Wednesday • November 27 • 2024
Vol.XVI • No.XLVIII
Manchester, N.H.
Given the direction of the culture, the next queen of England will probably be a man. Don’t scoff, it’s true. Until their foreign invaders take over, there is little to stop that trajectory; after all, the monarchy is just one more institution the communists need to undermine. Meanwhile, back in the colonies …
Oak Park High School students in Kansas City, Missouri just got sent a message loud and clear: boys are just better at things than girls are. Even at being a girl. Tristan Young, a male student who identifies as a female, was crowned the homecoming queen this week. He beat out four lovely female candidates because actually identifying as the gender that you are is like, sooo 2010.
It makes sense these days. A male dressed as a female (a transvestite) is colloquially referred to as a queen or drag queen. Who better to pick as your queen than a queen?
The students had four actual ladies (who never had a penis of their own) from which to choose, but they picked the guy because being the queen comes with a lot of responsibility so those big holders will help.
Actually, I suspect the majority was swayed by how it might feel if anyone found out they didn’t vote for the dude. What might the cultural Stasi do to you? There are plenty of examples of how non-conformists are treated. Wander off the plantation, and you get socially hobbled. Or was it a too many other choices thing? Had there been but one other girl to choose, she might have had a chance, the way the RGA pushed too many Republican governors into the ring to challenge Trump, and now they’ve bolloxed their scheme. Haley’s not winning South Carolina, Christie is not winning New Jersey, and even Ron DeSantis might not win Florida.
Somebody screwed up. Is that place run by teenagers or something?
Actual teenagers have to deal with being blamed for slavery, labeled as systemically racist and colonialist, and now they have to come home to a guy in a dress as your queen, or else!
It’s the new #MeToo stereotype—where women get screwed by men against their will, but this time by majority vote.
HT | LibTikTokk Tok
The post High School Puts the ‘Queen’ Back In Homecoming appeared first on Granite Grok.
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona recently said that while he doesn’t have a problem with differences of opinion, he feels that things have changed regarding the tone of conversations about education. In the past, he says,
There was civility. We could disagree. We could have healthy conversations around what’s best for kids.
Call me old-fashioned, but as I understand it, civility implies an absence of violence or even the threat of violence.
What Cardona is saying is that as long as he gets to take your money — under the threat of violence if you don’t fork it over — and use it the way he and his friends think it should be used, it’s fine for you to disagree, but you should be polite about it.
That’s a ‘healthy conversation’. That’s ‘civility.’
This suggests that maybe we ought to revisit our statutes regarding robbery. If you wear a nice suit, speak politely, and give the person you’re robbing a chance to disagree about what’s best for the two of you (so long as you end up with his money), it’s not really a robbery.
It’s just the kind of civil, healthy conversation that our Secretary of Education says we should be engaging in.
The post By Civility, I Mean… appeared first on Granite Grok.
Would you be surprised to discover that a commission in Massachusetts might have devolved into a vindictive, self-enriching trainwreck with no transparency? Of course not; this is Massachusetts.
“Since its creation in 2017, The Cannabis Control Commission has faced what sometimes feels like an endless stream of scandals. The public deserves some accountability on why these issues have proven so hard to stamp out, and what long-term changes the agency is making to get its work done with more transparency and efficiency,” State Sen. Michael Moore said in a statement Monday.
The committee commissioner was suspended – but not for having “a pair of marijuana license cultivation applications, despite her position.” No one knows why she was put on paid leave, but she is still collecting her $182,000+/year salary.
Licensees have testified to legislative committees over retaliation by commission investigators and complained about transparency.
This reminds me of that time on GraniteGrok when I said letting the government control/manage the marijuana business might be a bad idea. How scrabbling for any semblance of permission to use cannabis would empower oppressive forces with an infusion of additional revenue. That it might not be worth the long-term pain and suffering, though you could – if needed – smoke some weed to try and forget about that for a while.
And as with all organs of the government, the apparent solution to whatever ails it is to request a massive budget increase.
“Considering the 23% funding increase the CCC requested during FY24 budget negotiations, it is now more critical than ever that we make sure this agency has a plan to right the ship. Millions of our tax dollars are at stake – I am hopeful the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy will schedule a hearing to get answers from the top brass at the CCC,” Moore said.
If it makes anyone feel better, several members of the Massachusetts Legislature sent a letter to the joint committee overseeing the regulators on the cannabis commission. They are concerned about the problems, abuse, and secrecy. Maybe they are all just becoming paranoid. Marijuana can do that to you, and while I do think private citizens should be free to grow a little or have a little for their use without the state harassing them, so far, state management has not gone well.
The solution in Massachusetts will likely be another commission stuffed with connected, overpaid, make-work zombies to oversee the commission that oversees cannabis, and that’s what they should call it.
The Commission to Control the Cannabis Control Commission. And they, of course, will need some oversight as well. The Commission to Control the COmmission Controlling the Cannabis Control Commission. And you have to pay them more than the commissioners whom they oversee and give them larger budgets, and It’ll be glorious, comrade!
If you want to afford the cannabis you worked so hard to deregulate or decriminalize, you’ll have to buy it on the black market, which the state will then need to police to protect its monopoly.
Legal Weed as a path to a police state. And let’s not pretend we didn’t see that coming.
HT | Boston Herald
The post The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission is … Out of Control appeared first on Granite Grok.
Let’s start with what DeSantis needs to do next. Abandon New Hampshire … IMMEDIATELY. And say why … BECAUSE NEW HAMPSHIRE REPUBLICANS ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF REPUBLICANS NATIONALLY; they are much more liberal than Republicans nationally, and I am NOT a good fit. Then focus on Iowa and South Carolina … reducing expectations for both, AND … fix his dysfunctional campaign.
OBVIOUSLY, DeSantis was NOT a good fit for New Hampshire … one of the most pro-abortion, pro-woke, pro-COVID-authoritarianism States in the country. The idea that the face of anti-COVID-authoritarianism would resonate with New Hampshire’s lock-us-down, mask-us-up, vax-us-up voters was and remains IDIOTIC. But it is even worse than that.
DeSantis has been trying to simultaneously appeal to the donor class and Republican voters … which CANNOT BE DONE. In order to please the donor class, his campaign has tried to recast him as some Koch-fueled JUST “cut taxes,’ “cut regulations,” blah, blah, blah, focus on the fiscal issues… which he obviously is NOT.
The beginning of DeSantis’ demise was, in my opinion, when he chose to walk back the correct answer he gave Tucker about the War-in-Ukraine and spewed the same Putin-is-Hitler pablum as the Establishment IN ORDER TO PLACATE THE DONOR-CLASS. He looked weak and NOT his own man.
And it has gone from bad to worse as the campaign turned his descent into a free-fall. He is NOT a retail campaigner. He is NOT a Koch-bot. To use a sports analogy, the DeSantis campaign’s approach is like a coach telling Kevin McHale, one of the greatest post-up players in NBA history, to just shoot jump shots from the top of the key.
Just let DeSantis be DeSantis. And that starts with recognizing he has NO CHANCE in Blue Hampshire and pulling the plug on the Granite State.
The post How DeSantis Lost The New Hampshire Primary … And What He Needs To Do Next appeared first on Granite Grok.
Yesterday’s preschool apprentice was a riot, and we’ve got more funny for you today – this time tinged with a bit of irony. A parody on mandatory masking, which – as we get closer to 2024 – could be coming soon to a fearmongering community near you (conspiracy theory!).
It is not, of course, a conspiracy to think masks are coming back becasue they already have. The chatter alone has some in the public, putting them back on in public. How long before we again see people, alone in their EVs, masked?
Whether this uptick is the first drop of rain in a storm meant to promote stuffable ballot drop boxes and tampered with vote-by-mail remains to be seen, but Democrats cheat each other in elections to win races, so there’s that.
While we wait, this young lady has chosen to amuse us about people who wear them and why.
I love this woman. She’s the best. pic.twitter.com/Mpdgx1QlMM
— UltraMJTruth (@MJTruthUltra) September 20, 2023
The post Let’s Poke Fun at People Wearing Masks … appeared first on Granite Grok.
The strength of your character is far less important than the color of your skin. That is the belief of the Democrat Party, and for a group of people who love to apply labels, you are a flaming bunch of racists. The Democrats, specifically the Progressives, know this election is slipping away. The Biden policies are failing the American people, and the polls continue to point toward a disastrous 2024.
If people are neutral about his policies, most voters know that Biden is unfit for office today, and the numbers grow when looking at a Biden reelection bid. As bad as Biden’s numbers are, Kamala’s are even worse. What do you do when facing a situation stacked against you and there is no chance of turning it in your favor? You pull out the race card, and in this case, you threaten the DNC that you will forfeit the Black vote if you remove Kamala Harris from the 2024 ballot.
The irony of this threat is the Democrats may have already lost the Brown and Black votes. Black and Hispanic votes have always been considered automatic for the Democrats. That is no longer the case, as people of color have opened their eyes and seen how Democrat policies are hurting them and their children.
This new thinking may have been triggered by COVID and the Summer of “Love.” The isolation, exposure to the damage caused by the Education System, the rioting, and the destruction of inner cities hurt people of color the most. The disaster at the Border is also having the most significant impact on inner cities.
Thousands of illegals moving into major cities across the country are impacting housing, wages, social services, drugs, crime, and overcrowded schools. So many people are spreading throughout the country that the impact is flowing into the suburbs. No city or town is exempt. And all caused by the intentional destruction of our Border by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We have been watching this destruction of our country for three years, and it is not the result of bad policies but policies designed to take down this great land intentionally.
We have been alarmed to watch the impacts at home and abroad by this bumbling President. Still, with each passing day, we can see with our own eyes the irreparable damage inflicted on America and Americans. It has taken three years, but the Progressive mainstream media has finally awakened and is calling out Joe Biden for his inept handling of his job.
CNN and MSNBC are now covering events detrimental to the Administration, such as Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appearance this week before Congress. The questioning was divided, with Republicans attacking the AG and the President for using the Justice Department to shelter Hunter and Joe Biden’s illegal money laundering scheme. The Democrats defended the AG and praised the President’s work, but to the objective observer, the facts spoke for themselves. Jim Jordan and those on the Right are mounting an unquestionable case that our President is corrupt and using his office and all its trappings to collect millions from our foes worldwide,
We cannot wait for the election to remove Biden and Harris. The damage will be too significant and irreversible. Biden is not only fulfilling the promise of Barack Obama to transform our country but to destroy it, and he is acting without the consent of Congress and in defiance of the Supreme Court. There are not three equal branches of government today, but someone must step up and stop this President and his actions.
This mess created by Biden is not about Race or even Climate Change, and to call it so is a distraction. The Progressives are trying to use the Race card, but they have drawn the Joker, and the dealer is not smiling. Congress has to grow a spine and say enough, and we must push them to do so.
The post Kamala Stays Or Lose The Black Vote appeared first on Granite Grok.
As with all things environmental, climate alarmists conclude that current wildfires are more evidence of greenhouse gas warming. This must be clarified, as human activities other than driving cars or rearing cows impact these terrible disasters. Appropriate preventive policies are dependent on an accurate diagnosis of cause. The knee-jerk “the sky is falling” pathos furthers the monetary interests of purveyors of polluting.
America’s deadliest wildfires occurred over a century ago, when climate change cultism had not eclipsed common sense. Massive fires across the Midwest frontier were the product of vast forests, sloppy logging practices that accumulated debris, and wooden homes that made quick tinder. Some 800 people died in an October 1871 wildfire in Peshtigo, WI, and more than 400 people were killed in fires in Minnesota in 1894 and again in 1918. These were attributed to logging practices.
Anthropomorphic Wildfires? Such catastrophes were not wild at all but anthropomorphic. The sensible response was to improve logging practices using the knowledge gained, build homes with brick or stone, enact building codes, and implement firefighting practices that extinguish flames promptly in extensive forests. For a time, this was effective, augmented by the timber industry’s decline. Yet this human strategy also carried flaws – extinguishing blazes immediately reduced wildfires in the short term but caused an accumulation of undergrowth as well as a false sense of safety, leading to more homebuilding in fire-prone regions.It may be that weather changes – human-caused or not – are impacting the frequency or degree of wildfires, but how is that correctly determined if other potential causes are excluded a priori from consideration? Climate alarmists employ a one-issue ideological lens that looks increasingly silly when viewing the kaleidoscope of other potential causes. Do Americans wish to heed Smokey the Bear and prevent forest fires, or increase them recklessly to serve a climate alarmist power grab?
Climate “warriors” do not want to prevent wildfires, as scary fires are the George Floyd counterpart to climate alarmist histrionics. Just as blaming heavy rains and localized heat waves on climate change avoids consideration of the profound impacts of an unprecedented 2022 undersea volcano that more likely explains these disruptions, blaming human-generated greenhouse gases for massive wildfires ducks analysis of other, more likely, anthropomorphic sources. There will be no change in logging and forest management practices or humans risking their lives by building tinderboxes in Hades if the culprit is misidentified as carbon dioxide. In Greece, where some 80 arsonists have been arrested for lighting massive, deadly infernos, arson deniers still seek to label climate change as the primary cause. No firestorm could be more anthropomorphic than one sparked by pyromania. Yet, that cause is an inconvenient truth to those employing even natural fires as a convenient lie about climate change.
Impacts of RewildingIndeed, ill-conceived climate alarmist policies like rewilding (allowing large areas of cleared land to regrow) are doubly foolhardy. Rewilding will increase forest areas to resemble the Midwest a century ago. Human incursions into the wilderness will continue as forests and human habitations expand. Farmland sacrificed to forest growth will require food to be shipped further distances, increasing fossil fuel use and supposed greenhouse effects. Most ludicrous of all, well-managed grasslands sequester far more carbon dioxide than forests – rewilding thus increases greenhouse gas emissions while amplifying the likelihood of more massive blazes. This will then be presented as proof of why more rewilding, not improved forestry practices, is warranted.
A more sensible policy would be to restore confined dairy and beef cows to rotationally graze pastures instead of rewilding them. The extra grass-fed (renewable solar energy) meat could be dispatched to the Amazon to supply farmers with meat so they will stop burning forests there. Of course, farmers clearing lands with anthropomorphic wildfires in Brazil are doing so to survive and to eat: America’s wildfires are surely aggravated by neglect and poor management, then used to further a globalist power-grab that seeks to control all food in the name of climate change.
Effectively Reducing Future WildfiresSmokey the Bear would wisely say stop stoking wildfires by ignoring best forest management practices and building death-trap houses on the edge of risky areas. Smokey would point out the moral hazards of such human behaviors, akin to building one’s house in a flood zone and then screaming climate change when the seas break in. Rewilding would likely induce Smokey to roll his eyes and repeat the frustrated refrain: “Remember, only you can prevent forest fires!”
Wildfires will decline in frequency and intensity when their true anthropomorphic causes are addressed, not by banning cows for their flatulence, interrupting tennis matches, or gluing hands to famous artworks. Alarmists cultishly fiddle as Rome burns. Not even arsonists deter them from incinerating sensible science.
John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And a regular contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.
The post Wildfires and Climate Change: What the Alarmists Aren’t Doing – And What They Aren’t Telling Us. appeared first on Granite Grok.
Boston University (BU) has dropped the hammer on its (anti)racial darling, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (Ibram Henry Rogers). Staffing has been slashed as BU investigates his Center for Antiracist Research over accusations of retaliation, discrimination, and “an underwhelming output of research.”
Multiple former staff members allege that a mismanagement of funds, high turnover rate and general disorganization have plagued the Center since its inception.
The $43 million, according to 2021 budget records obtained by The Daily Free Press, includes general support, such as the $10 million from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, as well as donations for specific projects. ..
A week after the layoffs, BU announced Wednesday that they received complaints “focused on the center’s culture and its grant management practices.” …
The complaint detailed multiple high-level employees leaving suddenly and allegations of a workplace culture that included fear of retaliation and discrimination.
According to the report, nothing was done about the complaints. It also notes that “Boston University and Dr. Kendi believe strongly in the Center’s mission, and … he takes strong exception to the allegations made in recent complaints and media reports.” What mission might that be?
“My hope is that it becomes a premier research center for researchers and for practitioners to really solve these intractable racial problems of our time,” Kendi said to BU Today. “Not only will the center seek to make that level of impact, but also work to transform how racial research is done.”
That was three years ago, and as noted above, the Center has mismanaged grant funding and produced little to nothing with it. Is that becasue the intractable problem of our time is Ibram Kendi, CRT, and the systemic division of the American People since the elevation of Barack Obama to the Presidency – The black man who destroyed decades of progress on race on purpose?
Nothing that happens at the Center for Antiracist Research is likely to produce unifying revelations becasue transforming racial research has happened, and the result is racism as the default setting. The conversation is no longer, as Dr. King would have it – about content and character. It is about the systemic inculcation of groupthink: that reverse racism is not racism unless you mean the people using the term who are most certainly fragile white racists.
It is a ridiculous argument that trips over its own shoelaces every time it targets people of color who refuse to accept the distinction. Black, brown, red, yellow, green, blue, it makes no difference. The transformation of racial research is in the same vein as the political concepts of diversity and equity. Diversity is a room full of people who appear different but think exactly the same things. Equity is an act of force that redistributes rights, wealth, or property from the people who think differently.
Dr. Kendi’s accomplishments to date are dividing people and working to ensure they stay divided, a path that leads not to liberation, be you black, white, or anything in between, but back to slavery, this time to the national government and its puppets perched in complicit state capitols across the increasingly fruitless plain.
Put another way, and I know we say this a lot: they are using you, and you will be discarded when that use ceases to have value or be necessary, and neither your gender nor your skin color will protect you.
The post Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research Accused of “Fear of Retaliation and Discrimination” appeared first on Granite Grok.
Oil prices are soaring, and, as always, we read in many articles that OPEC and Russia are to blame. However, if OPEC and its allies were almighty and the drivers of oil prices, why have Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude plummeted in 2022? OPEC only reacts to demand, but it is not a price-setter. It is a price-taker.
WTI is up 13% year-to-date, but it only started bouncing in May. WTI is only up 6% in the past year. At $90.7/barrel, it is still far away from the June 2022 high of $122/barrel and barely reaching the levels of November 2022.
What made oil prices plummet from their June ’22 highs? Rate hikes and monetary contraction sent the entire commodity complex down to pre-Ukraine invasion levels despite production cuts, geopolitical risk, and the Chinese re-opening. Commodity prices are driven by monetary factors, and the hawkish stance of global central banks accelerated the decline despite supply chain challenges and limits to production. Added to the decline in the money supply and rate hikes, the United States and non-OPEC production offset the negative impact of Russia and OPEC limits on some exports. Competition works. Finally, oil prices stumbled as Asian demand ended up being weaker than estimated, with global industrial production declining, particularly in developed economies.
The weakness in crude was a combination of monetary factors, increased United States supply, and weaker global demand. Those three factors have now reversed at the same time.
We cannot blame OPEC when prices rise and ignore them when prices fall.
The biggest challenge for the oil market in developed economies in the next five years is self-inflicted.
Governments and financial institutions all over the world declared war on investment in fossil fuels under the misguided view that supply and prices would not be affected. According to JP Morgan, there is a chronic underinvestment in the oil and gas complex that exceeds $600 billion per year. In 2022, with oil prices rising to the previously mentioned $122/barrel, companies all over the world continued to reduce investment in exploration and production. Development capital expenditure was kept to a bare minimum, and even some European oil and gas giants started selling their “net zero emissions” strategy, ignoring the global energy reality. Total oil and gas investment came below depreciation for the sixth year in a row, according to Goldman Sachs.
The energy transition cannot happen through ideological imposition. It requires technology and competition. Destroying the incentives to invest in oil and gas and imposing an ideological, not industrial, view of energy has made developed economies more dependent on fossil fuels.
When politicians decide, they willingly ignore economic calculations because they believe that the political world dictates prices, not supply and demand. Economic analysis has been abandoned, and the result is an exceedingly negative scenario.
Developed economies have destroyed all incentives to invest in diversification and security of supply of oil and gas driven by an ideological view of the world without having a feasible, abundant, and flexible alternative. Thus, when the United States administration imposes more restrictions on oil and gas investment, and the European Union decides to reduce nuclear capacity and ban the development of domestic resources, all they have done is make their economies more dependent on foreign suppliers.
Western governments now demand that OPEC produce more while, at the same time, saying that their nations will not use fossil fuels in ten years. This is the imaginary deal that we, in the West, offer to oil and gas-producing nations: “Dear oil and gas producers, you have to produce as much as we demand and sell it cheap, investing billions of dollars in development, but we will not use your product in ten years”. I imagine there is no rush to sign such a deal.
It is hard to believe that the global emerging market producers will be thrilled about the prospect of eliminating their energy exports only to import more “energy transition” engineering from developed nations.
According to OPEC sources, there could be a two-million barrel-per-day supply shock in the winter of 2023. Other analysts are more prudent but still see a market that is tight today and may be getting worse as the underinvestment toll becomes more apparent.
The entire bounce in oil prices since May is driven by the rushed decision of central banks to stop the monetary tightening before the inflation battle has ended and by the misguided decision to limit investments in domestic resources in the middle of a geopolitical battle without a clear alternative. Governments have created their own supply shock by placing ideological views in the energy industry. The alternatives are not evident yet; technology and availability have not been fully developed, but politicians have already decided when the transition must be completed.
Crude oil did not replace whale oil due to the decisions of environmentalists or politicians. Crude oil displaced other sources of energy because it was easier to store, produce, and transport. Crude oil and natural gas proved to be abundant, easy to manage, and economically efficient. This is the first time in human history that the energy transition has been decided by politicians without allowing technology, competition, or human ingenuity to come up with a better, more flexible, and more economical alternative. Renewables are great, but they are intermittent and volatile. We need to allow the world to produce alternatives when they can truly replace the current energy resources without destroying our lifestyle and economy.
We may blame OPEC for rising oil prices, but the fact is that they only react to weak demand and low prices. OPEC may increase production at its next meeting, but the reality is that the energy supply issues have been created by Western governments and may persist. Instead of allowing all sources of energy to compete and allocation of capital to generate the investments needed for security of supply and energy transition, what has happened is that we may have created an energy crisis by political design. The alternatives are not ready, and the domestic resources that could limit prices have been banned or severely limited.
The irony is that anyone who understands energy knows that there is no successful energy transition without natural gas and nuclear, and this requires incentives to invest in energy security. Governments will not back down, and they will prefer a decline in energy prices coming from a deep recession to an improvement coming from diversification and investment.
This may be yet another energy crisis created by political design. Unfortunately, instead of learning and changing, many developed nations’ policymakers will prefer to impose restrictions on consumers. Ultimately, the incorrect planning of this energy transition is not a question of energy sovereignty or climate change but a way to control citizens. That is why many governments prefer to see soaring energy prices because that will allow them to impose restrictions on consumers.
Daniel Lacalle, Ph.D., economist, and fund manager, is the author of the bestselling books Freedom or Equality (2020), Escape from the Central Bank Trap (2017), The Energy World Is Flat (2015), and Life in the Financial Markets (2014).
He is a professor of global economy at IE Business School in Madrid.
Daniel Lacalle | Mises Wire
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The post The Oil-Price Shock Is a Direct Consequence of Interventionism. appeared first on Granite Grok.
The first order of business on the agenda for the Renewable Energy Standard Working Group’s September 20 meeting was “Conflict of Interest – Discussion & Clarity.” This should be interesting, I thought to myself. What it turned out to be was ironic.
The discussion that took place was over the hired moderator for the committee, Jennifer Knauer. She is married to Tom Knauer, a policy director for the Vermont Public Utilities Commission (PUC), a fact that had apparently not been vetted during the hiring process. Furrowed brows and chin rubbing ensued.
Of course, the usual tropes about Vermont being a small state, and how everybody wears a lot of hats, and is married or related to someone with a real or perceived conflict of interest is inevitable came up. The furrowed brows quickly dissolved into chuckles, and none on the committee ultimately dismissed any idea that they would have any problems working with Knauer in her moderator role.
The only person to raise an issue with this was Chris Pearson, a former Chittenden County senator now working for the Sierra Club, who cautioned, “If we’re all saying we’re comfortable with this around the table, but there are many other observers who are now sort of going to be convinced rightly or wrongly that this is rigged, I think that’s a real problem here….”
“Rigged” is the right word, but not because of Knauer’s presence as moderator. The irony of this mini-inquest is not the subject but the inquisitors.
The Committee, charged with working to shape Vermont’s energy policy (specifically the renewable energy agenda to achieve 100% renewables by 2030) is made up of two senators, Chris Bray (D-Addison) and Anne Watson (D-Washington), two Representatives, Amy Sheldon (D-Middlebury) and Laura Sibilia (I-Dover), so no Republicans.
The non-elected members consist of Jeffrey Cram of Global Foundries, William Driscoll of Associated Industries of Vermont, Michael Lazorchak of Stowe Electric, Shana Louiselle of Vermont Electric, Brian Evans-Mongeon of Village of Hyde Park, Candace Morgan of Green Mountain Power, Ken Nolan of Vermont Public Power Supply Authority, Louis Porter of Washington Electric, Darren Springer of Burlington Electric, and Rebecca Town of Vermont Electric Co-op.
While the expertise of these people is certainly critical to understanding the issue, there is absolutely no denying that they all have a very serious conflict of interest regarding how this public policy is shaped.
But it gets much worse.
Other members of the committee include Ben Edgerly Walsh of VPIRG, Peter Sterling of Renewable Energy Vermont, Chase Whiting of the Conservation Law Foundation, and Pearson himself with his Sierra Club connection. These are all just lobbyists for ideological special interest groups with ties to and in many cases funding from renewable energy producers.
These are the most egregious conflicts of interest on the committee, and you can count on them to shape policy in ways that funnel money to their doners through mandates and subsidies.
Just look at some of the folks pulling the strings at VPIRG on their board of directors. Marianne Barton, VPIRG’s treasurer is founder of Catalyst Clean Energy Finance, LLC, a company that provides “financial advisory and strategic planning services to the solar, energy efficiency and performance contracting industries.” Duane Peterson of SunCommon. Wind developer Matthew Rubin. Their employer/employee relationship with voting committee member Ben Walsh should be of far more concern as a conflict of interest that the spousal relationship of the committee’s moderator with a member of the PUC.
Or Renewable Energy Vermont, whose board includes Chad Farrell, founder of Encore Renewable Energy, and Paul Lesure president of Green Mountain Solar. Do you think these folks have a special conflict of interest when it comes to a 100% renewable energy policy for the state? How do you think these directors are directing their employee Peter Sterling to act on this committee? With the best interests of the public in mind? Pardon my laughter.
So, yes, Chris Pearson, as one of the many other observers paying attention to what you all are up to, I am convinced – and I’m confident rightly, not wrongly — that “this is rigged.” And yes, that’s a real problem here.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank. He is also a regular contributor to VermontGrok!
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Kamala Harris, the Czar of Czars, has all the answers. She has solved why today’s young parents resist having children. You would think it has to do with economics or that today’s offspring will be the first generation of Americans to have a lower quality of life than their parents.
However, according to Kamala, the climate gives parents pause when deciding to have children. There is no limit to what the Progressives will try to link to their climate theory. One thing that will surely curb the rising temperatures is taking the microphone away from any politician who blows nothing but hot air when they speak. There is no one with an iota of common sense who shares the Vice President’s ludicrous theory.
Contrary to Harris’ remarks, parents cite many reasons for not having children, and most are the result of decisions and policies of the Biden administration in just a few short years. The number one reason is economics. With the runaway Bidenflation, most couples live paycheck to paycheck, and no money is left in the pot for another mouth to feed. Apartments are in short supply, and rents are at all-time highs.
With the rising cost of living and incomes not keeping pace, both parents must work. If you can find adequate daycare, the price is so high that it consumes nearly one of the incomes. This conundrum puts you back at square one. The sheer cost of a child will thwart your future. Homeownership will be impossible, with supply driving up prices and mortgage rates pushing 8%. The American dream of owning a home has been changed forever. The plight of today’s married couples is not a concern for Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, or any of the elite, for they have theirs, and to hell with you.
That was just the numbers side of the issue. Good people don’t want to bring an innocent child into this world and put them through the indoctrination factories of our broken education system. They don’t want them to face the temptation and threats of a drug-riddled America. They can’t bear the thought of their young child facing gangs and a society that has abandoned morality and the rule of law because the Progressives see accountability for one’s actions as oppression. The good have given up their God-given rights and surrendered them to those who would steal them otherwise.
No, Kamala, the temperature has nothing to do with the decision to procreate. It is people like you and Joe who have deceived the American people into thinking you were acting in their best interests. It is you, Kamala, who has taken this great country and set it on a downward trajectory in three short years to its eventual death. Gaslighting is what you do best, but the light is growing dim. Your light will be out in fifteen months, and you will soon be a footnote in history. You had a chance to be a heroic figure, but that chance was squandered. But don’t be too hard on yourself. You never deserved the opportunity in the first place.
The post Kamala Explains The Climate Anxiety Theory appeared first on Granite Grok.
In 2018, the people of New Hampshire amended their State Constitution. They added “[Art.] 2-b. [Right of Privacy.] An individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent.”
In the face of looming US Supreme Court rulings that Moderates and progressives thought might end the state’s ability to terminate pregnancies, they gathered together and proposed what became Article 2-b. A constitutional right to privacy. No shadows, no penumbras. It’s right there in black and white.
There are any number of things the state has done since that likely violate it, how could it not, to which we should add the growing movement to introduce a national digital currency. An electronic central ‘dollar’ would allow regulators doing business as police state spies to observe your transactions and, in more extreme cases, limit what you could buy, how much, or how often.
Some would scoff at such an idea, but these are many of the same people who didn’t ask why the IRS needs to know when you spend more than 300.00 (later changed to 600.00) on anything. That government would use big banking and big tech to run algorithms to detect spending habits down to the dollar, which would raise flags that might trigger alerts. A CBDC makes every penny traceable.
While the bank you chose to do business with could monitor it for fraud protection, it would be illegal in New Hampshire to cough it up to any local, state, or national government without a warrant, at least technically, becasue of Articel 2-b.
That’s not to say they wouldn’t do that anyway and not tell you. Shadow warrants are a lot more common than you think. The State violates you privacy all the time and with far too little objection from the Judicial branch, happy to cash its government paycheck while letting them spy on yours.
The difference with digital currency is everything is trackable in real-time, and in New Hampshire, the government should not be able to save or store any transition data that occurs within New Hampshire’s political borders until they have a warrant.
If a State is serious about its Constitution, it will not allow violations by third parties, especially the Pfederal Government.
Sadly, one of the problems that persists among elected officials in the Live Free or Die State is a failure to understand their role as defenders of our rights, regardless of who seeks to violate them. That the State Constitution they swear an oath to uphold is the measuring stick.
To my knowledge, we’ve yet to see anyone bring a case based on a violation of 2-b, but if CBDC continues on its current path, it seems impossible to avoid.
The post A Government Run Digital Currency Wouldn’t be Unconstitutional in New Hampshire but Spying on Transactions Could appeared first on Granite Grok.
Prior installments of this series have demonstrated that state and national standardized test scores in New Hampshire and Vermont were poor and declining before the COVID pandemic school shutdown. We became curious about the so-called “COVID learning loss” narrative after Principal Nicole Lackie of the Croydon Village School blamed it for her students’ poor performance on standardized reading tests. Because she also said that schools no longer knew how to teach reading, we also researched the methods used to teach reading by local elementary schools.
In addition to the Croydon Village School, we’ve also looked at the elementary schools in Killington, VT, and Washington, NH. We now report on the Albert Bridge School (ABS) in Brownsville, VT.
Assessing this school is challenging because there is very little in the way of standardized test scores to determine whether it was affected by the pandemic shutdown or how it fared over time. Nonetheless, there is some data that shows test scores were falling years before COVID came on the scene.
While the number of students in this school has recently been too small for Vermont to release school-level scores from its Smarter Balanced assessment, its scores were published in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, 64% of students in the Albert Bridge School tested proficient or above in reading. That number dropped dramatically to 37% in 2017.
Jenifer Aldrich has been the principal at the Albert Bridge School (ABS) for ten years. She is a multi-age education specialist. This K-6 school averages 65-70 students per year. It has one class per grade and combines grades to balance the student-teacher ratio. She couldn’t explain the drop in SBAC scores from 2016 and 2017.
When asked how the students have done since the pandemic, Aldrich said that Albert Bridge has focused on community and social-emotional learning (SEL) and has cut back on academics. She said that students can’t pay attention to reading and math until they feel safe, have predictable routines, and have a “sense of agency.” She pointed out that most students had not had a traditional education during these last few years.
The school now asks about a child’s growth rather than what the standards say a child should know. Aldrich said the school meets students where they are, as gauged by a few diagnostic assessments, including Track My Progress, Fountas & Pinnell, DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), and PNOA (Primary Number and Operations Assessment). The school administers these tests three times a year. Aldrich said most of the students are now progressing beyond a third of a year in a third of a year’s time. Still, Aldrich is concerned about the students who are below proficiency.
ABS switched to the Amplify reading curriculum this year. Amplify is built on research from the science of reading. Since 2015, ABS has used, and continues to use, Fountas & Pinnell, along with supplements to close the gaps. As pointed out in prior installments of this series, the science of reading research has shown that the Fountas & Pinnell “cueing” approach is misguided and might harm children, even when used with other methods.
The “science of reading” is based on decades of research about how students become proficient in reading and writing and why some of them have difficulty. Using brain scans and eye-tracking technology, they found that good readers process virtually every letter in every word as they read. Some children catch on quickly, others need to be taught how to do it. Learning to read is not as natural as learning to talk. This research is summarized in an engaging podcast series called “Sold a Story,” produced by Emily Hanford, an investigative education journalist at American Public Media.
ABS is instituting another change this year to improve academic performance. Students are being grouped with other students at the same performance level. That is, all 3rd-6th grade students will work on reading at the same time, split into cross-grade groups of students who read at the same level. The same goes for students in grades K-2. If students need to cross into the other group (for example, if a 2nd-grade student is reading at a 5th-grade level), the staff will create a specialized plan.
While sympathetic about the difficulties the pandemic brought, Principal Aldrich said she was grateful that the pandemic happened now as opposed to 15 or 20 years ago because of all that has been learned over about trauma and how the brain and academic performance work.
— This story is part of a series in which we show how the pandemic shutdowns in Vermont and New Hampshire affected student performance on state and national standardized tests. We’re also taking a look at how some elementary schools in our area teach reading. Next, we’ll take a look at test scores and reading instruction at the Grantham Village School in New Hampshire. Prior installments in this series were published in the Eagle Times on September 9, 12, 14, 16, and 19 and can be easily found on Jody Underwood’s Granite Grok author page.
This story originally appeared in the Eagle Times.
The post Social-Emotional Learning Replaces Academics as Focus (Pandemic Shutdown & Reading, part 6 of 8) appeared first on Granite Grok.
Groktoberfest is deep into the planning stages. The event is October 28th from 1-4 pm at the Londonderry Fish and Game Club. We are working on having beer, food, music, a comedian, and a list of local and national speakers…
To be announced soon!
We will have vendor tables for local and national groups to promote their thing. We’re also considering a Joe Biden Dunk Tank, an accordion player (maybe), and recorded messages from high-profile folks we’ll announce when we’ve confirmed them.
A gun raffle also seems likely, again – waiting on confirmation.
While you wait for tickets to go live (this week!), we are open to suggestions for food and beverage vendors who are friendly to the cause of free speech and independent media and can do their thing remotely. Beer, food, heck, if you have a band who will play for (actual) popcorn and free publicity, we’re interested in that too.
We are working on our own lists, but more names are good but don’t wait to share; we want to lock things down soon.
And remember, October 28th. We hope to see you there!
The post Join us October 28th for Groktoberfest! </br>[Update Number 2] appeared first on Granite Grok.
We would like to personally acknowledge the time and effort of the many Reps and volunteers in the Northwood/Nottingham special election. Despite the headwind we unknowingly faced, it is always great to see the team unite around a common goal.
A special thank you to candidate Jim Guzofski, for putting himself in the spotlight of a special election and his willingness to serve. We appreciate you.
We strongly reject the damaging and dangerous rhetoric that continues to take place against Jim on social media and in the press. There seems to be a culture taking hold that is incredibly unbecoming of Republicans. It does nothing to help grow our party or to keep the Granite State free and prosperous.
We do not support disparaging a good person to further the narrative of another. Let it be known that we will not stand for this type of behavior no matter who it comes from.
United in Liberty,
Rep Aidan Ankarberg
Rep Cyril Aures
Rep Mike Belcher
Rep Jacob Brouillard
Rep Matthew Coulon
Rep Leah Cushman
Rep Michael Granger
Rep JR Hoell
Hon Dawn Johnson
Rep Diane Kelley
Rep David Love
Rep Tom Mannion
Rep Lisa Mazur
Rep Nikki McCarter
Rep Kristin Noble
Rep Sandra Panek
Rep Kristine Perez
Rep Katy Peternel
Rep Emily Phillips
Rep Brandon Phinney
Rep Kelley Potenza
Rep Arlene Quaratiello
Rep Karen Reid
Rep Sheila Seidel
Rep Shane Sirois
Rep Julius Soti
Rep Scott Wallace
The post We Do Not Support Disparaging a Good Person to Further the Narrative of Another appeared first on Granite Grok.
Pennsylvania’s Communist Governor has issued a ukase that henceforth in his oblast there will be automatic voter registration. So Pennsylvania’s rigged elections will be even more rigged. More votes to harvest during election-month! But let’s pretend that all we need to do is nominate someone not named Trump and Pennsylvania will turn crimson red. Yup … it’s just that easy. Just listen to the proven winners … the people who elected President McCain and President Romney!
Automatic voter registration is one of the easiest ways to cheat – by registering kids to vote automatically when they turn 18 or get their drivers license, those interested in cheating now have registered voters who won’t go to the polls for years and they can vote in their… https://t.co/6OMEkXYhii
— Lara Logan (@laralogan) September 19, 2023
The post Congratulations To The Biden-Regime … They Just Won Pennsylvania And It’s Not Even 2024 Yet! appeared first on Granite Grok.
Are we making your mornings more interesting? We try, and sometimes that means bringing you something inspirational or amusing, from Lt. Gov. Robinson (inspirational) to Dr. Lanci Lindsey (informative). And we’re just getting started. Today, we are sharing something I thought was hilarious.
Scraped off X (still pronounced, Twitter), we have a video shared by James Woods of a young man (a kid) who did something called the Preschool Apprentice, and I hope that’s a wig on his head.
He does an amazing impression of President Trump talking about … Mac and Cheese.
If you’ve seen it, you know it’s worth watching again. If not, it’s a must-watch. I’ve seen it a handful of times now, and I still find it hard to believe that this voice came out of that kid.
The post The Preschool Apprentice – Kid Does Spot on Impression of Donald Trump appeared first on Granite Grok.
Transgender athletes are becoming increasingly more common in athletic competitions, and this has spurred a great deal of criticism from the right side of the political aisle. Their argument is simple: men have a distinct advantage when it comes to sports.
This point seems self-evident given the immense amount of success most trans athletes (typically male to female) experience when they decide to change gender. CeCé Telfer, Mary Gregory, and Rachel McKinnon are a few examples of this in that they were all mediocre male athletes who are now, put frankly, dominating in their respective fields and setting world records in hurdling, weightlifting, and cycling.
Despite the seemingly obvious biological benefits that come with being a male athlete, many on the left side of the aisle still deny there is a relevant difference. In an audio interview conducted by National Public Radio, host Scott Detrow spoke with established geneticist Dr. Eric Vilain, who believes that there simply isn’t enough evidence to suggest that men have a disproportionate competitive advantage in sports:
Well, on one hand, not having an indiscriminate ban suggests that the baseline for eligibility for all athletes, including trans athletes, should be inclusion. And I think that’s a good thing. And that’s actually what the International Olympic Committee has done in creating a framework for inclusion and fairness that’s based on the principle of no presumption of advantage. And if a category is going to be excluded, it needs to be based on evidence. The problem here with the exclusion on a case-by-case basis is that it is likely not to be based on evidence. Who’s going to undertake all the necessary research to demonstrate a disproportionate advantage, sport by sport, at so many different ages? Who will fund this? Likely not the school systems. . . .
The issue is we lack a lot of data, so we, in fact, know very little about advantages of trans girls and women athletes over their cisgender peers. That’s true in elite competitions. That’s true in school sports. . . .
I’ll end by saying that the larger question really goes beyond a simple competitive advantage. It’s whether there is a disproportionate competitive advantage between trans and cis athletes.
Aside from pushing a partisan narrative or reinforcing the party line, there is no good reason why Dr. Vilain, an accomplished geneticist, would say these things. The reason for this is that science has, in fact, provided quite a bit of evidence regarding the advantage male athletes have over their female counterparts.
What the research has shown is that men have a clear advantage when it comes to sports. For starters, men have larger and denser bones, which leads to an increased ability to support muscle mass, as well as an increased mechanical advantage, thus increasing their ability to perform tasks that require strength, speed, and power. Furthermore, men have a much higher VO2 max threshold. In other words, due to biological males having larger hearts than biological females, men’s bodies are much better when it comes to delivering oxygen to their muscles and tissues during exercise.
Now the reason these two disproportionate advantages are important to note is that neither has to do explicitly with testosterone, which is the typical go-to argument of antitrans activists. This is to say that, unlike testosterone, which can be increased or decreased via artificial means, bone density and heart size are not parts of the body that doctors can alter. In other words, they are clear-cut and, more importantly, unchangeable advantages that no amount of gender-confirming care can eliminate.
As this evidence shows, it is not fair for biological males to compete in female sports. With that said, however, more and more male-to-female transgender athletes seem to be making the decision to switch proverbial teams. In some states, this is being heralded as brave and heroic, while in others, it is leading to serious legislative crackdowns. So, what is the proper way to handle trans athletes while pleasing both sides?
Despite chess being a sport that no one really thinks about while discussing trans athletes, the International Chess Federation has recently found itself at the center of the debate by making the decision to “effectively stop allowing transgender women from participating in women’s competitions until ‘further analysis’ can be made.”
This decision, though from an unlikely source, may have exposed an answer to this debate that will make all of this trans athlete stuff, effectively, a nonissue. The reason for this is that chess has a unique aspect that most sports do not share. This aspect is an “open” section, which is a category in tournaments that allows both men and women to compete against each other.
Per the International Chess Federation’s decision, trans chess players will still be allowed to compete in these open sections, thus allowing them to continue competing despite their decision to transition.
Could this be the answer America has been looking for? Think about it.
People on the left argue that trans people are far more common than the average person realizes. More specifically, they say that the research suggests that 1.3–5 percent of the US population identifies as a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth and that this number is likely higher, but due to underreporting, those people are still not being accounted for.
Of course, people on the right have and will continue to deny these statistics/assumptions, but they don’t want trans athletes competing anyway, so as far as the left is concerned, who cares, right?
Assuming that this argument is valid and there truly are this many trans people out there in the populace, well, when it comes to sports, why not just create open leagues? Wouldn’t this give the Right what they want, biological men and women competing with biological men and women? Wouldn’t it also give the left what they want: a safe and inclusive place for trans athletes to compete?
The answer as to why we do not have open leagues is probably that there are not enough trans people to fill the ranks of these divisions, though the left will never admit it. But to be honest, this is an irrelevant and unconstitutional criticism of open leagues. You see, at the end of the day, the Constitution is all about protecting individual rights and free market principles. This, among other things, means protecting the right of women, who are disproportionately affected by trans athletes, to have fair and safe spaces. In addition to this, a free market operates via supply and demand. Therefore, if there are not enough trans athletes to support open sports leagues, well, then that is just, unfortunately, the way it is, and you don’t get to infringe upon women’s rights to remedy this.
In closing, sports are all about meritocracy. In a way, they are a perfect example of how a free market should work. This is to say that sports are driven by a supply of talented athletes who meet the demands of the population’s viewing preferences. Because of this, sports are highly competitive. This is why you don’t see five-foot-two people competing in the National Basketball Association or overweight people competing in the one-hundred-meter dash. So, if the integrity of sports is to be upheld while also protecting women’s constitutional rights, which would mean not allowing athletes who are born male to use their inherent biological advantages against athletes who were born female, the only logical solution is to leave things up to the free market by making a separate place for trans athletes to freely compete against one another. If you think this isn’t a feasible idea, well, chess did it.
Alexander Oakes is a Marine Corps combat veteran who is currently pursuing his PhD in Clinical Psychology at Arizona State University. He also hosts Nobody’s News Show on Youtube.com and is preparing to publish his first book, “How To Get Out Of Work: A framework for manipulation, deception, and misdirection” to be released later this year.
Alexander Oakes | Mises Wire
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The post Chess, Trans Athletes, and Free Markets in Sports appeared first on Granite Grok.
My new “income” situation is poised to begin in a week, and there are a lot of questions that no amount of time poking around at the IRS website has managed to resolve. I’m still in the dark about my responsibility to help the IRS steal from me, and I’m looking for some free expert advice or, lacking that, a bit of direction.
The last thing I want to do is screw up how I pay taxes under these new circumstances. I’ve had freelance, gig economy-like income in the past, but not in any significant sum. I could just declare it as additional income alongside my regular work income. Beginning in October, the majority of my income will be from donations passed through GraniteGrok (or GiveSendGo), and how, when, and how much gets reported matters.
Taxes will need (should be) paid quarterly, I get that. Fees and fines are not in my budget, so I want to avoid those. The nature of the relationship between the funding (donors), GraniteGrok, and myself (as a part-owner) needs to be explained from a tax perspective so we understand who reports and pays what, why, and when.
I will add that whoever helps us navigate this successfully could get hired to do Grok’s taxes. Skip has been doing them, but we are in a situation where things are getting too complex, and we are probably not reporting allowed deductions to taxable income; I feel certain we’re paying more taxes than we should, helping the IRS steal more from us.
If you have experience wrestling with the current IRS code and are willing to offer a few minutes of pro-bono help working out the details of my new income arrangement, it would be greatly appreciated. I am willing to offer some free advertising space on GraniteGrok in exchange for that assistance if you are doing this professionally.
You can email me at steve@granitegrok.com.
Thanks!
The post Looking for Some Free Tax Advice … appeared first on Granite Grok.
You might already be familiar with my recent article, the open letter to Councilor Wheeler. Please refer to it for a list of some of his key transgressions against the will of his constituents and against NH. Today, one more thing can be added to his rap sheet.
He voted the wrong way on the political patronage appointment of DJ Bettencourt. Again, see my earlier article on why rejecting it was the right thing to do. And as much as I hate the thought of praising a member of the enemy camp, kudos to Warmington for being the lone dissenting vote!
I should add that Kenney, similar to the Edwards judgeship hearing, offered some half-measure of lip service about a concern with a potential conflict of interest involving the Salem Town Council. It was addressed, and a 4-1 vote was quickly taken while I held up a sign from the 2nd row saying, “say no to political patronage.” I packed up and left the venue in disgust after that. At least I didn’t have to wait several hours for that vote as though it was October 13, 2021, all over again.
I know there are Wheeler loyalists, Beth Scaer, Colton, and JR, for example. Even Karen Testerman once said, “oh he’s not THAT bad, considering all 5 of them.” And I almost forgot that Cornerstone Attorney Ian Huyett, who claims Wheeler is one of the most conservative guys in NH. I certainly welcome polite discourse from them, but to them, I ask how many more times does Wheeler have to vote the wrong way before loyalty to him is reexamined?
With Anne Copp now in Florida and Clegg sadly on the wrong side of the grass, and my knowledge of previous primaries limited to just them, I consider myself like that Saturday Night Live guy lecturing the youngsters in their living room about living in a van down by the river. For the love of all that’s holy, will someone electable PLEASE primary him!
I forsee another routine NH higher office election where a mediocre politician has us all over a barrel because under no circumstances do we want the opponent(in this case, Alderman Kelly) to get elected. The Damn Emperor’s last 2 elections were secured by an unhinged despicable November opponent(Feltes and Dr Sherman). Now I see Kelly Ayotte being the next governor only because we don’t want NH to become a “statewide Manchester.” Something has to change!
I will leave you with a Plato quote. “If you don’t take interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.” We are already there, my friends!
The post Wheeler is On Notice (not that he wasn’t already) appeared first on Granite Grok.