Tuesday • November 26 • 2024
Vol.XVI • No.XLVIII
Manchester, N.H.
No President in the history of the United States has achieved as much in his first three years in his first term in office as President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, no President in the history of America has been subjected to such incessant vile and unjustified attacks as President Trump.
We are making America stronger, prouder, and greater than ever before.” President Donald J. Trump
Why? Because he believes in American exceptionalism, not globalism.
“Make America Great Again.” Just a slogan, the people of failure shout back. The Obama/Biden team had failed us for eight years in every aspect of our lives. To the leftists, failure is not only typical; it is expected. Since Donald Trump announced his candidacy, the Democrats have launched one failed hoax after another in an attempt to end his political career.
The list of their failures for the previous administration is so long and glaring that I hardly need to repeat all of them here. Under the previous administration, once well-paid manufacturing jobs had disappeared and were relocated to other countries. President Trump managed to reverse this trend and brought back many manufacturing jobs. Before President Trump was at the helm, vast swaths of this nation, from northern New York to the great states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and many others, previously vibrant manufacturing regions, looked like ghost towns but now have come back and people are optimistic about the future of this country.
“During a PBS town hall, Obama referenced Trump’s promise to bring back jobs to the United States when talking about manufacturing.
“Well, how exactly are you going to do that? What exactly are you going to do? There’s no answer to it,” Obama said.
“He just said, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, what, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have?”
If I may, on President Trump’s behalf, allow me to respond to the former President:
“Mr. Obama, I wake up every morning and see a winner. Every day of my life, a winner has looked back at me from the mirror with a smile, encouraging me to go out there and have another winning day.
“And I do that. And I am doing the same thing for our country. My wand is made of people. I can lead people to do miraculous feats. I’ve done it all my life, and after three years in office, I have done it again, and that’s just the beginning. Before America hired me, I had built some of the most magnificent buildings in the world through the combined efforts of tens of thousands of talented people. These men and women each brought their skill and energy to their jobs. They worked for living wages, that’s for sure. But they didn’t go through the motions only to get a paycheck. They worked their best and hardest because they contributed to building something beautiful. These men and women felt the priceless joy of working for something that no money can buy, the pride of being in a team of winners accomplishing greatly challenging tasks.”
“Now, the winner who looked at me in the mirror and asked me to do the same exact thing for our country. This time with a team of millions of competent men and women lining up to build a better America while seeking a better life for themselves and their children. This is how I have accomplished and brought back so many businesses and manufacturing jobs to our country. Something you failed to do.”
President Trump won against them. Why? Because the American people want a leader who believes in them and believes in America. A leader who is willing and able to end the corrupt decay of Washington, D. C. The American people are sick and tired of letting a band of losers give away the store and what’s left of it.
Although the Obama/Biden and Biden/ Kamala Harris team made a wreck of our country, they have done very well for themselves personally, and I mean hugely well.
Strange as it may seem, the above paragraphs may tell us something important about the motivation of Donald Trump to “Make America Great Again.” His monumental egotism should be viewed with the above ideas in mind. This would have been readily understood by Alexander Hamilton, whose founding of the First National Bank and his famous “Report on Manufactures” established him as the father of American capitalism.
Despite the fact that Trump’s White House and government were stacked with progressive liberals/Obama holdovers/Muslim apologists, and Muslim brotherhood career workers, President Trump still managed to reverse the disastrous course of Obama/ Biden and has made America great for every man, woman, and child of every race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and all other variations.
Unfortunately, in a shocking turn of events that had left the nation reeling, the American people were robbed of their rightful choice for leadership. Trump’s impressive victory was a reward for his tireless commitment to serving the American people. It was also the crowning achievement of an unprecedented campaign whose brilliance and high tone demonstrated the vitality of our Constitutional Republic to the entire world while keeping them spellbound.
Our responsibility as Americans to Keep America Great is to reelect President Trump, who selflessly has sacrificed his comfortable life for the sake of America and the American people.
The post Donald Trump’s America appeared first on Granite Grok.
I’ve been pondering a foray into the Green Mountain State for a few years but was burdened by the same issues with other expansions. People promising to write about local stuff and it happening regularly are very different things. They mean well, but I get it.
Writing comes easily for some, while most folks have other skill sets. They want to write, but sitting down to do it is torture. It’s a waste of their time and resources. They can participate in the fight for liberty in other ways. Adding a digital presence in Vermont was on the bucket list but until this past week untenable.
At the end of last week, True North Reports (TNR) announced that it would no longer add new content. That would leave several capable writers without that page to land on, so I started reaching out. We can count on a few of TNR’s regular contributors to provide content to VermontGrok.
It’s TimeI’ve been throwing down my fair share of words about Vermont. We’ve got a ‘Grok author who lives there. We’ve got a pair of TNR writers ready to pitch in, but will anyone else in Vermont volunteer to write state and local stories for its pages? I think we can attract a few more, add local op-eds published as we do here on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River, and with the added reach GraniteGrok, boom!
We’re doing this!
Not long from now, a New Grok will appear as a link in the header of every page. It will be part of GraniteGrok as we do our best to fill some of the void left by TNR.
And …
At some point, much as we have in New Hampshire, we intend to Dominate the Political Bandwidth in Vermont.
This is not the final proof, but I was fooling around with it and liked where it was going. We’ll unveil the real thing on opening day.
A Thing Worth DoingWe ask our readers to support independent media, and we practice what we preach – and my trying to go full-time with your help makes this leap tenable.
While not the only option, TNR was an important part of the other side of Vermont’s media landscape. Vermonters lose a step without alternative content or opinion on the day’s issues, culture, and news. We’re not going to allow that to happen. And what better day than Independence Day to announce it?
We’d also like to welcome all of TNR’s readers and commenters. Yes, we allow comments. You will need to sign up for DISQUS (sorry), but that’s what we’ve been using for more years than I can count. We don’t brook trolls, foul language, implied threats, or violent language against anyone, but everything else is on the table—debate matters.
I hope you will join us as readers, commenters, and op-ed writers when the urge strikes you.
A formal announcement will follow when the page is live.
One more Question. Do you like Green MountainGrok Better?
The post Coming Soon: GraniteGrok in Vermont … Should We Call it VermontGrok? Green MountainGrok? appeared first on Granite Grok.
We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, we are the unfortunate victims of the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.
Case in point: the FBI.
The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being tough on crime, FBI agents are also among the nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues, and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work.
Clearly, this is not a government agency that appears to understand, let alone respect, the limits of the Constitution.
Indeed, this same government agency has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how, and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting.
Basically, it works like this: in order to justify their crime-fighting superpowers, the FBI manufactures criminals by targeting vulnerable individuals and feeding them anti-government propaganda; then, undercover agents and informants equip the targeted individuals with the training and resources to challenge what they’ve been indoctrinated into believing is government corruption; and finally, the FBI arrests the targeted individuals for engaging in anti-government, terrorist activities.
This is what passes for the government’s perverse idea of being tough on crime.
For example, undercover FBI agents pretending to be associated with ISIS have been accused of seeking out online and befriending a 16-year-old with brain development issues, persuading him to secretly send them small cash donations in the form of gift cards, and then the moment Mateo Ventura, turned 18, arresting him for providing financial support to an Islamic terrorist group.
If convicted, the teenager could spend up to 10 years in prison.
Yet as The Intercept explains, “the only ‘terrorist’ he is accused of ever being in contact with was an undercover FBI agent who befriended him online as a 16-year-old… This law enforcement tactic has been criticized by national security researchers who have scrutinized the FBI’s role in manufacturing terrorism cases using vulnerable people who would have been unable to commit crimes without prolonged government assistance and encouragement… the Ventura case may indicate that authorities are still open to conjuring terrorists where none existed.”
In another incident, the FBI used an undercover agent/informant to seek out and groom an impressionable young man, cultivating his friendship, gaining his sympathy, stoking his outrage over injustices perpetrated by the U.S. government, then enlisting his help to blow up the Herald Square subway station. Despite the fact that Shahawar Matin Siraj ultimately refused to plant a bomb at the train station, he was arrested for conspiring to do so at the urging of his FBI informant and used to bolster the government’s track record in foiling terrorist plots. Of course, no mention was made of the part the government played in fabricating the plot, recruiting a would-be bomber, and setting him up to take the fall.
These are Machiavellian tactics with far-reaching consequences for every segment of the population, no matter what one’s political leanings, but it is especially dangerous for anyone whose views could in any way be characterized as anti-government.
As Rozina Ali writes for The New York Times Magazine, “The government’s approach to counterterrorism erodes constitutional protections for everyone by blurring the lines between speech and action and by broadening the scope of who is classified as a threat.”
For instance, it was reported that the FBI had been secretly carrying out an entrapment scheme in which it used a front company, ANOM, to sell purportedly hack-proof phones to organized crime syndicates and then used those phones to spy on them as they planned illegal drug shipments, plotted robberies and put out contracts for killings using those boobytrapped phones.
All told the FBI intercepted 27 million messages over the course of 18 months.
What this means is that the FBI was also illegally spying on individuals using those encrypted phones who may not have been involved in any criminal activity whatsoever.
Even reading a newspaper article is now enough to get you flagged for surveillance by the FBI. The agency served a subpoena on USA Today / Gannett to provide the internet addresses and mobile phone information for everyone who read a news story online on a particular day and time about the deadly shooting of FBI agents.
This is the danger of allowing the government to carry out widespread surveillance, sting, and entrapment operations using dubious tactics that sidestep the rule of law: “we the people” become suspects and potential criminals, while government agents, empowered to fight crime using all means at their disposal, become indistinguishable from the corrupt forces they seek to vanquish.
To go after terrorists, they become terrorists.
To go after drug smugglers, they become drug smugglers.
To go after thieves, they become thieves.
For instance, when the FBI raided a California business that was suspected of letting drug dealers anonymously stash guns, drugs and cash in its private vaults, agents seized the contents of all the safety deposit boxes and filed forfeiture motions to keep the contents, which include millions of dollars’ worth of valuables owned by individuals not accused of any crime whatsoever.
It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations, and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy.
This certainly isn’t a constitutional democracy, however.
Some days, it feels like the FBI is running its own crime syndicate, complete with mob rule and mafia-style justice.
In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts.
USA Today estimates that agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day (5600 crimes a year). Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.
In a stunning development reported by The Washington Post, a probe into misconduct by an FBI agent resulted in the release of at least a dozen convicted drug dealers from prison.
In addition to procedural misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, the FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, and harassment.
For example, the Associated Press lodged a complaint with the Dept. of Justice after learning that FBI agents created a fake AP news story and emailed it, along with a clickable link, to a bomb threat suspect in order to implant tracking technology onto his computer and identify his location. Lambasting the agency, AP attorney Karen Kaiser railed, “The FBI may have intended this false story as a trap for only one person. However, the individual could easily have reposted this story to social networks, distributing to thousands of people, under our name, what was essentially a piece of government disinformation.”
Then again, to those familiar with COINTELPRO, an FBI program created to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize” groups and individuals the government considers politically objectionable, it should come as no surprise that the agency has mastered the art of government disinformation.
The FBI has been particularly criticized in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks for targeting vulnerable individuals and not only luring them into fake terror plots but actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons, and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.”
The FBI has also repeatedly sought to expand its invasive hacking powers to allow agents to hack into any computer, anywhere in the world.
Suffice it to say that when and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state, but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions has steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided, a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance.
This is how tyranny rises, and freedom falls.
The powers-that-be are not acting in our best interests.
Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government.
Think about it.
Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars. Domestic extremism. The COVID-19 pandemic.
In almost every instance, the U.S. government (often spearheaded by the FBI) has, in its typical Machiavellian fashion, sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers.
Consider that this very same government has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us to track, control and trap us.
Are you getting the picture yet?
The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from threats to our freedoms.
The U.S. government is creating the threats to our freedoms. It is, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart, The Erik Blair Diaries, the source of the threats to our freedoms.
John Whitehead | The Tenth Amendment Center
The post FBI Make-Work Entrapment Schemes: Creating Criminals in Order to Arrest Them appeared first on Granite Grok.
My story begins in Chengdu, China, at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution, an insanity that gripped millions of my countrymen. We were destitute, as were most Chinese during this period.
We want to thank Lily Tng Williams for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
We lived in a primitive worker’s row house by a river sharing one tarp-covered outhouse and one water faucet with eight families. We had a mud floor that, after occasional flooding, would sprout mushrooms.
My parents were illiterate workers, so their positions in the state factory were too low to be rationed much food. A full belly was a luxury. My uncle even taught me how to trap rats for food. All we knew was a life of arduous labor and chaos. Little time was spent thinking of philosophical fantasies concerning “oppression” and “rights,” so we labored to survive, hoping only that we would endure.
Despite the socialist rhetoric, school and childcare were not free. I even missed school for a year to babysit my infant brother. Yet despite the few resources available to Chinese students, I committed all of my energy to excel in school when I could go. But in Communist China, even fleeting joy is crushed in the young by ideological rigidity, for I was denied entry into Mao’s “Young Pioneers.” The pain was not in the denial but in learning that my friend reported me for showing “too much pride in my grades.”
From that moment forward, I was a model communist citizen. I wrote ideologically validating diaries. I memorized Mao’s words. I recited his political slogans as prayer and made sure that every word I uttered was politically correct. Mao was our god, and I was his faithful disciple.
This mindset served me well for a time, for when Mao shut down all churches and temples, I mourned not. In 1976, when I was 12 years old, Mao died, and the Cultural Revolution came to an end. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) admitted that Mao was only a man and the Cultural Revolution was just a mistake, my faith in the CCP began to crack.
China’s renaissance began, colleges reopened, and after years of hard work and preparation, I was able to pass the national entrance exam. I was accepted into a top tiered university to study law. I had hopes that China should not be ruled by men but by law. Yet even the law was but an extension of the wills of men, modeled after the Soviet Union legal code. It was the antithesis of justice.
I learned an important lesson from Mao’s regime: to become a slave, the “true horrors” are not the shackles placed around one’s wrists but the ones that are self-imposed. No longer secured by the shackles of cognitive slavery but not able to find solace in a just code of laws, I became cynical and rebellious, even befriending foreign students on campus to learn if there was more to life.
It was during this time I met an American student. What he showed me would forever change my life — the Declaration of Independence. When I read the lines, “We hold these truths to be self-evident… (that all men) are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they shattered what remained of my mental shackles. What ideas! Rights come not from the benevolence of the state but from God. All I had ever known were “collective rights,” the workers’ rights, the rights of peasants, etc. Never had I imagined that I, an individual, had rights. Those words only served to embolden me and my dreams. Knowing where they came from, I began to look to that “City upon a Hill.”
I eventually made it to America in 1988. In the decades since I have thrived in this great country. I earned my graduate degree, married, raised three children, started my own business, searched for deeper truths, learned much about liberty and the free market, rid myself of CCP indoctrination, naturalized as a U.S. citizen, and volunteered in my local community.
Lately, in my spare time, I have traveled around the country to share my personal stories and educate our youth about the horrors of Communism. I always defend the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the documents with the words that freed me from my enslavement and helped me choose America as my home. I have always wanted to thank our founding fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the most beautiful.
Note: This Originally Published in the Concord Monitor in NH on July 4, 2021.
The post America’s Forefathers Shattered my Communist Chains appeared first on Granite Grok.
Ever since the massive arrival of Muslims to the Western hemisphere, our culture and world have been forever altered, thanks to the ceaseless attempts of the left to jam a failing Utopian Multiculturalism paradise down the throats of its unsuspecting citizens.
As every recent election has shown, multiculturalism in Europe is dead in the water. Even the politicians are admitting it now. Then why are they still insisting that we must coexist and keep importing more Muslims who will NEVER assimilate? Let me be clear; multiculturalism spells the demise of our Western culture. Is that what we want?
The controversy is ongoing: whether in Europe or the US, the leftist intelligentsia and elitists continue to demand that they have seen the truth, that all people can live peaceably together so long as we are tolerant and have the right laws in place.
The West has been tolerant, but “tolerance in the face of evil is not tolerance. It is a crime.” We were defending ourselves at the Gates of Vienna from a Muslim invasion not long ago. Now, we welcome Muslims with open arms and generous welfare policies. Any pushback to these open immigration practices is labeled Islamophobia, racism, bigotry, etc. But what cost do these changes bring?
The battle with these barbarians has been proven to be arduous and lengthy. It is the duty of every enlightened individual to work their hardest to fumigate these leeches from the body of humanity.
Billboards have been popping out and sneakily reminding the viewers about their kinship with Muslims: “Islam: The message of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad.” Well folks—Christians and Jews—the overwhelming majority of the people in the United States, you need to relax about Islam. Muslims are family. They are your kindred through your shared progenitor, Abraham, so they claim. Having Abraham as an ancestor would demand that the “children” be loving siblings. That’s the message the American Muslims try to convey. And that’s how they aim to keep us in the deadly slumber of complacency and the delusion of multiculturalism. For one, multiculturalism and multi-religionism are not interchangeable or one and the same.
Muslims and their frequently well-paid apologists use the multiculturalist umbrella only in non-Islamic lands to shield themselves from the torrent of legitimate criticisms that those who know Islam better shower on this cult of violence peddled as the religion of peace. You don’t need to listen to me, and don’t listen to these conniving dissimulators. Please search for it for yourself. See if the euphemism of multiculturalism is ever even mentioned by any Islamic leader, ever printed in the Islamic press, or ever appears in any form anywhere in Muslim countries.
This multiculturalism gambit is Islam-manufactured wool to pull over the eyes of the non-Muslims. At the same time, Muslims carry on with their unrelenting campaign of eradicating anything or anyone non-Islamic anywhere and everywhere in the world.
Trust me, people like us, through reason and a tremendous act of will, who have freed ourselves from the enslaving yoke of Islam placed around our necks from birth, know about all the heinous inside dirt of this plague of humanity. We have experienced Islam first-hand and up close from the inside. We have studied the Quran, the Hadith, and the Sunna. We have seen Islam in action where it wields sway. Yet, the more we studied and experienced Islam, the more our efforts to remain in the fold became untenable. We broke away from Islamic slavery and found it our solemn duty to expose this fraud of a religion, help other Muslims free themselves from it, and warn the good-hearted and gullible non-Muslims of the world against falling prey to it.
The Muslim organizations in America, generously financed by the oil-rich Muslim governments and Sheikhs, are directed to sell Islam Lite long enough until this ideology runs deep roots and real Islam is introduced. One can see how the scheme played out in Europe. Much of Europe is already past the stage of Islam Lite and knee-deep into the quagmire of real Islam. And that’s precisely where things are headed in America.
Some non-Muslims, good-hearted tolerant people tend to overlook all the terrible things Islam perpetrates by pointing to some of its good teachings. These folks contend that the world should direct its effort not at combating Islam but at those individuals and groups that commit heinous acts in the name of Islam.
There are others who disagree with this gentle approach. This latter group sees all the so-called aberrations as an inherent part and parcel of Islam. They believe Islam actively promotes and is terribly out of sync with the best interests of the 21st-century world.
I say humanity must remain strong and resolute; they must stop deluding themselves. Islam will never ever coexist with infidels. We must move on. Move away from an exclusionary, primitive, and tribal mentality to a vision of all humanity being one, with justice and liberty for all.
While we frivolously waste our precious time talking about it without any drastic action taken, Islam and Sharia continue to creep into every aspect of our American culture furtively. But only too few dedicated freedom-loving people are sounding the alarm. That’s not enough. Why most of our fellow citizens don’t get it? Because the liberal elites have conditioned Americans to be tolerant and compassionate, embrace multiculturalism and respect each other’s beliefs, ideals, and values.
That’s wonderful in a utopian world, but the fact is, Islam, doesn’t embrace any aspect of Western civilization—much less American culture. We are rapidly and methodically being dismantled as a nation, and our freedom and liberty are more fragile than ever since WWII. And while we fight the enemy abroad with combat troops, intelligence, and drone strikes, we’re doing nothing to combat the same exact enemy that resides on our own soil in broad daylight.
In short: I cannot emphasize enough the urgency of this threat. We must confront Islamic ideology and its expansionism, close down all of its chapters across America, and declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. All of us must pressure our government, at all levels, to abandon the practice of ‘political correctness’ and protect the American people and act to safeguard liberty against the truly deadly assault that is reprehensive of Islamic ideology.
It is long past time for our elected officials to wake up.
The post Islam-Manufactured “Wool” Pulled Over the Eyes of the Non-Muslims appeared first on Granite Grok.
This is not good. For all the talk of “on-shoring” by the Biden Administration, its actual policies belie their talk, and now it is starting to show up. A chart and prose (and more at the link but essentially saying the same thing):
US Manufacturing “Took Sharp Turn For The Worse” In June
Despite the recent resurgence in upside surprises for US macro data, the US Manufacturing sector remains deep in contraction (sub-50) based on the ISM and PMI surveys driven by a sharp fall in new orders.
(click to embiggen)
And growth is gone – this 50 line means no growth at all:
We’ve been listening to scares talk of recession or deep recession for quite some time – is this a foretelling? The SMAHT PEOPLE that seem to want to rule us have created policies (financial, taxation, environmental, regulatory) that all have made making stuff here in the US harder to start, more difficult to do, and taking profit out of the effort ending up with off-shoring that profit (and the jobs needed to create it).
That seems to be a bit of cognitive dissonance with the Eco-Enviros, hard Socialists, and the drizzling of Communists embedded in the Biden Administration, right?
(H/T: Zero Hedge)
The post Is US Manufacturing Tanking? appeared first on Granite Grok.
I have crunched the numbers – i.e., the voting records of 2023 – to determine objectively which ‘Republican” members of the New Hampshire House are RINOs – Republicans In Name Only.
We want to thank Spec Bowers for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
I looked at every vote where Republicans voted opposite Democrats. More specifically, I looked at all votes where a super-majority (two-thirds) of Republicans voted opposite a majority of Democrats. I ignored votes where both sides voted the same. A RINO vote is when a Republican votes with Democrats against a super-majority of Republicans.
Almost every Rep at one time or another casts a vote the same as the Democrats. One example is when a Republican votes against the budget because it is too large, while the Democrats vote against it because they think it is too small. Thankfully, such votes are not common.
Most Republicans rarely vote with Democrats against other Republicans.
There were 28 Reps that scored a perfect 0%. Not a RINO among them. Looking at all Republicans, the median score was 1.5%, meaning that, on average, they voted with the Democrats only 1.5% of the time.
80% of Republicans voted with Democrats (against Republicans) 4% of the time; 90% scored less than 8%.
There were 15 Republicans who voted more than 10% of the time against fellow Republicans. Clearly, they are out of mainstream Republicanism.
Even more outside of the mainstream were 5 Republicans who voted more than 20% of the time with Democrats against Republicans. The worst, as usual, was Dan Wolf.
| Wolf, Dan | 65.3% |
| Bordes, Mike | 32.8% |
| Bickford, David | 31.2% |
| Guthrie, Joseph | 29.5% |
| Ankarberg, Aidan | 24.5% |
| Wolf, Dan | 65.3% |
| Bordes, Mike | 32.8% |
| Bickford, David | 31.2% |
| Guthrie, Joseph | 29.5% |
| Ankarberg, Aidan | 24.5% |
| Hynes, Dan | 15.5% |
| Thackston, Dick | 15.5% |
| Nagel, David | 13.9% |
| Trottier, Douglas | 13.7% |
| MacDonald, John | 11.7% |
| O’Hara, Travis | 11.1% |
| Boyd, Bill | 10.7% |
| Phinney, Brandon | 10.6% |
| Mason, James | 10.3% |
| Proulx, Mark | 10.3% |
| Sytek, John | 9.5% |
| Pearson, Mark | 8.4% |
| Pratt, Kevin | 8.0% |
| Donnelly, Tanya | 7.3% |
| Pearson, Stephen | 7.3% |
| Yokela, Josh | 7.3% |
| Bogert, Steven | 6.8% |
| Cahill, Tim | 6.3% |
| Brown, Carroll | 6.0% |
| Stapleton, Walter | 6.0% |
| Davis, Arnold | 5.7% |
| Crawford, Karel | 5.5% |
| Harb, Robert | 5.4% |
| Cordelli, Glenn | 5.2% |
| Fedolfi, Jim | 4.7% |
| Kuttab, Katelyn | 4.7% |
| Ladd, Rick | 4.7% |
| McDonnell, Valerie | 4.7% |
| Rhodes, Jennifer | 4.7% |
| Vandecasteele, Susan | 4.1% |
| Walsh, Lilli | 4.1% |
| Drye, Margaret | 4.0% |
| Renzullo, Andrew | 4.0% |
| Harley, Tina | 3.8% |
| Beaudoin, Richard | 3.7% |
| Plett, Fred | 3.6% |
| Alexander, Joe | 3.4% |
| Gerhard, Jason | 3.4% |
| Abare, Kimberly | 3.3% |
| Griffin, Gerald | 3.3% |
| Tierney, James | 3.3% |
| Khan, Aboul | 3.0% |
| Milz, David | 3.0% |
| Nelson, Jodi | 2.9% |
| Granger, Michael | 2.8% |
| Merner, Troy | 2.8% |
| Prudhomme-O’Brien, Katherine | 2.8% |
| Seaworth, Brian | 2.8% |
| Bailey, Glenn | 2.7% |
| Creighton, Jim | 2.7% |
| Ford, Oliver | 2.7% |
| Harvey-Bolia, Juliet | 2.7% |
| Healey, Robert | 2.7% |
| Horgan, James | 2.7% |
| Katsakiores, Phyllis | 2.7% |
| King, Bill | 2.7% |
| Lekas, Alicia | 2.7% |
| Lekas, Tony | 2.7% |
| Mannion, Dennis | 2.7% |
| Popovici-Muller, Daniel | 2.7% |
| Porcelli, Susan | 2.7% |
| Santonastaso, Matthew | 2.7% |
| Foote, Charles | 2.6% |
| Cole, Brian | 2.5% |
| Lewicke, John | 2.4% |
| Prout, Andrew | 2.4% |
| Harrington, Michael | 2.3% |
| McCarter, Nikki | 2.3% |
| McMahon, Charles | 2.3% |
| Edwards, Jess | 2.2% |
| Gould, Linda | 2.2% |
| Pitre, Joseph | 2.2% |
| Gorski, Ted | 2.1% |
| Hoell, J.R. | 2.1% |
| Ouellet, Mike | 2.1% |
| Roy, Terry | 2.1% |
| Sanborn, Laurie | 2.1% |
| Tripp, Richard | 2.1% |
| Aron, Judy | 2.0% |
| Berezhny, Lex | 2.0% |
| Kofalt, Jim | 2.0% |
| McGuire, Carol | 2.0% |
| Melvin, Charles | 2.0% |
| Moffett, Michael | 2.0% |
| Nutting, Zachary | 2.0% |
| Osborne, Jason | 2.0% |
| Pauer, Diane | 2.0% |
| Thomas, Douglas | 2.0% |
| Vose, Michael | 2.0% |
| Connor, James | 1.9% |
| MacDonald, Wayne | 1.7% |
| Emerick, Tracy | 1.6% |
| Lundgren, David | 1.6% |
| Varney, Peter | 1.6% |
| Potenza, Kelley | 1.5% |
| Berry, Ross | 1.4% |
| Brown, Richard | 1.4% |
| Corcoran, Travis | 1.4% |
| Dolan, Tom | 1.4% |
| Hobson, Deb | 1.4% |
| Janvrin, Jason | 1.4% |
| Panek, Sandra | 1.4% |
| Sellers, John | 1.4% |
| Spilsbury, Walter | 1.4% |
| Testerman, Dave | 1.4% |
| Ulery, Jordan | 1.4% |
| Andrus, Louise | 1.3% |
| Ball, Lorie | 1.3% |
| Burnham, Claudine | 1.3% |
| Cambrils, Jose | 1.3% |
| Colcombe, Riché | 1.3% |
| Costable, Michael | 1.3% |
| Cushman, Leah | 1.3% |
| DeSimone, Debra | 1.3% |
| Drago, Mike | 1.3% |
| Greeson, Jeffrey | 1.3% |
| Lascelles, Richard | 1.3% |
| Leavitt, John | 1.3% |
| Lynn, Bob | 1.3% |
| Mannion, Tom | 1.3% |
| McGuire, Dan | 1.3% |
| Notter, Jeanine | 1.3% |
| Perez, Kristine | 1.3% |
| Phillips, Emily | 1.3% |
| Potucek, John | 1.3% |
| Qualey, James | 1.3% |
| Quaratiello, Arlene | 1.3% |
| Seidel, Sheila | 1.3% |
| Sweeney, Joe | 1.3% |
| Verville, Kevin | 1.1% |
| Janigian, John | 0.9% |
| Summers, James | 0.9% |
| Dumais, Russell | 0.8% |
| Hunt, John | 0.8% |
| McLean, Mark | 0.8% |
| Mooney, Maureen | 0.8% |
| Newton, Clifford | 0.8% |
| Ammon, Keith | 0.7% |
| Aylward, Deborah | 0.7% |
| Coulon, Matthew | 0.7% |
| Doucette, Fred | 0.7% |
| Dunn, Ron | 0.7% |
| Gagne, Larry | 0.7% |
| Kennedy, Stephen | 0.7% |
| Kenny, Catherine | 0.7% |
| King, Seth | 0.7% |
| Love, David | 0.7% |
| McConkey, Mark | 0.7% |
| McGough, Tim | 0.7% |
| Noble, Kristin | 0.7% |
| Peternel, Katy | 0.7% |
| Polozov, Yury | 0.7% |
| Post, Lisa | 0.7% |
| Rollins, Skip | 0.7% |
| See, Alvin | 0.7% |
| Sheehan, Vanessa | 0.7% |
| Simon, Matthew | 0.7% |
| Smith, Jonathan | 0.7% |
| Stone, Jonathan | 0.7% |
| Tenczar, Jeffrey | 0.7% |
| Terry, Paul | 0.7% |
| Tudor, Paul | 0.7% |
| Wallace, Scott | 0.7% |
| Weyler, Kenneth | 0.7% |
| Wherry, Robert | 0.7% |
| Wood, Clayton | 0.7% |
| Aures, Cyril | 0.0% |
| Avellani, Lino | 0.0% |
| Bean, Harry | 0.0% |
| Belcher, Mike | 0.0% |
| Bernardy, JD | 0.0% |
| Boehm, Ralph | 0.0% |
| Boyd, Stephen | 0.0% |
| Brouillard, Jacob | 0.0% |
| Comtois, Barbara | 0.0% |
| Erf, Keith | 0.0% |
| Hill, Gregory | 0.0% |
| Infantine, William | 0.0% |
| Kaczynski, Thomas | 0.0% |
| Kelley, Diane | 0.0% |
| Layon, Erica | 0.0% |
| Mazur, Lisa | 0.0% |
| Piemonte, Tony | 0.0% |
| Ploszaj, Tom | 0.0% |
| Reid, Karen | 0.0% |
| Rochefort, David | 0.0% |
| Sirois, Shane | 0.0% |
| Smart, Lisa | 0.0% |
| Smith, Steven | 0.0% |
| Soti, Julius | 0.0% |
| Spillane, James | 0.0% |
| True, Chris | 0.0% |
| Turcotte, Len | 0.0% |
| Walsh, Thomas | 0.0% |
Three Reps were omitted because they cast too few votes to calculate a score.
The post The 2023 RINO Report Card appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Ministry of the Perpetual State of Fear, still doing business as The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wants you to know that XBB1.16 (COVID variant code name Arcturus) has migrated from India to the US.
We reported on the rise of Arcturus back in April.
Just in time for summer flu season, remember when we didn’t have those – It’s Arcturus. Omicron sub-variant XBB.1.16 is “causing havoc” across India, with a small number of cases appearing in other counties. OMG! Lets … do nothing, please.
How dare you, the wing-nut Karens might say. What about the community?
There is a moderate amount of propaganda media coverage on the recent immigration of Arcturus to our shores, but none of it seems to include this nugget.
If you read far enough down in either or any article that attempts to inform the public about BB.1.5 or 1.16, you will learn that “We haven’t seen a change in severity in individuals or in populations,” or that “hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths have not yet risen due to the variant.”
According to the Ministry of the Perpetual State of Fear (MPSF), Arcturus now accounts for 20% of all new “COVID” cases, as if that means anything.
In response, the Ministry’s hunchbacked mutant assistant (stooped over from carrying all those bags of Pfizer “ad” cash) from the soon-to-be-renamed FDA (The Food as Drugs Administration) has,
“…directed vaccine manufacturers to update their vaccines to target XBB.1.5.
“Based on the totality of the evidence, FDA has advised manufacturers who will be updating their COVID-19 vaccines, that they should develop vaccines with a monovalent XBB.1.5 composition,” the agency said in a statement.”
This now means XBB.1.16, which is why you misspelled “Quick, change the insert and marketing material on the same useless crap you’ve been pushing” because “by ‘variant,’ you mean another revenue silo at Pfizer as people get wise to their sh!tty “cure.'”
It’s also evidence of why flu vaccines are a waste of time and money, and sometimes lives – the virus mutates far too quickly for even the best guess to be of much use as anything but a revenue stream. They are effectively selling you the Brooklyn Bridge. You can pay for it, but it doesn’t mean anything.
It is also not as popular as once it was, the fear or the jabs, as millions of experimental vaccine enthusiasts have embraced hesitancy as the number of necessary injections increases.
No reason not to try because, as the old saying goes, a needle in the arm is a pocket full of cash. It’s increasingly useless cash, printed to line the pockets of the mandates to pharma to Democrat campaigns triad. But they’ve got so much of it that the inflation it causes (an actual state of emergency) will ensure they all get good seats to watch the end of America and Western Civilization.
For those wondering if there’s a cure for that, it is clean elections.
Let me know if you spot one. They are about as common as Unicorns.
The post We Interrupt Your Peace and Prosperity™ For a Message from The Ministry of the Perpetual State of Fear appeared first on Granite Grok.
As of Sunday, July 2, 2023 (approximately 10 am), which is when I am typing this, the West is still being told that France is dealing with riots. It has been reported that 45,000 police have been deployed across the country in response to the “rioting.”
Following the latest night of violence, France’s Interior Ministry announced there were 719 arrests around the country on Saturday night, where a total of 45,000 police fanned out in a so-far unsuccessful bid to quell violence.
It sounds more like an “insurrection” than a riot … especially when you say the part out loud that you are not supposed to say out loud:
Allahu Akbar: France's Child Soldiers…
At just 8 years old, this child soldier is already prepped to wage Jihad on the French police, bred to harbor a deep hatred for France. Are these the hopeful faces of France's future? Islamic groups view children as potential 'soldiers'… pic.twitter.com/nCQStUX7Op
— Amy Mek (@AmyMek) July 2, 2023
Perhaps France will be successful in quelling this insurrection … oops, I mean “riot,” but how long until the next one?
And how long until all the “migrants” the Biden regime, with the full support of the Uni-Party-Republicans, is flooding America decide to “riot.”
The post Dien Bien Phu … Take Two? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Attorney General Merrick Garland was right when he said that an attack on the Department of Justice is an attack on the people charged with ensuring that the legal system is administered fairly for all Americans. When we refer to the weaponizing of the Justice Department, we are not pointing our fingers at those on the front line. We are pointing them at you, Merrick Garland, the most corrupt Attorney General in modern times.
You are the person who targeted parents concerned with the curriculum at their children’s schools as domestic terrorists. You are the person who allowed protestors to torment the homes of our Supreme Court justices. You are the person who let a deranged individual attempt the assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
You are the evil we want to eradicate. Not the men and women honoring their pledge to their assigned jobs. We want to remove you from the position of power that you have perverted to enhance your own agenda. Your job was to protect the American people. You created a position to protect the President and yourself. You have to go.
Your performance is very similar to what we have seen from the FBI. From Comey to McCabe and Wray, the leadership of our FBI has embarrassed the FBI and our Country. You all have worked diligently to ensure the Democrat control of our Country and to thwart any attempt by Republicans to change course.
You have deceived and taken advantage of the American people. Americans always understood the lack of credibility in the executive branch, where every decision is based on politics and polling. You corrupted the neutrality of the Justice and Investigative departments of our government. You wanted us to fail, but the times have changed, and we are making headway on the cards we were dealt.
This arrangement cannot continue. The press is rearing up out of a feeling of self-preservation. Why have we been waiting five years for the investigation into Hunter Biden to continue and bear fruit, only to be deceived and stonewalled? Why, after all that time, does the American media still turn their backs and do the bidding of these corrupt politicians who only have themselves to serve?
It actually would behoove us to shut down these two factions of our Government, come to a common ground for those across the political aisle, and replace the entire upper level of management. These were once admirable groups that operated without a Right or Left-leaning. Things changed, and those in charge sought power over protection. Those in charge picked a horse in the race, and if it was Republican, they rode it home with pride. If that horse chose to veer Right, the Left found a reason to override and get us all facing the same description.
We do not need a supermajority. We can get by with a simple vote count, and the Democrats will ensure that count never happens. We, the people, need to make sure it does.
The post No Mr. Garland, It Is You We Impugn appeared first on Granite Grok.
I’m back doing my darndest to fill in for Nitzakhon and his incredibly popular meme posts. Our readers love them, and while he is away on a “special assignment,” I’ll do what I can to keep the meme alive.
Your memes are served hot and fresh with a few not-meme-inspired images (because the world is an amazing place) and some general a-political tomfoolery. I mixed them in this time.
And, as always, when viewing, consider the possibility that some material may not be age-appropriate. Feel free to decide what age or how appropriate for yourselves.
The post Monday Memes appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Associated Press reports 34% of us support his handling of the economy. Voters’ assessment of the economy is dismal. Yet, Biden continues to say and do the same things. An NBC poll says 74% of us think America is on the wrong track. So, what’s going on?
The strategy is familiar. Biden is using rhetoric as a substitute for performance; it is the Leftist way. If voters dislike what you are selling, don’t change the product. Market it differently. Call it Bidenomics and the battle of the “trickle-down” straw man.
His economic message isn’t new. His arguments have been around for years. The words have no effect. You see, the cleverest slogan doesn’t disguise reality. Mr. Biden’s claim is: Wages have been growing at a rapid clip on my watch. That is true but completely wrong… Here’s why.
Mr. Biden is presiding over a decline in real average hourly earnings. What that means is, yes, wages are going up. The problem is inflation is up more. The result is: His policies are responsible for the loss of purchasing power. He made us all poorer. We can buy less with our higher wages; 3.6% less on his watch.
The worst inflation in 40 years came from gross overspending. It is compounded by Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act which flooded a recovering economy with $2 trillion of additional stimulus. It came in addition to trillions spent the previous year. The spending splurge, combined with ending energy independence plus restrictive trade policies, generated inflation.
Mr. Biden claims American billionaires are not paying their fair share. To be clear, he does not describe what share exactly is a fair share. So let’s ask a couple of questions: Would that mean we all pay the same amount? Isn’t that what equity demands; equality of outcome? Would it mean we pay the same percentage? Does the responsibility to pay depend only on the ability to pay? If that’s true, where does it lead?
The average billionaire’s tax rate is 8%, according to Mr. Biden. How would he have acquired that information? Do you want your tax return information shared with your neighbors? Mr. Biden says no billionaire should pay a lower rate than a school teacher, fireman or policeman. Why are all his examples, public employees?
The implication of Mr. Biden’s statement is the average American is paying far more than 8%. But is that true? No, no, it is not.
According to IRS data the top 1% of taxpayers pay an average effective income tax rate of 25%. Those people earning more than $60 million/year pay an average tax rate of about 22.9% in federal taxes. Again that’s according to the IRS. You can check the numbers at Politifact.
Now looking at teachers, firemen, and police, let’s assume this is a proxy for those making less than $100 thousand/year. There, we find those people pay an effective federal tax rate between zero and 15%. Mr. Biden is simply wrong in his claim, and he’s hoping he can lie and you will not have done your homework.
Mr. Biden cherry-picks positive data points to brag about instead of recognizing policy failure and changing policy. There are some positive indicators; there always are. For example, the unemployment rate stands at 3.7%. Also, there is an uptick in factory construction. The flip side of the coin is: Government subsidy is almost 100% responsible for that activity. It is not actual innate growth from the demand in the private sector.
He just keeps hoping the Federal Reserve will fix inflation. He seems like a deer in the headlights. He’s frozen in place as oblivion hurtles toward America.
Mr. Biden also speaks about the deficit. He says the deficit went up every year under Trump, and it has gone down under him. Again Mr. Biden is correct but completely wrong. Here’s why. America has not balanced its budget in more than 20 years, since 2001, actually. During the pandemic, we did some big-time bipartisan spending. Since the Plandemic years, we have spent too much but less successively.
We are still engaging in a serious and unnecessary amount of deficit spending. The difference in the rate of deficit spending is what Mr. Biden would claim credit for. The CBO has released a report saying the deficit reduction claims are not material. Over the next 25 year, our national debt is going to climb from 91% of GDP to 181% of GDP.
Bloomberg News reports such high and rising debt will slow economic growth, push up interest rates and payments to foreign debt holders, and pose significant economic risks to the fiscal and economic outlook of America.
Nobody in the District of Columbia should get credit for much of anything except irresponsible behavior. We are nationally behaving like Hunter Biden. A lot must go right for Bidenomics to succeed. The Fed must avoid the long-predicted recession. Higher interest rates might continue to trigger bank failures. The Fed’s track record is not encouraging. Inflation has been persistent.
Assuming economic success, other issues will step forward. Biden’s fitness for office is in doubt. There are reasonable concerns over the 80-year-old president’s physical and mental capacity. People his age only move in only one direction.
If you worry about Biden’s health and capacity, then you are likely terrified at the prospect of Kamala Harris. She inherits the office of president should something happen to Biden. She’s the most unpopular vice president in history. Nothing makes people feel good about Harris.
Then there’s the issue of corruption. IRS whistleblowers have revealed the schemes of the Biden family. There are Hunter’s escapades. There is Joe’s entanglement in Hunter’s scandals. There is the House of Representatives seeking to uncover the details of the Biden family operations.
The precariousness of Biden’s political position comes from the decline in the American standard of living. It is not helped by his obvious health and diminished capacity issues. It is magnified by the inept and obvious corruption. The once generally accepted genial grandpa issuing reassuring platitudes from his Delaware basement is gone. That myth has been replaced by the cranky demented octogenarian with a troubled relationship with the truth.
The nation is on autopilot. We are moving toward a general election. Will the result again be determined by narrow outcomes in three or four states? The election may depend on the MAGA/anti-MAGA struggle. How are the parties approaching the election? Which side are you on?
The post Mr. Biden Knows He’s Vulnerable appeared first on Granite Grok.
Recap: I had put in a Right To Know to DCYF Specialist Amy Fortin for their Investigative Manual that is supposed to outline how DCYF Field Workers are to handle their cases. She at first blew me off by not responding within the first five business days after receipt of the Right To Know that demanding a copy for inspection.
When I reminded her that she was overdue, she responded that her lawyer’s advice to was to tell me it was a public document and that it could be found on the Internet.
In other words, go pound sand. Silly person. I responded with, “RSA 91-A has Clauses 7 & 8 has penalties – would you like to find out how?” and that’s when DHHS Chief Legal John Martin showed up and delivered the Responsive Record demanded of Fortin.
But that got me thinking – what was that path from me to her through to him? So I put in a Right To Know to find out (as you can tell, an RTK is the most powerful tool a citizen can employ in keeping our Government in check and to account) to him as he had said, in effect, “ask me anything.” I made it clear that I was NOT asking to see any “privileged client/lawyer communications” as outlined in the Right To Know law as I knew and specified in my RTK that such were unwanted and are exempt from RTKs. Just the communication pathway. What I received from him didn’t make the grade (reformatted, emphasis mine):
—— Original Message ——
From “Martin, John” <John.B.Martin@dhhs.nh.gov>
To “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
Date 6/30/2023 1:31:08 PM
Subject RSA 91-A Right to Know RequestGood afternoon Mr. Murphy. I am responding to your Right to Know request pursuant to which you requested any internal e-mails relative to your initial Right to know request seeking a DCYF protocol. At this point I have reviewed all of the e-mails beginning with your initial request for the protocol leading up to my e-mail to you on June 9, 2023, when I provided you with two DCYF protocols.
Every internal E-Mail was either sent to a State attorney or by a State attorney for the purposes of legal consultation. As a consequence, these e-mails fall under the attorney/client privilege and are exempt from disclosure under RSA 91-A:5,IV. For this reason, there are no public records that are responsive to your request. That being said, I hope you have a good weekend and a nice 4 th of July.
John B. Martin, Deputy Chief Legal Counsel
Department of Health and Human ServicesOffice of Legal and Regulatory Services
Bureau of General Counsel
129 Pleasant Street
Concord, NH 03301
His response specifically leaned in on what I specifically DIDN’T want to see, attorney/client privilege, as the reason not to send me anything. I decided to correct his logic because, from my standpoint, he was pulling a curtain I had already rent across to shield those Responsive Records for whatever purpose):
—— Original Message ——
From “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
To “Martin, John” <John.B.Martin@dhhs.nh.gov>
Date 6/30/2023 3:04:21 PM
Subject Re: RSA 91-A Right to Know RequestSo far it has been! Hope yours has been as enjoyable as mine has been thus far!
Relative to the attorney/client privilege, I wasn’t asking WHAT was said, only who was involved. Redacting any and all email bodies of such Responsive Records, would be fine – that erases any client/privilege communications that are subject to RSA 91-A:5, XII.
Providing names/email addresses and those connections, however, is not explicitly enumerated in that clause of the statute. The resulting digraph, which is of interest to me and the reason for the RTK, would be void of ANY such prohibited privileged legal advice. Therefore, those records should be released and available for my inspection.
And yes, good wishes are returned back to you as we celebrate what our Founding Fathers, in their political genius, bequeathed to us – a governance model that first and foremost that was the first one that put citizens first and over a Government that should be totally and wholly responsive to them…
…And not the other way around. It is unfortunate that their aspirations have not yet been met in many ways.
-Skip
Let’s see what happens
The post Still Digging in: Which DCYF Personnel Were Included In On My Initially Botched RTK? appeared first on Granite Grok.
There’s a saying in software that the only numbers you should be seeing in code are zero, one, and infinity. If you’re seeing other specific numbers (e.g., there can only be 140 characters in a message, or 255 characters in a filename, or a finite number of elements in a list), then someone is being lazy.
It occurs to me that the same is true when considering the ‘interpretation’ of constitutions by courts. Just recently, SCOTUS decided that POTUS didn’t have the authority to forgive student loan debt without action by SCOTUS.
Justice Kagan’s response? That this is terrible because ‘some 40 million Americans will not receive the benefits the plan provides’.
So, 40 million Americans would be let off the hook for up to $20,000 each. According to Justice Kagan, that’s sufficient reason to leave the program in place.
But what if the numbers were 4 million and $2000? Or 400 and $20? Should those numbers make any difference at all? They should not. As a rule, if you’re basing an argument on numbers, it means you’ve lost your connection to the underlying principles involved.
Note that the same is true about arguments over gun control, education, all flavors of welfare, voting, censorship, and so on. If you think that
RKBA works differently if the number of people killed with guns each year is 30,000 or 300;
a tax on income or assets is justified if it’s ‘small enough’;
a war on drugs is justified if the number of deaths from overdose is ‘large enough’;
shutting down entire economies and cultures and stripping people of the rights you’re supposed to be protecting becomes necessary when an infection rate is ‘high enough’;
and so on, then you have completely misunderstood the concepts of individual rights, delegated powers, and government by consent, and you shouldn’t be allowed to officiate at a little league game, let alone on the nation’s highest court.
The post Numbers aren’t Principles appeared first on Granite Grok.
The videos say it all. Just as Ray Epps somehow, someway has escaped prosecution for instigating … some would say leading … the “insurrection,” the person cutting down the security fence WHILE TRUMP IS STILL SPEAKING somehow, someway did not even get picked up by the FBI’s J6-radar. Amazing … isn’t it? But remember the real threat to America is NOT Merrick Garland or Chris Wray … it’s PUTIN; its PUTIN, PUTIN, PUTIN, PUTIN, PUTIN.
Two videos in one.
Watch what happened on SW lawn of Capitol grounds as Trump finished his speech at Ellipse around 1:10pm on January 6.https://t.co/WKb78SxpTQ
— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) July 1, 2023
The post Nothing To See Here … Just The FBI Cutting Down The Fence Around The Capitol WHILE Trump Is Still Speaking appeared first on Granite Grok.
At some point, I think I would enjoy sitting down with DHHS Deputy Chief Legal Counsel John Martin for a chat “about stuff.” I have to admit; he’s probably the most responsive guy in State Government I’ve had to do business with. That said…
I had put in my “missive” concerning how it appeared that DCYF had doxxed TMEW and myself to people we don’t know (The Daughter-in-Law’s family and ex-spouses; a couple of the latter are also “abusers”) such that those people could then reach out to The Granddaughter to say “Hi!” et al.
Emphasis mine, reformatted:
My Daughter-in-law, Mother of my Granddaughter [that we are caring for], just called me to let me know that DCYF has released my personal information…While she did not catch/remember the name that called, she was told that DCYF was contacting her family members and friends to let them know where my Granddaughter can be found to contact her and she remembered some of the family names enumerated over the phone.
HOW DARE YOU release my information to people that I do not know!
Subsequent to that, I was told that some of the “ex-husbands” of that family member set are “abusers” of one type or another. A family friend that works dispatch for first responders was agog over this. I told that friend that I demanded to have the complete list because of the above, and that would explain that at some 3 am time of the morning, they’d be hearing from me in no uncertain terms.
But that’s not the purpose of this post. My email to DCYF on this went out at 12:57 PM yesterday. At 1:30 pm, I got my response from Mr. Martin:
—— Original Message ——
From “Martin, John” <John.B.Martin@dhhs.nh.gov>
To “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
Date 6/30/2023 1:30:55 PM
Subject RE: Has DCYF now breached my PERSONAL information?I will see that this gets to the right people for response.
We have a saying here at GraniteGrok (one of our informal mottoes): Spank’em when they’re wrong but Thank’em when they’re right. I would be morally hypocritical not to take a moment and say thanks for the quick response on this. Thirty minutes, in the area of RTKs, is almost instantaneous. I’m thinking that part of it was the data breach (and now I have thoughts of MORE Right to Knows to create!) and part of it was the danger aspect. No matter which or both, it is appreciated.
NOW, when will I hear back? Probably not until next week due to the long holiday with the Fourth Of July falling on a Tuesday and many folks “filling in vacation days” to have the week off. I am hoping that someone there has the thought “what would happen if someone in that family has a grudge against DCYF and now knows where to go to “send a message” and will bounce it up and down faster to find someone that can get things done quickly.
And as I type this, I’m feeling that I ought to let our local constabulary know of this as well….
The post Is This The Most Responsive Guy in NH State Government? appeared first on Granite Grok.
If you’re an old-school Cop Block supporter, you surely remember Cell 411. It was a killer app that allowed the user to send GPS-based emergency alerts out to friends and family and also allowed for live streaming video from the scene, among other useful features for police accountability activists.
For instance, a Cop Blocker could be getting pulled over, send an alert to a “cell” including other Cop Blockers in the area, and then others would know the sender’s location and what was happening, and could mobilize to the scene to provide support. Meanwhile, the Cop Blocker who sent the alert could also stream live video from the pullover that his cohorts could watch while they were en route.
The app also had alerts for other categories such as fire, medical emergency, breakdown, and others. The idea being that when something bad is happening in your life, it’s better to have friends respond instead of armed psychopaths who might shoot you, your family, or your dog. In case you’re not already familiar with Cell 411, here’s a video that Cop Block’s co-founder Pete Eyre made showing the app’s various features several years ago:
Unfortunately, after years of useful service, Cell 411 fell into disrepair due to its founder falling on hard times due to some family difficulties. He reached out to me and the Shire Free Church took over the project in 2020, but by that time the software was essentially broken.
The first thing I wanted to do was open source Cell 411’s programming, which we have done. The project’s new head programmer, “Nobody”, is an old-school Cop Blocker and has spent the last few years – minus six months in jail when he was targeted by the feds for selling bitcoin – trying to refactor and improve the code. However, he needs help. It’s more than a one-man project and he’s getting burned out and needs some people with programming experience for Android and iOS who are willing to help make Cell 411 great again.
If you don’t know how to program, you can still help us test the app.
If you’re willing to help, please join our Matrix or Telegram support chats to get connected, and introduce yourself. You can also find our code at our Gitlab here.
Please share this story if you value Cell 411. Thank you.
And if you think that it isn’t, why is almost every decision it is making (especially “Administrative Rules” that have the force of Law) mean GOVERNMENT makes the decisions and not you and I? Are you really that dim-witted that you believe “but it’s for your own Good?”
Nope, you’d probably would have been considered a Tory or a Loyalist come Tuesday back 247 years ago.
Competition in a private property system is expected to guide resources to those uses that maximize the value of production secured from them. This value is measured by what consumers are willing to pay, making due allowance for the implicit value of leisure and other goods consumed outside the formal market arena. The profit criterion stops uses of resources that would result in more cost than benefit as these are measured by the money votes of consumers.
-Harold Demsetz (Economic, Legal, and Political Dimensions of Competition)
Competition can only happen when there is Freedom to compete. Sounds simple, sounds trite, but it is true. When Government believes it knows better than the millions of decentralized people making billions of decisions on their own for their own self-interest, the result is always better than Government control. We have had hundreds of years of examples of Socialism, fascism, and Corporatism that show my assertion to be true.
Each of those government/economic models is defined as “planning from the top” – centralized decision-making by a relatively paltry few who have the hubris to believe they can efficiently control economies that have billions of decisions – every hour. Each individual one focused on one person’s needs and desires but which, in the aggregate, form the “Invisible Hand” discussed by F.A. Hayek. Efficient (perhaps not always the highest optimal, but “efficient enough” for each) in which their capital is put to the highest good.
Planners, as in Critical Race Theory adherents, only see groups and not the individual needs. And they can only approximately guess their needs, wants, and cost ranges. Because of that, they are insufficient when it comes to “Complete Knowledge” and, thus, end up with sub-optimal decisions because the limited information they have is already out-of-date by the time they receive it; the People have already moved on.
And planners are never concerned with the People’s concern with Time which is one of the most important issues of that decision-making – time to work vs. time for leisure.
Freedom to decide – that’s what our Founding Fathers gave us. Big and Bigger Government, run by bureaucrats and stupid elected officials, forget that was one of the driving forces for Independence.
IMHO, it is being taken from us – what are you actively doing to take it back?
Or are you that lump sitting on the couch?
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
The post Notable Quote – With The Biden Administration Hurtling Into Corporatism and Fascism… appeared first on Granite Grok.
SCOTUS ruling on independent state legislature theory, imposing judicial review on powers seemingly given exclusively to State Legislatures; if Trump’s nominations to SCOTUS have disappointed, is that partially the fault of the Federalist Society? The IRS whistleblowers vs DOJ; is the left trying to dump Biden for 2024? How much accuracy is there to the polls showing Trump so far ahead of Desantis? Should Desantis attack Trump’s failures more and will that help to connect to voters more?
The post The Conservatarian Exchange Podcast #160 appeared first on The Liberty Block.
Apologies for the late update, as my DCYF saga continues. In Part 1, I put in a Right To Know requesting the volume and locations of DCYF abuse and neglect reports being made. The RTK payload (w/out the boilerplate) was rather simple.
For the Division of Children,Youth and Families (“DCYF”) and the time frame starting January 1, 2018 to today, June 17, 2023 (inclusive):
- Initial incident reports of neglect of a child/children, all sources
- Initial incident reports of abuse of a child/children, all sources
- Initial incident reports of neglect and abuse of a child/children, all sources
Only three data elements for each governmental record are demanded:
- Date of complaint filed with DCYF
- Complaint/incident type [neglect | abuse | neglect and abuse]
- Originating Town | City from where the complaint was filed
No other identifying or personal identifying data elements are requested or desired.
That was sent on 6/19/2023 1:13:02 PM. I got a response the next day that it was received and was being sent to the data folks for the response. There was a concern from DHHS Deputy Chief John Martin concerning the ability to narrow into individuals as the targets of those incidents (emphasis mine right now):
…My only concern is that we do not release data at so low a level of granularity when there is the possibility of constructive identification. If a report of abuse or neglect is made in a town with a very small population and we provide the specific date the report was made, it is possible that the identity of the alleged victim and/or alleged perpetrator could be derived using other sources of information, such as police reports or news accounts. Therefore, it may be necessary for us to withhold certain information in accordance with RSA 91-A:5,IV. For example, it may be necessary in some instances to withhold the name of the town if its population is very small, or it may be necessary to provide the month and year of the report, but not the specific day.
DCYF anticipates that it will take up to 30 days to pull the data. I will provide the data to you as soon as I receive it and make any necessary redactions.
Valid points. I get it, but my response was this:
…My only concern is that we do not release data at so low a level of granularity when there is the possibility of constructive identification.
Which is why I asked for only 3 data items per incident. With such a paucity of data, there is no way to be able to tie it back to any particular family.
…we provide the specific date the report was made… it may be necessary to provide the month and year of the report, but not the specific day.
Point made. While part of my research was to see what days of a week or month turned out to be “least” and “maximal”, I am willing to amend my RTK to be MM/YYY. Would you want me to re-submit or can we do a “Gentleman’s Agreement” based on this email?
Or, formally state that I will forgo any attempts to use other sources in “pinpointing” within a town (that which you are worried about)? I’m not looking for specific people with this RTK.
And all of my answers are absolute truth – I’m not looking to identify anyone – the construction of my RTK strictly marks that down (see above, Date, Complaint type, and town). And if DCYF does its job correctly, the Police do THEIR jobs correctly (which, in this case, is the protection of the Privacy of all involved) nowhere would there be “leakage” as to a family or individual.
So 30 days to receive the dataset. When I receive it, it will be interesting to see what the first takeaways will be.
The post Part 2: Update on RTK for DCYF Abuse and Neglect Incident Reports appeared first on Granite Grok.