The Manchester Free Press

Wednesday • November 27 • 2024

Vol.XVI • No.XLVIII

Manchester, N.H.

Tucker Believes The Biden-Regime’s “October Surprise” Will Be A Hot War With A Russia

Granite Grok - Mon, 2023-09-04 01:30 +0000

Tucker makes an excellent point … when you start trying to jail your political opponents (the four bogus indictments of Trump), you have crossed a political rubicon. You cannot give up power because your opponents may do onto you what you did to them. So anything goes. Tucker, however, does not believe that Covid 2.0 will be what the Biden-Regime uses to maintain power. He believes that the Regime will “Tonkin gulf” us into a hot war with Russia in order to allow the Regime to use “war powers” to even further rig our already rigged elections.

I sure hope that he is wrong. The lunatics running the Biden-Regime’s military, cheered on and egged on by GOP lunatics like Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Lindsey Graham, could easily cause a nuclear war and the end of humanity.

And just because I love to infuriate the GOP warmongers, here is Douglas MacGregor’s assessment of how we would fare in a hot war against Russia:

 

The post Tucker Believes The Biden-Regime’s “October Surprise” Will Be A Hot War With A Russia appeared first on Granite Grok.

Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Another Look at the Human Cost of Net Zero and The Green Agenda

Granite Grok - Mon, 2023-09-04 00:00 +0000

In 2016, the human rights violations in Africa fueling the technology future were well known and documented by none other than Amnesty International, which released a report on “the hazardous conditions in which artisanal miners, including thousands of children, mine cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Chinese mines in countries like Congo, Indonesia, and others have few, if any, environmental controls and little in the way of oversight, pay locals very little to work or collect Cobalt and other rare earth metals necessary for companies like Tesla, Apple, LG, Samsung, and others, who create the devices Westerners crave.

Things their societies won’t live without and are the backbone of the Left’s supposed Net Zero future.

 

UNICEF estimated in 2014 that approximately 40,000 boys and girls work in all the mines across southern DRC, many of them involved in cobalt mining. The children interviewed by researchers described the physically demanding nature of the work they did. They said that they worked for up to 12 hours a day in the mines, carrying heavy loads, to earn between one and two dollars a day. Even those children who went to school worked 10 – 12 hours during the weekend and school holidays, and in the time before and after school. The children who were not attending school worked in the mines all year round.

 

We’ve covered the issue a few times, but until this week, I was unaware of the Amnesty International report, which predates the Biden ramp-up, the piecemeal imposition of the Green New Deal, and the full-spectrum dominance approach to imposing environmental policy. It is proof that the offshoring of emissions, ecological devastation, and human suffering predates that ramp-up alongside mining operations that enrich China, a nation with an abysmal human rights record at home and a self-declared mortal enemy of the United States.

Any notion that China cares about African locals is absurd, but they do care about projecting power. Hence, they burn dirty coal to build green tech they then sell to the West that then ignores the short and long-term harm while laying claim to a greenwashed moral superiority.

But there is no energy future without fossil fuels.

You can’t make steel without coke from coal or energy-intensive aluminum.

80% of the sulfur “required for the production of phosphorus fertiliser and manufacturing lightweight electric motors and high-performance lithium-ion batteries” comes from the desulfurization of fossil fuels. Banning or reducing the use or access to fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides will dramatically drop global food production, with some estimates suggesting that 40-60% of the world (mostly likely the third world) would starve to death.

Related: Not Even a Pencil Could Exist without Fossil Fuels

The Left likes to whine about Colonialism and Settlers wiping out societies in favor of their preferred lifestyles and livelihoods. What would they say about embracing an energy policy that results in 4 billion brown people starving to death?

Is it environmental justice when your programs are pogroms?

Children are dying, and entire ecosystems are being destroyed, so you can smugly attest to how much empathy you have for a planet your “planet-saving” priorities are destroying.

 

The post Another Look at the Human Cost of Net Zero and The Green Agenda appeared first on Granite Grok.

Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

But Just Keep Pretending America Is Not A Police State … Part (I’ve Lost Track)

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 22:30 +0000

The most important issue that this country faces is its rapid spiral into a Police State. It’s far, far, far more important than inflation, the debt, Ukraine, etc., etc., etc.. For example, how are you going to get rid of DEI and CRT … the systemic brainwashing of America’s children in order to turn them into unwavering, unquestioning foot-soldiers of the Communists Democrats, the equivalent of Mao’s Red Guards … when the Communists Democrats make it a crime to criticize DEI/CRT? It can’t happen you say. You haven’t been paying attention.

For more than two years, the corrupt USDOJ … aided and abetted by corrupt DC  judges (including judges appointed by Trump) … has been conducting a Robespierre-like reign of terror against Trump voters, with the objective of making people afraid to criticize rigged-elections. In stark contrast, rioters who bombed, burned and looted cities during the 2020 “summer of love,” in order to turn voters away from Trump and to Biden, have gotten a comparative “slap on the wrist”:

 

Yet all we get from the GOP Presidential candidates is … at the most … some pablum about how he is going to somehow “end the weaponization of government.” And when the “GOP” House fully funds the corrupt USDOJ and FBI in the coming months, we won’t hear a word of criticism of Kevin at-best-useless McCarthy from these Presidential candidates.

The GOP, in the aggregate (there are some exceptions … for example, Julie Kelly has been exposing the J6 political-persecutios from the outset), just wants to pretend that it’s all somehow going to go away after the last J6’r is locked up. It’s NOT. The federal judiciary is packed with faux-judges nominated by Obama and Biden who have zero fidelity to the constitution and the rule of law, and total fidelity to their political ideology. And it’s only a matter of time until the Communists Democrats start using the State courts against their political enemies the same way the Biden-regime’s DOJ is using the federal courts to prevent Trump from winning the Presidency a third time. For example:

 

The post But Just Keep Pretending America Is Not A Police State … Part (I’ve Lost Track) appeared first on Granite Grok.

Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Politicians, Wind Power, and Another Hidden Tax

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 21:00 +0000

This week, the US Government held an auction for major wind projects in the Gulf of Mexico. There’s bad news: The US Interior Department tried to lease out three wind blocks in the Gulf of Mexico off the shores of Texas and Louisiana.  There were zero bids for the two wind blocks in Texas.

We want to thank Mark Abear for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
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There was one bid for the Louisiana wind block.

The Louisiana wind block went to a German company for about 1% of the normal offshore wind price.

  • Why would we sell our energy production rights to Germany?
  • Why would we do that for 1% of market value?
  • Why would we sell our sovereignty for any price?  Isn’t energy independence critical to national security?
  • Does national security matter?
  • What happens when you don’t have it?

According to a senior wind analyst at the energy intelligence firm Wood Mackenzie, the reason why the US Government got that paltry amount is that the wind doesn’t always blow and sometimes the wind blows too much.

That is especially true in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s also true the seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico is notoriously soft and silty which raises the cost of sinking wind turbines and keeping them in place.

If the Louisiana deal goes through, utility companies and residents in that state will be paying upwards of $150 per megawatt hour for this energy.   That is about double the average for similar offshore projects, according to the outlet Semafor.  This means offshore wind is around $75 to $100 per megawatt hour, give or take.

Now, compare that to nuclear at $60 or coal at $50 per megawatt hour.

If market forces were at play here, no off-shore wind projects would be built. We would not build off-shore wind projects because of how comparatively expensive they are.

So why is it that we are paying $75 to $100 per megawatt hour for the average wind power facility when we could be going with nuclear at $60 or coal at $50 per megawatt hour?  It sure seems like we would want to keep our electric bills down.

Well, here is one reason.  States like New York, Massachusetts, California, New Hampshire, and others mandate utilities serving their jurisdiction buy this expensive stuff.  The legislated mandates, followed by utility companies, are then passed off to you, the ratepayer, in your electric bill.

State and federal governments are forcing the economics of offshore wind to work. This is a masked use of governmental taxation power against you.  The government is forcing you to pay more for an essential good than you otherwise would be willing to pay.

This means your politicians, by subsidizing or mandating or both, are forcing the adoption of high-priced wind energy.  That is why there was one non-market rate bid for that Louisiana project.  That’s why, analysts say, the upcoming bids for offshore projects in Oregon and Maine are expected to do better.  How are you going to do any worse?

The states of Maine and Oregon, these states are Leftist controlled.  They have mandates and subsidies legislatively in place.  That means, eventually, the cost of those mandates and subsidies does get passed down to you, the electric rate payer.

Like it or not, your government is forcing you to pay more than is necessary for electricity.  Can you do without electricity?  So the next time you hear an offshore wind farm argument, keep that in mind. There is a lot of political funny business going on in the offshore wind power business, and you are going to be sent the bill for the decision-making that certainly should be controversial.

You are going to unnecessarily, “voluntarily,” have to pay exorbitant electric rates.  You are going to pay excessively for something you cannot do without.  Not only that, you will need more of it if you have an EV than you do today.

Leadership requires courage, commitment, communication, and competence.  It is being an effective communicator with a clear purpose, a well-defined role, a clear understanding of who you serve, what your values are, and authenticity in presentation. Who are your representatives working for?

Does political leadership today provide the best possible service at the lowest practicable cost… to you today? Why are your electric rates the highest in the nation?  Are you getting a competitive advantage from their actions?  What are these governmental actions doing to your future?

If you want to shiver in the dark because you cannot afford the electricity to light and heat your home, and you’re not going to work because you cannot afford to charge the car’s battery, our state and federal energy strategy is working.  Remember, if they sell it, you “will” buy it.  They do not tolerate debate.

The post Politicians, Wind Power, and Another Hidden Tax appeared first on Granite Grok.

Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

The Conservatarian Exchange Podcast #169

The Liberty Block - Sun, 2023-09-03 20:09 +0000

Discussion of the republican debate last week; some say Vivek won, some say he looked immature; some say DeSantis won; should any candidate raise a hand at a debate or respond that way to a question? Will DeSantis be hurt by insurance laws in Florida in the aftermath of today’s hurricane? The attempt in some States to keep Trump off the ballot for taking part in an “insurrection”; Ed P. opined that Trump can’t possibly lose the nomination; others disagree; is Trump’s campaign weak because of so much money and attention to his legal issues?

The post The Conservatarian Exchange Podcast #169 appeared first on The Liberty Block.

Affordable Housing Is NH’s Top Economic Problem, Leaders & Voters Agree

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 19:30 +0000

New Hampshire voters rank affordable housing as the state’s No. 1 problem, according to a UNH Survey Center poll released on August 28. State business and political leaders agree, saying housing affordability is the top problem holding back the state’s economy.

“Oh, it’s number one,” Gov. Chris Sununu told Drew Cline, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center, on the WFEA Morning Update. “The lack of housing for middle and lower-income families is absolutely number one because…. Without the housing, you don’t have the employees. Without the employees, the businesses can’t grow. If the businesses can’t grow, then economically everything becomes stagnation.”

In June 2023, housing affordability in the state reached a new record low for the second consecutive month, according to the New Hampshire Association of Realtors. With an affordability index of 61, the state’s median household income was only 61% of what’s necessary to qualify for the median-priced single-family home at current interest rates.

At the same time, median prices for single-family homes in New Hampshire hit their highest point ever at $495,000—an increase of $30,000 from the previous month’s record high. Condos notched a record median price of $400,000 in June too.

Rents are also hitting new heights. The median cost of a two-bedroom apartment soared 11.4% over the past year alone to $1,764 a month.

Despite New Hampshire’s growing economy—ranked fourth overall, third in economic growth, first in economic opportunity, and last in poverty rate by U.S. News & World Report—the state is 36th in housing affordability.

“I would rate housing affordability number one currently among issues or challenges impacting New Hampshire’s economy,” Michael Skelton, president and CEO of the Business & Industry Association (BIA), told the Josiah Bartlett Center.

“It’s unquestionably the single most important problem facing New Hampshire’s economy,” said Jason Sorens, senior research faculty at the American Institute for Economic Research and author of the Josiah Bartlett Center’s landmark 2021 study linking local land-use regulations to the state’s housing shortage.

Several leaders also agree that land-use regulations are a leading cause of the issue.

“Most of the affordability problem is due to local land-use regulations,” Bob Quinn, CEO of the New Hampshire Association of Realtors, concluded. “They increase development costs or eliminate the opportunity to build entirely.”

“Local land-use regulations are certainly part of the issue, on par with NIMBYISM [Not-In-My-Backyard-ism],” Keene Mayor George Hansel said.

It comes down to a problem of supply and demand: Limited supply of housing with steady or increasing demand leads to an increase in prices. By restricting what can be built and where, zoning laws are suppressing the supply of housing, resulting in New Hampshire’s current housing shortage, state housing experts and business leaders say.

“There is simply not enough housing for people to rent in New Hampshire,” Ben Frost, deputy executive director of New Hampshire Housing, said on WMUR.

According to the CATO Institute’s Freedom in the 50 States—an index of personal and economic freedom—New Hampshire ranks 40th in land-use freedom, a product of local land-use regulations obstructing supply.

These zoning regulations include minimum lot size, setback, frontage, minimum square footage, and design requirements, among others—all of which make it difficult to build and/or increase the costs of building.

“We know developers are interested in building more housing and there are generally financing options and capital available to do so, [but] the challenge they most often face is finding a place to build,” BIA’s Skelton observed. “Local land-use regulations and zoning (minimum lot size being the most prominent) and infrastructure (water/sewer, etc.) availability and requirements, to me, are the most significant local regulatory issues impacting what can be built and where.”

As the New Hampshire Zoning Atlas demonstrates, single-family housing is allowed by right on 90% of the state’s 3.6 million acres of buildable land, yet most municipalities don’t allow single-family homes on small lots (less than one acre).

In fact, homes on lots of less than one acre are permitted on only 16% of the state’s buildable land.

The median lot in New Hampshire is 49,223 square feet, according to the Angi U.S. Lot Size Index. This is the second-highest in the country.

In New Hampshire, minimum lot size requirements can exceed dozens of acres. Districts in Groton, New Boston, Peterborough, and New London require lots to be a minimum of 25 acres (1.089 million square feet).

Zooming in on the Greater Manchester Area, 89% of the buildable land in the city and surrounding towns (Auburn, Bedford, Goffstown, Hooksett, Litchfield, Londonderry, and Merrimack) allows single-family housing, but only 33% of that buildable area is open to new single-family homes (after accounting for existing development, vacancies, and growth potential).

Just 21% of Greater Manchester’s buildable land allows single-family homes on small lots. This drops to merely 7.8% when considering only vacant or underdeveloped space.

“It’s not the only factor, but it’s the predominant factor, and it’s easily the most important factor we can actually do something about,” Jason Sorens, the principal investigator on the New Hampshire Zoning Atlas, noted about local zoning laws.

“We can’t do much about steep slopes and poor soils, and expanding sewer and water service takes time and expense. Growing the construction workforce is another lever, but that will take a long time. Local land-use regulations drive at least 50% of the affordability problem, and we can change them,” Sorens added.

Multifamily development is heavily restricted as well. While housing for five or more families is permitted on 44.2% of New Hampshire’s buildable area, only 21% of this land allows these large-family developments on smaller lots.

Reforming a city’s zoning regime can be quite an undertaking. “Keene has dramatically streamlined and rewritten our land-use codes in the last three years,” Mayor Hansel said. “This was an expensive effort, costing more than $500,000 on top of internal staff time devoted to the rewrite effort. Smaller communities, without full-time planning staff, would have a hard time tackling something like that.”

Though some communities might want to avoid a full rewrite, smaller changes such as reducing minimum lot sizes, eliminating overlay districts (zoning districts that overlap original zoning districts), and increasing density limits (how many housing units can be built in a given area) would have significant impact.

Mayor Paul Callaghan offers Rochester as a model for other municipalities looking to make quick progress on this front.

“In 2018 we increased the density allowance in and around our three urban centers (East Rochester, Downton Rochester, and Gonic) to allow for more density (and therefore less cost to developers),” Mayor Callaghan said. “And then in 2019 we did away with density requirements altogether in Downtown Rochester and allowed for some residential units on the ground floor level.”

“The system really works when it’s clicking, and the number one thing holding it all back…is housing,” Gov. Sununu told Cline. “And it isn’t, ‘Well, the government needs to build more housing.’ We’re investing more in housing than we ever have.”

In fact, the 2024–25 state budget spends a record $25 million for the affordable housing fund.

“But the locals need to permit it,” the governor continued. “Local, even small towns, need to talk to their businesses who are struggling to find employees and say, ‘Maybe if we just put five units up here or we let a small multifamily complex with seven, ten units go over here,’ that in itself can just be a game changer for a lot of small businesses in town to make them more economically viable.”

Capturing the full economic extent of the challenge, the governor added, “Everything moves positively when you have the housing and you can bring in the employees.”

 

Mitchell Scacchi | Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy

 

The post Affordable Housing Is NH’s Top Economic Problem, Leaders & Voters Agree appeared first on Granite Grok.

Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

If Black Lives Mattered They’d Be Demanding Reading Proficiency not Reparations

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 18:00 +0000

Ian Underwood has a great article on education priorities. He talks about the goals for which schools and their advocates (parents, lawmakers, taxpayers, society) should strive. That if you teach kids to read, they can then learn anything.

He writes,

 

‘This state should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of bringing 95% of students to a 12th-grade level of proficiency in reading.’

Note that in achieving this goal as a society, we would position students to achieve their own goals as individuals: To create their own bright futures. To attend college, or train for a career, or start a business. To learn more about whatever they want, whenever they want, for the rest of their lives. To be active creators, rather than passive consumers, of public discourse on subjects like tolerance and inclusivity — or taxes, public health and safety, criminal justice, welfare, or any other matter of public policy. They would be able to participate intelligently in the political, economic, and social systems of a free government. And in doing so, help preserve a free government.

 

There is no truer statement you can make about education. A school system that fails to teach reading has failed at everything if education is the point of the exercise. It is the foundation of something I say often: teach them how to learn, not what to learn for which reading is fundamental.

If you can’t read or read well, that system is bankrupt, and declining proficiency scores, especially in inner-city schools, is the greatest crime against minorities.

Black Lives Matter famously grew fat, attaching its name to protests in the interest of minorities, but, in the end, only a handful of them benefited: the organization’s leadership got filthy rich while the lives it claimed mattered found themselves worse off. Black-owned businesses burned, and lives were lost as crime skyrocketed in the wake of direct action in honor of a career criminal who overdosed on Fentanyl.

The Democrat party, and anyone afraid to disagree, lionized George Floyd in the name of making Black Lives Matter, but did any black lives get better? Other than Patrice Cullors and her family, I don’t think they did. But no one was marching to make black lives better. If you wanted that, you’d invest every dime and bit of energy into solving the problem of illiteracy.

The single biggest injustice heaped on any class or race of people anywhere is funding an education system that can’t even teach a kid to read, but that is what has happened, and to hide their failure, they graduate them anyway. And it is not the product of white supremacy, whiteness, or white fragility. It is a direct result of the cabal of Democrat-run cities and teachers’ unions, many of whom, in these places, are minorities who can read.

The face these same people run the police department some claim are so oppressive should not be lost in the debate, but the answer to their failure is to hand you someone else money, but that’s not going to save you from the social cage in which you are kept. Reparations, welfare, free housing, or health care make you slaves. Learning to read can set you free.

And there is indeed no shortage of people who can read and have failed in life (or perhaps have not exactly succeeded). It is also true that we each have our own concept of success and failure. But few, if any, illiterates free themselves from poverty or dependence, not in this generation or the next. It begins with the ability to read.

Given the amount of money or resources directed at public education, there is no excuse for a student with poor or limited reading ability, and this not only continues to be the case, but illiteracy is on the rise.

If you want to protest something and demand change, you should start with the waste, fraud, and abuse of a public education system that spends obscene amounts of money but has denied students the one thing they need more than any other to succeed—the ability to read.

 

 

The post If Black Lives Mattered They’d Be Demanding Reading Proficiency not Reparations appeared first on Granite Grok.

Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Depopulation Speculations

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 16:30 +0000

This started out as an entry in a meme post, but it got long enough – and a truly serious enough topic with a lot to discuss – that IMHO it’s worth making a standalone post.  But first, please do recall my four essays on depopulation:

The 7.3 Billion Dollar, er, Person Question – Liberty’s Torch (libertystorch.info)

Proverbs 16:18… and What’s Coming? – Granite Grok

Dark Thoughts in the Small Hours – Granite Grok

Borrowing from a Dog Food Ad – Urban Scoop

To be read in your “copious free time” of course.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

PREDICTIONS

 

 

In this vein, understand that the central meme of this post, the one that inspired it, just below. is anonymously sourced and unvetted.  Almost by definition considering what it says, I am hoping that this prediction does not come true, and that it is a fabrication.

So here’s that central meme, courtesy of the RebuildNH Discussion Group on Telegram:

 

 

I suggest you read it a couple of times.  In vino + cocaine, veritas?

 

ASSUMING

Now first, two assumptions:

1. That this is an actual and accurate account of a real event / conversation

2. That the coming events discussed are, in fact, in the works and being launched later this year

For the purposes of this essay – again, even as I hope that they’re not true – I’m going to assume the above two things are true.  So the first thing is to note, as Surak often noted back when he was active: They really do want you dead.

 

 

We don’t have to wonder if they want us dead.

WEF-Infiltrated Dutch Gov’t Begins Euthanizing People With Autism, Disabilities, and Alcoholism – The People’s Voice (thepeoplesvoice.tv)

Euthanasia Is Now A Leading Cause Of Death In Canada, And Ethicists Are Freaking Out | The Daily Caller

We now have suicide pods.

Introducing Modern, High-Tech, Self-Assisted Suicide Pods – Yes, They’re Serious – Granite Grok

Inventor dubbed Dr Death unveils grisly ‘suicide booth’ the Sarco Pod that asks three questions before suffocating user | The US Sun (the-sun.com)

And overall a culture of death not valuing human life at all.

‘Somewhere around 10am or 11am she went to an apartment complex on the west side of Dothan and placed a live newborn in a trash compactor,’ he added.

He said officers later found the baby’s remains still in the unemptied dumpster at a landfill site, wrapped in a mattress protector inside a zipped duffel bag.

We see rising “died suddenly” counts with excess deaths being at unprecedented levels.  We know that birth rates are dropping with the Jab having horrific effects on women’s fertilely; sperm counts are falling globally and have been for decades – whether intentionally or purely “serendipitously” (I’d argue both).  Our sedentary lifestyle doesn’t help, when rigorous exercise is a testosterone-production stimulant.  Multiple things seem to be aligning to drop the growth rate of population and – likely – turn that growth negative.  Remember, they want a less populated world.

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/club-of-rome-bearded-guy.mp4

 

Scientist Given Award, Standing Ovation after Anti-Human Diatribe – The Heartland Institute

Much less.

 

 

Certainly fewer surviving children because of the Jab’s effect:

Safe and Effective® – Small Dead Animals

If people choose to have them at all, assuming they’re able to.

My vote is for the lunatics to not have children, that way they are not bringing kids who will be turned into complete mental messes from the scary cult propaganda.

 

DEFINING TERMS

IgG4 antibodies in particular.  Now there are myriad sites defining them, mostly in highly biology-jargon terms, but my understanding from conversations with a couple of people deep into immunology – one with a PhD in it – can be put this way in my layman’s analogy, which they said was accurate:

Imagine you’re in a strange town, you’re hungry, and there’s a crowded-lot tavern that looks appealing.  You go in, and it’s a “bad” bar.  Bikers – real bikers, not the weekend-warrior type.  Other thug types.  They’re all looking at you and all reaching for weapons.  Standing up.  Not a good thing for your long-term health and well-being.

But suddenly an arm descends on your shoulders, and a guy who is clearly known to the crowd says “Hey, don’t worry, this guy’s cool”!  Everyone relaxes.  You go on in and nobody harasses you.

That’s the IgG4 antibody.  Among other factors, it’s why our immune systems don’t go after allergens.

(If I’m wrong in any of the above and someone can point me to correct information, I’ll welcome it.)

But IgG4 antibodies don’t just prevent reactions to allergens like peanuts or pollen – a good thing.  IgG4 antibodies create immune tolerance of the spike protein.  And now, not only do we know that the spike protein is, itself, toxic and immuno-suppressive:

“To that question as well, the immune suppression because of the spike [protein], because of the pseudouridine, it changes patterns of receptors on cells,” said Cole, adding these receptors could enable T cells to fight off all kinds of viruses.

“Now, you don’t have a defense system. This cancer cell can invade over the wall. This pathogen can invade over the wall because your immune system has been suppressed to a degree that allows that to happen. When does that stop? We don’t know. How do we reverse it? We don’t know. Is it happening to everybody? No, thank heavens. Is it happening to a degree that’s alarming? You bet.”

It also appears that people are being found to be producing it over six months after they’ve been Jabbed.  And from the article – RTWT and shudder – this about igG4 antibodies specifically – echoing the above:

Immune tolerance is perfectly acceptable for allergens, irritants that do not replicate and exist persistently. Ignoring allergens, instead of suffering from annoying hay fever, is why immune tolerance is a good response to such environmental irritants as pollen or dust.

However, immune tolerance is deadly when it comes to resisting live, replicating pathogens!

So, do you see how high, permanent levels of IgG4 antibodies related to the Covid virus and its spike protein might not be such a good thing?  Having your immune response downgraded, if not turned off, by igG4 antibodies that this non-sterilizing Jab creates in your body?  Never mind all the other damage we know the Jab and spike proteins do to your immune system?

And what did that meme talk about?  IgG4 antibodies in high density, in a large swath of the population.

Check.  That corroborates.  More importantly, that’s a highly-specific claim that corroborates; after all, how many people even knew what an IgG4 antibody was, let alone knew of its existence, before the above?  I’m a curious, wide-reading sort, and I didn’t know about them until less than a year ago.

 

MORE CHECKMARKS

Geert Bossche: Halt All Covid-19 Mass Vaccination (Open Letter to WHO) (darachi.com)

Geert Vanden Bossche, PhD, DVM, is a vaccine research expert. He has a long list of companies and organizations he’s worked with on vaccine discovery and preclinical research, including GSK, Novartis, Solvay Biologicals, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr Vanden Bossche also coordinated the Ebola vaccine program at GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization).

He is board-certified in Virology and Microbiology, the author of over 30 publications, and inventor of a patent application for universal vaccines. He currently works as an independent vaccine research consultant.

Sounds like a knowledgeable person who would know, right?  So what has he said about this non-sterilizing “vaccine”?  From that same article:

He claims his beliefs are basic principles taught in a student’s first vaccinology class – “One shouldn’t use a prophylactic vaccine in populations exposed to high infectious pressure (which is now certainly the case as multiple highly infectious variants are currently circulating”).

He states that to “fully escape”, the highly mutable virus, “only needs to add another few mutations in its receptor-binding domain”.

He’s not alone in sounding this warning.

 

 

More on that warning:

Luc Montagnier: “They are not vaccines, they are poisons” – Speech to the Luxembourg Parliament • Soul:Ask | Unlock your mind and soul (soulask.com)

(For a little broad history, look at the “conventional wisdom” and how it fared against a Smallpox breakout – and how going against THE SCIENCE was what ended it.  This history aligns with Bossche’s warning about not trying to vaccinate your way out of a pandemic.)

So as an analogy consider chickens and Marek’s disease – a disease for which there is a vaccine, but it’s leaky and non-sterilizing.

Leaky Vaccines Enhance Spread of Deadlier Chicken Viruses (nationalgeographic.com)

This chicken vaccine makes its virus more dangerous | PBS NewsHour

Chickens with the vaccine don’t get sick, but they still spread the virus; they still carry a viral load (sounds familiar).  Meanwhile, the virus evolves fast; getting around any protection the vaccine creates and in the process often become more lethal in that local cluster.

Is the Covid Jab leaky and non-sterilizing?  Yes, to both.

As to fast evolution, in the below video Dr. David Martin talks in front of the EU and says that from 1990-2018 it was universally known that it was fruitless to attempt to create a vaccine against Coronavirus because it mutates too quickly and escapes the ability of a vaccine to block it.  (Watch the whole thing.)

 

David E. Martin talk in the 3rd International Covid Summit | European Union May 2023

 

 

So, in the Jab, we have a non-sterilizing agent that is driving a highly mutable virus’ evolution to evade it.  Paging a human-version of Marek’s disease analogy, anyone?  Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche has predicted:

Is Geert’s Deadly Prediction About to Come True? (substack.com)

Repeated COVID Shots Driving Dangerous Variants, Turbo Cancers • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)

These in turn have subclasses, and one that is central to Geert’s concern is one of the SARS-CoV-2 spike-specific IgG subclasses called IgG4.

So that seems to align with the meme too.  Again, take this with as many grains of salt as you like.  But while I find the prediction outlined above in the “loose lips” meme likely, again, I hope not.  But it would not surprise me if it did happen.  Pray for those you love who have taken The Jab.

 

TWIN IMPLICATIONS

So whether by design or accidentally – and I firmly believe it’s by design – we have billions of people whose immune systems are not just compromised in general through immune disregulation, as Dr. Ryan Cole states:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ryan-cole-on-immune-disregulation.mp4

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ryan-cole-2.mp4

 

but have been “set up” to not react to the Covid virus by IgG4 antibodies specifically.  We also know, through the analogy of Marek’s disease and and natural effects but also, potentially, through possible deliberate engineering (one example) that it’s only a matter of time before a variant emerges that fully escapes the immune response of whatever protection the Jab gives.  This variant, again through both observation of multiple epidemics in humans and animals in the past, will rip through the population.  It will likely have immense virulence – whether through natural reasons or engineering – again, based on history and medical experience.

Billions.  They’re talking billions.  So let’s assume that the three billion estimate is about right.  That’s over one third of the human population right there, dying in such numbers and, presumably, with such a velocity that it will be impossible to keep up with the deaths in an orderly manner.  Captain Trips in real life.  So, too, is the conjecture that with that many people dying in such a short time, many others dependent on a functioning society will also die.  Look left, look right, look in the mirror.  Statistically, one of you three isn’t going to make it.

That aligns with the meme too.  And if it really is deliberate to create death on such a scale?  Chaos will reign.  And into that chaos, hunger, uncertainly, and desperation will step the “benevolent hand” of the Globalists, promising order, stability, and predictability, with just a small little price:

 

(Link to AZQuotes per their policy.)

 

Logic, again, agreeing with the meme.  After all, never let a crisis go to waste.  And, parenthetically, how much more chaos if the news gets out that world governments knew?  If you thought people were chaotic and panicked beforehand as they see people dropping across the world, imagine adding in the idea that their governments had known this was possible and had still pushed forward with multiple Jabs.  Panic, rage, betrayal trauma, and revenge rage.  Politicians being murdered (no great loss IMHO), but also doctors, nurses, pharmacists – you know, the people who we’d need to try and combat this.

We know that there have been forces at work for decades trying to slow down and reverse population growth.  For example, while Dr. Rima Laibow initially struck me as loonie-central when I first saw her, she’s been consistent on this for years and years:

 

Dr Rima – The Globalist Agenda: The Great Culling

 

 

This would definitely fulfil her warnings about the “new aristocrats” wanting to cull the Useless Eaters.  After all, the supposed conversation partner spilling this is one of the uber-rich.  Another checkmark.

We have legions of statements from all sorts saying they want to depopulate the planet.  Paging Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel:

When someone says they want to kill you, believe them.

Especially when they have the means and motive to do so as well.

And one other implication.

If this is being done by design, and there are videos and speeches and text aplenty of people saying we need to reduce the population drastically, this speaks to a genocide on a scale absolutely unheard of save by natural disasters like the Chixalub extinction or, even larger, the Permian extinction.  Except unlike those, this is done knowingly and deliberately, and focused on one species only.  And it speaks to two things:

First, an absolute amorality on the part of those doing this.  Whatever the belief driving it – it could be fear of cliiiiimate dooooooom, or just wanting to get rid of those pesky peasants so the “royalty” have more, or some other reason – it takes a dead soul to be willing to murder, let alone murder on such a scale.  Those people ruling over an abattoir planet would not have human souls, not by any measure I hold dear.  Just remember that they believe they’re doing good.

Second, and I’ve commented on this before, this has been decades and decades in the works.  Countless millions of experiments.  Thousands of scientists over the years, tens if not hundreds of thousands of technicians and lab assistants.  Has nobody broken ranks at a sudden realization of what the end goal is?  If not, why not – what possible hold could be over so many?  Or is it simply that such a thing has been exposed time and again by people who connect the dots, smuggle data and pictures out to blow the whistle, but this happens?

 

 

Certainly, in the main, when I try to talk with people about even a shadow of a scintilla of this I get dismissed with some version of Oh that’s just not possible.  Twenty-niners, all of them (bolding in the original).

Hence my term, “Twenty-Niners”.  People who cannot grasp that anything that could radically change the situation in which they live are actual possibilities, and completely dismiss concerns that others present even when backed by evidence.

Yuri Bezmenov was right.

 

 

CONCLUDING

If, as predicted by the end of 2023 / start of 2024, we’re seeing people dying by the bushel, rushing upwards towards three billion dead from a virulent Covid strain, with doubtless billions more dead as the world falls apart, we’re in trouble.  As an example, recall the Deagel report.  That the US will lose over 200 million of its population by 2025 (though admittedly it doesn’t say HOW – the looming threat of a radioactive-hot war with Russia also plays into consideration)… and it does beg the question of whether this is a prediction or a goal.  Regardless, 100 million Americans was 1914-1915.  We had a functioning country then and – absent other factors – I’m sure we’d pull it together given time.  It’s the getting down to that level – plus inevitable outside machinations – that would be the issue flummoxing the regaining of stability.  But society in general would be wounded spiritually from enduring that.

Also consider that, OOH, the Globalists want us to be pure renewable, but OTOH want to block out the sun because of cliiiimaaaaate doooooooom, so there’s no reliable electricity (as if it’s able to power civilization now) – let alone if they do block the sun there’s unreliable farming or even plant growth.  Imagine the surviving Millenials, etc., trying to cope with the loss of the grid & internet?   Let alone having to forage, farm or – gasp –  milk a cow?

But broadly, there goes America.  There goes Western Civilization and all the others too.

Pray this is not going to happen.  But in vetting and investigating, a great many of the pieces in that meme do line up with outside information.  Enough to worry me greatly.

Prep.  No, you may not survive… but go down trying.

 

I’m not afraid! You will be

 

 

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Andy Sanborn – Scandal, or Normal?

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 15:00 +0000

It may be the case that Andy Sanborn applied for COVID relief money for a business that was not eligible for relief and lied on the application in order to get the money.  If true, that would be scandalous.

Having received money that he didn’t need, he had more money available for personal desires, such as sports cars.  That’s a separate issue, and it is not scandalous at all.  It is the kind of thing that well-to-do parents of school-age children do all the time.

For example, we have a woman in Croydon who owns at least five properties.  How did she pay for all those? Well, every year, the town pays more than $30,000 in tuition for her children — money she could afford to pay but doesn’t. As a result, every year, she has a pile of extra money to spend on her personal desires.

She spends the money on real estate rather than on sports cars, but the principle is exactly the same:  When the government buys something for you, the money you didn’t have to spend — on your employees, on your kids — is yours to do whatever you want with.

Taking money from your fellow citizens under false pretenses?  That’s wrong and illegal.

Forcing your fellow citizens to buy something for you that you could afford to buy for yourself?  That’s wrong, but legal.

Spending the money freed up by government largess on luxuries?  That’s just normal behavior in modern America.  One wonders why it’s taking up so much space in news reports on Sanborn’s activities.

Maybe he should have spent the money on real estate instead.

 

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Biden May Hate Putin, But He’s Well On His Way To Becoming Him

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 13:30 +0000

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!” President Joe Biden yelled as he wrapped up a March 2022 speech in Warsaw. The man in question was Russian President Vladimir Putin. When asked later whether he had just committed to a policy of regime change against a nuclear-armed power, Biden desperately tried to walk back the claim.

“I wasn’t then, nor am I now articulating a policy change. I was expressing moral outrage that I felt,” Biden said a few days after the speech. So intense is the president’s righteous hatred of Putin that he is apparently unable to restrain himself from provoking nuclear war. (RELATED: Biden Claims White House Didn’t Walk Back Europe Comments, Says He Doesn’t ‘Care’ What Putin Thinks)

There are plenty of reasons to hate Putin — such as his ties to the old KGB or the atrocities his military has committed against civilians in Chechnya, Syria, and Ukraine. But perhaps Biden’s revulsion has a deeper, more psychological source.

 


An old Russian proverb, which Putin himself has quoted, warns that “one should not criticize a mirror if you have a crooked face.” Vladimir Putin is a mirror in which Biden sees his own worst impulses reflected back at him. How much of the deformity is in the mirror and how much resides in his own falsely rejuvenated countenance, even Biden himself no longer knows. He cannot bear to look.

There are similarities between Putin’s rise to power at the end of the millennium and Biden’s in 2020. Both offered themselves as safe consensus candidates in an age of political chaos. For Putin, it was the disorder and corruption of post-Soviet Russia under President Boris Yeltsin.

For Biden, the source of the instability was Trumpian populism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the prospect of Bernie Sanders running away with the Democratic nomination.

Both promised to restore faith in democracy. Once power was secure, however, the open hand became a closed fist.

Putin wasted no time in persecuting his enemies. Much has been made of his thuggish assassinations, but Putin’s preferred weapon is the legal system. Six months after he took office, media magnate and Putin critic Vladimir Gusinsky found himself charged with fraud and forced to flee the country. Boris Berezovsky, a lawmaker and billionaire who helped fund Putin’s rise before turning against him, also became the target of a fraud investigation. He fled to the United Kingdom in 2000. Oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky called for political reforms. In response, Putin’s government investigated him for corruption, destroyed most of his net worth by freezing shares of his energy company, and finally threw him in prison.

And it’s not just the wealthy and powerful who have reason to fear Putin’s courts. When members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot staged a blasphemous anti-Putin protest outside a Russian Orthodox cathedral in 2012, three members of the group got two-year prison sentences.

Biden’s administration has taken similar steps against his enemies, arresting not just his predecessor and likely 2024 opponent Donald Trump, but also the lawyers who advised him. When Elon Musk bought Twitter and refused to play the Biden admin’s censorship game, he quickly found his company SpaceX, which depends largely on government contracts, facing a DOJ lawsuit for failing to hire enough asylum seekers. Pretexts can always be found.

 

 

Biden is just as defensive of America’s state religion as Putin is of Russia’s. And his Justice Department is just as willing to crush any who dissent. His FBI spies on parents who go to school board meetings to complain about transgenderism. The same bureau sent a SWAT team to terrorize a father who dared to defend his son against a psychotic pro-abortion radical. On Tuesday, a federal court found five activists guilty after they peacefully blockaded an abortion clinic. Each could face up to 11 years in prison. (RELATED: Jury Finds Pro-Life Activists Guilty After 2020 Abortion Clinic Protest)

In neither case, however, does the leader’s zeal for law and order extend to himself and his allies. Before his meteoric rise in Moscow, Putin did work for St. Petersburg’s mayor, who was closer to organized crime than government bureaucracy. And yet, when he became president, every investigation into those activities quietly vanished.

Similarly, when allegations emerged that Biden and his son Hunter had engaged in corrupt dealings with overseas business partners, U.S. Attorney David Weiss found himself facing pressure to drop the investigation. It’s only thanks to two brave whistleblowers and one eagle-eyed judge that the case hasn’t been buried alive.

Putin has been accused of rigging elections in his own favor. In the 2021 legislative elections, for example, one estimate suggests that Putin’s tame United Russia party inflated its share of the vote by nearly 20 percent.

But again, Biden is in danger of becoming that which he despises. In 2020, he convinced his old friends in the intelligence community to sign their names to lies in order to suppress the unflattering story of his son’s sordid laptop. Once in power, he quickly moved to enshrine in federal law the COVID-era early and mail-in voting expansions some states had implemented. He knew he wouldn’t have won without them. Only principled opposition from Biden’s fellow Democrats stopped this scheme to create a permanent one-party state.

Putin, we heard ad nauseam throughout most of the Trump administration, interferes in foreign elections. What, then, are we to make of Biden, whose Agency for International Development is subsidizing anti-Orbán media outlets and NGOs in Hungary and who oversaw, as vice president, the coup that illegally deposed Ukraine’s duly elected leader? (RELATED: The Real Reason The Democrats Are Determined To Punish Hungary)

Speaking of Ukraine, perhaps the greatest objection to equating Putin with Biden is that Putin is a bloodthirsty imperialist and Biden is not. But is that the case? Biden inherited and continues to pursue a policy of aggressive NATO expansion. Considering the breakdown of military expenditures, it would not be a stretch to describe NATO as an American empire of sorts. Putin’s invasion was an act of unjustified aggression, but at any point, the U.S. could have averted it by pledging not to admit Ukraine to the alliance.

 

 

Biden could also have prevented the war by deploying 100,000 U.S. troops to Ukraine. Putin wouldn’t have dared to fire on American soldiers. But that wouldn’t do. From Biden’s point of view, the primary utility of the war in Ukraine is that it kills Russians. The longer and bloodier it is, the better. (RELATED: Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Hasn’t Gone As Well As Expected. Here’s Why)

Arming Ukraine in the early months of the invasion, when the defenders strove to halt and then turn back the Russian onslaught, was an admirable act. Eighteen months later, American support looks less heroic. Instead of pushing for a just peace or sending Ukraine what it needs to win, we provide just enough material to ensure that waves of Ukrainian infantry keep dragging themselves across Russian minefields to hurl themselves against Russian fortifications.

Biden surely knows that Ukraine is unlikely to secure total victory. The president’s true goal is to blunt the military might of a geopolitical rival. His allies even brag about how cheaply they’ve been able to do it. Cheaply, that is, from an American perspective. For the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian parents who will receive their children back maimed or in boxes, I imagine it feels quite costly.

Setting aside the justice of the cause, which is more noble? To order one’s own countrymen into the hell of modern combat? Or to pay a country halfway around the world to do your fighting and dying for you?

Grayson Quay is an editor at the Daily Caller.

 

Grayson Quay | Daily Caller News Service

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline, and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

A Win for The Little People – A Warning to the Bureaucracy

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 12:00 +0000

The state of Virginia used to threaten residents with revocation of their driver’s license if they failed or refused to pay court fines or fees. Any fee of fine regardless of offense. The law has been changed, but not before a lawsuit was filed, and the plaintiffs were left holding the bag full of legal fees.

 

“In July 2016, a lawsuit was filed against the DMV, alleging that the automatic suspensions violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of due process and equal protection.

 

If you were too economically challenged to afford to pay a fee or fine, you would also lose your ability to drive legally.

 

The complaint charged that many people lost their licenses through being too poor to pay fines, “effectively depriving them of reliable, lawful transportation necessary to get to and from work, take children to school, keep medical appointments, care for ill or disabled family members, or, paradoxically, to meet their financial obligations to the courts,” Rutherford explained.

 

The state legislature changed the law while the case meandered through the legal system. The Department of Motor Vehicles could no longer revoke licenses on these grounds, so it claimed it could no longer be held responsible for any violations of rights or the court costs required to regain them. The Legislature fixed it. We’ll be on our way.

Not so fast, says the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

 

“If the government is allowed to avoid the financial liabilities associated with violating the Constitution, it will violate the Constitution for as long as it can get away with it,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of “Battlefield America: The War on the American People.”

“Such a practice cripples the ability of the citizenry, especially the poor and vulnerable, to effectively seek protection from the courts and hold the government accountable.”

 

I am reminded of the City of Nashua and Laurie Ortolano’s ongoing battle concerning Right to Know requests. She asks for public documents. The city does everything it can not to provide them. She brings them to court, and it’s expensive. Laurie happens to have the means to hold the Mayor and City accountable. Still, most people have neither the resources, the patience, or the hours required to wait out the expensive crapstorm the bureaucracy is prepared to bring at taxpayer expense.

To them, money is no object. They want what they want, and to hell with the rest of it. And since it’s not their money, why would they care?

In most instances, they don’t. And quite often, insurance covers the costs, but not always. Oberlin College famously lost a lawsuit filed by Gibson’s Bakery, resulting in a settlement amounting to just over 36 million dollars. Oberlin had played fast and loose with one of its pet Woke-a-sarus, whose direct action resulted in a defamation suit the College lost. Their insurers are refusing to reimburse the Liberal Arts school, which, regardless of the outcome of their lawsuit to get that money, will likely have trouble with coverage and rising costs.

They’ll pass them along to the wealthy parents of students who attend in the tuition, but repeated court losses could make it difficult to buy coverage.

Municipalities rarely find themselves in that situation. The well or “revenue” is unlimited – in their minds – and it is easy to blame one persistent citizen (like Ortolano) for increased costs (paying unnecessary court and legal fees) when the real problem is the government’s refusal to follow the law.

The 4th Circuit has handed down a ruling, while different in some respects, that touches the foundation of the common problem. The government will always try to punish you to its advantage and then use itself as an excuse not to pay for the trouble they created.

In the Virginia Case (Stinnie V. Holcomb), the ‘State’ didn’t escape the cost of its cavalier misfeasance. The court agreed with The Rutherford Institute, which “warned that allowing the DMV to avoid fiscal accountability would encourage further constitutional mischief by the government.

Not that one case in one Circuit Court, or even the highest court, will slow the roll of every deep-state stooge from inside the beltway to your backwater berg. But it’s a start.

 

HT | WND

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

BRICS: The Acronym Is Not Growing, But It’s Power Is

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 10:30 +0000

I have written about BRICS in the past, but their latest activity requires a closer look. BRICS is an alliance formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to create an international monetary system and currency based on the gold standard.

In recent weeks, six more countries have joined BRICS. These new members are Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The latest additions to BRICS bring the current membership to eleven countries, including some of the world’s largest economies and producers of oil. The primary goal of BRICS is to be the dominant global economy by 2050 and to make the BRICS currency the exclusive monetary system for petroleum trade, replacing the dollar. If successful, this bloc of countries will make the U.S. Dollar insignificant in the global economy and severely damage our economic value.

If this growth trend with BRICS continues, America will be forced to continue buying oil from OPEC but must convert dollars to BRICS currency to pay for our petroleum needs. We will no longer be able to use dollars to pay for our national debt or print money as needed. Our economy, and therefore our national security, will be in tremendous jeopardy with very little recourse.

Three years ago, we were energy independent and actually exporting oil and natural gas. If this condition continued, we would not be in a position to be negatively impacted by BRICS. Unfortunately, Joe Biden killed our energy dominance on his first day, bringing us back to buying oil from OPEC, Venezuela, and other unfavorable countries. BRICS will further complicate our energy needs and purchases, and the blame for this situation lies entirely at Joe Biden’s feet.

As the BRICS leaders met in Johannesburg, President Joe Biden’s administration renewed promises to step up funding for the developing world through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. As usual, the Democrat response to any threat is to throw money at it.

Washington publicly played down the BRICS expansion, saying that countries can choose their partners. Sullivan, noting the vast policy differences among the nations, earlier told reporters, “We are not looking at the BRICS as evolving into some kind of geopolitical rival to the United States or anyone else.”

Biden and the Democrats do not see BRICS as a problem that needs to be addressed directly. These are the same people who scoffed at Mitt Romney for calling Russia our greatest geopolitical foe. These people are no longer laughing as we spend billions to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. NATO countries are on high alert against a possible Russian expansion of its Ukraine assault.

Those of us who have been critical of Joe Biden look at the possibility that Biden’s hands are tied because of his illegal money laundering scheme, including money from Russia and China. Biden’s poor policies continue to hurt us at home, and his illicit activity with his son Hunter is hurting us globally.

We must continue monitoring BRICS, note the countries that join the pact, and reverse course on our energy programs. Joe Biden is not concerned about any of these and gives us another reason not to provide Joe with another four years in the White House.

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Victor Davis Hanson – ‘If I Told You Ten Years Ago …’

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 01:30 +0000

Victor Davis Hanson has a video that looks to be about a week old, titled, ‘We’ve Never Seen Anything Like This.’ In it, he catalogs the things about America today framed around the idea that if he’d said they would be true ten years ago, you’d think he was just wrong or crazy.

But they are all true.

Our new reality is outlined thoroughly with the understanding that not that long ago, it would have been absurd to suggest. Hanson rightly defines the period from Obama today as a cultural revolution and then makes a note of a handful of folks who are pushing back. People we should listen to and follow (he doesn’t mention us, but that’s okay because we feel like we’re part of the solution).

“We really need people to speak out. It doesn’t matter what party or what ideology, this country has so much potential…”

 

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

“Debanking”: The Latest Assault on Freedom of Speech

Granite Grok - Sun, 2023-09-03 00:00 +0000

Threats to freedom of speech and efforts to suppress dissenting views and voices have been on the rise over the past decades. They were exponentially intensified since the ascent of social media, and as the political polarization in the West truly took hold of our societies, the powers that be have been using any and all tools at their disposal to “defend” the interests of the establishment against those who might try to publicly question its policies (or even worse, its purpose).

Many of us who have been keeping tabs on restrictions on all kinds of individual freedoms have been aware of this dangerous trend for quite some time already. However, it was during the covid crisis that it became obvious to a lot more people too. Anyone reluctant to fully embrace and follow the state’s edicts and “science-based rules” (which, if you recall, kept changing from week to week) was, at best, branded a “denier” or, at worst, actually arrested in some jurisdictions.

We saw dramatic evidence of that extreme response coming from China, Australia, and the United States, among other places. That’s to say nothing of countless other cases of people who lost their jobs or were denied access to basic public services.

Apart from those “straightforward” scenarios of punishment and retribution, though, there were other instances that were much more subtle and indirect. The story of the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” stands out as a solid example of how the banks themselves can be weaponized in the war on dissent. Individuals who supported the antilockdown convoy with donations found their bank accounts frozen, without any warning or due process. This was (or at least should have been) a serious wake-up call for all freedom-loving citizens, whether they agreed with the protesters’ views at the time or not.

Fast-forward to this July, when the “debanking” scandal of Nigel Farage made international headlines. The story, involving political angles, the banking sector, and the mainstream media, was very illuminating, and it revealed just how far establishment forces are willing to go to silence those who disagree with them. The bank at the heart of the scandal is the 330-year-old private bank Coutts, which is owned by NatWest, which in turn happens to have the United Kingdom government as its biggest shareholder following its taxpayer-funded bailout in 2008.

Mr. Farage’s Coutts account was summarily closed without any explanation. When he publicly insisted that it was due to his political beliefs, the bank shrugged him off, while the BBC went on to publish reports suggesting that the move had nothing to do with his ideology. Instead, according to the public broadcaster, it was the state of his finances that was to blame—his account supposedly had fallen below a certain threshold. Mr. Farage didn’t take long to hit back: he obtained a forty-page dossier from the bank exposing internal communications and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that his allegations were justified.

The documents showed that Coutts’s reasons for the account closures were his support for Brexit and Donald Trump and his “transphobic” and “xenophobic” views, among many other beliefs that he had expressed that were not “compatible with Coutts.” As Mr. Farage himself highlighted, “This story is not just about me. You could be next . . . if this situation is left unchecked, we will sleepwalk towards a China-style social credit system in which only those with the ‘correct’ views are allowed to fully participate in society.”

Indeed, the story clearly struck a nerve with the general public, and it quickly snowballed into an industry-wide and soon nationwide cause of outrage. The BBC had to apologize, and the CEO of NatWest, Dame Alison Rose, was forced to resign, but that wasn’t enough to appease all those who finally realized the disproportionate and largely illegitimate and unchecked power that banks can have over their customers.

As the Financial Times reported, “It raised wider questions about the ability of banks to remove accounts without explanation, leaving them or their small businesses cut off from the mainstream financial system. In an increasingly cashless world, having a bank account has become an essential service. David Davis, former Brexit secretary, likens closing someone’s bank account to cutting off their water or electricity supply. ‘You should be able to get a bank account regardless of your political views, whether you are a communist or a fascist,’ he says.”

The key takeaway from all this, however, is not this particular story itself. It would not be wise to regard it as an isolated incident or as something that could only ever affect account holders that have a high profile or a large audience. To the contrary, if it can be done to Nigel Farage, it can be done to anyone.

The lesson to be learned is that the threat is posed by the banking system itself, and that is why it is more important than ever to rethink your own financial structure and your plan. Keeping part of your savings outside the banking system and in physical precious metals is the only reliable way to protect yourself against the whims and trespasses of both governments and banks.

 

Claudio Grass | Mises Wire

Claudio Grass is a Mises Ambassador and an independent precious metals advisor based out of Switzerland. His Austrian approach helps his clients find tailor-made solutions to store their physical precious metals under Swiss law. ClaudioGrass.ch.

Mises Wire We heartily encourage reprints and shares of Mises Wire articles. If you wish to reproduce an article in your blog, magazine, radio show, newspaper column, classroom material, textbook, discussion group, website, or any other venue, please do so. The original publication source must be included in an appropriate place.

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Climate Committee Says Don’t Run Electric Heat Pumps at Night

Granite Grok - Sat, 2023-09-02 22:30 +0000

Climate Change isn’t just about changing the climate outside. It is about you changing the climate inside becasue of their claims about the climate outside. It is undoubtedly a mental disorder, but the inmates running the asylum will not be persuaded to stop the madness.

If you’d like another example,

 

The U.K.’s Climate Change Committee, an independent statutory body established under the 2008 Climate Change Act and tasked with hectoring the nation over emissions targets, has urged millions of families not to heat their homes at night, reported the Telegraph.

In its “Sixth Carbon Budget” paper advising Parliament on the “volume of greenhouse gases the UK can emit during the period 2033-2037,” the CCC, which sets legally binding limits, implored households with electric-powered heating systems, including heat pumps, to shut off their radiators in the evening.

 

I find this fascinating in light of the current trajectory of the climate plan in neighboring Vermont. They are committed to moving everyone to electric heating systems and heat pumps despite the costs and lack of available power production to run them (faux-clean or otherwise). The UK, which has been a committed resident in this ‘green’ asylum for longer, though not much, puts it further along the inevitable path to failure, and they sound a lot like California, whose policies Vermont is aping. ‘Don’t charge your EV at night, turn off or turn down your AC – there isn’t enough electricity for the electrified future we’ve forced upon you.

 

What to some might come off as coercive social engineering, the CCC simply calls “behaviour change.”

Similar proposals, which in practice look like wartime rationing, have been advanced and executed in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California. However, in the case of California, the Independent System Operator had to call upon consumers to ration power because the state’s shift to renewable energy has left it with an unstable power grid and sporadic blackouts.

 

And despite all the trillions spent on wind and solar and this or that, you must not use the things we told you to use to save the planet … to save the planet.

Have you got that, especially in places that have not yet leaped off the cliff with only the promise that we will probably sprout green wings (and learn how to use them) before hitting the bottom?

Not likely, and we’ve posited that they all know this and don’t care. People emit CO2 as well, and a few billion fewer is as much a priority to those who aren’t worried you might freeze to death in your sleep.

So you will switch to heat pumps and switch them off when we say, or they will use those smart meters they made you get and do it for you.

Tyranny will, after all, always require a monopoly on the resources in decline due to its policies.

 

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Warning to Parents: They Are Trying to Turn Your Public School Into a Mental Health Clinic

Granite Grok - Sat, 2023-09-02 21:00 +0000

We already know that Keene State BHII is under Contract with The New Hampshire Department of Education to develop a report for the Federal Government on the Multi-Tiered System of Support. The MTSS-B is a mental health system now set up in schools across New Hampshire.

We also know that personally identifiable mental health information on students is being shared with BHII without parental knowledge or consent. That means that mental health PII has been shared by many New Hampshire Schools without the knowledge or consent of the students or their parents.

Anita Hoge is one of the nation’s leading researchers in education policies and laws. Several years ago, she warned about the medicalization of our public schools and how that would be tied to Medicaid. In addition, schools would be turned into mental health clinics where personal mental health information on students would be shared without parental consent.

Hoge recently updated what is happening in schools across the country. It’s a SERIOUS warning to all parents who have children in a public school.

As one ex-military officer warned me the other day, all it takes is a visit to a mental health counselor, and that could end the dreams of a student who wants to go into the military.

This is a must-read for everyone: Biden Expands ObamaCare For Mental Health Services at Schools to Psychoanalyze Children 0 to 21

EXCERPT:
WARNING: Your Neighborhood School Is Being Set-Up As A School Based Clinic To Bill Medicaid So That All Children Can Be Psychoanalyzed For Health/Mental Health Services At School.

This was the only way to identify ALL CHILDREN for the social and emotional programming under Universal Screening in a Tier I intervention program like Positive Behavior Intervention Supports, PBIS. Now, all children can be screened, observed, and interventions applied WITHOUT PARENTAL PERMISSION according to the new Medicaid Biden/Harris regulations. Teachers are being trained through special education cadres (IDEA) to screen, observe, and collect behavioral and psychological data on your children. Teachers enter this data into a local teacher dashboard, transmitted to state and a national data base called the state longitudinal data system at the National Center for Education Statistics, NCES. And, now schools will be paid Medicaid dollars to do it.

What parents are NOT being told is the end product of Medicaid billing at school. DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, will be used to code your child that will be billed to Medicaid. A behavioral or mental health disability/disorder will clearly be stated on your child’s permanent record that will last their lifetime. Do teachers, healthcare workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers really understand what they are doing? Remember, the Pennsylvania EQA was administered for 20 years before I had the test removed. (See Part 2) Most teachers had no concept of what the test was measuring or why the state wanted this psychological information. Questions remain why teachers are not acknowledging that social and emotional data that they collect and enter into their computers to observe children and implement interventions to mold a child’s personality is government approved surveillance. How are personality traits scored? Knowingly or not, we are able to prove this agenda is moving forward at warp speed. What will parents do about it? What is the future?

 

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Elected Democrats Left on Twitter Will Be Fleeing the Platform – Elon Musk to Eliminate Blocking

Granite Grok - Sat, 2023-09-02 19:30 +0000

The long-standing debate about whether legislators are breaking the law (I think they are) when they block constituents on Twitter is about to become a non-question, not just because they don’t call it Twitter anymore.

The debate started before Trump got kicked off Twitter, but the point is that, as usual, Demcorats did precisely the opposite of the thing they claimed to champion. The courts said President Trump could not block constituents (and they cheered), but Dems did it as often and quickly as they pleased (blocking constituents), even after that decision.

I agree with the courts, but that didn’t stop Dems and more than a few Republicans from blocking anyone they deemed trollish or harassing – which includes asking questions about support for taxes or their voting record.

If it is your personal non-political stream, assuming you have separated them, then fine, block and mute at will. But if that is the only online access to you as an elected official on that platform, sorry – no joy. It would be best to endure the trolls because it comes with the position, though it may soon no longer matter on Elon’s Platform.

‘X,’ which I still pronounce as “Twitter,” will be making more changes, one of which is the end of blocking.

 

It’s been almost two weeks since Musk announced his intentions to remove the blocking function from every aspect of X aside from direct messaging.

While this has not yet come to fruition, it could mean that users will not be able to limit who they interact with online.

This was met with floods of concern from X users, with many fearful of harassment and scams.

 

I sense that Musk will look at the problem when it raises its head and search for solutions other than blocking, though I am thoroughly unqualified to tell you what that might look like. Or maybe not. It might just cost them users, not just legislators or other public officers who can no longer escape pointed questions, inconvenient truths, or the digital equivalent of having rotten vegetables thrown at you online.

I’ve never blocked anyone on any social media account (that I recall), so I couldn’t care less. I find trolls amusing sources of content for these pages and, when inspired, will goad them or egg them on with a series of statements or questions until they’ve more or less written the post for me.

GraniteGrok has banned Disqus users, but the range of offenses there are few. Implied or actual threats of violence against a person or group or persistent harassment of other commenters can get you booted. Vulgar language (which we will edit out, but only to a point). And the rare off-topic, out-of-left-field trolls. If you can’t stay on topic and make your point without being a villainous douchebag, we’ve no time for you. Otherwise, play ball. But that is a private website comment policy in a world where fewer media sites even allow comments and not a recognized digital square.

X (is it pronounced Eks?) is a fast-paced news, information, and opinion aggregator. It’s everything about everyone, all the time. And if you happen to be in elected office or working on the taxpayer dime, your presence comes with expectations, and one of them is that you have to listen to the public.

That seems to me to be enough to get any number of folks fleeing any platform where they cannot hide in their partisan bubble, so watch to see who jumps ship. I’m sure you’ll be able to link more than a few of them to either the Democrat Party or their RINO water-carrying brethren.

 

Update: It wasn’t quite ready when it went live, so I cleaned it up a bit after publication.

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

When A School Board Member Actually Puts Kids First

Granite Grok - Sat, 2023-09-02 18:00 +0000

Curt Hier, a public school history teacher and debate coach for thirty-five years who now runs a business helping students get into college, was elected to the Slate Valley School Board this past March. Hier’s background gives him more insight into the actual workings of the public school system than the average school board member has, as well as personal relationships with students and teachers. Hier ran for office intent on fixing problems – something that has since put him at odds with the public education bureaucracy.

One immediate problem Hier brought to the attention of the school board was a teacher with an alleged history of physically assaulting students, including one incident that involved pushing a student with severe disabilities over a chair.

Another involved the “resignation” of a well-liked special education teacher, who Hier says was given an ultimatum of “quit or be fired” because she refused to sign off on false paperwork regarding what special education services students were actually receiving. According to Hier, he suspects that the school administration wanted to falsely report that some students were receiving special education services when, in fact, they were not in order for the school to keep receiving the higher levels of special ed funding. The teacher wouldn’t play ball, so was given an offer she couldn’t refuse, as the saying goes.

When school officials, the superintendent, and his fellow school board members seemed more intent on burying Hier’s concerns in a quagmire of bureaucratic stonewalling and memory holing, he took them public in letters to the editor of his local papers and on social media, and began his own investigations, including multiple FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests regarding the incidents in question.

This led to students, ex-students and parents sharing their own stories of corruption, mistreatment, and incompetence in the school district, including a new area of concern for Hier regarding allegations of harmful “seclusion and restraint” incidents (ie. locking kids in closets euphemistically called “Blue Rooms”) – a problem that is so horrific and becoming so pervasive in Vermont’s public schools that legislation was introduced in 2023 (H.409) to ban the practice.

Hier suspects that these incidents are happening in his school district more often than is being reported – which in and of itself is a violation of state law.

(BTL covered this story back in March. See: Yes, public schools should not lock five-year-olds in closets.)

It also led to Hier’s fellow school board members calling for his resignation because, well, no good deed goes unpunished. (He’s not resigning, happy to say!) And, in a formal letter to the school board, Superintendent Brooke Olsen-Farrell opined, “I am gravely concerned about one individual board member’s behavior, that of Curtis Hier. It is my opinion that he is purposefully and relentlessly trying to destabilize the school district, create unrest, ‘harassing’ employees and striking fear in an organization.”

Well, yeah, if the organization has been physically abusing children and defrauding the taxpayers I can see where they might be in fear of someone shining a light on their improprieties. Where’s my world’s smallest violin?

The school board chair at their July 31 meeting reprimanded Hier, “Curt, you openly boast on social media that you’re a board member just trying to make a difference… and you have, in a very negative way. Many school board members feel unsettled by your presence. Current and former staff have expressed concern that they might be your next target…. The two primary goals for our superintendent are to increase staff retention and improve school culture. Curt, your assertions have eroded the trust of staff, depleted the morale of leadership, and called into question the integrity of the superintendent… directly undermining her ability to achieve these goals.”

But, as Hier pointed out in a social media post, the superintendent was not doing a stellar job in meeting those goals even before his inquiries began. Per Public School Review, the Slate Valley Union District has only 26% of its student population doing math proficiently, and just 41% reading proficiently, which puts the district in the bottom half of performers statewide.

Perhaps what is undermining student outcomes, and leading to poor morale and a lack of trust from the community is a failure of leadership to address – or even acknowledge — the concerns Hier is raising (and probably a number he is not). I for one am grateful Curt is sticking to his guns and continuing to blow those whistles.

Unfortunately, while Hier’s decision to put kids before politics is somewhat unique in our education landscape, the problems he is shining a light on are not. Student scores in Vermont have been dropping for over a decade, mental health problems for students have been on the rise along with violence in classrooms, and proper staffing to deal with these issues isn’t there.

The system is a hot mess. A dumpster fire. Choose your favorite metaphor for disaster. We need more Curt Hiers out there putting pressure on our school officials to come clean about what’s really happening inside those buildings so that the problems can be solved.

A story today in VT Digger detailing how the Alburgh School Board issued a vote of no confidence in their superintendent due to “about a dozen Alburgh students … not receiving special education services and had not even been assigned to special educators,” gives me hope that this is a growing trend.

 

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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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Massachusetts Illegal Alien State of Emergency Update: Healey Calls Up the National Guard!

Granite Grok - Sat, 2023-09-02 16:30 +0000

Less than a month ago, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency. The problem? Progressive policy met reality on her doorstep: more illegal aliens than she knows what to do with, so they’ve been stuffing them into local shelters, hotels, and motels.

Related: Massachusetts Has a State of Emergency, but It Is Not the One They Think …

She can’t pull a Martha’s Vineyard, which did its impression of Survivor last year when it frog marched 48 of them into transports and “off the island” – probably to Mainland Massachusetts, but that is a fraction of the bodies milling about The Bay State as a result of Biden’s borderless America.

Healey has called up more than 200 National Guardsmen to guard the illegals.

 

“Massachusetts is in a state of emergency, and we need all hands-on deck to meet this moment and ensure families have access to safe shelter and basic services,” Healey said Thursday. “We’re grateful to the brave men and women of the National Guard for stepping up to help us ensure that every family in emergency shelter has their needs met, including access to food, transportation, medical care, and education. While we work to implement a more permanent staffing solution, the National Guard will provide an efficient and effective means of delivering these services and keeping everybody safe.”

 

Armed guards for the “new arrivals” when they should probably be deployed to the border to stop the invasion. But Democrats like open borders, third-world disease, human trafficking, more fentanyl sneaking in, and, of course, the thousands of military-aged Chinese men who are arriving dressed in similar clothing with nearly identical backpacks.

Nothing to see here.

How about a nice hotel room, free food, and a cell phone? Can we get you anything else? Would you like a wake-up call? Healey just got one, but she can’t even begin to suggest that her problem, which has no hope of getting better and every expectation of getting worse, could be solved if Joe Biden installed the border wall sections and enforced it instead of selling them and us out to the highest bidder.

 

 

HT | Daily Wire

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

America’s Farmerless Farming Future?

Granite Grok - Sat, 2023-09-02 15:00 +0000

Farmers have steadily declined as a share of the American workforce since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, undermined by technological advances, regulatory strictures, and industry consolidation in farming.

Larger farms on ever-pricier land bar new entrants, and a handful of corporations are increasing their domination of food production. Both farm operators and migrant workers are aging, while globalists push unnatural industrial food substitutes that can be grown in a lab without hands in the field.

Technology has always illusorily made big promises to farmers, keeping the downsides in the shadows. The reality is that tractors have compacted soils; plows have tilled lands into erosion and water loss; chemicals, synthetic fertilizers, and confinement feed operations have replaced traditional husbandry.

In an odd parallel, humanity has irrevocably and abruptly shifted from a balanced agriculture where people were tied through communities to one another, their plants and livestock, and the soil, water, and sun that sustained them. What was hitherto achieved through clean, renewable solar power (blades of grass and grain fueled by photosynthesis) is now accomplished by technology. Moderns embrace a machine-dependent technocratic agriculture, subduing endless horizons with computer-guided titanic tractors to be one day, we are told, powered by factory-manufactured solar panels.

From solar to solar, from life to machine. Imagine what the next leap in food production will be, as artificial intelligence softly smooths the covers for humanity to lie down in techno-dependency. We are reaching beyond slavery to that unthinkable time when a man is no longer valued for his labor and has become superfluous.

Farmer Attrition

As machines and corporate greed have destroyed local, small-scale agriculture, farmers have diminished in numbers. The hangers-on are crook-kneed and wrinkling: The average age of American farmers is now 60. More people have been switching to farming careers, but even there, the average was 46.3 years in the 2017 Census, and new farms are more likely to be smaller in size.

Farming is a high-capital, low-margin enterprise, favoring older landowners with accumulated funds. Inflation and demand have pushed farmland prices up more than 7% a year recently, discouraging many would-be growers. Consequently, in 2019, some one-third of America’s 3.4 million farmers were over 65, and nearly another million were over 55. Lands, factories, and feedlots consolidate ever larger as the pool of land stewards shrivels.

Migrant Farmworkers Aging Too

This contraction of the human portion of the food-producing chain is limited not only to principal operators but also to migrant labor. In 2012, the average age of an American farmworker was 36. The National Center for Farmworker Health stated that “the age of agricultural workers in the United States has been increasing since 2000”: 17% are between 14-24 compared to 35% in 1999-2000, and 14% are over 55, compared to merely 5% in 1999-2000. It is not just expensive land prices discouraging farm labor but rapid mechanization.

Notwithstanding calls for better wages for migrant labor, few consumers appreciate that many farmers work not only for less than minimum wage but also, at times, a negative wage. When milk or other farm product prices plummet, family farmers (not their paid workers) must absorb higher costs and keep feeding animals that are losing money minute by minute.

Indeed, for much of the past century, family farmers have suffered through a real-life Steinbeckian tragedy. The US Department of Agriculture reported:

“The reduction in self-employed and family labor through 1990 was more rapid than the decline in hired labor. According to data from the Farm Labor Survey (FLS) of USDA’s National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS), the number of self-employed and family farmworkers declined from 7.60 million in 1950 to 2.01 million in 1990, a 74-percent reduction. Over this same period, the average annual employment of hired farmworkers — including on-farm support personnel and those who work for farm labor contractors — declined from 2.33 million to 1.15 million, a 51-percent reduction. As a result, the proportion of hired workers has increased over time.”

Both migrant farm workers and farm operators/owners are getting older, and corporations and mechanization continue to seize the day – and the food supply. Many young people seek to return to the land and turn the soil to turn a profit. This is especially visible since COVID and at least partly explains the rising prices for rural agricultural plots as San Francisco and Portland real estate prices head for the manure pile. Policies could instead be fashioned to secure a next generation not of GMOs and macabre splicing of plant-animal-microbe genes but good old-fashioned pitchfork-in-hand American Gothic land stewards.

Foreign Farming Dependency?

The crisis of American farmer attrition isn’t some quaint nostalgia for a Little House on the Prairie idealism but a practical economic, cultural, and health matter. One contributor to farm-income decline is globalization and increasing foreign food dependency. The USDA reported:

“In 2023, net farm income is expected to decrease by 18.2 percent relative to 2022. Farm production expenses are projected to increase 11.0 percent in 2022 relative to 2021 and 1.3 percent from 2022 to 2023 … Total U.S. agricultural trade rose to record levels in 2021. U.S. agricultural exports were valued at $177 billion in 2021, an 18 percent increase relative to 2020. Imports grew by almost 17 percent in 2021 to $171 billion. While the United States typically exports more agricultural goods by value than it imports, from 2012–21, imports grew more rapidly than exports.”

Fostering dependency on foreign, corporate-dominated, highly consolidated, processed, techno-dependent foods shipped long distances threatens food security and international competitiveness. Policies that favor large corporate producers only add to this dependency, especially subsidies for monoculture crops like corn, wheat, and soy. To reverse this dangerous trend, regulatory, tax, and fiscal benefits could be offered to new market entrants, particularly for the acquisition and retention of fertile farmlands, many of which are being lost to development or lapsing into forest-growing carbon sequestration (grasslands sequester far more carbon than trees, and beef tastes better than cordwood!).

Bill Gates is not accumulating farmland so he can tool around in his cardigan on a John Deere tractor practicing inorganic farming. He advocates for bug diets imposed by regulatory fiat, fake meat made of GMO soy, and calf fetal tissue (for which he owns the patents), preserved with his unappealing APEEL (another patent). If Americans don’t want Bill determining what’s for supper, they had better incentivize some young hands to tend the land pronto – from sea to shining sea, with ample waves of grain.

 

John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And Regular Contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.

 

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

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