Sunday • January 12 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.II
Manchester, N.H.
A perfect record, the governor predicted, would guarantee a chance to compete for greatness, inspiring his 5-year-old son to take a Sharpie in hand earlier this year, stand on his tiptoes, and lovingly graffiti the front of the DeSantis campaign bus. Barely above the headlights, in big block letters, the young fan wrote, “Florida State.”
If the university’s football team stayed perfect, the governor told his kids, FSU would make the four-team NCAA postseason. Triumph followed as the Florida State Seminoles team went through their 13-game schedule undefeated and untied. Perfect, in other words. Then a cruel snub that challenged the DeSantis family worldview: The College Football Playoff committee voted to elevate more popular schools over the team that did everything right. Excellence may be its own reward, but it doesn’t always swing enough votes. At least, that is, for the favorite football team of the Florida first family. And perhaps for presidential campaigns.
It is four days before Christmas. DeSantis is again in Iowa, and though his season is still far from over, the situation is far from rosy.
A former high school football coach, the governor draws from the hard-nosed pep talks he once delivered at halftime: “Stay dedicated to the mission, you’re not gonna be denied, and execute your plan.”
DeSantis has been blitzing Iowa non-stop, making stops in all 99 counties, many of them more than once. Ahead of the holidays, he mops up the western side of the state where he tells voters the country needs “a new birth of freedom” and promises to be their “change agent.” This isn’t just talk. Voters can see what he did in Florida. On policy, and more importantly, on getting that policy enacted into law, DeSantis has what many conservatives consider a perfect record.
But if it hasn’t already, the race for the Republican nomination may be shifting from a conversation about the fate of the country to a question about the fate of one man. “This whole legal stuff has had a big impact on the overall dynamics,” DeSantis says of how former President Trump’s myriad of felony counts and other legal challenges to his empire and his candidacy have changed the race. And this, among other factors, he says during an interview with RealClearPolitics, is “beyond my control.”
The pandemic made the “American Carnage” Trump invoked worse, the governor argues aboard the bus as it rumbles past cozy farmhouses decorated for Christmas. Worse even, he says, “than it was in 2016.”
“Are we going to have some type of accountability?” he asks. “Are we going to have a reckoning for this, or are we just going to act like everyone did such a great job?” DeSantis wants that conversation. But Trump won’t even show up to discuss it. What DeSantis considers his marquee accomplishment – how he handled a once-in-a-century crisis, refusing to lock down when Trump acquiesced – is becoming an afterthought.
“The 21st century: The three biggest events: 9/11 and the wars that followed, the Great Recession, and then COVID,” he says, moving his hand along an invisible timeline and pounding a tray table to punctuate each ugly epoch. The virus, and its still festering wounds, DeSantis continues, “had a broader impact than the other two events combined. And yet, here we are. We’re not even discussing that.”
The moderators asked exactly “one question even involving COVID” during all the primary debates, he complains, and then to make matters worse, “The former president, because he won’t debate on the stage, has not had to defend his record.”
Trump’s legal troubles now dominate the headlines once reserved for the virus. Two days prior, the Colorado Supreme Court had ruled that the former president was disqualified from holding office again because he engaged in an insurrection ahead of Jan. 6. DeSantis opposes the move “as a matter of principle” and warns that the decision “takes us down a road that’s not going to be good for this country when a court can disqualify you without a criminal conviction.”
“But let’s just be clear,” DeSantis continues, “Trump is fine with weaponization if it’s against people he doesn’t like.” For proof, he points to a complaint filed with the Florida Ethics Commission. It was “bogus” and quickly dismissed, but he notes that when the complaint was filed by Trump allies, they explicitly called “to have me ejected from the office of governor.”
He doesn’t make much of Vivek Ramaswamy’s demand, either, that the field boycott Colorado in solidarity. “If one of Trump’s competitors was removed by a state Supreme Court,” DeSantis says almost chuckling at the absurdity of the notion, “is there any chance in hell he would remove himself in solidarity? He’d spike the football!”
As Trump hustles to make the race about “retribution” and his martyrdom, DeSantis sees a trap. “This is all very strategic,” he warns while diagnosing a paradox: Democrats want to run against the former president. “They realize those indictments are beneficial to him in a primary” but also set up “a massive legal wringer” ahead of a general election. “I think they totally understand it.” And indeed, they do.
Trump’s own pollster, John McLaughlin, told RCP ahead of the first indictment that “this is really helping us.” A close friend of President Biden, Dick Harpootlian, even admitted to RCP that he was “praying” Republicans would set up Trump as the nominee for Democrats to knock down.
A popular former president adored by a sympathetic conservative media, DeSantis admits, “makes it harder for a guy like me to get oxygen.” But the candidate is stoic. “That’s just the landscape, and so a lot of that is beyond your control,” he says. “You’ve just got to do the best you can here on the ground to win the vote.”
DeSantis laughs when asked about speculation that Ramaswamy, who has repeatedly praised Trump as the greatest president in modern history, is running with a future cabinet seat in mind. If that’s the case, the millennial entrepreneur should have just issued an endorsement rather than enter the race: “He is obviously not running against Trump.” Focus on the wrong president though, he warns, and his party will lose: “Republicans should want the election framed as a referendum on the failure of Joe Biden, and how we get America out of this mess.” Unsurprisingly, he says the future ought to look like Florida.
Some Iowa Republicans have paused their holiday plans to hear about “the Florida model.” They learn, if they didn’t know already, about the Florida COVID experience, the reformed Florida public school system, the Florida war with the Disney Co., the Florida debt that is down by 25%, the year-after-year tax cuts in Florida, the Florida migration boom, and much, much more about Florida.
DeSantis sells himself as much as he pitches the Sunshine State for export. “You have the opportunity to change the trajectory of the country,” he promises. Make him the nominee, he later adds, and Republicans will win “just like we did in Florida.” On a night when the GOP was bitterly underwhelmed, DeSantis barely broke a sweat. He won reelection last year by a historic 20 percentage points.
Some voters come to hear him already convinced. During a stop in Coralville, Wyatt Landuyt-Krueger, a 21-year-old corrections officer wearing DeSantis campaign merch, asks the governor about mortgage rates. DeSantis gives a long answer that touches on the free market, the Federal Reserve, and energy independence driving down inflation. “I liked his answer,” the Zoomer replies, calling it “absolutely comprehensive.”
Others welcome the process of being persuaded. After another town hall, this one just outside Ainsworth, retired small business owner Patty Koller is also impressed by the DeSantis record. She came to the session leaning toward Trump, but leaves impressed with DeSantis. “He’s just solid,” she reports. “Very intelligent and sincere.”
Voters ask more than a dozen questions. No one says anything about the latest Washington Beltway fascination, namely the super PAC responsible for funding most of the DeSantis advertising, canvassing programs, and the candidate’s travel. It is reportedly imploding.
The DeSantis campaign ceded significant funds and traditional responsibilities to Never Back Down, an auspicious and historic bet that is now in danger of backfiring. The organization’s operation has been the polar opposite of what DeSantis promises to bring to the White House. Jeff Roe, the PAC’s chief architect, resigned last week from the group plagued by blunders and backbiting.
“I don’t have control over it, and that’s the problem with how this is set up. If I controlled it, I would own it, and I would obviously have run it in a good way,” DeSantis tells RCP. “It’s just an independent group, and so the dynamics there are things that I just have no visibility into whatsoever.”
Would he do anything differently if he could start over again, perhaps the now infamous decision to launch his campaign on Twitter? Despite glitches, DeSantis still considers the audio live stream a success. “There was so much interest that it crashed the site,” he says of the launch that attracted 300,000 listeners in the moment and 3.4 million listeners in the following 24 hours.
More generally though, he says of the campaign, “There’s always different things that you can do. Anytime I’ve done anything, I can look back and say that.” The last few months, DeSantis reports, have been a significant success. He won the endorsement of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and then Iowa kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats. He warmed up for the fourth GOP debate by taking California Gov. Gavin Newsom to task during an exhibition in primetime on Fox News.
“We are clicking,” DeSantis insists as he blankets Iowa. “We are doing good.” Does he enjoy the process of campaigning, though? DeSantis has heard the question before, phrased in various ways: It goes to the heart of whether he’s struggling in the polls because he’s charisma-challenged. DeSantis doesn’t object to the question. “It’s fun,” he replies with a shrug during another long day in Iowa.
Trump has not put in that kind of work. The former president prefers parachuting into early states for big rallies rather than meeting voters one-on-one at the diner or the firehouse. More recently, Trump can be found with a posse sitting ringside at UFC cage fights.
The governor has crashed big events like that before. He received a warm welcome last year during a surprise visit to Pepsi Gulf Coast Jam when he walked on stage and told a crowd gathered for country music that the festival had been made possible “because Florida chose freedom over ‘Faucism.’” And both men attended the Iowa vs. Iowa State football game earlier this year. Trump watched from a private suite. DeSantis sat in the stands.
“Ultimately, that’s not my bread and butter,” he says of the celebrity cameo. “I mean, I’m not an entertainer. I’m a leader. And a leader has got to be able to get the job done and deliver results.” Podcasts are a more natural fit, and his last stop before heading home for Christmas is a hayloft.
DeSantis sits opposite Sawyer and Tork Whisler, the father and son duo who host “Barn Talk.” They are the Joe Rogans of agriculture, and on their farm, the governor seems in his element. Behind the microphone for an hour, he discusses everything from the intersection of the U.S. Constitution’s Interstate Commerce Clause and the pork-packing industry to environmental regulations. He can’t help but brag about his son, the Seminoles fan.
A highlight from the campaign: a stop in Sioux City the morning of the Big Ten title game. DeSantis brought his 5-year-old on stage with him and put him on the spot. “I didn’t rehearse it with him,” he recalls on the podcast. “I was like, Mason who is going to win Iowa vs. Michigan?” A cute moment to be sure, it could have just as easily ended in disaster. As DeSantis brought the microphone within his son’s reach, he admits thinking, “If this kid chooses Michigan, he’s going to get booed.” He shouldn’t have worried. Mason hollered “Iowa!” The crowd went wild.
The Barn Talk guys love the story, and when the recording wraps, they invite the governor to come back anytime. He appreciates the hospitality. It’s a change of pace.
DeSantis has weathered more attacks than anyone else in the race, absorbing constant hits from Trump, the rest of the field, and Democrats. More campaign money had been spent to tear down the governor by the end of the summer than to attack either Trump or Biden. Even old friends started taking shots.
Right after news broke that Fox News had ousted Tucker Carlson, the candidate called the pundit. “He was really good TV,” DeSantis says of the former Fox News firebrand. The two were often of the same mind, and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” served as a sort of conservative safe space complete with an average of 3 million viewers on any given weeknight. DeSantis rebelled against pandemic protocols and went to war with Disney on the primetime programming until Fox gave Carlson the boot. DeSantis called to tell the pundit he was “saddened” by the news. They haven’t spoken since. That hasn’t stopped Carlson from attacking.
“His donor, Ken Griffin, told him to change his view on Ukraine from it’s a regional conflict we shouldn’t get involved to it’s a super important thing we should send more money,” Carlson claimed earlier this month at a Trump-friendly Turning Point USA conference. “One donor got him to change his view,” said the pundit, who is reportedly in the running to be Trump’s VP. “And these so-called conservatives are supporting that like it’s the most important thing ever.”
The governor had initially described the land war in Europe as “a territorial dispute,” only to clarify later in an interview with Piers Morgan that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “a war criminal.” Critics pounced on that clarification, but if DeSantis is tainted because he supports a Cold War era-type proxy war with Russia, no one told his two biggest congressional allies.
DeSantis brought both Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Thomas Massie of Kentucky with him to Iowa this month, campaigning arm-in-arm with the two most prominent Ukraine skeptics in the House. He says he has “no beef” with Carlson. All the same, the governor seems annoyed at this kind of attack.
“I’ve never said it was the most important thing ever,” DeSantis replies. “I haven’t changed my position either.” He comes to his stances after deep study, he explains, not after calls with donors, even someone with oversized influence like the CEO of Citadel Capital. “Nobody got to me on anything. And in fact, Griffin has not supported my presidential campaign,” he says. “It’s a total false premise.”
DeSantis then offers his analysis of the conflict more than 5,000 miles away. After dinging Biden for failing to articulate “an end game” and reiterating that he opposes anything approaching “a blank check,” he gives two broad “guiding principles.” First, he says, “to ensure that wider conflicts are not breaking out in Europe.” Second, to see to it “that Russia is kept in a box.”
“In terms of all the nitty gritty,” the governor replies when asked what the DeSantis administration’s definition of victory would be, “we’re going to see what it looks like in January of 2025.”
Putin is the aggressor, but American interests are preeminent in the mind of DeSantis, who sees China, not Russia, as the bigger threat. Voters perk up when he lays out his “strategy of denial” for the Indo-Pacific, and they applaud when he not only promises to ban the Chinese purchase of American farmland but also notes that he did it already in Florida.
He doesn’t buy the argument from Nikki Haley, though, that Beijing will back off from wanting to swallow Taiwan if Moscow is denied in Ukraine. “She has even linked Hamas attacking Israel to Russia,” the governor says, noting the former ambassador’s recent remarks. “She said Hamas chose to attack on Oct. 7 because that was Putin’s birthday. That’s a conspiracy theory! Give me a break.”
DeSantis and Haley will meet the Wednesday before the Iowa caucuses. On stage, Florida’s governor and South Carolina’s former governor (and Trump administration U.N. ambassador) will clash over their visions, and he will again defend a record that is nearly faultless in the eyes of the right. He did the work in Florida, and he will promise again that he can do it for the country if given a chance. That starts with Iowa, where he trails by 32 points in the RealClearPolitics Average.
“The model that we’ve done in Florida,” DeSantis tells voters at his last stop of the day, “will lead us to not just victory in 2024 at the presidential level,” but also congressional majorities, “and then a reelected president in 2028. I don’t think anything less than that will get the job done.”
“Don’t listen to the media, don’t listen to them cite polls,” he warns. Look to his record instead, he urges the Iowa crowd. As for the polling and the ephemera, “Put it aside and do what you think is right.”
Back on the bus, as the day draws to a close, the candidate predicts that all the hard work will soon be worth it. “I think you’re going to see it really come to fruition when we get to the caucus,” DeSantis tells RCP. After all, the governor did all the leg work already.
He gave conservatives nearly everything they wanted in Florida. He now hopes Iowa will save him from the capricious fate of the Florida Seminoles who will watch the college football playoffs from the sidelines. Perhaps this time, in a conservative electorate swayed by policy, a perfect record will not go unrewarded.
Philip Wegmann | RealClear Wire
The post Ron Desantis Struggles With Unrewarded Excellence appeared first on Granite Grok.
We remember an Andy Sanborn, from nearly 15 years ago. A small business owner who stepped up with others to voice opposition to the then-all-Democrat New Hampshire State government and a budget bristling with new taxes. It vaulted him into politics and eventually a gig as a State Senator. That’s not this guy.
I’ve not spoken to Andy in many years, but a slew of circumstances hath laid him low, and the latest is a ruling by Independent Hearing Officer Michael King. In response to a long list of accusations from the State and the Gaming Commission, King has revoked Sanborn’s Casino license.
Thirteen state conclusions of law were granted, while 19 were denied. Many of the denied conclusions were denied due to not being relevant to the proceeding “and better left for determination by another agency.” Sanborn can operate the casino until Jan. 1, 2024, when the license is suspended and the casino must cease operations. He then has six months to sell the casino. If Sanborn fails to sell the business, the license will be fully revoked.
The accusations against Sanborn included increasing rent payments to himself from $500 a month to as much as $20,000 a month across several years, according to a state audit. The total amount appears to be more than a quarter of a century of advance rental payments. Sanborn was also accused of misusing more than $800,000 in coronavirus relief money for the business to buy himself and his wife sports cars.
We can’t speak to the numerous accusations of impropriety, including the misuse of COVID money not mentioned in the pull quote, but taken in the larger context of how governments and graft work, we’re partial to ‘Grok contributor Ian Underwood’s conclusion in this piece on the alleged scandal.
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.
In other words, if there is any serious concern about waste, fraud, and abuse (of COVID money or any other laundering scheme, the watchdogs had best broaden the scope of their steely gaze lest this look like targeting.
If he done wrong then bring suitable justice, just don’t leave anyone else out of it.
The post Night Cap: Sanborn Loses Gaming License – Forced to Halt Operation on Jan 1 appeared first on Granite Grok.
The current in-vogue spin-room phrase is “context is everything.” That phrase is used to provide an excuse for every unethical action, from teachers who are caught reading pornography to grade-school children, to politicians who vote to support “gender-affirming” surgery without their parent’s permission or knowledge.
To university presidents who use that phrase to excuse support for genocide or plagiarism, and to how judges hand down different punishments based on the perpetrator’s political ideology or financial connections.
When “free speech” advocates are questioned about their obviously ridiculous statements, they retreat into well-practiced “weave and dodge” responses. They use technicalities cloaked in legal non-answers. They don’t want to be held responsible for what they said.
“You need to understand the context in which those words were spoken.”
Um, no. We don’t need to understand the “context”. We can plainly see what was said. We heard it. We understood it. And we know you meant every word you said.
The City of Nashua has recently used those same “weave and dodge” tactics to avoid answering difficult questions about a recent election. “We followed the law”, they claim. They point at various NH RSAs and use “context” to explain why they can’t retrieve public information they are required to provide, by those same RSAs, to citizens requesting that information. They want to know why the information is requested, as if the “context” of the request would provide an excuse for not providing the information. They say that the information is stored in a “secure location” and thus cannot be retrieved – even when ordered to retrieve it by a judge.
It’s not “context” that’s the problem.
It’s the fact that the statements were made at all, or that the information was purposefully hidden from view and/or retrieval. Those who made the statements or hid the information knew exactly what they were saying and/or doing. Now, like a toddler caught with a hand in the cookie jar, they are trying to fool us into believing that their truth is the only truth, that we are at fault for even asking the questions.
Nobody should be surprised at this. The United States has been sliding away from truth for decades. It is only now that the slide has finally become noticeable as more and more people begin to wonder exactly why they can’t get a straight answer from city leaders. Or politicians. Or university presidents.
The latest of these “we know better” efforts to provide “context” is the “diversity”, “equity”, and “inclusion” policies being implemented in both public and private organizations. The stated goal was to “level the playing field” by ripping up the playing field and redesigning it into multiple incompatible levels. The redesign violates the “all men are equal” principle (and MLK’s principles, by the way).
“But you need to understand the context behind DEI”, one person says.
Um, we need to know why two equally-qualified individuals must be treated separately? “Why, yes. It’s all about the context in which the decision is being made.”
That word again: context. The same “I don’t need to explain it to you because you obviously aren’t intelligent enough to see it for yourself” explanation.
So, given the correct context, it must be OK to tell city residents that they don’t need to have FOIA information that they demand, especially if that information will expose corruption and bias. With the correct context, it must be OK to tell university students that some of them don’t deserve protection from attack because “they’re not as worthy”. Context explains why it’s OK for politicians to use unethical and possibly illegal means to enrich themselves in office even though there are laws that are specifically designed to prevent it. And context explains how it’s OK for both the government and private organizations to treat selected groups of people differently.
Why is this so? Context, of course. Context explains everything.
So the question remains: are you going to believe those who are using “context” to explain the need for corruption, the violation of morality and truth, and the imposition of unequal treatment?
Or, are you willing to ignore context and recognize corruption and unequal treatment when you see it with your own eyes?
The post Context is… Nothing. appeared first on Granite Grok.
As we stumble into the year of our lord, Two Thousand Twenty-Four, I feel compelled to give thanks to commenters. Yes, the people who are not just fans of our authors but feel the uncontrollable urge to add their input and encourage debate.
You guys are great. Seriously.
To show my appreciation, I’d like to institute a new thing. You could call it a contest or perhaps an incentive. Maybe even a reward.
Inciteful input is valued, as is snark or compelling counterargument. We want more of it, so I am introducing a weekly commenter “award.” Here’s how it works. My moderator has been tasked with sending me comments they find interesting. Intuitive or relevant. Material that knocks an argument out of the park or adds to or extends the debate. He’s got a lot on his plate, so I’d also like readers and commenters to send me compelling comments (not your own, please).
Please submit each other’s best comments for consideration to support the community. Submit comments you read that make you go yeah, or hmmm, or hell no; that’s not right, but well said – you should also respond to those yourself.
There is no limit to the number of potential submissions from any commenter. The more you comment, the better your chances are that someone will pick your words for consideration. This is not an invitation to spam us or to be a troll. The same rules apply to those, and abusers will be removed at our discretion.
Add to the debate, please.
Whether you comment or not, if you read a comment you like, email it or a link to it (and the post from that week where you found it) to me with the name of the commenter. Please send it to steve@granitegrok.com. The email subject should be “comment of the week” or something similar.
We will run this weekly from Monday to Sunday for the next 24 weeks.
A winner will be announced at the beginning of the new week, and I will contact them for an address to send them their free Grok Swag. It could be a Grok Hat, a mug, or non-Grok NH-themed branding like Live Free or Die.
Contiguous 48 states only, sorry. International and overseas shipping are cost-prohibitive.
We will announce the winner each week following their selection. If it goes well from January to June, we’ll renew it for July to December.
We love our comments and commenters, and we’d like to love more of them. A lot more, so we hope this inspired you and others to join in the debate by exercising their right to Free speech.
Commenting house Rules apply – you can review those here.
Comments must be on the ‘Grok – meaning offsite remarks on social media that are not duplicated on our pages do not count. The comments should be your own, not someone else. Otherwise, we’re open to any remarks you’d like to contribute.
And remember, it is what you say, not how many words you use to say it. There is value in brevity.
The post New Year, New ‘Grok, Commenters Can Win Free Stuff – Every Week! appeared first on Granite Grok.
Advanced Placement for students in public schools who are more intellectually agile, capable, gifted, or just faster learners is proof of something. Racism? White Privilege (even if the bright kid is Asian or black). Whatever it is, it is unfair, and the government schools are on an equity mission to stop it.
Where once you had advanced placement or AP classes for kids who are or have the potential to excel above the standard level, you will now have everyone in one class.
Since Critical Race Theory (CRT), gender ideology, and DEI are not getting the reaction schools were hoping for, they’ve now repackaged their harmful agenda with a new title: unlevelling.
Unlevelling is when all students, regardless of academic abilities or special needs, are put in the same classes. No more standing out, Little Ricky.
Think about that for a second. In order to spare some feelings, students who show an aptitude for mathematics, science, English, and history will be punished.
According to Allison Dyer, the Nashua School Board has voted to end leveling, lumping all the kids into one room in pursuit of, my words, systemic mediocrity.
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Allison brings up several of the Nashua School District’s many demons, including a ‘Grok fan favorite, Heather Raymond. Heather was the tip of the spear to smear Doris Hohensee back in 2019 for daring to run and get elected to her school Board. Doris was a bane of her existence, challenging the progressive public school orthodoxy. Doris later became a Nashua ‘Grok contributor. (Related: Paula Johnson vs. City of Nashua.)
We’re thankful to have her, but Nashua lost a defender of parent and student rights, and a board member more interested in academics than turning the district into a mental health waystation preparing underachieving students for the crumbs left them by political elites like Heather Raymond.
Unlevelling will further handicap Nashua students. Parents who are able should do what they can to find other options.
The post The Nashua School District Unlevels (De-Levels) Classroom Learning appeared first on Granite Grok.
Nikki Haley’s answer … more accurately non-answer … to a question about the cause of the Civil War speaks for itself. She OBVIOUSLY does NOT have the wherewithal to campaign for President successfully, never mind having a successful Presidency.
She is Biden-in-heels … a figurehead who will do whatever the GOP big donors tell her to do.
What needs emphasizing is her campaign’s pathetic and stupid “damage control” … it was a “Democrat plant.” Dear Birdbrain, Inc., the entire Regime-media are “Democrat plants.” Adam Sexton is a “Democrat plant.” So is every “reporter” at NHPR. So is every NBC “journalist” who moderated the so-called GOP debate where you, DeSantis, and Christie all went along with the charade that those Democrat plants were real journalists, and only Vivek called that farce a farce. Same for ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, etc., etc., etc..
What also needs emphasizing is that Nikki can’t think on her feet. Every moment of a campaign CANNOT be scripted. There will be times when the candidate, to use a football analogy, has to call an audible. Quarterbacks who don’t know when to call an audible or the right audible to call don’t win Super Bowls.
Nikki Haley will NEVER win a Super Bowl.
The post Dear Birdbrain, They Are ALL Democrat Plants appeared first on Granite Grok.
They’re flying so thick and fast it is amazing. And wishing everyone a Happy New Year!
Take heart – there will be both a Wednesday and Friday Edition. Last week’s Friday Edition.
Remember, ridicule and mockery are effective weapons:
Now, let the mockery and mayhem begin.
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
>>>>>=====<<<<<
I know I’ve said this before, but… when I saw the first ultrasound of my oldest child, I broke down. Weeping and sobbing in joy. I was going to be a daddy.
I cannot advocate this tactic, but…
My wife – born and raised in the USSR – has described this to me.
Yes and no. My wife is – nominally – a Sunni Muslim and doesn’t think like this. But I do believe there is a vast reservoir of “moderates” that would, given a little push, make that change to radical.
Not just that, but I’m convinced the Dems were forewarned and deliberately sought to advance the virus’ spread as a way to attack Trump.
Yes and no. Do I think he’s central? Yes. Do I believe he’s at the true center of the web? No.
>>>>>=====<<<<<
PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA
The invasion across what used to be our southern border proceeds apace – and is accelerating. As I posted on the GraniteGrok Telegram chat (not run by the Grok itself):
This is why you only see illegal migrants with small backpacks.
This driver carries all the people’s bags across the border, so when the migrants are illegally crossing into the USA, they don’t have to carry anything.
It’s a whole operation.
This footage is in Eagle Pass, Texas; it borders the city of Mexico.
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/small-backpacks.mp4
A literal flood of people – just think, for a minute, about the logistics of a flow that large. Housing / shelter. Food & water. Sanitation – bodily and otherwise. This is not spontaneous – it has to be bankrolled, and yuuuugely.
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/literal-river-of-international-workers.mp4
As many have noted, this has to have massive governmental support. From this Telegram channel:
Illegal Alien Invasion Maps Exposed – CRITICAL THREAD EXPOSING NUMEROUS MASS MIGRATION BLUEPRINTS
Muckraker has obtained multiple maps, handed out by non-government organizations across South and Central America, that detail the routes to take to the U.S. and where to cross the U.S. border.
The collapse of the U.S. southern border is the result of a carefully planned and deliberately executed industrial mass migration program.
MAP #1 – Distributed by Doctors Without Borders (Médicos Sin Fronteras in Spanish).
The front shows the routes from Panama to Mexico.
The back shows the routes across Mexico to the United States.
MAP #2 – Distributed by The United Nations International Organization of Migration (IOM). It shows various commissions and consulates across the country of Mexico.
MAP #3 – Distributed by the NGO Amigos Del Tren (Friends Of The Train in English).
This NGO aids illegal aliens in riding the “Train of Death”, (also known as “La Bestia”), a freight train that U.S.-bound illegal aliens ride on top of to reach the U.S. border.
The front shows the train routes across the country of Mexico.
The back lists numerous hostels that can be found along the train routes and also shows the distances between Mexican cities.
MAP #4 – Distributed by the Red Cross.
The front shows the freight train routes across Mexico (similar to the Amigos Del Tren map) and lists 80 different stops from Panama to the United States.
The back gives advice on navigating the mass migration trail. One piece of advice given is how to safely ride a freight train. It is advised to avoid riding a freight train if “. . . you are under the influence of alcohol, drugs or medication that can make you drowsy.”
MAP #5 – Distributed by R4V (Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela).
The front shows the “migration routes” across the country of Ecuador.
The back shows the distance and transit times between Ecuadorian cities.
https://www.muckraker.com/articles/illegal-alien-invasion-maps-exposed/
Think of the money to do this:
And while I don’t advocate violence, I admit this is intriguing.
And who is coming in (or already here)? From Tommy Robinson’s Telegram channel:
On Christmas day Al Qaeda released a new “Inspire” video calling for increased attacks on American, British, and French airlines.
Parts of the video also called for solidarity with Palestinians.
They are now focusing on “open-source Jihad” to decentralize instructions and materials on weapons manufacturing and lone-wolf techniques.
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/AQ.mp4
Related memes and images:
As I said on Gab when I posted the above:
OK, a little investigation.
The average wage in Senegal is 351,000 XOF monthly.
https://www.salaryexplorer.com/average-salary-wage-comparison-senegal-c192
Translated to US dollars:
$592
https://www.currencyconvert.net/cfa-franc/dollar/351000
I don’t know costs of living, but… isn’t that a BIG TRIP for someone on such a low budget?
If you’re not familiar with The Cloward Piven Strategy, this is it writ large.
Cloward-Piven Strategy (CPS)
Democrats, Orchestrated Crisis, & an Open Southern Border
Pro-Palestinian Protesters Chant ‘Allahu Akbar’ At World Trade Center | ZeroHedge
What are the odds the “magic dirt” of America will make them into good citizens?
What ‘Great Replacement Theory’? Musk Exposes “Immense & Growing Size” Of Illegal Immigration Invasion | ZeroHedge
Open Borders – Why Not Just Invite the Entire World to the U.S.? – American Thinker
And lastly, consider the in-your-face all is well gaslighting by the The Potato’s administration:
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/border-gaslighting.mp4
Utterly intentional. It’s for votes:
But apportionment in the House of Representatives if illegals are counted in the Census.
And one last thing – all the chaos this will bring. Then, in all the chaos and violence and uncertainty – the “benevolent hand” of one-world government socialism will be offered to make it stop and restore a sense of normalcy.
The question is not that the flood of illegals must be stopped and reversed. The question is if it can be stopped, and reversed, without enormous bloodshed.
Alas. I don’t think so.
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The problem is that it’s soooo much easier and cheaper to get it from overseas. E.g., at one place I worked the head of logistics said that to build the product in the US would be unsustainably expensive even with automation… and then they have a 1000% markup on the imported goods.
Marxism appeals to the worst in us. Thinking religiously, it appeals to SLOTH and WRATH and ENVY.
What’s that line from the original movie The Matrix:
How do these people sleep at night?
IIRC RFK Jr. said that the cancer / chemo medical market is 10+ times that of the Jab.
I repeat: How do these people sleep at night knowing they’ve created this crisis. Speaking of:
But those ideas sound so good.
Nor just flat-out killing your inconvenient and non-obedient *ss:
I wonder if this guy’s bought it yet:
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Pick of the post:
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Palate Cleansers:
—
—
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Come back Wednesday for another edition. Same Meme Time. Same Meme channel.
Please do consider buying me a coffee.
Buy Me a Coffee
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The post MONDAY MEMES appeared first on Granite Grok.
National Parents Organization and New Hampshire Families recently received the results of independent polling concerning the attitudes of those in New Hampshire about shared parenting. The results show overwhelming support for a legal presumption of equal shared parenting when parents are living apart.
Recent polling by Researchscape in New Hampshire adds to a body of similar research done in more than two dozen states now, including Alabama in 2023; Iowa, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Virginia in 2022; and New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in 2021. In every state in which polling has been done, the support for a legal presumption of equal shared parenting when parents separate is stunningly strong. (See sharedparenting.org/shared-parenting-polling for details.)
So, what does the New Hampshire public think about shared parenting?
Decades of scientific research align with these public attitudes. More than forty years of empirical research provide near-uniform support for the conclusion that, when parents are living apart, the more time children spend with each of their parents, the better outcomes for children. Children fare better on all metrics of child well-being when parents share equally in raising them—even when the parents are not in agreement about engaging in shared parenting.
Under current New Hampshire law, in the absence of parental agreement, one parent is designated the custodial parent, and the other parent is relegated to an every-other-weekend visitor in the child’s life. This pits the parents against one another and contributes to the parental conflict that we know is harmful for children.
Assuring parents, and especially the children, that parental separation will not, in the typical case, degrade or destroy the relationship the children have with both parents will help to reduce the conflict that arises when parents separate. This is important because it is the ongoing conflict and extended litigation, together with the loss of a full relationship with one parent, that is far more harmful to children than the fact that the parents are living apart.
New Hampshire children and families pray their rights and best interests will prevail over the special interests that oppose shared parenting and that New Hampshire Legislators will VOTE GREEN ON HB185 on Wednesday, January 3, 2024.
The post New Hampshire Overwhelmingly Supports Shared Parenting appeared first on Granite Grok.
New Hampshire’s Largest paper, our paper of record, may not have had a lot of choices for a citizen of the year, or there may have been hundreds. But rather than pick a citizen, it picked a politician. Chris Sununu.
I am not implying that elected officials are not citizens, but shouldn’t an institution like the one left behind by the Loeb’s – the founders of that daily, make some effort to find someone outside the political sphere to recognize?
I’m not familiar with the criteria, but I’d be inclined to find a different sort of public servant. A police officer, EMT, firefighter, nurse, plumber, electrician, or other ordinary schmo who did something exceptional or persisted in a thankless task to benefit others.
Yes, you could call being elected thankless, but that’s in the job description. No matter what you do, at minimum, a third to perhaps two-thirds of citizens will not like it. That’s what his excellency gets paid to put up with. But this is a guy who let too many opportunities to choose liberty pass, and not just in 2023.
He has managed to sit atop an unusual time in 21st century New Hampshire. A Republican Governor with successive Republican majorities in the Executive Council and Legislature. With his signature, he has allowed tax cuts and the elimination of taxes to become law. But he has done too little to ensure election integrity. He endorsed Nikki Haley for President after Haley said she’d force private social media companies to make the names of every contributor public, which must include whistleblowers who could not otherwise speak.
Parents will be scratching their heads. Sununu was not their biggest ally and, in previous years, was quite the contrary. While Sununu supported school choice, he has compromised women’s safe spaces and left room for third-party associations to advance unconstitutional policies like JBABA, which encourages compelled speech. And done nothing in this year or any other of which I am aware to fight that injustice.
He has allowed his DoJ, without public comment, to chase cases that suggest a deeper commitment to interfering with free speech and support for more government control of speech.
Sununu chose the Biden administration’s election interference tactics over a former Republican president who was well within his legal right to possess classified documents and those he’d declassified. If it was a political hit on a guy he’d sworn to oppose, not much seems out of bounds.
Illegal border incursions from Canada went on for too long before Governor Sununu lifted a finger to do anything about it.
Sununu is always quick to take federal money, insisting there are no strings or federal demands attached when nothing comes out of DC without conditions. A commitment to growing fiscal dependency on the Feds, which is a crime against state sovereignty.
There are more, and by all means, please fill them in below as comments because I’m stopping here.
Mr. Sununu has done some good things in each of his terms, in every year in office as Governor, but he could have done better in 2023. More than a few opportunities to side with liberty passed him by either because he blocked them or failed to use his office to rally legislators in support.
Nobody is perfect, and we cannot let perfect be the enemy of the good, but naming a politician as Citizen of the Year is a cop-out and wholly inappropriate for a media organization whose role should be to find elected officials from any party, in any office, at the bottom of any or every such list. Your job is to hold them accountable, not put another accolade on their mantle.
As for The ‘Grok, we don’t name a citizen of the year, and by all means, offer suggestions in comments if you have them, but if I had to choose one off the top of my head for 2023, I’d go with Danial Richard.
But that’s just me.
The post Union Leader Names Chris Sununu NH Citizen of The Year – We Respectfully Disagree appeared first on Granite Grok.
There are three main takeaways from 2023. Higher education, especially among the Ivy Leagues and other “elite” colleges, continues to be revealed for what it has become: a bloated, tenured-protected, and indoctrinating mess.
Three Ivy League college presidents recently went before Congress and gave arrogant and evasive answers to simple questions. It reminded me of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Ketanji Brown Jackson when she could not define a woman or man.
Colleges have morphed from institutes for learning into indoctrination camps designed to propagate leftist race and gender ideology. The worst extremes of the left have now become the norm at colleges, which are out of touch, expensive and arrogant. They used to be places that searched for the truth; now they create false narratives.
Colleges are so paralyzed by race that they cannot fire the plagiarizing president of Harvard, Dr. Claudine Gay. So far, 40 cases of plagiarism have suddenly been discovered after she angered Jewish people, something any educated person with common sense knows not to do. President Gay, who is black, implies the assertions are racial. She says she plans to address all this in her upcoming “I Have a Dream” speech on the National Mall in D.C.
Having coddled students for so long, businesses are no longer buying the colleges’ product: students. I am glad I got my degree in gender studies in the 80s, back when there were only two of them. I cannot image how confusing that degree would be now.
Colleges have become so PC and humorless that their choosing to become antisemitic should worry us. I would not bring Mel Brooks’ comedy “The Producers” to any Ivy League campus for fear the audience would not laugh at the “Springtime for Hitler” song, but instead join in.
Secondly, it was good to see America and candidates (mostly Republicans like Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis) push back on the idea of Washington getting us into another war of choice. Biden and the Beltway permanent political class love war now. And to keep us funding his honey hole ATM, Ukraine, Biden pandered to students by pretending he could wipe out their student loans.
The loans that college students signed up for to get degrees are worthless, like the course/major called “Taylor Swift Studies.” Getting out of college is much like breaking up with Taylor Swift; in a year or so you will be paying a severe price.
Biden did say that any young person killed in his pending World War III will have his or her government student loans forgiven.
Lastly, women and men taking advantage of the #MeToo movement have been dealt a blow. Kevin Spacey, Johnny Depp and others with the guts to challenge old claims have won their cases. Being hit on or flirted with have morphed into sexual harassment and assault allegations. Kevin Spacey’s first accuser, a massage therapist who said Spacey groped him, died suddenly after filing suit. This made me think the Clintons are now franchising.
In testimony, a witness said Kevin Spacey “would not hurt a fly.” (I guess as long as it is not open.) It’s clear: If Kevin Spacey, Chris Rock or Russell Brand were not rich celebs, these cases would not have been filed. Had the #MeToo movement gone unchecked and allowed to go any further, I was going to sue for harassment. If my lawyer asked who I wanted to sue, I would’ve said, “Anyone who will settle.”
When the #MeToo movement took the fun out of being a Democrat in elected office, the left backed off. They certainly have kept the Epstein Island guest list under wraps. It is still the only secret in D.C.
Opportunists used the #MeToo trend to shake down the rich and famous for purported sexual encounters from decades ago. When egregious crimes like rape, sexual assault and pedophilia go unpunished because people use the heightened #MeToo attention to threaten criminal charges in order to enhance their civil suit shakedowns, we are all worse off. It’s gotten where it is a career risk being social with co-workers.
In short, not a single Founding Father or president would have survived this #MeToo movement. Not a single male Republican Supreme Court nominee has since 2016 has not been attacked by an old allegation. Rest assured, if Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullet had not gotten JFK in 1963, the #MeToo movement in 2018 would have killed him at the ripe old age of 101.
A libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author, Ron does commentary on radio and TV. He can be contacted at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.
Ron Hart | 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.The post College Campuses, Warmongering, and #MeToo appeared first on Granite Grok.
As GraniteGrok rolls into its 17th year at the helm of New Hampshire politics, we wish you and yours a Happy New Year. We hope you have some fond memories of the old year and great plans for the one ahead, regardless of how the political wind blows.
We will, of course, work to provide some direction and try to punch a few holes in our political opponent’s bilge barge. Changes are planned, but some things never change. We’re still your ‘Grok, so plenty of hyperbolic bomb-throwing will ensue.
Site updates are planned for Q1—a slightly different look. The ad-free VIP feature will build out from that—changing commenting systems. and new ways to sort content that addresses our expanded audience. The MicroGroks will be there, but you’ll be able to sift from any page by NH, New England, the Nation, and the World.
We’ll also be adding MaineGrok.
That Mobile App I’ve always wanted is lingering in the wings – and yes, I still want that, and I want it in 2024.
We are still hoping for a few generous sponsors willing to support independent media annually. ‘Grok can grow, but we need funding, and the consensus is no one wants more ads, including me. Ideally, we raise enough from subscribers, donors, and sponsors to make the Ad-Free VIP portion not just Ad-Free but premium content-only and the regular site Ad-Free. We need donors to do that, and it’s on the list.
Better search is still on the update bullet list, as is a dedicated Op-ed page that works a bit better than the way we do it now.
Given the new silo content sorting scheme, we’ll be moving toward – with a few exceptions – limiting MicroGrok content to articles about those towns or regions. No more general dumping of statewide, regional, national, or global content on those pages. They are useless as locals if the content isn’t local. And yes, I need to recruit more or newer creators willing to provide that focus for all of them.
Volunteers?
We need them for Nashua, Manchester, Hollis, Windham, Cheshire County (MonadnockGrok), Rockingham-Strafford County (SeacoastGrok), Belknap and Carrol (Cty Lakes Region), North Country (Coos – no site until we find writers), as well as Derry Londonderry (no site yet), Concord (No site yet) and perhaps the River Valley (Belknap and Sullivan Cty. no site yet).
It may make more sense to do Greater Nashua, Greater Manchester, and GreaterConcord -regional pages. This would roll Derry/Londonderry into Manchester and Hollis into Nashua – and no, I’m not married to that idea yet.
VermontGrok needs more contributors, as will the newly minted but not yet live MaineGrok – both states deserve our attention as they have significant policy impacts on New Hampshire. What happens there, they want here.
The budget to run all of this will be more than we failed to raise in 2023, so anyone who is good at fundraising and will work on commission should contact me. I know – in an election year, good luck, Steve – but that’s what we need, so we’ll try to get there from here.
We’ve made a few strategic content-sharing arrangements so ‘Grok can help local independent media grow its audience while we grow ours.
It seems like a lot, but it all comes down to this. There are outlets repeating the news and those who will do more than challenge that status quo. We are the latter and can do more, but we’ll need more help and, yes – more financial support. I’m not linking to it here. The donate link is at the top of every page (GiveSendGo has no fees if you care). But there are plenty of ways to contribute that don’t include money. Content, contacts, content, relationships, and did I mention content?
The world is out to shut independent media down. We see that as no less of a challenge and intend to rise to meet it. We hope you can do more than just come along for the ride, but if your contribution is reading and sharing, we’re more than just happy to have you. We love our readers, even the ones who don’t always love us.
Now put your phone away and enjoy whatever New Year’s Eve thing is your thing. And if you are reading this on New Year’s Day or later, welcome to 2024. Let’s kick some ass.
The post Happy New Year! – Now, Let’s Take 2024 by the (You Know What) And Kick It (You Know Where) appeared first on Granite Grok.
If you take out and read the United States Constitution.
Or the New Hampshire Constitution.
Or the Declaration of Independence.
Or the federalist papers.
or Tom Paine’s work “common sense.”
You would not find “equity” (as used in DEI).
George Washington never advocated it.
Abraham Lincoln never mentioned it.
Nobody died at Gettysburg to promote it.
Now, to be sure, the thought changes if you talk about “equality,” not equity.
Equality is a common theme in our laws, our social norms, and in our history. To confuse the two is to confuse two views of civilization.
Equality means that the INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS of each citizen are treated equally by the Government. Equality is an intimate part of a system of Government that elevates the individual to the highest status and sees Government as existing to promote, protect, and defend the rights of the individual citizen. As a part of a system of individual rights, “equality” operates to protect those rights by forbidding Government from promoting one man’s or woman’s rights preferentially over another’s. My first amendment right to free speech is no better nor worse than my neighbor. I am entitled to the same due process as a citizen born across town or across the country. The key is “my” rights: equality is a part of making “my” rights prosper along with everyone else’s rights.
Equity” means that citizens belong to one of two classes: the oppressed or the oppressor. “Equity” assumes that all of society- on all levels (whether spiritual, historical, legal, or educational) – is explained by these two classes. “Equity” declares that individual rights are really just an illusion imposed by the oppressor class to marginalize the oppressed. “Equity ” declares the role of Government (control belongs to a central Government, not local towns or cities) is to take control of society to un-oppress the oppressed and subdue the oppressors. CRT adds to this “equity,” the notion that the oppressors are white and the oppressed are not white.
For more than 250 years, we have been living in a world of individual rights and liberties, a world that treats citizens equally. Individuals may have seen themselves as oppressed, but the Government operated according to a constitution that valued and respected the individual. During all that time- 250 years- a lot of highly educated and freedom loving Judges, legislators, and citizens looked at and interpreted and enforced our Constitution through a filter of freedom, liberty, and individual rights. Not a one of them over 250 years-read “Equity” into the State of New Hampshire’s Constitution.
Kind of created a powerful log jam for the “equity” crowd: how do we replace the “liberty” and
“individual” freedoms Constitution with the value and norms of the “Equity” Constitution?
First step: Let Massachusetts tell us what is in our own Constitution!
Case 1: CLAREMONT SCHOOL DISTRICT V GOVERNOR OF NEW HAMPSHIRE 138 N H 183(1993)
Five “property poor” (as in the average home value for these folks is substantially less than in, say, Hollis) School districts plus one student and one taxpayer in each of these five districts sued the state, claiming that the State was not “spreading educational opportunities EQUITABLY among “its”( i e the entire student body of the state) students.
These plaintiffs argued that the State, as opposed to local school districts, had the duty to provide, on an equitable basis, the same education to each student in the State. A student in a property-poor district is denied “equitable” treatment if a student in a property rich district receives more money.
In other words, the plaintiffs argued basic principles of “Equity” and argued that the New Hampshire Constitution mandated such equity.
This infusion of “equity” was required, they claimed, due to the provision of part II, section 83(1774) of the Constitution, which reads:
“ART. 83: (ENCOURAGEMENT OF LITERATURE)Knowledge and learning, generally diffused through a community, being essential to the preservation of a free Government…it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates…to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all the seminaries and public schools, to encourage private and public institutions, rewards and immunities for the promotion of agriculture,arts, sciences, commerce, trade, manufacturers…: to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and economy, honesty and punctuality, sincerity, sobriety, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people.”
When the Plaintiffs asserted that this provision of the Constitution MANDATED the State to take control of the education system and specifically the funding of each student on an equitable basis, the Honorable Judge Manias basically said, “HUH?”
“New Hampshire’s Encouragement of Literature Clause contains no language regarding equity, uniformity, or even adequacy of education. Thus, the New Hampshire Constitution imposed no qualitative standard of education which must be met. Likewise, the New Hampshire constitution imposes no quantifiable financial duty regarding education; there is no mention of funding or even providing or maintaining education. The only duty set forth is the amorphous duty to “…to cherish public schools and…to encourage private and public institutions.” The language is hortatory and not mandatory.”
It would seem that Judge Manias was spot on. How could anyone read the Encouragement of Literature clause any differently? The plain language is the plain language. Right? Right?
Nope.
In Claremont v Governor, the Supreme Court essentially said that to read the clear, unambiguous words in this clause so as to support our mandate that the State take over the school system, we must ignore the plain meaning and ask,” What did the people at the time mean by those words? “
Ok, fair enough -let’s do that. What did the folks in 1774 in New Hampshire mean when they wrote this article into the Constitution in 1774?
To find out, should we not look to the people in New Hampshire in 1774?
Nope.
We must look to the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1993.
Why?
Because for a big part of New Hampshire’s history, up until 1680-nearly 100 years prior to the writing of the words we are trying to interpret – we were a part of Massachusetts. Therefore, a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in 1993 provides mandatory guides for us to know what our citizens thought in 1774.
I hate to be repetitive, but HUH? WHAT? I am not making this up. It is what the New Hampshire Supreme Court said. Pull it up on Google and read it yourself.)
In Mcduffy v Secretary,415 Mass 545, the Mass Supreme Court (which, of course, is made up of justices who knew the citizens of New Hampshire back in 1774 because, after all, the idea is to interpret the subject clauses according to what the people at the time understood them to mean(sarcasm!)) ruled:
The phrase “duty…to cherish…the public schools encompass the duty (on the state) to provide an education to the people of the state.”
The New Hampshire Supreme Court held that because the 1993 Massachusetts court made this pronouncement, that the duty was now established in New Hampshire: Schools and school financing are the duty of the State.
OBJECTION, YOUR HONORS. For 250 years, the people’s legislators, judges, and citizens interpreted the subject phrase as Judge Manias did. Would that not be a better way to determine what the original authors meant?
What about 250 years when the good judges, legislators, and citizens of New Hampshire thought differently- thought like Judge Manias?
Nope.
The deal with this “problem,” the New Hampshire Supreme Court again turned for guidance to the Massachusetts case of Mcduffy:
Without any thoughtful basis, the Mcduffy court simply dismissed any idea that the founding fathers and mothers meant to place control of education into local hands by saying
“That local control and fiscal support has been placed in greater or lesser measure through our history on local governments does not dilute the validity of the conclusion that the duty to support public schools lies with the state.”
(Again HUH? What? Give me a reason. Saying what you feel or want is not a reason.)
In a nutshell, Judge Manias ruled that the plain meaning of the New Hampshire Constitution has no language of “equity” has no language saying that the State has the duty to run the schools. Moreover, 250 years of local school control, with local funding, say clearly that for 250 years, New Hampshire Judges, legislators and good citizens agreed with Judge Manias’ interpretation.
But… Massachusetts disagrees and because we were a part of Massachusetts until 1680, whatever they say goes. They say the state has the duty to provide for, control, and finance the school system by applying principles of EQUITY(DEI).
So, let’s ignore the language of the Constitution; let’s ignore 250 years of New Hampshire folks’ interpretation of the Constitution. And let’s apply Massachusetts law of 1993 to hold that the State of New Hampshire is under a constitutional level duty to take over the Education system, take control from the local school boards and citizens, and apply principles of equity to school financing.
This ruling was cataclysmic by every definition of the word. It represented a sea change of 250 years in how New Hampshire ran its schools. You may not realize how cataclysmic because, for the last thirty years, a lot of good folks in positions of power did not (my opinion) embrace the holding and fought it.
But the wealth, power, and persistence of the woke folks and the weakness of the non-woke means that what began thirty years ago is finally about to visit its full destructive force on the good parents, students, teachers, and taxpayers of this great State. Our system of local control will soon be replaced by a system of centralized control in Concord. An Equity-based tax system will take from the “oppressor” School districts and give to the “oppressed. ”
To understand more of what is happening, I invite your attention to part 2 of this article.
Simply put, there have been eight subsequent Supreme Court rulings – all chipping away at the traditional school system – replacing it with a system based upon EQUITY. Those 8 cases are now joined by two rather dramatic Superior court decisions coming out of Rockingham Superior Court. The full impact of this effort to fundamentally re structure the school system by filtering the New Hampshire Constitution through the eyes of DEI/Equity is now about to be felt. My opinion: we are about to see results -felt for the first time really in 2024-from these rulings that will fundamentally alter not only the school system (i.e., gut local control and local funding) but will fundamentally infuse the State with the EQUITY world view. Certainly, if the Courts are willing to do what they are doing to the school system, then what system is safe from the EQUITY rule?
Part 2 will explore Claremont II( Claremont v Governor 142 N H462(1997)), wherein the Court declared the system for funding education was unconstitutional because it was not based upon Equity.
The post Are the State Courts Trying To Transfer Control of School Districts to Central Command in Concord? appeared first on Granite Grok.
The year 2023 had so much potential. The usual suspects were screaming the hottest hotness ever. All that global boiling. The dry grass out west from a year with record snowfalls. Drought narratives meet climate narratives to spark a flame that rages (like wildfire) nationwide, but 2023 saw the lowest burn average in 25 years.
The news has been quite good this year with respect to the total number of acres burned on US soil due to wildfire activity. In fact, the total acreage burned this year is under 3 million (through 12/18) which is far below the 10-year average of nearly 7 million from 2013-2022 and the lowest since 1998.
One of the main contributing factors to the down year in overall US wildfire activity is the fact that it has been a mild year in California with the number of burned acres under 390,000 (as of 12/18). This value is down about 75% from the 5-year average of about 1.6 million acres burned in the Golden State (data source). The relatively mild year of 2023 follows another relatively mild year in 2022; however, the two years before that (2020, 2021) were some of the worst on record.
WUWT Also included a screen grab of the official government data, available here.
That’s not the only bad news for Captain Planet and the Climate Cult Profiteers. Overall, 2023, while sold with a hyperbolic fury as proof the world would end if we didn’t revert to stone tools and eating insects, was, in fact – boring. Nothing unexpected or exceptional if you are more interested in climate science than political science.
WUWT did a deep dive here, which was summed up like this.
We are all well aware of the narrative that the weather is quickly getting worse. Unfortunately, data does not agree.1
The weather — and certainly the impacts — of the past 12 months in the United States was actually pretty typical, even benign, in historical context.2
I’ll leave you with one more bit of data that is not at all interesting or exciting. NOAA’s USCRN Surface Temperature anomaly data for the US.
Boring. There is no evidence of a change in temperature trend, which means no boiling or roasting or hottest hotness. It’s just weather, and when you pile all that weather in a row, there’s nothing to see.
Sorry, one more “one more.” Tony Heller checked the Arctic Sea Ice Extent on Christmas Eve. It’s at its highest in Greta Thunberg’s lifetime.
Arctic sea ice has declined over the long term, but I read somewhere that the NAMO is expected to flip again soon, leading to expanding sea ice. None of which will stop the hyperbolic fury. The grift depends on it.
So, here’s to more news about wildfires, boiling, and sea ice news in 2024!
The post They Said “Global Warming” Will Affect Wildfires – 2023 Had Fewest Acres Burned This Century appeared first on Granite Grok.
We hear politicians spout it all the time when they are raising our taxes: “We’re just making them (of course not you) pay their fair share.” But what exactly is one’s “fair share,” and at what point can one be considered to be paying MORE than his or her “fair share”?
It seems like a good and important question to ask in this last post of 2023 and in anticipation of Vermont’s Democrat Supermajority returning to Montpelier next week for the start of the 2024 legislative session, looking, as they always do, to redefine this undefined term upward.
I have asked this question about what exactly a fair share is in the past. (Really fun to ask politicians on the campaign trail. Try it! The resulting squirming is impressive.) I get lots of answers, but rarely, if ever, a straight one, such as 20% of one’s income is enough. Or, as Bernie and his fellow travelers might say if they were being honest, “Everything you earn belongs to us, your government overlords. Just shut up and be happy we let you keep any of it.” What do you think?
Anyway, we can expect a lot of “fair share” rhetoric buzzing through the airwaves and social media in 2024 as our so-called representatives find new and creative ways to screw hard-working Vermonters out of their wages to pay for more pet projects that provide little real value or benefit to society. See, last sessions’ “Clean Heat” carbon tax forcing you to pay “your fair share” through higher heating bills to not have any impact on climate change, for example. Or the 20 percent DMV fee increases the department said it didn’t need or want, but lawmakers implemented anyway just, I guess, to be “fair.” And, of course, the anticipated 18.5 percent increase in property taxes, which is apparently the new “fair” price to pay for increasingly poor public school performance catering to fewer overall students
Another suggestion coming back next year is a 3 percent income tax surcharge on Vermonters earning over $500,000 a year. That would make the state marginal income tax rate on these folks 11.75 percent – the highest in the nation bar California (13.3 percent). And, just a reminder, our neighbor New Hampshire has no earned income tax at all and is phasing out its tax on dividend and interest income within the next year or so. (Please finish this article before you start scrolling through Zillow.)
This additional 3 percent surcharge would say its advocates, raise roughly $100 million per year from not very many people. According to an analysis done by former state economist Art Woolf back in 2018, only 1,658 Vermonters earned over $500,000, and just 488 earned more than $1 million. Still, this tiny group of about half a percent of Vermont taxpayers accounts for 20 percent of all income taxes paid. Is that fair?
Yes, many will shout! I don’t earn $500,000 a year, so who cares? “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that rich guy behind the tree,” as the ditty goes. But here’s the thing…
As Woolf points out,
For most Vermonters who earn [$500,000 or more], having a high income is a one-time event. The Vermont Tax Department looked into this a few years ago and found that half of all the taxpayers who earned $500,000 or more experienced that level of income only once over a 10-year period…. Only 3 percent [of that half of one percent of all taxpayers] earned over $500,000 dollars in every one of the 10 years…. The basic conclusion: Very high-income Vermonters are rich because of a one-time event.”
Such as an otherwise non-wealthy Vermonter selling a house or a business. So, what this 3 percent income tax surcharge really is in practice, with very few exceptions, is not a screw the rich out of their ill-gotten gains play. It’s just the government greedily taking another chunk (on top of the property transfer tax) out of what is, for most of us, the largest investment we will make in our lifetimes, our house, or a bite out of Mom & Pop’s sale of their local business after a lifetime of work. These are often cases in which hardworking people have invested years of equity into these assets in order to fund their retirement. And our government wants a bigger piece of that. And no, it’s not “fair.”
The lesson here is to be careful when progressives try to win your support for some program by telling you they’re going to raise taxes on someone else to pay for it. In the end, it’s just propaganda, and it’s your wallet they end up looting because, as Willie Sutton might observe, “That’s where the money is.”
One of the questions Campaign for Vermont asked in their recent poll was Do you “Support/Oppose: Creating a Vermont Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which would limit state spending growth to the rate of inflation and population growth; and would require any tax revenue collected in excess of that amount to be refunded to taxpayers. It would also require voter approval for any tax increases above and beyond this formula.” Gratifyingly, 67 percent of Vermonters supported the idea. Only 16 percent opposed it outright. This tells me that a solid majority of Vermonters think we’re already paying more than our fair share, and it’s time to cut off the spigot.
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.
The post When Is Someone Paying More Than “Their Fair Share”? appeared first on Granite Grok.
First, let me tell you what Trump’s actual “crimes” were: Not starting any new wars. Actually getting economically tough, not just talking tough, on China. And, perhaps the biggest crime of all in the eyes of the UniParty, making the Southern border more secure.
Now let me tell you something else. Whenever the Regime-media tell you something is a “conspiracy theory,” that means that they have been caught with their hand in the cookie-jar and they intend to continue swiping the cookies. One such example is the Great Replacement, which according to NPR:
… is a conspiracy theory that states that nonwhite individuals are being brought into the United States and other Western countries to “replace” white voters to achieve a political agenda. It is often touted by anti-immigration groups, white supremacists and others, according to the National Immigration Forum.
Which is exactly what’s happening as illegal immigration is now exceeding domestic birth-rates:
Since August, there are officially more arriving each month than there are children being born to American mothers.
And these are just the official encounters — we don't know how many avoided detection. https://t.co/7Bt52x0385 pic.twitter.com/2APOiICGW0
— ~~datahazard~~ (@fentasyl) December 29, 2023
The Democrats support an open Southern border because they believe that non-white voters are Democrat voters and that, therefore illegal immigration produces a permanent Democrat majority once the American-born children of these illegal aliens reach voting age. The “traditional” Republicans support an open Southern border because their big donors want cheap labor.
The UniParty is winning. America will be unrecognizable in twenty years.
The post The UniParty Wins Again … The Great Replacement Is Succeeding appeared first on Granite Grok.
Much has been said about the disparity between the cost of public education and the return on investment, but everything about government inevitably ends that way, and the more Democrats you have in charge, the greater the imbalance between rising costs and declining output.
It matters little what the budget exists to do; it will inevitably do less at greater expense, and politics ensures it goes to the right people at the wrong price. Take Vermont—a convenient punching bag for this and many a tale of woe. In recent years, it jumped off an ideological cliff, reducing itself to little more than a Liberal playground for failed policy. For our part, we get to watch this not-so-slow-motion decline—an exchange of individual rights and property for incompetent rule and perfidy.
Democrats are the joke that’s not even funny. A party that claims it can handle a complete transition in energy but is incapable of managing the infrastructure we already have. One of the many increases in costs Vermonters will face as they stumble into their Democrat legislature’s 2024 budget is rising DMV fees.
As part of last year’s budget, DMV fees are slated to increase about 19% across the board starting on January 1. That will include everything from registering a vehicle to getting a new license.
“There’s kind of an impression the DMV is the one pushing these fees — we administer them. They pass the laws, we administer them,” said Vt. DMV Deputy Commissioner Michael Smith.
Under the budget approved by lawmakers, it will cost $15 more to register a car, $10 more to register a motorcycle, $6 more for a small trailer, and $11 more for a driver’s license.
The increased fees are expected to bring in about $20 million to the state’s Transportation Fund to help offset lost revenue as cars have become more fuel efficient in recent years.
Who knew you had another 20 million lying around for the state to suck up. Revenue Vermont needs because of a deliberate policy decision to force people into cars that don’t pay gas taxes. Yes, they say “more efficient cars,” but that’s what they wanted, so has anyone thought it forward? To explain what I mean, consider tobacco taxes. If you dared to cut them, Democrats lost their collective hive mind, but their own goal was to end smoking. If you end smoking, there are no tobacco taxes.
If the revenue is critical, but the goal is to zero it out, what’s the plan? A progressive Government does not give back. It never gets smaller. Growing the state first is priority one. The lost revenue must be replaced, and taxpayers are well.
The transportation fund is no different. Much like tobacco, the goal is to get you to abandon personal transportation, but roads and bridges aren’t going away, nor is road striping, salting, and plowing, or any of the line items in a budget, which must increase. What’s the plan? From where do the millions beyond the next 20 million come, and for what?
To answer these questions, look back to public education. Citizens will pay more and get less, and their only hope of getting away from this progressive spiral of doom is to stop electing them to public office. I’d say look to New Hampshire for guidance. We’ve cut taxes and regulations, even eliminated some, but I’m not sure how much longer we’ve got until we are dragged down the same hole.
Every election is the most important one in our lives, and that includes the local/town elections. But the decades-long disaster that is public education hasn’t inspired a revolt at the ballot box, so what does it take to get people to care enough to change their own lives for the better? It begins by kicking Democrats out of office and never ends after that.
Or would you rather figure out where the next 20 million will come from to feed that ravenous beast because that’s what’s in store whether you’ve got it to give or not!
The post Another $20 Million Vermonters Didn’t Know They Had Will Leave Their Pockets Beginning Jan 1 appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Orange Bowl was not a traditional college bowl game in 2023. It was a game between two programs that had something to prove. The 13-0 Florida State Seminoles were snubbed from the playoffs for the National Championship of college football. They were the undefeated champions of the ACC, which many feel is a conference below the level of the SEC and Big 10.
After tonight’s game, these people have a lot of data to prove their theory.
The Georgia Bull Dogs had not lost a game in two years until the Alabama Crimson Tide took them down in the SEC Championship. That one loss kept them out of the playoff tourney and relegated them to play FSU on New Year’s weekend. There would be no three-peat in 2023 for the Dawgs, who had not lost a game in over two years but were denied a shot at the championship when they lost to the Tide.
Maybe it’s not fair, but it’s inevitable when you let partisan people decide the fate of these future NFL athletes. Yes, these Dawgs had much to prove and their egos to mollify as the FSU mascot raced onto the field and planted a flaming spear into the fifty-yard line. That was the last moment to cheer for Seminole fans, as their heroes in Garnet and Gold were no match for their counterparts from Georgia. This game was ugly, and even friends and family switched the channel before the two-minute warning,
There was a big difference between the make-up of the two teams that met today for bragging rights and pride. Because of injuries, the Noles were down to their third-string QB, but as many as twelve key players opted not to play for an undefeated record. These players chose to protect their bodies for the upcoming NFL Draft. Rather than putting on the uniform and playing for the pride of the school that had allowed them to showcase their talents, they sat it out, and thus, their team was embarrassed in the final game of 2023.
In contrast, Carson Beck, the Quarterback for the Georgia Bull Dogs, not only played in the Orange Bowl but has opted not to go for the cash of the NFL but to return to Athens, Georgia, for his Senior year to win another National Championship for his school and, hopefully, a Heisman Trophy for himself. That difference in commitment and pride has brought back-to-back championships to Georgia, and that is why Florida may never rise to that level again.
The 2023 Orange Bowl had no impact on college football’s National Championship but was a microcosm of life. Those who put themselves above their teammates may have a big payday but may never know the feeling of winning a championship. Those who put their team above themselves will always be champions. The Orange Bowl was only a game, but I bet the players will have very different memories to last a lifetime.
The post What Does 63-3 Really Mean appeared first on Granite Grok.
Joe Biden has something in common with Donald Trump. They’ve both been president, and neither has seen any need to debate anyone in the 2024 contest for similar and different reasons. Both are far enough ahead in the polls that debates are more risk than reward.
There is simply no reason to step into any ring of that circus.
And while Trump could probably walk onto a debate stage without fear of falling and with very little prep. Biden can’t say that. I’d be surprised if Grandpa Joe can still manage to sniff hair, and I doubt he does any debates in 2024, and not just because we’ve predicted the DNC’ll replace him after he wins the party nomination at their convention. He always lacked intellectual agility, but his decline has reached a point where even wearing an earpiece for prompts (which he lacks the hair to hide (like Hillary) would only confuse him. It would be ugly, so Joe won’t be debating anyone… ever.
Democrats should be okay with that—no debates, I mean. We already know most of them don’t want Biden but, like good party animals, will compromise the speed with which we receive election results by writing him. No paper ballot hand counting is allowed, but if the New Hampshire Bien write-in campaign is even moderately successful, poll workers will be forced to count those write-ins to tabulate results manually. The machines won’t know.
That is a reasonable delay in Democracy. It is a worthwhile distraction so local Dems can show their fealty to Dear Leader and a party that has been fixing its presidential primary for years. But that’s what good little Marxists do. It will be required after the resolution – might as well get good at it now.
If, however, you’d like to pretend you want to live in that Democracy you keep flapping your skinny little lips about, there’s a debate in New Hampshire on January 8th. Even in a pretend Democracy, you are allowed to pretend to have competing opinions about managing the planned decline and fall of that Democracy. And, no Biden, which should increase the draw. It’ll be safe to bring your daughters.
The lonely political vigil of long-shot Democratic presidential candidates Marianne Williamson and Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips will be transformed on to the debate stage early next month in New Hampshire – without Joe Biden, who is neither on the state ballot nor agreeable to any debate interaction with competitors.
The debate between self-help author Williamson and Phillips is set to be held at the New England College on 8 January, and moderated by Josh McElveen, former political director of radio station WMUR, two weeks before the state holds its primary.
Update: The debate will be hosted by New England College, a liberal arts nonprofit school, on Jan. 8 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Manchester, N.H. It will be moderated by the founder of the communications firm McElveen Strategies and former WMUR Political Director Josh McElveen, and it will air on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel 124 at 7 p.m. EST.
The Left’s Party machine doesn’t want either of them, so this is more an exercise in policy approach, but it is something Democrats in New Hampshire have been denied, so I’d expect the junkies to be there.
They’ve also been denied the media spotlight New Hampshir’s primary provides. The access to insiders, the donor class, and political operatives who would have come from all across the world to cover Democrats vying for the attention of Granite State voters.
The handful of no-names have been here. There’s a bunch of them. There are more than 20 filings in both parties for the Presidential primary contest. Local Dems may have had the opportunity to press the flesh with one or more of them. Or not.
Joe Biden is conspicuously absent from the list, but Vermin Supreme is there. So are Williamson, Phillips, and others from a dozen states and DC. So, you might see why any Democrat debate in the 2024 New Hampshire primary season might be attractive.
It is a meaningless debate, but so is the Democratic presidential primary, so why quibble?
The post Presidential Primary: If You Want to See Dems Debate There’s One Coming Up in New Hampshire [Update] appeared first on Granite Grok.
President Biden’s sliding poll numbers have set off alarm signals among Democrats, who are beginning to see that he might lose the 2024 election to Donald Trump. Those polls have also gotten the attention of pundits who have confidently said for three years now that Trump could never again win a national election.
The polling results published over the past few months suggest otherwise: Trump is currently the favorite to win next year’s election.
The most recent RealClearPolitics Average has Trump leading Biden by 2.6 percentage points, a switch of about four points since late summer when Biden led 45%-43%, and in a long-running decline of seven points for Biden since he won the 2020 election with 51% percent of the popular vote.
More ominously for Biden, a recent Bloomberg poll showed Trump well ahead (by an average of five points) in the seven swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It appears the most significant factor in recent months is a surge in support for Trump (from 43% to just above 47%), while Biden has essentially remained stuck in neutral.
Joe Biden is an unpopular president, almost as unpopular as any president in the post-war era. According to the RCP Average, just 40% of voters approve of his handling of the job. His ratings have been falling for more than two years since the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Not coincidentally, voters also take a dim view of where the country is heading, with 68% percent saying it is headed in the wrong direction and just 25% in the right direction.
The president’s ratings have gotten steadily worse over the course of this year. More than 60% of voters say Biden “has moved too far to the left” on policies important to them. Voters are also pessimistic about the economy: 47% say things are getting worse, while just 22% say they are getting better, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll. These are alarming numbers for an incumbent seeking reelection.
Biden is also underwater on nearly every major issue. According to an early December Wall Street Journal poll, Trump is favored over Biden on the three issues voters say are most important to them: the economy (52%-35%), inflation (51%-30%), and securing the border (54%-24%). Voters also favor Trump over Biden on crime, the Russia/Ukraine war, and even the war between Israel and Hamas. These latter two ratings, on Ukraine and Israel, undoubtedly surprised Biden and his supporters, who assumed that voters would endorse his policies in regard to these conflicts. By contrast, voters favor Biden on just two issues: abortion (44%-33%) and Social Security/Medicare (44%-38%).
Voters in these surveys also question Biden’s fitness to hold office, especially as they look ahead to the prospect of another four-year term. According to a new Harris/Harvard poll, 62% of voters doubt that he is fit to carry out the duties of the presidency, and another 48% think his presidency is getting worse year by year and month by month. Whatever their views on the issues, voters appear to think that Biden is increasingly incapable of addressing them.
Biden is losing support among Hispanics voters, a key constituent group of the Democratic Party. Hispanics have been trending away from Democrats and toward Trump over recent election cycles. Hillary Clinton carried Hispanic voters by 37 points in 2016, but Biden carried them by just 21 points in the 2020 election and lags well behind that margin this year. According to recent polls conducted by Economist/YouGov, Biden led Trump among Hispanic voters by 18 points in August, by eight points in September, by four in October, and by just two points (41%-39%) in December. These voters express strong disapproval of Biden’s performance in office, and even disapprove (51%-33 %) of his policies on immigration. Since Hispanics represent about 15% of all U.S. voters, their move away from Biden and toward Trump accounts in part for Biden’s recent slide in the polls.
Another key constituency turning away from the incumbent president is independent voters. Biden carried independents by nine points in 2020. They were a crucial part of his coalition in the swing states he carried narrowly last time, and an important ingredient in his popular vote majority since independents represent one-third of all voters. As with Hispanic voters, he lags far behind that margin in this year’s surveys. A recent Economist/YouGov poll taken in December gave Trump a six-point margin over Biden (38%-32%), with many of those voters still undecided. Still, this represents a 20-point slide for Biden among independents since the 2020 election.
Biden also faces an “enthusiasm gap” among some previously loyal groups who turned out to support him in 2020 due to their dislike for Donald Trump but are disappointed thus far with his performance in office. This is true, in particular, with young voters and, surprisingly, with African American voters as well.
Some suspect that voters under age 30 who are abandoning the president are disillusioned by his support for Israel in its war with Hamas, his failure to cancel student loans, and an insufficiently aggressive posture in regard to climate change. Biden won those voters in 2020 by a margin of 60% to 36%, but due mostly to their dislike for Donald Trump. Much of that antipathy remains. Recent polls continue to give Biden a lead over Trump among these voters: A Yahoo poll in December gave Biden a 55%-27% lead over Trump, while a more recent Emerson College poll reported a smaller margin: 45%-40%. At the same time, just 35% of those voters approve of his performance in office, according to a poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, a measure of their lack of enthusiasm for his reelection campaign.
To the extent young voters disagree with Biden, they do so for progressive reasons – and are unlikely to vote for Trump. But they could stay home, which would be a blow to the Democrats. According to the same poll, fewer than 50% of young voters say they will “definitely” turn out to vote next year, compared to 57% at this point in the 2020 election cycle. In addition, roughly 10% of these voters say they would vote for Robert Kennedy in a multi-candidate race, which further narrows Biden’s lead over Trump in this group.
Biden seems to be in unlikely trouble among black voters. They are by far the most loyal of all Democratic Party voting groups: Biden carried these voters overwhelmingly in 2020 (92%-8%), which also helped him in the swing states. Trump may never win a significant share of this vote, but a doubling of his 2020 total now seems within the realm of possibility. A recent Economist/YouGov poll has Trump with support from 12% of these voters, with many still on the fence.
Perhaps more ominously for Democrats, a growing share of blacks say they will not vote in a contest between Biden and Trump. In a series of Economist/YouGov polls, the percentage of black adults saying they would not vote at all increased from 7% in August to 11% in December. This, despite Biden going a considerable distance to appeal to those voters by appointing African Americans to prominent positions in his administration and taking their side in controversies over civil rights, crime, and government spending. Biden’s challenge among the black community, then, as with young voters, is in regard to enthusiasm and turnout, and not so much with the direct match-up with Trump.
Biden’s strategy for the 2024 campaign becomes clearer in view of his sagging poll numbers. Instead of running on his record, which will be difficult to do in view of his overall ratings, he will emphasize Trump’s defects and the dangers a Trump presidency will pose to the constitutional order.
“We may have problems,” his allies are already saying, “but the other guy is far worse.” The various legal prosecutions underway will be woven into this strategy as a means of appealing to independents and those “on the fence.”
A conviction of Trump in a court of law would aid immensely in this strategy. In addition, Democrats will redouble their efforts to mobilize minority voters and young voters, while sharpening their appeal to Hispanics. Democrats will also ride the abortion issue, which worked for them in 2022, and is one of the few issues that cuts in their favor. Democrats understand that a victory for Trump in the presidential race will also mean that Republicans will take control of the Senate while expanding their margins in the House of Representatives – and thereby enable Trump to carry out his threatening agenda.
Trump, on the other hand, if he can side-step the legal challenges, has his own cards to play in the campaign. For one thing, voters know him, and there is nothing new that Democrats can say about him that they have not already said, ad nauseam, for several years.
Voters can also compare the Trump and Biden presidencies – and Biden does not come off well in that comparison. According to a Wall Street Journal poll taken last month, 50% of voters say Trump’s policies helped them, while just 23% said the same about Biden’s policies; indeed, 53% of voters said that Biden’s policies had hurt them in some way. This allows Trump to ask the question Ronald Reagan posed to voters in 1980 during his campaign against Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Many voters will say “no.”
More importantly, Trump does not have to win the popular vote in order to win the election in the Electoral College. The election will be decided in a series of separate races in seven or eight swing states where Trump may have an advantage. If he wins even half of them he is likely to win the election. The national popular vote, measured by these polls, will be somewhat beside the point in determining the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.
Democrats will register large margins of 7 or 8 million votes in the populous states of California, New York, and Illinois, as they did in 2016 and 2020, while Republicans will carry their own large states (Texas and Florida) by less than one million votes – giving Democrats a substantial edge in the popular vote that will not translate directly into electoral votes. Any vote beyond 50% in a state is of no use in the Electoral College – and Democrats tend to “waste” more votes than Republicans.
Trump lost the popular vote to Clinton in 2016 by two percentage points, but still won a safe majority in the Electoral College by carrying nearly every swing state. Biden won the popular vote in 2020 by more than four points (51.3%-46.8%), but carried the critical swing states by narrow margins, in the cases of Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, by less than one percentage point. A swing of less than 1% from Biden to Trump in those three states would have given Trump a tie in the Electoral College, so that the election would have been decided in the House of Representatives. In addition, reapportionment following the last census will allocate three additional electoral votes to the states Trump won in 2020 – two more to Texas and one to Florida – and three fewer to the states Biden won. This will make Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes slightly easier to navigate. (Pollsters would do well next year to survey the swing states and mostly ignore the national vote.)
It appears, then, that Biden must win the popular vote by at least three points, and perhaps by as many as four, in view of what happened last time in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, to be assured of winning a majority in the Electoral College. Current polls have Biden running two points behind Trump in the popular vote, but at the same time show that he is behind by at least five points in the swing states. These polls, along with results of past elections, suggest that there is a gap of at least three points (and maybe four) between the national popular vote and the outcomes in those swing states.
Some have said that Trump has a ceiling of 46% or 47% of the popular vote, and has no chance of reaching 50%, which they say he will need to win the election. This is not so: Trump can win the election with 47% percent of the popular vote if he can keep Biden below 50%, perhaps with the assistance of third-party or independent candidates. If Trump stays close to Biden in the popular vote, which current polls suggest he can do, then he is likely to win the game in the Electoral College.
Trump is fully aware of this (many are not), and will campaign accordingly. He is also aware that Biden will not be able to campaign from his home as he did in 2020, lest voters conclude that he is not up to the job; but the attempt to run a vigorous campaign may further expose that weakness. Nor can he allow his vice president to lead the campaign because she is more unpopular and prone to gaffes than he is.
Trump’s rise in the polls sets the stage for an unusual campaign ahead. Democrats may conclude, in view of Biden’s weakness across the board, that a traditional campaign focusing on issues and turnout may not succeed this time around – and that their hopes will rest upon winning the legal campaign against Trump.
This may explain recent moves by the special prosecutor to expedite the case against Trump in order to win a verdict prior to the election. The reversal of fortunes between Biden and Trump also accounts for the revival of charges that Trump, if elected, will prove to be a “dictator,” and so should be disqualified from the ballot. Those cases, and perhaps the election itself, will be decided this year by the Supreme Court.
For these reasons, and others likely to develop, this is bound to be an ugly and unsettling campaign – and one in which the traditional rules of national politics will be cast to the winds.
James Piereson | RealClear Wire
The post What’s Behind Biden’s Sliding Poll Numbers? appeared first on Granite Grok.
The People’s Republic of Vermont has a climate itch it can’t stop scratching. An irritation that persists to the point of bleeding if it were on your person. And it is. You, kind people of Vermont, will pay in ways they can’t or won’t explain.
Despite your objections, your ruling class has plans to get you all off oil and gas and running heat pumps. Separately, the peasants will be expected to trade in vehicles they need and want for Electric imposters. Pod vehicles that look like the real thing but don’t act it. This requires an exponential rise in power generation and the infrastructure to carry this increased load from the mystical place it is created (Captain Planet’s lair, perhaps) to the homes, businesses, and EVs meant to use it.
Over at Watts Up With That (WUWT), they’ve got a post about increased demand if everyone in the UK were forced into using Heat Pumps. They have the same sorts of idiots running their government as Vermont (where lunatics in its legislature rammed through the clean heat standard). It is a messy bit of business whose only redeeming characteristic is that no one tasked with implementation has a clue quite how to get started. We can hope it was all about resume pumping, but the dingbats seem serious about their fraudulent emissions reduction plan, just like the idgits in the UK.
Don’t get me wrong, they’ll find a way, but while they try to fit square pegs in round holes, look at this from WUWT.
If we assume then that the heat pumps are in use for 14 hours a day, that gives average hourly electricity demand of 2.1 KWh. This assumes that the heat pump runs at a constant power rating. In practice, the system would have to work harder in the early evening as temperatures drop.
There are about 24 million homes with gas and oil boilers, so a peak demand of 2.1 KW amounts to 50 GW for the country as a whole. To that we can add demand from offices, shops etc, which currently use gas and oil.
Along with demand from EVs, the UK would need well over 100 GW of capacity to meet peak demand.
Has anyone done similar math for the Green Mountain State? How many homes, number of offices, hourly demand, and total demand? Believe it or not, no, but that is a legislative priority – they say. But how serious are they about admitting anything past “ratepayers will pay more.”
How about a little game of truth or dare where the truth is the dare?
A commenter on the WUWT post noted that almost nowhere in the UK are the buried cables capable of carrying that sort of load, especially the end-of-the-workday variety when EVERYONE turns on (or turns up) the heat pump and plugs in the EV. It would all need to be dug up and replaced. It’s expensive and a colossal bother.
I’d guess most of that infrastructure in Vermont is above ground, but it would need to be replaced or rerun. All of it. Soon. But then not. Vermont’s sooty foot is already on the decarbonization path despite no one knowing where it leads or at what cost to not just ratepayers but the entire economy. Why rush things? Burlington’s carbon tax on buildings hasn’t been enacted yet (it starts Jan 1), but at least one councilor wants the rate hiked. That should buy them some time (/snark!).
On this side of the Connecticut River, the New Hampshire Legislature has introduced HB1644, which proactively asks the NH Department of Energy “to initiate a proceeding and conduct an investigation of the benefits and key considerations regarding support for clean or non-carbon emitting power generation, and report to the legislature in one year.” Benefits and risks. Reliability, security, and winter energy spikes. Cost-effectiveness, how it might impact economic growth – a list of things you’d want to explore in detail before making any more permanent grand gestures.
It also requests that the NH DoE define clean energy and investigate steps “taken by other states, including clean energy standards.” Presumably, to learn lessons from their mistakes, for which Vermont will be helpful – their 2024 legislative priority includes trying to back into what HB1644 requests upfront. Potential problems you’d want to sidestep or a workaround for in advance but that Vermont ignored before it latched onto the California standards. None of which addresses the genuine issue of cost.
What will it cost Vermonters, not just in dollars but in ‘sense.’ The state government is punishing everyone to reduce emissions – even if you believe that’s the problem or that a government could fix it – that China will erase in a wink of the Middle Kingdom’s military-industrial complex eye. A sum of emissions Vermonters might take decades to save, coughed into the earth’s atmosphere in a few industrial heartbeats by that Marxist regime to which Vermont’s Heat-Standard Climateers are (more than likely) most enamored.
Vermonters need to confront their legislature and demand a response. Why are they killing Vermont with these crippling initiatives when China, India, and Africa could do 100 times better – meaningful good if your goals are to be believed – in a fraction of the time, at no cost to us?
Or if we framed it another way. How does my paying more for a paper straw keep China from dropping tons of plastic into the ocean every day?
Shouldn’t they be pressuring the Feds to pressure China by any means necessary short of war instead of pressuring a few farmers and small business owners to give up so much for so little?
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