Tuesday • April 22 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.XVII
Manchester, N.H.
LD227 would permit the state of Maine to hold those in other states liable for violating it; violating what? The law allows human trafficking and protects adults from charges of kidnapping and transporting minors across state lines for gender surgeries. Tennessee pushed back, but not just against the unconstitutionality of LD227.
Tennessee lawmakers in the state’s Senate on Thursday passed a bill on a 25-4 vote that would make it a felony for adults to aid minors in seeking gender transition procedures. It now heads to the GOP-led House, where it is expected to get additional Republican support.
State Sen. Janice Bowling, a Republican, sponsored SB 2782, which would penalize any “adult who recruits, harbors, or transports an unemancipated minor” in Tennessee “for the purpose of receiving a prohibited medical procedure that is for the purpose of enabling the minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex or treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity, regardless of where the medical procedure is to be procured,” and make it classified as a felony.
Objections are without merit. It is about protecting children from a medical, industrial complex revenue machine that secretly admits the risks and failures of its alleged cures on one hand while cashing checks for its services on the other.
A practice that is rapidly losing support around the world (in just the past few weeks).
A growing institutional force recognizes how dangerous and ineffective this is for children’s mental health.
What About Rights?Children have very limited rights, historically recognized across almost every culture. No one has a history of deliberately letting kids decide what they are ready for or when they can begin certain behaviors. Results may vary (rural kids are up working the family farm and using equipment many an urban youth would be unable to master without the time and training of their rural peers). Still, when it comes to smoking, driving, vaping, drinking alcohol, tattoos, firearms*, and, until recently – sex, the universal standard has been when the time is right. That time is commonly mid to late teens (these days) or later, which ought to include the elective surgical removal of healthy human body parts.
Every culture can debate when the best time is for marriage and firearms safety, but we don’t typically let adults chop off healthy body parts (theirs or someone else’s) unless it is for sexual reassignment surgery, which, when you consider it, is not the best policy. Recent research affirms that a majority of what gets labeled gender dysphoria in children is a different mental health issue that gender-bending does not address. It would explain why the quick-to-judge gender reassignment solution is failing so badly. Even in accepting communities, those lured into the LGBTQ lifestyle continue to embrace other unhealthy habits, including suicide, in statistically high numbers.
You are not addressing their mental health. You are using it to project your political will. Adults are free to make mistakes for which they must then pay some price (unless they are members of Congress). Children manipulated into those choices, contrary to the rising body of evidence against it, are being abused sexually, politically, and forever. You can’t undo the damage of gender surgery, and hormone treatments are dangerous, leading to disease, cancer, and even death.
Maine Democrats are not just fine with the risks. They would add human trafficking to the list. They are putting children in harm’s way. Tennesse is trying to protect them. More states should do the same.
The post While Maine Works to Protect Child Traffickers, Tennessee Moves to Punish Them appeared first on Granite Grok.
Democrat-owned fake news media continues to bamboozle their self-blinded followers with false narratives in order to sell their stories to the unsuspecting populace.
As long as left-leaning voters take the bait by the media, they will never learn what it was like 50 years ago to have honest and unbiased news presenters like Walter Cronkite.
The “news” articles of today are more like gossip columns reeking of manipulated, sensational “gotcha” opinions by left-wing reporters at CNN, MSNBC, HuffPost, AP, ABC, et al.
This is called controlling the message. When the message is controlled, the people are controlled.
However, Democrats without a conscience don’t seem to care because they are happily living in their controlled fantasy world. Left-leaning people totally believe the negative, fictional opinions made against Republicans by the leftist media simply because it fits their Democratic narrative.
We want to thank Di Lothrop for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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Democrats in Congress love to claim “bipartisanship” when pushing laws. Have you noticed that they all claim to “work with” Republicans to negotiate bills? The reality is that they don’t leave space for Republican discussions; they shut Republicans out of the conversation. Congressional Democrats have no desire to negotiate. It seems it’s their way or the highway.
It is extremely rare for a Democrat to go against their party in Washington, DC. The reality is, if they appear to waffle, they pay a price. When Speaker Nancy Pelosi reigned over the House, they were led in shackles to her throne to have a “little chat”. Subsequently, the “throne-in-waiting” of the House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. And to current Senate Leader Chuck Schumer. They are all given the order not to stray from liberal chronicles.
The media will never report that.
Remember when Joe Biden was running for president on a platform of unity? The reality is that Biden has denigrated Republicans for years. He slams Donald Trump at every chance, propagating the same falsehoods claimed by the media, albeit in his mumbling, bumbling Biden-esque way.
Biden is the most divisive president this country has seen in a long time. He wouldn’t know unity if it bit him in the nose.
And yet, Biden’s controlled partisan followers continue to walk around with blinders on. In their letters to the editor and other public communications, they note that Biden is ‘full of stamina and vitality’ and ‘clearly articulates his policies’. Are they drinking the weird Kool-Aid?
Another dramatically false claim is that Trump is a ‘threat to America’ and he ‘cozied up to dictators’ and his ‘greed fed corrupt pay-to-play politics’. They sound catatonic and seemingly suffer from foaming at the mouth.
Talk about being controlled.
People don’t get the full truth. All they get are subjective opinions calling Republicans bad. They listen to fake news with liberal ears and believe the false claim that President Trump said he was going to be a dictator. No. That was taken out of context by the media. Look at the transcript of the conversation. With tongue in cheek, he said he would be a dictator on day one only and would close the border and stop illegal border crossings. Frame of reference: On day one, Joe Biden acted as a dictator when he signed 77 executive orders all cancelling Trump policies simply because they were not Democratic policies.
Let’s not forget Biden holding a pay-to-play billion dollars hostage to force the Ukrainian government to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Hunter Biden’s corrupt deal. Well, son-of-gun, the prosecutor got fired, and Biden got them their billion dollars!
Take the “bloodbath” incident. Trump was speaking metaphorically about a major economic disaster, not a bloody war like the liberal media claimed. Biden used the term in 2020, referring to a political bloodbath. Result: nothing from the media. They let that go without calling him out.
The media claimed Trump called all illegals ‘animals’ – they forgot to mention that he was talking about the murderous criminal element of illegals crossing our border.
Liberals will not be swayed by this column and will continue to turn a blind eye. They’d rather focus more on the lies about Trump than talk about Biden’s economic disasters affecting us all.
Knowledge is key.
The post Media Prejudices Lack Credibility but Liberals Don’t Care appeared first on Granite Grok.
George Carlin used to tell jokes about his time in Catholic school and his smart-ass interactions with The Church, like asking a priest if God is so powerful that he can create a rock so large that he himself can’t lift it. A similar situation has arisen closer to Earth. Vermont close.
In their pursuit of ineffable emissions goals, the Vermont Legislature has created an environmental standard so complex that no one knows how to implement it. Grokster Rob Roper explains.
The Clean Heat Standard (CHS), the “Rube Goldberg” carbon tax on home heating fuels, became law almost a year ago over the veto of Governor Scott. The Democrat/Progressive supermajority that passed the CHS did so without providing – or even considering in any significant detail – how it would work or what it would cost. Instead, they kicked that can into the laps of the Public Utilities Commission with the charge to just figure it all out – by September 2024 (fifteen months) for review before a legislative vote in January 2025.
So far, the only thing we’ve figured out is that this thing can’t be figured out. Certainly not by September 2024/January 2025 and probably not ever.
He proceeds to show us the receipts in support of the claim, which is simplified by the fact that the agencies tasked with achieving goals have not because the way the law is written, it can’t be done. This is progressive busybodying at its finest, and you’d be right to ask the next question.
How many emissions have been emitted not just during the drafting, deliberation, and passage of the Clean Heat Standard but also since trying to work out how it won’t work, starting with the fact that it creates a financial instrument (a carbon credit) the state would have to oversee and regulate (more government, more emissions).
“From the outset, you should treat the credit like a financial instrument if you want to see what happens when you don’t, look at the beginnings of the European Emissions Trading System ten or twelve years ago. It was a disaster. They are a financial instrument. They are basically the same as money, so you need to track them like that. There should be a single registry for credits, and they should all have unique identifiers…. And the final thing, I’d say, is there should be an annual review of market activity. It seems like overkill on day one, but it is really important to understand what is happening in the credit market to make sure that it’s being operated above board….”
Yeah, all that. And much more. Good luck hammering out the details of how to create, track, and regulate what is essentially a new crypto-currency during a three-hour Zoom meeting! This is not the fault of the TAG or the EAG, it’s the fault of the morons who passed this law with this time frame with this bureaucratic framework without doing anywhere near the due diligence necessary to determine if this were possible.
And Vermonters didn’t even want it. They don’t want to pay more to heat and cool their homes, but that’s what this does if they can figure out a way to make it work, which is not a bad thing. The longer it takes, the more time you have to replace them and get this repealed.
The post They Made an Environmental Law So Huge No One Knows How to “Lift It” appeared first on Granite Grok.
IF you consider yourself a political activist … then there is a thread on X from Jesse Kelly that is a MUST-READ. But let’s start with me, okay? Am I a political activist? NO. Writing posts for GraniteGrok does NOT make me a political activist. It makes me a political commentator (the dysfunctional NHGOP would probably use gadfly instead of commentator). But it does NOT make me an activist.
The vast majority of what is posted on this site is “preaching to the choir.” I am not changing minds. I am not affecting elections, And I can say this because I see how many views the posts get. The reach of my posts, in terms of votes cast in elections, is not material.
If I were a candidate for, let’s say, a school board, or I were helping such a candidate … then I could actually call myself an activist. But I am neither, so I have no business calling myself an activist. Similarly, someone who just posts on Facebook and flies a MAGA flag is not an activist. You are not doing anything actually to manifest change.
Democrats … more accurately, Communists … are winning because they understand the distinction. They seek and win positions of power, and then they use that power. That is why you see drag shows and pride flags in supposedly Red States.
If you want to be an activist, then you need to ACT. And a word of advice, if you do choose to take Jesse’s advice … ignore the NHGOP. The NHGOP is dysfunctional and useless. Trying to “take over” the NHGOP is a colossal waste of time. Instead, the focus should be on taking over your local school board and other aspects of local governance.
Needless to say, I do not expect anyone to actually follow this advice. It is so much easier to do things the same way—the losing way—that the NHGOP has been doing things for decades. TOP OF THE TICKET, COATTAILS, DON’T MASS UP NEW HAMPSHIRE. What’s really “massing up” New Hampshire is not the alleged threat of an income tax—it is the Communist zealots running school boards and other aspects of local government.
Read the whole thread on X by clicking on the below:
Wanna know why “red” towns across America have child drag shows and muddy buddy parades?
Walk with me and I’ll tell you why. And how to stop it: https://t.co/Qvj0lsmMe3
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) April 16, 2024
Unrolled:
Wanna know why “red” towns across America have child drag shows and muddy buddy parades?
Walk with me and I’ll tell you why. And how to stop it:
Unroll available on Thread ReaderFirst, you need to set aside Nursery Rhyme Conservative notions like “majority”. The Right loves cope like that.
“We’re the silent majority!”
Yeah, dork. Thinking like that is why you lose.
The communist understands “power” and “majority” are very different things. His is a demonic religion of destruction so he knows he’ll never be popular. And he doesn’t have to be.
He just has to take the choke points of power in a society.
Which brings us to your town. You know that library you drive by on the way to work every day? Do you even look at it?
No. You don’t.
Guess who does. The communist does. You see a library. He sees a choke point.
The communist understands power in a way the American Right never has. You put on a MAGA hat and post on Facebook and think you’re “political”.
The communist gets himself on your city’s parks department. Why? Cause he knows what politics really is about.
So yes, there are only 10 commies in your “red” town. But they’re all on your school board. THEY have the power. Your “majority” means nothing. Nothing. If you want to save the parts of your country that can be saved, it involves much more than voting for Trump once every 4 years and avoiding Bud Light. You must become involved. LOCALLY. Run for school board. When there’s a meeting or a committee in your town (communists love committees), go get on them. When the communist pushes the next tranny parade, make noise. Organize. Last time they tried that in my “red” town, I had so many people calling that they stopped answering the phones in city hall. And in the end, I won.Legal and local is our path to victory. Your red area is vulnerable cause you’re watching the game while the communists are planning and organizing.
Plan. Organize. Fight. Win.
That’s all.
• • •
The post No … You Are NOT A Political Activist appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Democrats, especially Joe Biden, have learned to use the courts and trials to their advantage. They set the Justice Department loose because Donald Trump would return to run against Biden to regain his Presidency. The word in the White House last week was “Don’t.”
For the previous year, the Dems favorite word was “Indict,” and indict they did, to the tune of 91 indictments filed against Former President Donald Trump. They did this for three reasons:
This three-pronged attack failed on every front. Every indictment meant a plus in Trump’s approval. Trump is setting records raising money and will have enough for both battles. Trump has the energy to be in a New York court during the day and hold a rally in Texas at night. Joe Biden dreams of energy, and Donald Trump exudes it.
The House has impeached Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. Not because he is incompetent but because he is doing precisely as Joe directs him to keep the border wide open. He is impeached for his treasonous activities that have led to 10 million illegal migrants entering the country under his watch. The House has delayed delivering the Articles of Impeachment to Chuck Schumer and the Senate because Schumer has leaked that he will table the articles rather than convene a trial per the Constitution. For Schumer to table would be unprecedented and in defiance of the Constitution. It would be as disastrous for the Senate as Harry Reid blowing up the 60 vote majority.
The Senate has always been referred to as the upper chamber because it is supposed to be the more stately of the two wings. Senators tend to be more seasoned politicians, and some rules and traditions force the Senate to debate, negotiate, and compromise to get bills passed. That is how it used to be, but like everything else in this new world order, things are not as they used to be or as good. If Schumer does as he promises, it will be another notch downward for the Senate. We should not be surprised that someone like Schumer would do this, especially this New York Jew who had a brain freeze this week and turned on Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu by calling for new elections.
Being in the minority, I do not know if the Republicans have any procedural tricks they can pull to force the issue and the trial. Still, if Schumer is successful in protecting Mayorkas, impeachment will become a lame act if the impeached is of the same party as the majority. Conventional thinking has Trump back in the White House and the Republicans taking the Senate but losing the House. Should that come to fruition, you can bet the house, your house, that Trump will be impeached before the summer of 2025. If Schumer blows up impeachment like the supermajority, a Trump impeachment will become a placement in the Senate cafeteria.
The post Dems Love Trump Trials, Mayorkas’ Trials Not So Much appeared first on Granite Grok.
Germany, like Vermont, has some problems. They are both scrambling to meet arbitrary and unnecessary emissions targets. Stop laughing; they think this is serious. And like Vermont, Germany has unworkable laws with rules to get there from here, because the world might end if they can’t agree on how to massage or cheat them.
The problem in Central Europe’s largest nation is that dueling sides are fighting over a thinning slice of what was once a proud and stable manufacturing economy. This planned ruin includes addressing what to do about vehicle emissions, but as deadlines loom without a compromise, Transport Minister Volker Wissing thought he’d try a different sort of motivation.
In a push to get his coalition partners to quickly approve the changes, Wissing said the [Transportation] ministry would have to enforce a ban on driving to meet the current law requirements if the amendments do not come into force before mid-July. “A corresponding reduction in traffic performance would only be possible through restrictive measures that are difficult to communicate to the population, such as nationwide and indefinite driving bans on Saturdays and Sundays,” Wissing wrote in a letter dated Thursday to coalition parliamentary group leaders.
Strange meets insane. Germany is known for making decent automobiles, which is harder to do given the constraints on energy produced by unreliable intermittent fancy. Not to mention that it’s impossible to make steel in the new green world, so missing the emissions targets is less of a threat to Germans than the government that sets them and insists on meeting them.
Whether Wissing is making fun of his coalition partners or not is unclear to me, but it feels like he’s making a point they’ve all missed, which brings us to the dumber thing alluded to in the headline.
“It is not responsible for a minister to stir up unfounded fears,” Green Party parliamentary group leader Katharina Droege said on Friday, calling on the minister to make sensible suggestions for more climate protection in the sector.
Amusing, yes? The entire emissions scheme stands on unfounded fears, without which you’d not be arguing about how to meet meaningless targets whose only effect is to shackle your economy and bankrupt your people.
Failed Policy, Failed State“Social Democrats (SPD) deputy parliamentary group leader Detlef Mueller” was also put out by the scaremongering, and he was not referring to the climate scam. He meant the bit about a driving ban, which is disingenuous coming from a Social Democrat. Driving can’t be anything but verboten to reach the movement’s actual goals. And that is not an unfounded fear; it is a logistical fact. Environmental policy is about control, especially movement. The 21st-century equivalent of a Berlin Wall. Not a physical structure but a technological one. Social credit, digital currency, transportation tyranny, cultural reprimand. All for what?
As with all forms of Marxism, once they’ve convinced you to give up your freedom, it must descend into the same sort of dirty economy China has now. Government power cannot stand on green lies. To keep it, they will make excuses for well-meaning environmental policy (not what we thought) to justify whatever energy use keeps the gears of despotism oild, turning, and oppressing.
The goal is economic control, not climate control. In the end, governments will still be scrambling to meet emissions targets, but under absolute state rule, there’ll be more emissions to keep the home fires burning.
Germans need to understand that this is a different face, but the same fascism, and the end of it isn’t all that different from that which they were liberated in the last century.
The post “Ban Weekend Driving To Meet ‘Climate Goals'” Was Not The Dumbest Thing Said by The German Government, Last Week appeared first on Granite Grok.
If you want to understand why NHGOP House “leadership” believes it can ignore the priorities of actual GOP voters while instead pushing their decidedly non-GOP agenda … an obsession with legalizing marijuana, outlawing single-family zoning, increasing urban density, and catering to the rich and the elites (e.g., ending interest-and-dividends tax) while ignoring working people (no hard cap on local property taxes), etc. etc. etc. … check out this from “Leader” Jason Osborne on X.
Essentially, “they have nowhere to go,” … we can do whatever we want because at the end of the day voters are zombies who will vote the Party line up and down the ballot.
Not this voter, Jason. The NHGOP has left me, not the other way around. So, I intend to vote for Trump and then turn in my ballot.
The post Not Me, Jason appeared first on Granite Grok.
Some elements in our state are trying to force longtime-established single-family zoned neighborhoods into multi-family neighborhoods. Their goal is to eradicate the suburbs and morph towns into cities.
We urge the NH Senate to reject HB1291 on the following basis:– This bill’s provisions amount to zoning by the State in a one-size-fits-all manner rather than by the municipalities themselves. It does not give back, but instead takes away property rights in that it takes away the choice of SF neighborhoods from buyers.
– When zoning is done by the State using a top-down mandate, existing property owners are penalized for the benefit of a few.
– If residents did not want to live in SF neighborhoods, why has no one tried to remove zoning altogether via the warrant article process?
– If HB1291 passes, single-family residential lots would now be converted to three-family rental properties “by right” (bureaucratic state mandates), under the guise of “ADUs”.
– Current RSAs allow municipalities to make their own zoning changes by warrant article at the annual vote.
– Current RSAs already allow one ADU by right and one detached ADU.
– If HB1291 passes, single-family homes will then be bought by developers, eliminating the SF housing supply and exacerbating an already low supply of SF housing.
– HB1291 will permanently alter the face of single-family neighborhoods forever.
– The changeover will be gradual, but 5-10 years out, it will be too late.
– The idea of letting the state mandate housing rules sets a dangerous precedent of “central planning.”
– This legislation forces municipalities to allow two additional rental units, one attached and one attached/unattached.
– This legislation forces municipalities to increase the size of the first rental unit to no less than 1000 sq/ft and the additional unit to no less than 850sq/ft. If a municipality does not limit sizes, there are, in effect, no limits to how big these units can be. Any/both ADUs could be bigger than the single-family residence itself.
– If you have a garage, you can convert it to a rental unit. If you have additional space above a garage, you can convert it to another rental unit. Have a big shed in the backyard? You can convert it to a rental unit.
– According to the proposed legislation, the second rental shall be required to meet the definition of “workforce housing” and shall be required to meet the definition of “affordable” as defined in the RSAs and recorded in the Registry of Deeds. This is purely a form of rent control, and the House has recently killed two bills dealing with rent control.
– On smaller lots with a primary residence, rental units #1 and #2 could potentially take up nearly every square foot of the property. So where would the cars park? That is covered by the following proposed language: “at a legally dedicated off-site location at the property owner’s discretion” could mean one block, two blocks, a half mile, or even several miles away from the property. What is more likely is that the renters would end up parking on and clogging up the streets near the units.
What impact would HB 1291 have on our NH communities?First, there is the negative aesthetic and social effects on the neighborhoods. Let’s say you bought in a neighborhood consisting of single-family homes. You had the expectation that the zoning would remain the same as when you bought. But now, your neighborhood is going to change dramatically, and not for the better. Worst of all, you and your neighbors will have zero input in determining the matter because this zoning change was mandated and dictated from the central planners in Concord, not by changes proposed and passed in a warrant article that was voted on by you and your neighbors, as is the normal and proper process.
There will be increased demands on municipal water and sewer infrastructure. There will be a requirement for increased police and EMT presence and increased trash collection. What is the increased cost going to be for the taxpayers? Are the required sewer/water upgrades paid for by the State (this is a state unfunded mandate)? How many new school-aged kids will be enrolling when the rental units each have one, two or more children living on the property? Does an extra $1,000 or two collected in property taxes for the added rental units justify the $20,000 in additional costs to the taxpayers for each child? Without having voted to approve this zoning change, taxpayers/homeowners will be covering all these added costs for the benefit of a few property owners.
SummaryThe additional rental structures allowed by HB 1291 would be by mandate at the state level, thereby taking away “local control” from the municipalities. This is socialist “central planning” at its worst.
To be clear, the phrase in the language used within the legislation “allowed as a matter of right” means municipalities MUST allow two ADU’s, anything else is not an option.
Progressive politicians in Concord do NOT understand or know the needs and wants of distant municipalities such as Pittsburg, or Hampton, or Lebanon, or Nashua or your town or city. To believe that these politicians and bureaucrats “know better than you” is simply wrong.
Do not infringe on the municipality’s role of zoning.
The post Why the NH Senate Should ITL HB1291 appeared first on Granite Grok.
Iran’s attack on Israel; the Trump trial in NYC; should he have not bothered to show up to the trial at all to show his disdain? Would Biden pull Trump’s secret service to send him to prison? Should SCOTUS take so long to make decisions? Do oral arguments change minds? Speaker Johnson changing his mind on section 702; Senate refused to hold trial on Mayorkas impeachment.
The post The Conservatarian Exchange Podcast #202 appeared first on The Liberty Block.
I’m guessing most of the Grok Faithful are familiar with the areas of interest of the regular contributors. A few examples would be Ann Marie Banfield and education or Claire Best and law enforcement/justice system corruption involving the youth center.
I don’t want any of the many people worthy of mention to feel slighted, so I’ll leave it at that for now.
To give full disclosure, I am a Wheeler constituent, but one of my many areas of interest is the executive council seat currently occupied by the retiring Ted Gatsas. If you don’t know who his constituents are or who YOUR EC is, here’s a district map, which I suggest bookmarking for when you have discussions with people less informed about the EC and its role in Concord.
To back up for a quick moment, another item on my radar is the RTK crusade of Laurie Ortolano, someone also deserving of mention in the first paragraph. While in court, I observed her mentioning “the quiet phase”(of fundraising) in her RTK case against the City regarding the new arts center. I had never heard such nomenclature before, but it spoke for itself, at least to me. Look it up if you want, but I’ll give my own crude definition and keep it short. Before the public unleashing of a monster fundraising project, potential, generous donors are targeted and solicited. It’s a concept similar to down-ballot candidates obtaining an endorsement of an up-ballot candidate, someone who has been in equal or higher office, or even a private citizen pillar of the community. It’s desirable like your kid’s favorite professional athlete wearing a particular sneaker so s/he wants to be wearing the same one.
Because the executive council is a body of only 5, a candidate must campaign to 1/5 of the population. Though District 4 is a densely populated area that’s smaller in square miles than Districts 1, 2, and 5, it still consists of 20 towns. That’s 20 political subdivisions that have their local busy intersections for sign waves, 20 dumps(or “transfer stations,” if you prefer) for weekend literature distributions, and 20 communities with local pillars to recruit the support of.
Speaking from her pre-nursing experience in project management, Terese mentioned the 3-legged stool. The legs are time, money and quality. She went on about it at the podium on how the surplus or lack of one of such things affects the demand on the others. You get the picture. I will also point out that one of her commonly used phrases is “we’re going up against a Goliath.” Let’s talk about those “Goliaths” for a moment, and I don’t mean Davey Hansen’s dog.
A few of such “Goliaths” include, but are not limited to; money, name recognition, and connections. Burns has plenty of money. Ryan Terrell has plenty of name recognition. Senator Reagan and Mr Stephen presumably have plenty of connections. Terese is a private citizen political outsider and therefore disadvantaged. Pundits might even call her an underdog, but remember that Underdog always saves Sweet Polly Purebred in the end.
What can you, the reader, do to help? You can look again at the map.
If you live in or have ties to any of the 20 communities in District 4 or know someone who does, gather some intel. Find out and write down who the influential locals are and where the large political signs(for our side, not the enemy camp) are usually placed. If you’re feeling even more helpful, look up the addresses of such locations in the local assessor’s database so that owners can be reached out to in requesting their blessings. Find out when and where popular local events are, public or private, and find out who’s in charge of them. Get the contact info so Terese(or one of her volunteer minions) can get permission to solicit, if appropriate or required.
Because Ted Gatsas made his announcement and there are already multiple candidates with filing time still several weeks away, there will be no QUIET PHASE of the campaign process. It’s already an all-hands-on-deck situation. Find your puzzle piece and do your part.
The post Night Cap: The (not so) “Quiet Phase” of Campaigning appeared first on Granite Grok.
I was planning to wait for the site refresh to be completed to reboot the podcast page (GrokTV) with just podcasts, but Ken Eyring and Tom Murray just sent me an interview with our own Laurie Ortolano on government corruption (guess where!).
Neil Johnson (180,000 followers) leads the interview as part of the Lumberjack Logic Show with Tom and Ken riding sidecar as Laurie walks us through how she went from ordinary citizen to concerned citizen, taxpayer, property, and RTK rights activist, and the bane of Nashua’s corrupt city government.
Regular readers will be familiar with bits and pieces of these stories from our pages—followers of Laurie will know a good bit—but it will be news to many, including tens of thousands of Neil’s followers, exposing the city government’s crass indifference to corruption, abuse of taxpayer dollars, and the citizens’ right to know.
Some old stuff, and some new stuff you might not know yet – so please check it out!
The post Neil Johnson (Lumberjack Logic Show) Exposing Corruption in New Hampshire appeared first on Granite Grok.
Water, water everywhere, but get ready for odd, even watering bans. Yes, spring has sprung like a stripper from a giant cake as the whores in government line up to spring regulatory speed bumps at our summertime fun. Will water bans be part of it? Is the Pope a Marxist?
Damn straight (that’s so bigoted!), there will be bans. We’ve had odd, even watering in my town for so long that I can’t remember when we didn’t. Last year, amidst near-record precipitation, the signs were still up, and I think I know why. For the previous decade that we’d had them, it was wetter than usual but not wet enough (is it ever?). Since then, we’ve added thousands of additional “apartments,” each with faucets and toilets and showers used by people who are paying too much for rent because they can’t afford to pay too much for one of those racist single-family homes.
That’s a developer scam. The sums they get for rent are not far from what you might pay for a mortgage. Rent at $2700 a month is more than you’d need for a 30-year mortgage at 5% with 10K down over 30 years. But I digress.
I can’t speak for everyone, but New Hampshire has been in a decades-long wet period that you can clearly identify by the years of corporate media drought reporting. How much more? The 100-year mean from 1901 to 1999 is 43.44 inches annually. The mean for the past 50 years (1973-2023) is 47.35 inches annually. Since 2000, the annual mean is 48.97 inches.
Something up, if you take my meaning.
Post-Ice Age warming has resulted in a generous increase in available water for Granite Staters, at least on the averages, but the reporting is a bit less measured. We’re either drowning or droughting because clicks are more important than facts. And given the facts, as present by NOAA of all places, issues with water management seem more likely the culprit than the absence or presence of rainfall in any given month.
There is enough for mosquitoes to breed but no outside watering for you on odd or even numbered days, depending on the numerals in your street address.
To be fair, I can’t recall anyone enforcing the ban even as you drive by homes in the morning, irrigation systems watering luscious green lawns on the wrong days of the week. I’ve not taken a survey, but it seems more like an affectation. Virtue signaling. Look, we put up signs that say odd-even watering in effect, but it really means, isn’t it odd how evenly watered some of these lawns are?
That does not mean they would not choose to make an example of someone in the same way the FBI engages in entrapment as policy. No crimes to investigate? Why don’t we encourage someone to commit one and then brag about how we caught them?
If the fines go to the water district, that’s exactly what this looks like, but until then, we live with clown-car edicts about the lack of water despite years of record rainfall. 2023 saw 56.19 inches, which is a lot but not a record. 1954 was wetter, as were 1996, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2010. We’ve had above-average years 17 of the past twenty, and 2024 has begun looking to keep the trend.
February was way below average, coming in at 0.73 inches against a mean of 2.91, but January saw 5.46″ (mean at 3.24), while March dumped four inches above the norm of 7.58″ compared to 3.52.
April typically sees 3.64 inches but has been at or above average for seven consecutive years, following five years with below-average totals. May 2023 was just above average, followed by a very wet June and July. In other words, there’s no way to know. The Farmers Almanac says a sultry and soggy New England this year, while NOAA – not much better of a predictor, says above average temps and precipitation across most of New England (they agree this year!).
If you like to bet the NOAA line on hurricane predictions, an easy way to lose money, they’ve got another best guess for 2024: 23 storms, 11 of which will become hurricanes and five of which will reach Category 3 status or stronger. Stories of a warm Atlantic suggest this could be closer than in recent years, in which NOAA has blown the call by a wide margin in one form or another. Two years ago, not even close. Last year, total storms were good, but few made landfall, and NOAA had guessed there’d be more.
The reality is they have no clue what the weather is going to be like in a few days, so months, years, or decades are, at best, guesses – a well poisoned by politics and climate cult narratives. It’s not so much science and faith, but there are resources out there that stick to the data and trends based on past years. Weatherbell analytics, for example – and they say we’re kind of screwed on Hurricanes this year.
Basin Forecast
Names Storms 25-30
Hurricanes 14-16
Major Hurricanes 6-8
Impact Forecast
Named storm Impacts 10-14
Hurricane Impacts 5-8
Major Hurricane Impacts 3-5
And hurricanes that come close or make landfall mean more rain up the Atlantic coast.
All we can do now is wait.
The post Is It Drought Season Yet? appeared first on Granite Grok.
The 2024 Property Tax Revolt continues, with two more budgets going down to defeat last week. As reported in VDC, 30 school districts rejected budgets March 5. Since then, five of six revotes (known to VDC) failed.
Add two more to the No list. Voters in the Essex Junction-Westford school district and the Rivendell Interstate School District (Orford NH, and the Orange County towns of Vershire, West Fairlee, and Fairlee, Saturday morning) both rejected their 2024 school budgets last week.
It was the first 2024-25 school budget vote for both districts. In the aftermath, as elsewhere, their school boards must prepare tighter budgets in the face of voter unrest, if not outright rebellion, against the proposed 20% statewide property tax increase.
Both votes were resounding Nos.
Saturday night, RISD voters in Orford, NH and the Orange County towns of Vershire, Fairlee and West Fairlee voted 240 no, 143 yes on the proposed school budget.
In the Essex-Westford vote Tuesday April 9, the vote was 2,353 (yes) – 3,340 (no). A ‘yes’ in Essex/Westford would have increased spending by 7.7% and property taxes by about 23%.
School board chair Bob Carpenter said April 10, “as an elected board, we respect the will of our community in choosing not to uphold the initial EWSD budget brought forth. Now, our board is focused on bringing a revised budget forward over the next few weeks.” Voters did approve the tech center budget.
More school budget votes are scheduled for this week.
Hartford (White River Junction) will vote tomorrow, April 15, for the first time. The budget would increase taxes by an estimated 18.5%.
“If this budget does not pass, we will try to produce a budget that will pass. We will need to keep putting out budgets until we pass one, or we run out of time before the new fiscal year, which begins July 1,” a Hartford board statement said.
Schools may borrow up to 87% of the current budget necessary to operate schools. Taxpayers would be on the hook for all interest we incurred on the funds borrowed.
April 16 will be a Super Tuesday of sorts for budget revotes.
Milton, Champlain Valley Union SD, and Springfield, Mount Abraham Union Middle/High School, and Northfield schools, and the Elmore-Morristown school district will have their revote on April 16.
Georgia, South Burlington, St. Johnsbury, the Slate Valley Unified School District, and the Kingdom East School District all have voted no a second time to reduced school budgets. Alburgh is the only school district (known to VDC) to approve a revoted school budget. VDC readers, including school officials, are invited to report their school budget vote news to news@vermontdailychronicle.com.
Meanwhile, legislators are developing a bill that would fund a ‘foundation’ level for schools statewide with taxes other than the homestead property tax, leaving it as a local option to fund education above and beyond the ‘foundation’ level.
We want to thank The Vermont Daily Chronicle for being a partner and supporter of Independent Media. You can support us here, or if you prefer to donate by check, email steve@granitegrok com for details.
The post Vermont Tax Revolt Continues … appeared first on Granite Grok.
One of the golden rules of dealing with proglodytes is that if it’s something you need or enjoy, they try to make it more expensive so you’ll have or use less of it. This manifests as sin taxes or, in the case of things like water or energy, they use fear as a policy to drive up costs, forcing you to use less.
In most cases, the “science” behind the fear is suspicious, with supporting literature paid for by those looking to advance the policies that make the thing more expensive and less accessible. Oil and gas are not made from dinosaurs, nor are these natural earth minerals bad for the environment – but controlling them means controlling behavior, people, and economies, which is the end game.
The recent psychosis over PFAS and PFOA has driven up the cost of that otherwise human right known as water. Early research, almost impossible to find these days, suggested that it was naturally occurring and in everyone (in some quantity) but that there was no substantial evidence of a specific link to cancer. People who handled the stuff and had significantly more exposure had no higher incidents of ill effects than those exposed to much smaller amounts out in the world or the wild. That has been replaced by scaremongering and the term forever chemicals. No one knows that for a fact, but it gets the job done if fear is the job and has become part of the collective consciousness.
If you are not certain about any of that, remember, these are the same people still lying about COVID and its cure.
WaterMy water bill went from $30.00 a quarter to close to $40.00 a month—a 300% increase to address the mandated public water filtration following a PFOA/PFAS scare in one part of town. I still have doubts about the problem, the risk, and the solution, but votes were cast, money was spent, and legislation was enacted. Here we are—another liberal wet dream accomplished on unsettled science concretized by fear. People are forced to use less because of price, and another resource (money) gets redirected from more productive purposes in perpetuity. It is forced conservation for lower and middle-class families, summerlong odd-even watering bans, and a contradictory increase in local development that adds thousands of water customers tapping into this endangered resource. The government is stupid, in part because people it has made stupid let it happen.
A fine example of this comes from California. Although it’s mostly desert, people built huge, sprawling cities and massive irrigated plantations. When there’s not enough water, they label it man-caused drought, so water conservation is ubiquitous. It appears the messaging has been too successful. The regional water district isn’t making enough money on the water it sells and has announced a rate hike to make up the difference.
You did what we asked, and now it’s going to cost you … again!
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies water for 19 million Americans, is raising its rates 8.5% in 2025 and another 8.5% over baseline levels in 2026. The district’s projections include raising rates an additional 11.5% in 2027 and another 11.5% in 2028 to finance an $8.2 billion water recycling plant that could provide enough annual water for 1.5 million people.
“The difficult reality is, our costs have risen while revenues have dropped, so we need to take the fiscally responsible step of adjusting our rates,” said MWD General Manager Adel Hagekhalil in a statement.
Their jobs are more valuable than your lifestyle, so millions are diverted from more productive purposes in perpetuity to keep the lights on at the local water district.
But couldn’t you have just asked people to use more water? No. Resource scarcity allows the ruling class to control behavior, people, and economies, which is the end game.
Accepting and understanding this and then backtracking their rhetoric to reality is as easy as turning on the faucet. Or turning it off.
The post Resource Conservation … Leads to Price Hikes appeared first on Granite Grok.
As promised in Monday Memes, I have an overflow. My meme cup runneth over. And yes there will be a Friday edition too.
Let the mayhem, mockery, and ridicule resume:
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
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What madness drives parents to do this to their kids? The only thing I can think of is the attention the parents get…
Nope. Just like most people are, increasingly, finding they don’t OWN things in all domains. (Remember the meme, a post or so ago, of the HP printer that turned off, and finally they learned HP had turned it off because the debit card was declined? I buy something, I expect it to be MINE.)
Do recall that while drugs may still be MADE in America, increasingly their precursors come from overseas. Antibiotics in particular, from China. A lot of vitamin feedstocks too.
China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine
I resemble that remark.
How about… NO. Not trusting you, ever again.
I’m sure she had family, so I’m sorry for them. But I’d call this EVOLUTION IN ACTION.
But… but… but that’s not possible, all the blue-check verified good Socialists reply. Our Marxist college professors assured us we’re building paradise on earth!
Exactly right. If it’s not happening, why object to making it illegal?
I’ve been in situations where I’m CC and the people around me are just oh-so-liberal about how icky guns are, and how violent and dangerous all gun owners are, and I can’t help but think that if I – having a gun on me – were a fraction as dangerous as they claim, they’d all be dead by now.
“The Truth points to itself.”
— Vorlon proverb
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PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA
Experts Warn U.S. Government Planning To Freeze ALL American Bank Withdrawals – The People’s Voice (thepeoplesvoice.tv)
So here’s the question. Either or, I think.
EITHER… this is a crack in the matrix that lets us see their plans, accidentally, giving us a Providence-driven chance to act before the gates slam shut (see Australia going cashless more and more… a contact in Israel says the same push is happening there… and when we were visiting my wife’s family last summer, a heck of a lot of places just didn’t take cash at all – so either their domestic payment card, or my America-based card. Even at the markets for food, etc., while they accepted cash it definitely seemed to be an oddity.).
OR… this is a set-up, attempting to trigger a bank run that then “justifies” their desired crack down.
Is there a third possibility that I’m missing?
Regardless, MHO is that a crackdown on cash, and all assets, is coming – and sooner than you think. Related:
Is the Biden Administration Trying To Destroy the Dollar? | The Heritage Foundation
Short answer? Yes.
Cloward Piven.
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Links (some from me, some from my Jarhead friend):
Biden Plans Radical Expansion Of Two National Monuments (thefederalist.com)
The 1906 law (link included):
The 1906 law, however, requires that the area preserved must be “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
—
More young people choosing permanent sterilization after abortion restrictions, new research shows (yahoo.com)
OMG. Rutting is more important than anything else. As Mark Steyn said, the future belongs to those who show up. And reproduce. This does not appear to be westerners.
—
canceled doctor Big Pharma so spicy so juicy can’t miss it | Blaze Media (theblaze.com)
Evidence-based.
—
They want to kill you – Here’s how they’ll do it – The Expose (expose-news.com)
Kind of long, mostly about euthanasia. And as it talked about the expense of care, particularly for the elderly, this came to mind – applies to both the old and quite young.
Is this idea about the origin of the Wuhan virus too off the wall? – Bookworm Room
Remember, in socialist societies, an individual’s worth is measured, not by being a unique person made in the image of God, but by that person’s utility to the state. If you’re no longer useful and, worse, if are an economic drain on society, you’ve got to go.
—
The Disappearing Male | Marc De Guerre (rumble.com)
Chemicals, chemicals, chemicals. In our foods, in our water, in our soaps and other things.
—
Donaldos Magnus Trumpos, Trump, aka ’45’, is the ONLY hope now, LAST only hope for us, for America, for the world, for the west! Western civilization NEEDS him, America FALLS if he DOES NOT win! The (substack.com)
I am not a starry-eyed Trump boy. Increasingly, while I do admire his results overall, I see him as the least-worst option. But certainly, MHO is that if he can get in, we have a chance. If he’s stopped, America and the West are truly done.
—
Shared post – Trantifa member gets no prison time over Ohio pregnancy center attack (locals.com)
And this is how people lose faith in the system. This is intentional. Remember the goal: chaos, uncertainty, lack of faith in the system… and then, when things get bad enough, they can swoop in and offer the “benevolent hand” of One World Socialism as the cure.
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If Hashem doesn’t flame the world soon, then He owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.
Is it possible this is actually a real sign? Seriously???
All fuel, not just gasoline. And that will affect everything else too – because all goods require fuel to be delivered. It’s a multiplier effect.
You think they’ll really stop with Israel??? DEATH TO AMERICA in Dearborn sound familiar?
That’s actually a damned good question. Symbols and in-your-face victim mocking? That does seem to be a pattern.
Christian population growth under Israel, and shrinkage under the Arabs.
What’s that quote, to the effect that if election day was a week after tax day, elections would be very different?
Can we hide housing illegals in Dem pols’ homes too? “Surprise, pro-migrant idiot, here are your illegals for you to house and feed”!
I’m not saying that it’s impossible to become a multi-millionaire legitimately these days, but I’m increasingly believing that anyone who does nowadays is doing so by less than savory means.
The threat of team relocation is what does it.
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Pick of the Post:
Every time I think it’s impossible for them to go lower, they haul out a jackhammer and proceed to dig.
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Palate cleansers:
It’s always something. Every time I think I’m finally stable and set, we get hit with something.
—
As someone who started programming in BASIC+, I can relate.
—
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Come back on Friday for more memes. Same meme time. Same meme channel.
>>>>>=====<<<<<
The post Meme Overflow appeared first on Granite Grok.
A recent study of Burmese pythons concludes that snake meat is more efficient to produce than traditional livestock, making it a viable protein alternative to cows or pigs. Given the primeval human aversion to snakes, this menu item may be a harder sell even than crickets or faux-meat nuggets. However, the omissions and biases inherent in the study’s conclusions reveal much larger impediments to snake burgers than diner aversion.
Snake Bait and SwitchThe study of Thai and Vietnamese farms offers some interesting data about reptilian biology, and certainly, snake as a specialty meat product is a perfectly sensible menu item – as is alligator, turtle, or eel. However, the suggestion that humanity should convert from tens of thousands of years of symbiotic animal husbandry to an ophidian diet is a fantastical and unworkable “replacement theory.”
The plug for snake meat smacks of snake oil. A hint is offered in the deceptive statement by proponent Daniel Natusch from consulting firm EPIC Biodiversity, who proclaims that “no other livestock species studied to date possesses the same credentials or rates of production as pythons.”
Natusch, whose academic expertise is in reptile biology, does not conceal his ideological bias, revealed in articles such as “The fatal flaws of compassionate conservatism” and his founding and leadership of the Australian charity People for Wildlife. Dr. Natusch premises his claim that snakes are superior to other farm animals on the study’s measurement of the conversion of energy into meat by the Burmese Python:
“According to the study, the dry mass of the food the pythons were fed was 1.2 times that of the dressed carcass, compared with 1.5 for salmon, 2.1 for crickets, 2.8 for poultry, 6 for pigs and 10 for beef.
“The dry mass of the protein fed to the snakes was 2.4 times that in a snake carcass, compared with 3 for salmon, 10 for crickets, 21 for poultry, 38 for pigs and 83 for beef.”
Neither a climate scientist nor a biologist is required to readily perceive a mismatch here: Snakes are carnivores that eat a high-protein diet of other animals that consume yet other animals and plants, whereas traditional “livestock” are mostly herbivores – mammalian ruminants who dine solely on protein-weak grasses and other plant forage.
What a Waste (of Breath)When pressed about this “apples and oranges” analytical perversion, Dr. Natusch offered an equally specious excuse: It isn’t the efficiency of food conversion that makes snake meat sustainable, but the fact that snakes are fed on waste meat like trapped rodents and stillborn pigs. “Livestock fed on plant protein sourced from a crop monoculture where a natural habitat once stood … is far less sustainable than capturing rodent pests or using waste protein to feed pythons,” he said.
Dismissing his own study’s argument that snakes are grand for their food conversion, the snake doctor here pivots to a bold claim that trapped rodents and stillborn pigs can somehow compete with grass at scale and a strawman conclusion about livestock that ignores rotational grazing that nurtures the natural landscape. He also bypassed the fact that cows are fed agricultural waste products on a massive scale that would not be palatable to his pet pythons: fruit peels and pulp, corn refuse left over from the ethanol industry, spent brewery grains, almond hulls, etc. These are removed from a landfill destiny, where they prevent gaseous emissions from rot, reducing the output of crop waste by an estimated 60%, according to Gizmodo. Perhaps he will propose shipping this to Vietnam to feed wild rats?
Cows require 83 times the dry mass of protein because they extract it from plant matter, with very low concentrations of protein relative to rat or piglet sausages. Globally, humanity allegedly consumes about 350 million tons of meat annually. That is not just a lot of Burmese Pythons – by Natusch’s calculations, that equates to 840 million tons of dead rats and piggies – plus whatever they ate. (Someone, please send him a calculator!)
Rotational grazing is obviously far more sustainable, and it eliminates the chemical-dependent grain crops that destroy soils and pollute groundwater not just in monocultures for livestock feed but in plant-based diets (including synthetic meats) made from unsustainable (vegan) grain crops. Rats don’t eat grass – they eat grains. What will they be “sustainably” fed? We are not told by the snake charmers.
A Moral Argument?Natusch dangles yet another savory tidbit of balderdash: the moral “case” for munching snake flesh in lieu of fried chicken or yummy bacon. Dr. Natusch again resorts to serpentine reasoning when plugging pythons over bovines: “For the vegans out there, in my experience, there would likely be more animals suffering from sowing crops into the soil each year than are killed to feed a python.”
He also argues that farming snakes is more ethical than farming birds or mammals since serpents lack the cognitive capacity of the other two and are more likely to remain inactive in small, confined spaces when they don’t need food. Both of these assertions fall to the ground on inspection. Whatever he means by “animals suffering from sowing crops” (the trope that farm animals lead unhappy lives, which is just not true of grass-fed cows and free-range chickens), it is hard to imagine that more cows and pigs are slain each year than the billions of rats his snakes need for sausages. Certainly there aren’t enough piglets, despite California’s Proposition 12, which ensures more piglets will die every day.
As to the moral argument, it seems there has been another twist in logic – Natusch admitted snakes aren’t really that efficient, switched to “they eat waste meat” (an impossibility at scale), and now turns to a moral persuasion that is divorced completely from the sustainability premise upon which the study was based. Far-left field is where all the climate shenanigans end up hitting their nutty balls.
Serpentine Food Security?Perhaps most fantastical yet, Natusch finishes this tasty smorgasbord of weak assertions with the biggest Pinocchio of all: that snakes will increase food security because “most of the snakes chose to go for periods of up to 127 days without eating, yet lost just a few percentage points of body mass at most,” which “means that farmers can stop feeding them for weeks or months if there are global shocks that interrupt supply chains.”
Cows on grass are immune from such threats. Perhaps when global supply chains from Thailand and Vietnam (where shrimp farming is decimating the ecosystem) are disrupted, Americans won’t be able to import snake fare. Snakes may be content without food, but humans don’t do so well on 127-day fasts. Cows are kept locally, often on pastures unsuitable for growing plant crops. Rotationally grazed cows sequester more carbon than they emit, feed depleted soils with manure, and convert grasses to protein without the intervention of disease-carrying rodents. That is the current food security Natusch advises humanity to abandon in the name of snake food insecurity.
Or was it efficiency? Or sustainability? Or morality? Or preventing global warming? Or recycling waste?
Sensible minds prefer reliable, grass-fed, locally sourced beef and lamb. For those who buy into the reptilian argument that cows hurt the planet, perhaps we should just “Let them eat snake!”
John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And Regular Contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.
The post Climate Farming Dreams are a Nightmare for Diners appeared first on Granite Grok.
State Governments top heavy with progressive thinkers have been looking for excuses to pass laws banning “militias.” Vermont, to my geographic and ideological left, used a gun range with a few unpermitted buildings to ban Militias statewide, and Vermont only exists because of a militia. Maine just followed suit.
Vacationland legislators used the rumor that a prominent neo-Nazi and white supremacist, Christopher Pohlhaus, was looking to open a training center as an excuse for the new law. I don’t know who Pohlhaus is or what he believes, but the government thought enough of whatever picture they’d painted of him to ban “paramilitary” “training” statewide. I’ve not read the bill, so I’m not going to pretend to know what they mean by that. Still, according to this reporting, “Without the new law, [Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey] said, he had no way to bring a criminal case against someone using military training to create civil disorder, as authorities say Pohlhaus sought to do.”
Did you catch that?
Polhaus may or may not be a despicable racist, but he has yet to use military training to do anything, let alone create civil disorder. All we have is the presumption that this is his or anyone else’s intention, which is all that is needed to bring a criminal case. If you and some friends like to go to the range to practice gun safety together, the State’s assumption about your intentions might be enough to get you and the range brought up on charges.
Again, I’ve not seen the bill, but it sounds like any gathering of lawfully armed individuals for any purpose has become a breeding ground for anti-second Amendment enforcement. And how does that work? The State gets a tip. They follow up. One of the attendees is discovered to have shared something on social media that the government thinks it can use along with this new law to shut down otherwise law-abiding behavior.
Maybe a few of them show up in the same tee shirts. Is that a uniform? Are they a militia? It doesn’t take much to make law-abiding citizens look like criminals.
You can pretend it won’t happen, but New Hampshire is about as friendly to rights and liberty as you can get in the Northeast. The AG of our Live Free or Die Republican governor has tried to use State and Federal Civil Rights laws to silence free speech because they don’t like the speech. The case, much like with Maine’s new anti-militia law, started with a local white supremacy group which, had the AG succeeded, would have put a chilling hand on all free speech and likely cost millions as lawsuits wound their way to the US Supreme Court where the State would have lost. This fishing expedition was dismissed, but the AG is back from another angle. His office has filed another suit, this time pretending Hate Speech is not protected – they are still fishing, and we’d be right to wonder why. Shouldn’t the AG be protecting speech?
Maine’s new mission is not much different in my head than that, except that its legislature passed a law someone will have to be charged with violating before it can be challenged on the anvil of the constitution by another branch of the government with a spotty record of reading the constitution in ways unpopular with people looking to infringe on rights.
I’m not advocating for military training whose specific purpose is to disrupt public peace, but crafting legislation that allows the police state to decide the intentions of others absent any crime for prosecution, while not new, is fascist and authoritarian.
Mainers deserve better than that.
The post Maine Follows Vermont Down Another Disarmament Rabbit Hole appeared first on Granite Grok.
The votes are tallied, and the readers who voted have crowned our latest comment of the week winner. Congratulations to Publius!
Publius, if you are so inclined, please reach out to me, steve@granitegrok.com, so that I can get a shipping address.
Here is the post, commenter, and winning comment as voted by you!
The Post: G.E.T. R.E.A.L! – E: Education Reform
The Commenter: Publius
The schools aren’t perfect and share a portion of blame for sure, spending all their spare money on additional useless admin that don’t discipline, don’t give classroom support, don’t do their job of iep compliance, just sit there and try and enforce DEI and useless PD rather than trying to attract the best and brightest teachers with attractive salaries.
But we can’t forget to blame what we know to be the largest driver of student success.
Parents
Parents aren’t reading to their kids anymore, they aren’t fostering a love of learning, a sense of discipline, and a sense of respect
The parents plop their kids down in front of a screen for hours at a time, the almighty tablet has become their one stop shop for entertainment on demand. They then get a smart phone with all the quick-dopamine hits that give them easy highs and terrible lows when comparing themselves to everyone else. This constant connection to everything enables round the clock bullying too, and not to mention how that affects their attention span in the classroom, where they are truly addicted to the screen.
It’s an old comic at this point demonstrating the generational gap where a kid gets bad grades and the older generation asks the child what they did wrong, where the modern generation asks the teacher what they did wrong.
The covid years showed us how many parents don’t even care about the school teaching their kids anything but so many just care about it being free daycare.
As a society we once greatly valued education, but that has slowly been chipped away to ensure a generation of obedient, mindless slaves.
The post Comment of the Week Winner: Publius appeared first on Granite Grok.
(white) goldstandard-04-18-24-S.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-04-18-24-S-y.pdf
The post Senate Gold Standard – April 18, 2024 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.
In a previous article, I noted that I thought Attorney Celia Leonard was being coached by Attorney Bolton and his hired legal Dream Team on Wednesday, 4/10. The next day, I looked for a camera in Courtroom 3, as Mr Buckmire, the head of security advised me to mention in my request for footage.
I just called the number given to me, (855) 212-1234, and wound up frustrated. It was the same variety of frustration I experienced when Attorney Lehmann said that emails to and from individual members of the legislature are NOT subject to 91A, Gmail, or NH dot gov addresses alike.
Frustration has many varieties, though not necessarily 57 of them. One of them is being told to pound sand by the stewards of information being sought. I also mentioned how the police academy’s 10/13/21 raw video footage’s availability to the defense counsel was delayed for almost 20 months, even though Attorney Gens requested it.
My frustration was similar in that I was essentially denied also, but such frustration was compounded with my follow up questions being thwarted with repeated interruptions by the person on the other end of the phone. I will explain.
My call was answered by Pat, who introduced herself by name only. It was one of those countless cases, public and private, where the caller tells the long, detailed story to the call answerer only to be “cold transferred” to a coworker chosen by the answerer as the one most fit to field the request.
I did not have Laurie Ortolano’s PARTICULAR case number handy, my bad, but I offered the dates and other information Pat might find helpful, considering Laurie has/had multiple cases. I even said I would like to write the case number down so I could reference it in the future when asked. Unfortunately, I was unable to get that information despite repeated attempts to get it from both Pat and the person Pat cold transferred my call to. Neither of them was interested in what customer service experts call “identification and acknowledgment of the customer’s request.”
A whole separate article could be written on how such expert consultants would advise the CSR to let the customer finish explaining the reason for the call/visit. Then the CSR reiterates back to the customer what the problem or request is, thus establishing an understanding of the customer’s objective in the encounter. I’m aware that we’re all human beings who often do things less than perfectly, but such training would benefit both the public and the people employed to handle calls made to (855) 212-1234.
My ex-BF, an electrical engineer, would always say that the more moving parts there are to something, the more opportunity there is for malfunctions. While I hate to point out that a man was right, especially him, he was indeed right, no matter how many trees were falling in the forest at the time.
There were too many moving parts to my unproductive phone call to discuss and still keep this article short, so I will only focus on a few. One of them was the second person I spoke to relentlessly interrupting me. A few times, I had to resort to interrupting her back with a “pardon, I would like to finish, please” to answer her question, steer her back to the nature of why I called, or properly clarify my follow-up question(s).
The second person thought I WAS Laurie Ortolano. That mistake was on one or both of them, not me, and I politely pointed out that I was not. She also thought I was talking about another case with Laurie as the plaintiff. When she mentioned the Supreme Court, her error was obvious. She told me several times that there were several cases involving Laurie, but she obviously wasn’t listening when it was my turn to talk because I acknowledged several times that I was aware of there being multiple cases.
As noted earlier, I expressed interest in the one that was in court last Wednesday and would like to write down its case number. Deaf ears were definitely on full display throughout the call, so I ultimately took the high road and ended the call with a “no sense in barking up the wrong tree, but thanks for the information you gave me and have a good day” instead of complaining about her attention being a real “moving target” during my line of questioning. I will confess that I did throw in an “I think I’m done here” with my parting comment, but I stand by it. Let’s get to the takeaway item I learned.
I was told that they don’t just give out camera footage to anyone requesting it, media or otherwise. The request has to be filed as a motion by one of the parties involved in the case, and Judge Temple has to approve it. Laurie has another case on Thursday, 4/18, which is about the City’s misuse of New Market Tax Credits, so I’m not going to bog her down with my suggestion to motion Judge Temple while she’s preparing for it.
A reader might ask why I wrote this, and I have a few thoughts. One of them is that I have a greater appreciation for Frank Staples insisting on doing all his own courtroom recording. Another is that I’m glad to have heard during the robo greeting that my call was being recorded (presumably and hopefully for training purposes) when I called (855) 212-1234. And lastly, it’s another example of the RTK frustrations our government creates all by design. Consider this another reminder to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that HB 1002 is a bad bill and needs to be killed.
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