ago. I enrolled my kids in a charter school where I served as a board member and a chair. Today’s school kids are being indoctrinated with CRT, the 1619 project, SEL, DEI, Gender Ideology, LGBTQ agendas, etc.
We want to thank Lily Tang Williams for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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Kids are encouraged to keep secrets from parents, health centers in schools keep separate files, and teachers are not required to inform parents about a child’s gender identity change. Some School teachers and counselors are political activists who brainwash and train kids to be SJWs.
Parents are being sidelined, if you dare to challenge age-inappropriate books in schools, you are called bigots, and book banners. If you go to school board meetings speaking up against their indoctrination, you could be a “domestic terrorist”.
The fact that I must go to the State House and Senate to testify to support parental rights bills is concerning. It is absolutely necessary, though. It clarifies and protects one of the most ancient of all human rights – parental sovereignty.
The deepest human bond is between parents and their children. This bond must be protected from being torn by any political agenda. In America, children still belong to their parents, not the government, not the institutions, not any collective groups.
In America, children belong to their parents, not state. Parents have the right to choose the best suitable school for their children. Parents must have the right to know what their children are taught in school, Parents should have the right to access all their kids’ personal data, health records, and make informed medical decisions with/for their children.
Schools should not be political battlefields or indoctrination centers. Schools should be places of joyful learning focusing on academic subjects like reading, writing, math, and science — not places of social engineering with divisive political agendas and age-inappropriate content.
Girls should always feel safe to use their bathrooms, boys, too. Girls’ sports should not be crushed by men who identify as women.
Parents, grandparents, and good teachers, our kids need us more than ever. They are the most vulnerable, innocent, and precious humans and need our love, guidance, and protection.
Local town elections, including school board elections, are coming up on March 12th. Show up to vote for the candidates who represent your values and respect your parental rights. Make it your priority to get involved in your kids’ schools and their lives at home, including their social media activities.
If your state can’t pass a parental rights bill, try to work with local districts or towns to protect kids. At the Federal level, make sure your candidates will pledge to sponsor or co-sponsor a bill to abolish the DOE and return education to local control and parental control. That is what I will do when I get elected.
We need concerned citizen groups willing to be fierce, Mama and Papa Bears ready to protect the children. Your children, families, and freedoms depend on this. Take action now before it is too late.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBoBBQUpa4U&t=225s
Lily Tang Williams
Republican Congressional Candidate NH02
www.lilytangwilliams.com
Reminder: Content about candidates or by candidates is not an endorsement by GraniteGrok.com or its authors.
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Several Gmail users have emailed me to say they got the newsletter this morning. I checked, and we are in 100% compliance with Gmail’s requirements for now, so if you use Gmail and don’t see it today, it is in your spam folder (mine was).
Compliance with Outlook, Comcast, and several other mail services has also improved, but they are not 100% compliant, so we will continue to work on that.
As a reminder, we now are delivering two newsletters daily. The AM version will have the posts from the previous evening. The PM version will have the posts from that day.
I’m excited to learn that we are making progress.
Again, check spam, and then, if you are still not receiving it and know you signed up, please let me know.
steve@granitegrok.com
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One could be forgiven for mistakenly believing that Jennifer Mandelbaum was running unopposed in the Rockingham District 21 special election. The 32-year-old contender for a seat in the NH House of Representatives, whose race reaches its conclusion on March 12, is virtually ubiquitous both online and in signage.
How has a hitherto unknown candidate in an obscure contest established such sudden name recognition? I suspect the answer is a progressive advocacy group known as 603 Forward, which has hosted public events with Mandelbaum and invested in the election, according to campaign finance reports.
Founded in 2019 by Lucas Meyer and Elizabeth Wester—both hotshots in the realm of liberal political causes—the youthful organization has quickly grown into a veritable factory of progressive candidates for state and local office. Since its inception, 603 Forward has boasted over 150 successful elections, an unmatched success rate for an NH advocacy group.
We want to thank D. S. Dexter Tarbox Jr. for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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For his part, Meyer was well-equipped to launch an effective electoral machine. Not only was he a principal player in Chris Pappas’ Executive Council and Senate campaigns, the former Deputy Communications Director of the NH Democratic Party, and a consultant for the energy and tech industries (among others); he currently leads a public affairs strategy firm called Catalyst Advocacy.
Wester is likewise no small player in the world New England politics. Best known as the NH State Director for Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign, the Massachusetts native is also an alumna of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and several Democrat congressional offices.
It should come as no surprise that both of these rather flourishing characters were also accomplished collegiate athletes — a vigor they have seemingly carried into their hale and hearty careers in activism. But to call 603Forward a purely grassroots organization would be an error. Like most movements, its true origins can be traced to the ever-entangled and endlessly-moneyed powers.
Although it solicits donations, 603 Forward is mainly funded by grants. In fact, grants were the sole source of funding used to launch the group in 2019, according to its 501(c)(4) IRS filings.
From whom do these funds derive?
Reports from 2022 alone indicate that 603 Forward was the recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash awards from leftist donor clearinghouses like the New Hampshire Progress Alliance (“NHPA”), Run for Something, and the Rural Democracy Initiative (“RDI”). Indeed, RDI awarded two grants to this and other progressive NH causes in the same year.
RDI boldly proclaims its ominous objectives in no uncertain terms:
“We establish multi-year relationships with grantees. We invest in efforts that have the power to change immediate statewide and local electoral, public opinion, and policy outcomes, and at the same time RDI extends our impact by building sustainable organizational infrastructure that will support rural people working to transform America—and therefore the entire country—for decades to come.”
A review of the states and communities targeted by the Rural Democracy Initiative (i.e. AK, AZ, GA, NH, NC, ME, MN, MT, MI, OH, PA, TX, VA, and WI) plainly reveals the ultimate objective of their efforts: to strike at the rural conservative bases in key swing states and establish an enduring liberal majority. Ignore the many platitudes they espouse about the country worker. Radical entrenched transformation is RDI’s actual ambition.
The origins of RDI itself are obscure, but not untraceable. One name emerges especially from amidst the fog: William Carter.
Carter is a West Virginian string musician and wealthy financial manager who operates the firm of McKinley Carter Wealth Services and is a key founder of RDI. Carter’s business manages approximately $2 billion in total assets between its purported 5,262 clients, placing it among the largest firms of its type in the United States.
Naturally, Mr. Carter is not the only apex predator in the jungle of donor dollars. Run for Something and NHPA are backed by several shadowy nonprofits connected to billionaire megadonor George Soros (including the North Fund, Open Society Policy Center, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund).
But RDI’s expressed mission to develop a wide-reaching “network of donors” bent on “transforming America” seems to be the most keenly focused on impacting local elections in communities like NH, and Carter is an apparent fountainhead of this comprehensive program.
Billionaire-hating liberals be warned: you are far from immune to their influence.
That rich men have coopted our essential civic processes is no bombshell. On the conservative side, the Koch family’s Americans for Prosperity (AFP) operates a relatively powerful branch in NH, which advocated for Nikki Haley during the 2024 Primary almost to the point of nausea.
But the comparison is hardly equal. While 603 Forward is successfully recruiting and advancing candidates at all levels of government, conservative-minded political prospects are hardly supported by the Republican Party itself. While liberal syndicates have effected hundreds of local victories over the course of a few short years, the conservatives have all but completely abdicated their role in the process.
During the hotly contested November 2023 election, even the local Republican Committee hosted no recruitment events or candidate forums, had no social media activity, published no direct mail, posted very limited signage, and offered no sample ballot to voters in contested cities like Dover and its environs. Meanwhile hardly any Democrat candidate was lacking in any essential support.
The subsequent liberal victories in diverse House special elections—and now, the accelerated rise of Jennifer Mandelbaum against her GOP challenger—evidence the same pattern.
Where is our knight in white satin armor? Will our state ever bring forth a conservative Meyer, Wester, or Carter who will effectively organize GOP money and energy into a fruitful statewide operation? There is no reason why both sides should not be able to participate with equal strength, if certain Republicans will consent to desist in their genteel fantasies about American society and agree to truly involve themselves in the necessary civic mud.
If Republicans fail to learn the lesson of past defeats, the sway of local elections will ever more incline away from the right. It’s behind time for Republicans to learn from their shrewder Democrat counterparts by recruiting, training, and supporting bankable candidates.
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