California Governor Gavin Newsom, tasked with filling the US Senate seat vacated by Dianne Feinstein after her passing, has snubbed his state’s massive illegal immigrant population. He did choose a “non-resident,” just not one from California.

I can only assume that he could not find an English speaking black lesbian among the horde of California’s undocumented “workers” who can’t find work as if unemployment is a job Americans won’t do.

 

Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler, whose only qualifications appear to be working on Kamala Harris’ failed 2020 presidential campaign while being a “black lesbian.” Naturally, the California governor is touting the latter. …

 

FEC filings from EMILY’s List record Laphonza Butler’s residence as Silver Springs, Maryland as recently as 31 days ago. https://t.co/FjZkJ9Ugf0 pic.twitter.com/2FzA8MVqfU

— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) October 2, 2023

 

They’ve cleaned all that residency business up almost overnight, so no worries. Laphonza Butler, who is likely still registered to vote and has been paying taxes in (and from) Maryland, was doing so by mistake. Nothing about her history there is relevant to the appointment, and any thought or word to the contrary is white heterosexual fragility expressed as racism and bigotry.

Besides, does it matter which donkey they plug into that seat? None of them will vote for Californians; they will vote for the Inside the Beltway Party.

And who doesn’t want to see someone who fundraised for Kamala for president in action? As stupid and unqualified as Harris continues to be, the person who raised money to get her elected to the Oval Office has got to be worse.

Did the same donors help get a quick close on a property in California, which we all know does not define residency. Homeowners in states all over the place vote in New Hampshire every election cycle. They feel like they live here long enough to vote and then leave. Laphonza Butler can feel like she lives in California and cast votes as if she cares a wit about the people she has been chosen to represent.

C’mon, man, she’s a black lesbian. The US Senate needed one of those, and now it has one. And she’s not over seventy!

Of course, we don’t have any illegal “migrants” in the US Senate either. Not yet. But there’s still time.

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The following is an open letter to Frank Edelblut, Commissioner of Education, and Drew Cline, Chairman of the Board of Education, regarding a document that is making the rounds offering the public a chance to comment on proposed changes to the Ed Rules that govern public schools in New Hampshire.

Dear Commissioner Edelblut and Chairman Cline,

I’ve been reading — or trying to read — the 139-page document that is currently out for public review, which identifies proposed changes to the rules promulgated by the state Department of Education.

I believe that the goal of the document is to improve the performance of students in public schools.  However, the form, structure, and content of the document more or less guarantee that this goal will not be met. 

The first major problem with the document is its length:  It’s 139 pages.  There is a well-known technique in civil lawsuits for foiling the normal discovery process by providing so many documents that the ones that will be useful to the opposing side will probably never be found.  That seems to be what’s happening here.  There are so many changes — and so many rules that might be changed — that there’s no way to know which ones are important and which ones are trivial without plowing through the whole thing, which almost no one will have the time, motivation, or stamina to do.

The second major problem with the document is its level of detail. It is common knowledge among software engineers that every time you try to fix a bug in a system, you end up creating at least two more.  The same is true in statutes and regulations.  The solution isn’t to keep patching things but to go back to the original design, the architecture, so that fewer bugs can arise in the first place. The solution is to reduce the need for particular complications by reducing overall complexity.

In the case of public schools, the underlying source of complexity is that the system is time-based instead of results-based. In any other industry, the goal would be to get students to the finish line as quickly as possible for as little money as possible.  (Of course, this would require knowing where the finish line is, something that requires a shared agreement among students, parents, schools, and taxpayers about where it is. As far as I’ve been able to tell, no such agreement exists, and no steps have been taken toward reaching one.)

But in the industry of education — or more precisely, the industry of schooling — kids are kept in school for an arbitrary number of years, whether they want to be there or not, and whether they need to be there or not. Once they are there, it becomes necessary to find something for them to do, some way to fill their time and some way to keep them pacified. 

If this were to change — if there were a clear and adequate definition of an adequate education that focused on the desired end state rather than on particular paths to reach it — then many of the problems that the document seeks to address would simply not exist, and the document itself could be reduced to perhaps five to ten pages, and written in clear English rather than in legalese. 

Note that in technical fields, a ‘standard’ says what needs to happen, not how it needs to happen.  If you’re supposed to produce USB cables, there are some behaviors that the cables have to exhibit and some tests that they have to pass in order to meet the standard.  How you set up your factory, what manufacturing processes you use to make the cables, and how long you take to make them are your business. 

Imagine a USB standard that says:  The people making your cables have to spend a certain number of hours in training, and your factory has to run for a certain number of hours per day, a certain number of days per year.   And we’ll certify whatever you produce as a USB cable.

That’s the kind of standard we have now for graduating from the public school system, as embodied by documents like this one.

A reasonable standard for graduation would say:  This is what we mean by an adequately educated student.  Here are the tests he can pass, the skills he can demonstrate, and the kinds of problems he can solve. 

A reasonable standard would be precise.  It wouldn’t include pseudo-competencies like ‘Use digital tools to develop cognitive proficiency in literacy, numeracy, problem-solving, decision making, and spatial/visual literacy.’ 

A reasonable standard would be consistent.  If a certain kind of thinking or problem-solving ability is necessary, it would be spelled out, and every student would need to be able to demonstrate it in order to graduate.

If every graduate needs to be able to do things like ‘appreciate art,’ or ‘use technology,’ or whatever, then have tests that let students demonstrate those things and make everyone pass those tests. 

To the extent that the state has a job here — and the written state constitution, as opposed to the oral one, suggests that it does not — that job is to say what product is acceptable, not what process must be followed to produce it.  Micro-management guarantees macro-failure, which is what we have now.  Focusing on process creates the situation that allows (and, to some extent, even encourages) administrators and teachers to ignore (and in some cases, undermine) the product. 

I suspect that both of you are familiar with the book The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, but if you aren’t, I would ask you to read it since it perfectly captures the situation in which our public school system finds itself and suggests a way to deal with that situation.  Briefly, Goldratt points out that when running any kind of enterprise, every possible action that might be taken needs to be evaluated, not in terms of what invented internal benchmarks it might meet, but in terms of the primary goal of the enterprise.  In the case of a business, that goal is to make money. In the case of a public school system, that goal is to produce educated citizens.

Finally, unlike a manufacturing standard, an educational standard needs to be centered on two fundamental concepts:  priority and autonomy.

By priority, I just mean that some things are more fundamental than others and must be dealt with first. If you’re in a course on American history, but your reading skills are below proficiency, then you should be working on reading instead of listening to someone explain history to you.  If you’re not rock solid on your arithmetic skills, you certainly shouldn’t be taking algebra… but you also shouldn’t be taking courses in, say, fashion merchandising.

By independence, I just mean that the single most important thing that you should be learning is how to direct your own learning, how to become your own teacher so that you can learn whatever you want to later on. Nothing else even approaches this in importance.

Any educational standard that isn’t just a wish list must require students to develop foundational skills first and then require them to leverage those skills to learn to teach themselves. By the time a student is ready to graduate, his teachers should be acting mostly in an advisory role.

To put that a different way: No matter how much a student knows at a given moment if he’s still depending on his teachers to learn new material, then he’s not ready to graduate.

The third major problem with the document is, in fact, its complete lack of any priority among its requirements. It’s like a building code that goes into detail about how to choose the finishes on bathroom fixtures while ignoring how to tell if the foundation is solid. 

Two egregious and illustrative examples of this are requiring schools to ‘teach financial literacy’ and ‘teach digital literacy.’  It’s worth asking how these affect the teaching of actual literacy. 

First, when you require that schools ‘teach x,’ you’re implicitly saying that it’s okay if the kids can’t read about x on their own because you’ll provide a teacher to do that reading for them and provide oral explanations.   

Education professionals call this meeting students where they are, but psychologists would call it enabling illiteracy.  If you ever find yourself wondering how, in a district like Newport, 90 percent of kids can graduate while only about 10 percent of them can read, this is how.

Second, there is an old saying that if you chase two rabbits, you won’t catch either of them. By requiring so much content to be taught while not actually requiring any of it to be learned — and by establishing no priorities — you’re providing school administrators and teachers with a built-in excuse to ignore fundamentals in favor of incidentals.  If ‘learning about the Holocaust’ and ‘developing an awareness of and involvement with the natural world’ are on the same level of importance as learning to read, you can guess how that’s going to work out. 

If you really have an opportunity to overhaul the Ed Rules, I implore you: Please use that opportunity to create rules that (1) focus on product rather than process, (2) are results-based rather than time-based, (3) prioritize goals, (4) recognize that producing autonomous learners is the goal of the enterprise, and (5) eliminate everything that can’t be tied directly to the achievement of that goal.

In closing, I would ask that when creating those rules, you consider two crucial questions that almost never get serious consideration in discussions about education: First, if a kid wants to learn something, who can stop him? (And how much money do we need to spend to support that?)  Second, if a kid doesn’t want to learn something, who can make him? (And how much money do we waste by trying?)   

I would also ask that you consider these questions in the context of the world of 2023, where high-quality, low-cost pedagogy is literally falling from the sky, 24 hours a day, seven days a week — a world where a student in a school classroom has access to fewer resources, of lower quality, and vastly higher cost, than the ones available to him everywhere else. 

Thank you for your consideration,

Ian Underwood
Croydon, NH

This letter was originally published at Bare Minimum Books.

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Another shameless plug for our upcoming fundraiser/event on October 28th at the Londonderry Fish and Game Club Pavillion. Nice facility. Plenty of room. And here we are, trying to make political events great again. So, if you can attend, please purchase your tickets so we can plan the food!

There will not be any ticket sales “at the door.”

We can fit 400 people. We’d love to have that many, but whatever the number, we’d like to have an idea of what to expect so we can make sure we have food, and drink enough for everyone.

The ticket price includes food and a beverage if you want it.

Orders will be placed the week before the event, and we will have everything and everyone ready for Saturday, the 28th. Music, food (still looking for a comedian we think is funny), and our lineup of speakers.

You can pass the time playing cornhole while you listen, or whatever else we can think to make this more than just your average everyday event during presidential primary season. There will be lots of “vendors,” groups with tables, and plenty of like-minded people with whom to chat.

And we’ve added a speaker (it’s a secret) and may add one or two more, though we will not have any candidates speaking. It’s not that sort of event.

We’re not banning them. You are welcome to buy a ticket and come and hang out and chat and listen, but no one running for office is slated to speak.

That has to be a relief, considering the season. An event with speakers, but none of them is running for anything.

We hope to see you there!

 

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I have explained why I refuse to refer to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez by her preferred AOC. Cortez has never done anything to earn a moniker like JFK, FDR, or LBJ. As a matter of fact, Cortez has done nothing of note in her tenure in Congress. She has yet to have a bill passed that she authored since her first day in Washington in 2019.

She and her fellow Squad members, Pressley, Omar, and Tlaib, have been more disruptive than productive since they came on the scene. For some reason, Cortez attracts camera coverage, but when she does, she does nothing to elevate her stature. Cortez usually tries to make a point only to make a fool of herself.

Such was the case this week when she tried to show the difference between Democrats and Republicans on the subject of Immigration. Every argument she used to prove her point was not only off the mark but factually incorrect.

Cortez accused Republicans of having no plan on Immigration, and the Democrats have the plan and answers to all the immigrant problems.

Her Claims:

• Democrats want to issue work permits to nearly 500,000 illegal migrants.
  • First, the migrants are here illegally and should be deported, but next, why are the Democrats keying on only Venezuelan migrants?
• Democrats support women and children crossing the Border, and Republicans have no compassion for either group
  • The cameras do not lie. The stream of illegals crossing the Rio Grande into Texas is primarily military-aged individuals and very few family units. As for her claim about women and children, not only is this flow of people unsafe for women who are raped at will, over 300,000 unattended children have crossed the Border, but the Biden Administration has “Misplaced” 85,000. These children have no known address or sponsor, and many are thought to now be involved in illegal work farms or are in the sex trade. This facet of the plan is what the Democrats call humane.
• Democrats claim they are concerned with the conditions and welfare of the origin countries where these migrants originated.
  • The truth is these migrants are traced to over 150 countries worldwide. Taking in large numbers of adolescents and young men is stripping these poverty-ridden countries’ present and future workforce.
• Democrats believe the Border is closed and secure
  • Nearly each day in September saw a record number of illegals crossing into Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Some days they have exceeded 10,000 migrants entering America.

Cortez knows she is lying just as she did when she staged the photo-op at the Border years ago, crying at the sight of caged families. She, like all Democrats, will not go to the Border now because if they do, the Media will follow, and then they will need to report on the real story. Democrats know they are destroying this country with the seven to ten million unvetted immigrants that will enter during Biden’s first term. That destruction is their plan. God knows it is working.

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People who know better have complained that Donald Trump is avoiding the debates for [insert reason here]. I say they know better becasue most of them do. If you have a 30-50+ point lead, a debate is the last thing you need. Just ask Chris Sununu.

Related: Sununu, Who Would Not Debate Republican Challengers in 2020 or 2022, Criticizes Trump for Dodging a Debate

If you’ve already forgotten who Chris Sununu is, he’s the guy making a cameo in at the end of the latest PAC-funded Chris Christie commercials circulating the Granite State. He is also the governor of New Hampshire (for another year (when he steps aside). And an almost-ran 2024 presidential candidate who’d have never made it onto that pig pile of a debate stage Trump has avoided.

Sununu has vowed to work to trim the field (at least he started with himself), so someone has a better shot at being the not-Trump candidate. He was also the guy who said this after Trump skipped the first Debate.

 

“I honestly think he’s gonna regret it, I really do. You can’t say I’m going to lead the free world and not be willing to get up and talk to those who are going to challenge you and want the job. You can’t really do that. It’s not fair to the system. It’s not doing respect to the voters and your base,” Sununu said.

 

Everyone present at the second Debate, except perhaps Doug Burgham, declared themselves the winner, and compared to Biden, they are all a better choice, which you have to admit, with a few exceptions, isn’t saying a lot, but polling suggests it was someone else. Donald Trump.

 

“63% of potential Republican primary voters support Donald Trump for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, up from 58% in our survey released Monday ahead of the latest primary debate,” Morning Consult said in its survey released on Sept. 29.

In comparison, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, seen as Mr. Trump’s biggest rival, saw his support dip from 15 percent to 12 percent after the second debate, though the Florida governor is still in second place.

Some will say that Republican Primary voters are as dumb as Republican politicians. Trump can’t win. The Left will rally and bring independents, and America will Die. DIE, I tell you! They love this crappy economy more than the possibility of the prosperity Trump brought. I’m not saying they are wrong. Trump is polarizing but names one systemic thing the Republican party did to effectively push back on a narrative almost entirely concocted by Democrats and their media homonculi.

Even as president, Trump couldn’t count on members of his party, many of whom chose the machine over putting a crowbar in the works.

When you leave Trump alone, he does Trump. When you push him, he pushes back, another thing for which Republicans are not known. At GraniteGrok, we push back all the time, no matter what side you claim, and plenty of Republicans have gotten petulant about it. They oppose us for opposing acts that contradict the party platform and the constitution (state or federal).

Boo Hoo.

And so we are clear, I am still waiting for Trump to apologize for his accumulated debt. He must say more about getting the covid wool pulled over his eyes. The bad staffing choices in the White House. That vaccine nightmare. But Chris Christie is lying when he says Trump didn’t get anything done. He got plenty done, and all of it was good. And despite his popularity with the Republican base, those who know better can’t find time to share that list. We have, as have others. It’s an impressive thing. I include it because Trump is polling at 63%, not in every poll, but he’s got a yuge lead.

I’d be happy with a Ron DeSantis. I’d hold my nose and vote for Nikki Haley. Tim ‘Ukraine or Bust’ Scott is leaps and bounds better than the current regime. We’ve got a few months to go; anything is possible but highly improbable. And Trump’s not the problem; Democrats are – as is their stranglehold on messaging (the media) and elections, and their hands are still wrapped around that neck.

If we can’t fix “Trump” or fix primary voters, Trump’s the guy we’ll have, and we’re not giving up on America. What’s your plan?

 

 

 

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Compliance is a complex concern for many business owners. No matter which industry you operate in, there will be regulations and laws you need to follow. Failure to adhere to these guidelines doesn’t just put you at risk of legal action and fines, it can also destroy your brand’s reputation. Unfortunately, preserving compliance isn’t always as simple as it seems. Companies need to implement comprehensive measures to ensure they’re living up to expectations. To make matters worse, as technology and the world around us evolves, regulations are growing more confusing. Fortunately, there are ways you can improve your chances of success and protect your company from unnecessary risks. Here’s how you can enhance your compliance strategy in a few simple steps.

Know Which Frameworks Apply to You

Compliance is a broad term, which covers a wide range of laws and regulations, as well as organizational governance and security requirements. Different types of guidelines are designed by industry and federal groups for different kinds of businesses. If your company deals with transactions, you’ll need to be compliant with PCI regulations. Companies in the healthcare industry need to understand HIPAA restrictions, and businesses managing consumer data in Europe need to be familiar with GDPR. A comprehensive risk analysis can help you to understand where threats exist in your business, and what kind of regulatory guidelines you’ll need to follow. You can also speak to compliance experts in your industry for additional guidance.

Perform Regular Audits

Maintaining high levels of compliance requires a comprehensive approach to collecting data and insights throughout your business. Regularly monitoring your accounts, documents, and data can help to ensure your business remains fully compliant. It can also ensure you can take quick action to rectify any problems that might emerge over time. Regular audits will also ensure you have plenty of data to give the authorities if they decide to check on your business. Some companies are even required to conduct reviews on an annual basis, which includes a complete audit of all their internal systems. Staying up to date with your information could save you time and effort in the long term and reduce your risk of having to deal with expensive fines.

Implement Data Protection Strategies

While there’s more to comprehensive compliance than simply protecting business data, most frameworks will require companies to have a strategy in place for preserving the information they collect. As digital transformation continues to take place on a massive scale, it’s crucial to ensure you’re implementing strategies that keep your business and consumers secure. At the very least, you’ll need to ensure your information, documents, and digital files are safely encrypted on an end-to-end basis. You may also need to think about your access controls for specific documents and tools. Implementing specific permissions for different users in your workforce can reduce your threat landscape by making sensitive information less accessible.

Some businesses even invest in comprehensive security strategies, such as using multi-factor authentication for all online software and logins.

Use the Right Technology

Technology can make a huge difference to your compliance strategy. There are many kinds of software and tools that can assist with different regulations. You can leverage tools to help you monitor data compliance in the contact center, ensuring personal information is automatically redacted from call recordings. If you’re a government company running a fleet in California, you’ll need to be familiar with the state’s smog check rules, and you’ll need to leverage the right tools to ensure you can conduct tests quickly and efficiently. There are telematics systems available that can reduce the time and effort it takes to conduct smog checks, helping to boost both compliance and efficiency at the same time. Some tools can even help you to monitor your compliance with security, safety, and environmental regulations in real-time, with customizable alerts and notifications.

Mastering Compliance in the Modern World

Compliance is a complex topic, and it’s something many businesses struggle to manage effectively. Unfortunately, compliance isn’t something companies can think about once and then ignore. Just as you need to stay on top of your finances you need to stay on top of compliance related tasks as well. As regulations and guidelines continue to evolve, and your business processes change, you’ll need to ensure you’re updating your strategies regularly. The steps above can help you to implement a plan for compliance that protects your business from fines, reputational damage, and even legal action.

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The world of conspiracy theorists is fraught with nervous energy emanating from shadowy corners of the information war frontier. Of course, globalists are real, and of course, they want a New World Order, and of course, they’re conspiring to accomplish it – because they’ve admitted to all of it.  In fact, they even brag about it at their semi-public meetings or in the pages of their very public best-selling books.

However, the United States government is still beholden to its citizens it would propagandize if we let them.  Thanks to the Smith-Mundt Act we told them no.  Yet rumors of that act being repealed by Barack Obama began to circulate not long after he signed an amendment to it, which is not the same as repealing it.  The reality is he loosened restrictions, allowing American citizens to listen to state-sponsored media outlets the U.S. uses to propagandize others around the world.  Ostensibly, this is a good thing because it allows ordinary Americans, including conspiracy theorists, to listen closely to what our government messaging is around the world.  We pay for it. After all, we should get to see the final product.  So that’s one for Obama for those keeping score.

However, those holding the reins of power in our country can still propagandize us in a variety of ways, and in fact, they have if you listen to M.I.T. professor of linguistics Noam Chomsky.  Chomsky exposed the American media for conspiring with the military-industrial complex to “manufacture consent” back in the 1980s.  Both his book and documentary film of the same name go to great lengths to show how this is done.  Chomsky, a card-carrying socialist, is practiced at studying modern media and literature for the use of certain types of trends in language.  In this case, he noted the selective use of certain media outlets to create “manufactured consent” of public opinion for the purpose of justifying military intervention into the tiny Pacific island nation of East Timor.  Without going into detail, suffice to say the media painted a narrative whereby the East Timorese people were facing a hostile threat, which the United States, fancying itself the global bodyguard of the weak, would have to respond to on moral grounds.

The truth, as it played out, was more like the pre-text to our intervening in Iraq and Afghanistan.  American interest is a broad term, often meaning financial and controlling interests in American industry.  Rather than simply support the East Timorese people, we decided to reward ourselves by sticking around and helping ourselves to some of their natural resources.  This, of course, offended Chomsky as it was the bourgeois Americans using our military hegemony to take advantage of the simple working-class natives of East Timor.  The rest is history.

Chomsky was keen to notice and tell us what was happening, however.  Though I disagree with his politics, I completely agree with his perspicacity regarding American propaganda.  The Smith-Mundt Act began in 1948 as a response to the propaganda efforts discovered in Nazi Germany and the Soviet bloc countries where propagandizing citizens was commonplace.  At its core is respect for our First Amendment right to not have an establishment of government control over speech or the press.  The spirit of the act is mostly that, though, honored in the ether more than reality.

The reality takes an understanding of what constitutes propaganda.  What are the tactics and techniques used? The answer: constant and pervasive messaging designed to shape the way one thinks or perceives reality, often through the use of manipulation and fear.

The Church Committee of 1975-76 showed us the C.I.A. had, in fact, been paying journalists to essentially propagandize U.S. citizens by placing articles with narratives given to them by the agency.  Otherwise known as Operation Mockingbird, this was and is a violation of the agency’s charter and precisely what Chomsky was revealing in his expose.  The budget used by the agency for this was in the tens of millions of dollars.  Ostensibly, we are told their motives were good – to defend American values and interests.  Is that still true?

For those who recognize propaganda in real-time, the two-year COVID crisis was a prime example of a massive campaign utilizing virtually all of the techniques associated with the mind control techniques.

Pervasive?  Every news channel and online site ran non-stop COVID messaging.  The messaging was essentially the same across the board.

Constant?  We were inundated with COVID warnings and trackers on nearly every platform as well.  Remember the death toll tracker?  The maps of viral outbreaks?  The omniscience of Tony Fauci and other government warriors who were fighting the deadly virus on our behalf?  Of course, you do.

Lionizing and demonizing?  It’s as simple as recalling the vaxx vs. anti-vaxxed binary.  Those in the government-approved vax camp needed to be wary of the anti-vaxxers.  Anti-vaxxers were even dehumanized, openly and without shame, by dozens of so-called professional journalists, pundits, and government officials.  Fauci, Cuomo and Whitmer were heroes, and you could be too if you were willing to save Grandma by getting vaxxed.  Trump, Desantis, and Noem were unhinged and reckless troglodytes who mistook freedom for a license to kill via non-compliance.  You were told to skip funerals and family gatherings to avoid such reprobates.  Were it 1940s Germany the anti-vaxxers could easily have been Jews.

Fear tactics?  Aside from those already mentioned, there was the threat of job loss, social ostracism, and death lurking mere inches beneath your neighbor’s masked or unmasked face.  Propagandists know fear is essential to manipulating the mind to react in irrational ways to otherwise rational situations.  Love your neighbor became fear your neighbor, especially if they were acting in a disapproved manner.

Gaslighting? This is the manipulative art of denying one’s reality.  Consider Then we had the ubiquitous misinformation/disinformation narrative where Nobel Prize-winning medicines like Ivermectin and medical prize-winning doctors who stepped outside of the approved government-medical establishment narrative were no longer prize-winning unless it was a booby prize for failure to capitulate.  Rather than a world-beating virus medicine, Ivermectin was now a horse de-wormer paste for crazy people.  World-renowned cardiologist and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough was in league with mRNA vaccine pioneer Dr. Robert Malone, both of whom had the audacity to use their educations to question the preferred protocol.  Shut up and do as you are told, whackos.

The powers that be in government have studied the propagandists and know the history of government control tactics.  They have the benefit of hundreds if not thousands of years of research from around the world and the brain trust of specialized groups who feed them data on what works.  This is settled science.

We should all “follow the science” when it’s the result of the actual scientific process.  What is that again?  Science is: The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.  It is also subject to the scrutiny and skepticism of qualified practitioners of science for the purpose of arriving at laws and other scientifically accepted claims that are falsifiable and/or can be reproduced via the same mechanisms anywhere around the world.

Propagandists also have their techniques down to a science.

In this case, I suggest you don’t follow the science when the science is legalized propaganda.

 

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Under the phrase ‘Kamala Harris is Dumb,’ someone on X has shared a compilation from America’s alleged ‘Vice’ President. Kamala Harris. Joe Biden’s special envoy to word salads.  The woman gifted with the ability to speak at length and say nothing.

Her contribution is, in fact, capable of detracting from everything else said in a room. She makes a crowd of people dumber than when they arrived. So please use caution when listening to the following “presentation.”

Tree plus minutes of a sound Kamala makes when someone yanks her pull string.

 

Kamala Harris is dumb… pic.twitter.com/vSlTqUc8tP

— Gunther Eagleman (@GuntherEagleman) October 1, 2023

 

I think America would like to realize what can be, unburdened by what has been, as in, goodbye Biden administration and word-salad Kamala. Roll back all their nonsense. And try to get America back on its feet.

The post One of the “Sounds” Kamala Makes When You Yank Her Pull-String appeared first on Granite Grok.

The narrative from the Regime-media and both Parties goes like this … a small group of Republican “extremists” refuse to fund the government because ____ (fill in whatever nefarious reason you like: they hate the government; they hate Speaker McCarthy; they’re irrational; blah, blah, blah); these “extremists” are the children in the room and the politicians who want to keep the spending machine chugging along are the adults in the room. And it is all a LIE.

Matt Gaetz’s interview on CNN should be an eye-opener. I already posted about it: Must See Matt Gaetz … The actual adults in the room are the supposed “extremists” who refuse to fund government via “continuing resolution” or “omnibus” because “continuing resolution,” “omnibus” etc. are how the UniParty continues to spend far, far more … $2 trillion annually … than it takes in, without accountability. I HAD NO CHOICE; THE ALTERNATIVE WAS TO SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT.

But, as Gaetz exposes, the UniParty manufactures shutdown crises. The UniParty refuses to follow a normal appropriations process, which would expose what the innumerable alphabet-soup of government agencies are spending precisely because they do NOT want that exposure. It is NOT a Republican vs. Democrat thing … it’s the system versus the rest of us.

The post Everything The System Tells You About Government “Shutdowns” Is A Lie appeared first on Granite Grok.

In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, confusion surrounded many medical issues related to a scary, novel disease. Travel restraints, quarantines, mortality rates, treatment modalities, and a vortex of complex issues confronted an anxious American public told ubiquitous masks were a necessary prophylactic pending the arrival of a vaunted new vaccine to rescue humanity.

Children were force-masked in schools. Unmasked citizens were shamed in retail stores, legislators called for criminal sanctions for the noncompliant, and claims that masking caused harm or was ineffective were viciously attacked as misinformation. A recent South Korean study reported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), however, concluded that masking can indeed cause harm, especially for children.

In “Measuring the quantity of harmful volatile organic compounds inhaled through masks,” NIH posited what many concerned parents had wondered about in 2020:

“If harmful chemicals are released from these masks, there may be harmful effects on human health. In this study, the concentration of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from some commonly used masks was assessed qualitatively and quantitatively under diverse conditions … As masks are worn close to the face, temperature may increase beyond the ambient temperature due to body heat. … When the temperature of the mask rises, the types and concentrations of the VOCs emitted from the mask can rise with it.”

Free Speech to Question Masks

Any drywaller or mason knows that the masks worn to prevent viral spread are insufficient to block visible particulate matter such as drywall dust or masonry cement, creating a false sense of security that would cause even greater disease spread. Yet government spokesmen and the medical community insisted that face diapers would block viruses that are infinitesimal in size compared to dust, and the drywallers, and masons, and other folk who knew better were not permitted alternative opinions on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media. Sensible voices claimed masks could cause respiratory or other illnesses, increase carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide levels, or inhibit herd immunity and natural immune system development in children. Their voices too were silenced: Their simple scientific observations were verboten.

The recent study is remarkable not because it challenges official nonsense scientifically (like real science!) but in that it breaks from the political tyranny that Fauci & Co inflicted on Americans. Is the NIH uncaptured by the cultish fear ladled out so copiously by Joe Biden and others? How did the federal government’s lock-stepping lies get challenged by another agency – didn’t NIH get the memo? Likely, it was impossible to simply ignore the South Korean study that should have been undertaken in America.

Seeking Credible Science

The US government has seen its credibility fall like the biblical Tower of Babel. The more “real science” intrudes into unscientific political narratives, the more government agencies will lose credibility. This extends to bunk science about climate change, gender identity and hormone blockers for children, and even statistical abuses in critical race “theory” that labels all white people as criminals and all black people as victims. These and more display grotesque departures from traditional scientific and statistical inquiry to foster a hideous cult of hate and falsehood.

The NIH presents a credible study openly affirming what private citizens and physicians were banned, or even attacked, for suggesting two years ago:

“Now that masks are all but required, the harmful chemicals that can be released from them must be evaluated. … This study demonstrated that disposable masks (KF94) released higher concentrations of TVOCs in comparison to cotton masks … It is clear that particular attention must be paid to the VOCs associated with the use of KF94 masks their effects on human health. Based on our findings, we suggest that prior to wearing a KF94 mask, each product should be opened and not worn for at least 30 min, thereby reducing TVOC concentrations to levels that will not impair human health.”

How comforting – let the chemical-infused masks air out a tad before wrapping your toddler’s face. Yet the Korean study “found that disposable masks, including medical-grade N95 masks, released eight times the recommended safety limit for toxic volatile organic compounds (TVOCs).” Maybe an hour would be a better air-out, especially for vulnerable children.

 

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

 

The post Masking Creates Toxic Health Impacts … appeared first on Granite Grok.

It’s becoming harder and harder for high school and college girls to compete against other females without intrusion by transgender-identified males. To see just how far we have fallen in refusing to recognize the fundamental injustice of allowing these males to compete against biological females, consider some historic scandals in the Olympic Games.

Once, everyone from the organizers of the Olympics to every national athletic association to every high school gym teacher understood that the biological differences between men and women gave well-trained male athletes an inherent advantage over their similarly well-trained female athletes. These biological distinctions are not insignificant. (RELATED: DEROY MURDOCK: It’s Time For A Big, Fat Gay Divorce From The Alphabet People)

Males have greater lung capacity, larger hearts, more bone density, and more muscle mass—advantages that allow them to jump higher, throw further, run and accelerate faster, and punch harder than females. One recent study revealed that in sports where upper body strength dominates, males possess more than a 50% athletic advantage over their female counterparts. This athletic gap emerges around age 12 when males experience a 20-fold boost in testosterone.

That is why the rules governing sporting competitions—especially those considered to be at the pinnacle of athletic achievement, such as the Olympic Games—long maintained strict prohibitions on female athletes taking male hormones and other kinds of performance-enhancing drugs for both male and female athletes.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, East German Olympic athletes “swam their way to glory, winning Olympic gold medals, setting world records.” It was only after the fall of the Iron Curtain that the secret to their success was revealed: an elaborate, organized doping system that fed hormones and steroids to the athletes, including the female swimmers, intended to enhance their performance and give their female swimmers a distinct athletic advantage of the kind only found in their male counterparts.

The Russian government has been caught doing the same thing multiple times with the same hormone-doping system as the East Germans had. Last year, Kamila Valieva, a 15-year-old Russian figure skater who won a gold medal in the Beijing Olympic Games, tested positive for Trimetazidine, a drug classified by the World Anti-Doping Agency under “hormone and metabolic modulators.”

Today, liberal pundits seem to have forgotten history. They’re willing to turn a blind eye to the universal disapproval of hormone use at all levels of national and international athletic contests.

It’s not hypocrisy, apparently, when we normalize allowing male-bodied athletes with overwhelming athletic advantages to compete in women’s sports, but sanction female athletes like Marion Jones, a standout winner at the 2000 Sydney Games, for using performance-enhancing drugs. Jones admitted in 2007 to lying to federal agents about her use of those drugs, spent six months in jail, and was stripped of all five of her Olympic medals by the International Olympic Committee.

But now a new rule has emerged in sports: men that psychologically feel like women can compete with all the physiological advantages rendered them by accident of birth against real women. However, real women get the book thrown at them for taking performance-enhancing drugs that give them the same advantages that biological males develop naturally in contests against their own. (RELATED: SUZANNE DOWNING: They’re Coming For Your Children)

So much for equality.

The future of female athletics is on unstable ground. The inclusion of men competing as women is greeted with nods of approval from liberal elites, cultural Marxists, leftist politicos, and gender ideologues at home and abroad. The evisceration of spaces where the enduring differences between the sexes are most on display is, for trans-evangelists, their brass ring.

As goes sport, so goes the rest of the gender contagion. This generation’s greatest “doping” scandal seems to be just getting started, but it is already cheating high school and college girls out of medals, awards, and the athletic scholarships they use to pay for their educations.

Now is the time to divest fake females of their titles, and call an end to athletic fraud. It is a matter of common sense, fundamental justice, and the important principle of fair play in sports that – up until now – has been a hallmark of our culture.

Hans von Spakovsky and Sarah Parshall Perry are senior legal fellows in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

 

Hans von Spakovsky and Sarah Parshall Perry | Daily Caller News Service

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The post Liberal Hypocrites Are Destroying Women’s Sports appeared first on Granite Grok.

It had been quite some time since the native-born Englishman had returned to the far-east end of Greater London. Nothing had changed. Dagenham was still a socialistic stronghold, a horror hole populated by the embittered and resentful members of Britain’s lower working class. The expatriate spotted an old acquaintance and started up a conversation.

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The acquaintance immediately noted his childhood buddy no longer spoke the barely decipherable cockney brogue. The acquaintance queried if the town was no longer good enough for him and wondered if the returnee was trying to get above his station in life. The Englishman artfully avoided the questions, but he knew the answers. It was not a question of being better than, it was simply a question of whether he wanted to elevate himself from a dead-end London borough, and the answer was a resounding yes.

Around the world there are (and always will be) powerless, educationally deprived pockets of poverty; stranded in caste and class systems with little hope of ever elevating themselves, exploited by elites, who push the politics of envy and victimhood.

The United States of America is a beacon for these people.

The great land of opportunity, where waves of legal immigrants {Irish, Italians, Polish, and more recently the Vietnamese/Asian Americans} all have come and used the same playbook to live a better life and assimilate into the melting pot of America. The nuclear family was the backbone, with each generation encouraging their children to work hard and do better than their parents. Most often, it was 2 to 3 generations before their offspring reached the brass ring, with a grandchild becoming a successful doctor, lawyer, or businessman, but it happened.

Except, this did not happen for African Americans and Native Americans (the Native American story is for another time).

The post-slavery African American population was subjected to horrible “Jim Crow” discrimination, but in the late 1950s/60s, things were improving, and MLK’s colorblind society seemed reachable. There was one cautionary note. In 1965, Patrick Monahan published the famous Monahan Report that highlighted the breaking down of the black nuclear family. The report has proved to be prophetic. Over 70% of black families are headed by a single parent, and that parent is most often a female.

MLK was assassinated, and the black culture moved away from assimilating into a color-blind, united American society. The LBJ Great Society ushered in the era of welfare, and affirmative action sent the message that the color of a person’s skin was more important than character, hard work, and merit. These realities, combined with an almost total breakdown of the nuclear African-American family, put into play all the variables required for a destructive culture to develop, and that is exactly what happened (think inner-city crime/drugs, vile rap music, failing public schools, high unemployment. and inability to achieve merit-based success). In other countries, African Americans would be left to their own self-destruction, but in America, the black culture has something the Democrats desperately need: their vote.

The Democratic Party receives over 90% of the black vote, and if this dropped to 80% the party would be nonviable. The Democrat power brokers know this and will do “anything” to make sure that it never happens.

Conniving Democrat imp operatives, figuratively perched on the shoulders of African Americans, whisper self-serving lies. The black economic situation had nothing to do with them because they were being held down by systemic white racism.  The developing black culture should be embraced and celebrated. Generations had this imbued into their psyche.

All the while, things worsened.

The black-on-black crime was epidemic, and future-destroying drugs were everywhere. Black children were failing in school, and unemployment {especially among black men} skyrocketed. In New York City, 50% of all black pregnancies ended in abortion. However, the conniving imp assured the minority population that progressive elites would fight for them and make sure the government supplied them with all their needs. The only thing the black community needed to do was every 2 years check the candidate’s box with a D next to their name.

Things continue pretty much the same until the Trump presidency. During this time, the economy was on fire, and black Americans were working. A significant portion, especially black men, began to question the imp on their shoulders.

Panic started to spread among Democratic power brokers.

If the trend continued, they would not survive. Then, George Floyd died while in the custody of a white policeman. Even though the actual rate of white policemen killing black suspects during felonies was extremely low, Black Lives Matter became the mantra (their manifesto even endorsed fatherless households). Progressive-fueled riots spread across America with no accountability for the violence or damage. Joe Biden was elected president, and progressive Democrat politicians pushed affirmative action on steroids. Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DEI) were put ahead of character, hard work, and merit. George Soros-backed prosecutors were elected in major progressive cities, and crime was no longer punished. And the black culture continued its downward spiral.

It may be too late for the progressive-run cities because many individuals who would have fought to turn the cities around have elected to leave, and the majority that remains still have conniving progressive imps whispering into their ears, telling them they are victims, telling them they are losers because of white supremacy.

In order to turn things around, the first thing that needs to happen is to brush off the conniving imps. Once this pernicious influence is gone, the minority communities’ minds could clear, and they would finally understand the need to start voting for individuals who can build up the minority communities instead of keeping them down. The streets need to be made safe and drug-free. It is not an impossible challenge. Rudy Giuliani did it, and once the streets are safe, children can be given school choices so they can escape the failed teacher union-controlled public schools. In this safe environment, black male role models could step up, and pastors/priests could work on the community’s spiritual needs.

Affirmative Action has been declared unconstitutional, and DEI will soon suffer the same fate.

That does not mean society cannot offer minority communities a helping hand. Affirmative Access {help based on economic status, not skin color} could open the door to state and community colleges. Appropriate funding based on need would make the opportunity real, and if minority students take advantage of the opportunity, the American Dream will follow.

Despite being born into the intellectually stultifying lower-class English caste system, the Englishman made it to the United States and lived the American Dream. He worked hard, married, and had a daughter, who he watched graduate from law school. Perhaps the biggest difference between the Englishman and the failed black minority community was that he brushed off Britain’s figurative version of a conniving elite imp. An imp who was always whispering, you are no good and you should stay in your place.

It is time for America’s black community to do the same, brush off the conniving progressive imp, clear its mind, and vote for its own self-interest. The American dream is through that door. All it would take is to walk over the threshold.

 

The post The Brit who Brushed Up his Accent and Brushed Off the Conniving Elite Imp appeared first on Granite Grok.

The media continues to provide air cover for the Left’s efforts to sexualize children in public schools, framing it as book banning by Christian fundamentalists. Is it to give them time to digest what they view as a traitorous rebellion? It’s not just Christian parents who object to the promulgation of the progressive lifestyle.

 

For months, hundreds of religious parents have regularly rallied outside a Maryland school board building, aghast at curriculum featuring books that portray LGBTQ+ families to elementary school kids.

Waving American flags, they have chanted against “indoctrination” of children. They’ve sued to pull their kids from lessons and argued their case on Fox News.

In battles against LGBTQ+ acceptance, it is often white evangelicals pushing for book bans or boycotts over beer brands or bathing suits. In this case, Muslims are leading the fight.

Democrats are beside themselves over it. After years of standing behind Muslims, dismissing the darker side of Islam, and supporting whatever they’ve brought to the table, this rebelliousness offends them. How dare they! But it was inevitable. CAIR is pushing back against the Left’s transgender agenda.

 

“The school system believes it is being inclusive toward LGBTQ parents and students,” said Zainab Chaudry, the Maryland director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national civil rights group that put out calls for rallies over the Maryland books controversy. “But in doing that, it is not being inclusive toward another set of parents and students.”

 

The LA Times is generous in its coverage, quoting numerous progressive Arabs to pain opponents as… dare I use the word extremist? The reality, which will continue to cause them headaches and heartaches, is that Islam and the sexualization agenda are incompatible. The entire Progressive lifestyle will not comport with Islam in its traditional form.

Neither does the American Republic, but let’s not get distracted. The LA Times has done us a service. It says, “Religious parents… are aghast at curriculum featuring books that portray LGBTQ+ families.”

The LA Times, as with many claiming to protect these offerings, seems to have no clue what is in them. If they do, they claim that LGBTQ+ families promote Adult child sex (heterosexual and homosexual), drug abuse (including by minors), rape, incest, self-harm, and suicide.

There are books with rainbow unicorns, but no one cares about those. They are more concerned about the mental health issues arising from exposing children – unprepared mentally or physically – to grasp the subject matter. They object to civil servants undermining their religious liberty and rights as parents to frame their children’s spiritual, social, and cultural lives.

They object to this crap.

And no one is saying we should ban it. Access is an issue. Spending taxpayer dollars on it is an issue. Age appropriateness is an issue. And as noted above, the argument for including one group should not exclude another.

Public schools shouldn’t in any way be involved in this sort of “education,” and not just becasue they’ll likely screw it up as badly as they have the academics, which are much less complex than human sexuality and human nature. Per form, they could care less, but the rising opposition from Muslim families has the left confused, and I find that amusing.

It also demonstrates how much brighter we are than the average Liberal. We’ve been telling them this divorce was unavoidable for years, and here we are. Exactly how irreconcilable the differences remain to be seen, or more accurately, to what length will the Muslim parents objecting or the progressive gender-cultists advocating will go in support of their respective positions.

Will progressives resort to the level of name-calling so easily directed at other faiths, and does this cost them another victim-class voting base?

I’m intrigued by the conflict and can’t wait to see how things between them turn out and how effectively Islam, a faith that can brook no other, will use the First Amendment to get what they want until it no longer serves them.

 

 

HT | Don Surber

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The post Left at a Loss as Muslims Protest “Porn” in Schools appeared first on Granite Grok.

Steve noted not long ago, (paraphrased): “Notice something missing? Yeah, content from Skip. He’s been missing.” Indeed I have been. In fact, this (I think) is the second time I am saying the same thing but with a modifier: I [think] I am back. And I am glad that I can, again, finally put keystrokes to GraniteGrok.

It’s been a long, LONG 5 months, and NOW I hope to be writing again on a more normal basis.

First and again, I apologize to everyone that I was helping that I ghosted. Certainly not a voluntary situation, but it is clear that I just disappeared and dropped out of sight with little or no communication.

Family priorities came to the fore along with DCYF and taking in our fictive granddaughter (whom we have known since birth) because *I* believe a certain school district decided to make true a rumor that I had heard from others. School districts, mostly in the more populated southern tier, were dropping faux dimes on parents who wouldn’t hew to THEIR narratives during the Zoom days and/or saw how education was being carried out by their children’s teachers (or the lack of education, as the case might be). They decided, like millions of other parents across the nation, to revive THEIR control concerning their children’s education.

The Government (because the most obvious touchpoint by the Government to parents is their Public Schools) decided, “WE are in charge – shut up.” When parents persisted, these school districts sicced DCYF on them in what appears to be retaliation.

I believe that this was true in my son and daughter-in-law’s case as they forced their school district to do things for their special needs children that they didn’t want to do. So, I started to annoy DCYF with RTKs -> RSA 91-A Right To Know demands, and I caught them dead to rights (heh!) doing the wrong things. Some of those RTKs made themselves onto the ‘Grok, but I admit that I fell way behind on reporting on some of the “best” of them. I will set those right because even if I didn’t write about them here, they did get great usage just when they were needed…

..I gave them, and the answers, to my son’s Lawyer for use in Family Court. As Flounder in Animal House said, “Oh Boy, This Is Gonna Be Great!” I also gave him, ahead of the hearing, a list of questions to ask me AND the answers to them. They really weren’t necessary. Why?

I went to his first hearing, and when the Judge wanted to know who was present, I introduced myself as the child’s fictive grandfather as well as the Placement Foster Parent (having already taken sufficient training to pass from a visit with Grammy and Grandpa to then Kinship Caregivers, we are now permitted Foster Parents (waiting on DCYF to finish their paperwork – we long ago did everything that we were supposed to do), I saw that the DCYF Lawyer and Investigative Specialist (whose names I think I can mention here as they’ve been the focus of some of my RTK before the hearing) whip their heads around when I announced myself and then put their heads together and whispered to each other.

Sidenote: one is NOT supposed to report on what happens in Family Court. No video or audio recording. The doors are locked, so no one can sneak in or write about it, so I am trying VERY hard not to report any specifics that would get me cited. Please bear with me.

Then, I became a “witness of opportunity,” and they announced that they would be calling me as their witness.

Can you IMAGINE the glee with which I received this news??? I was higher than if Elon had put me on a Falcon Heavy for lift-off. You see, I had/have done my homework just in case; I knew what I was going to say and wargamed out possible questions. They, on the other hand, even after being on the butt end of my RTKs, made it clear that they had done none.

Sidenote: since I was called to testify, I let it be known that a number of RTKs had already been made public on GraniteGrok. Priceless. Lack of homework again.

Not a thing. And made the stupid assumption that Big Bad DCYF was going to grill me and that I’d be shaking in my boots to be up on the stand and make myself look stupid in front of the Judge.

Can you see the smile on my face as I type this in remembrance of what actually happened?

Without getting into details but with the mental help of repeating that old lawyer’s maxim of “Never ask a witness a question to which you already don’t know the answer,” – and the DCYF lawyer forgot all about it. But I surely didn’t and took full opportunity of it. Let’s just say that I had the chance to talk for as long as I wanted/needed and to make my points that I had already wargamed and made them look stupid.

Let’s just say that while my son’s lawyer, in the beginning, wasn’t happy that DCYF called me (but lightened up after I started). It was also clear to me, in reading his poker face, that my son was having a hard time containing himself (except when I mixed him up with his brother as to which one served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq). As was said later, “they unlocked the door, you strode in, and then blew their roof off.” And yes, the Judge kept staring at both of them, from what I was told.

Yes, the Judge was some unhappy with some of the illegalities that had been done by DCYF and the lawyer got it all started by trying to challenge my Liar’s Log (the other District had claimed Julie never lied) and had no response when I said: “What, you didn’t ask her current school for theirs that they had to start?”.

Snicker – lack of homework AGAIN!

And those were the high points for the DCYF Dubious Duo. While I was not present in the courtroom either after I officially became a witness or after my testimony.

But I digress. Almost all of my time was spent with some GREAT DCYF workers, both her case manager and the Liaison for Foster Parents, in navigating the complexities of becoming Foster Parents (and now, being dubbed Specialized Care Foster Parents because of all of her special needs AND plowing through the required classes as fast as I could to earn the title de jure and not just de facto). Also, I spent a TON of time getting her registered for school here and then dealing with all the problems and issues she brought as well as dealing with the meltdowns here and at school, which I cannot/should not get into here.

Suffice it to say that almost all of my and TMEW’s free time disappeared completely; she dealt with the day-to-day behaviors all summer while I’ve been on the phone or doing emails or driving her to faraway appointments all day long for months.  This isn’t what we thought we were being handed, nor was it anything that we thought we’d ever have to face. We were caught unawares by everything and have had to walk through and nail down every single behavior and then create structures around them so as to try to head them off at the pass next time (with mixed results).

And the entire time, trying to ensure that the Grandson wasn’t left in the lurch (which, I am sad to say, happened a few times).

So thanks for reading it all and allowing me to shine, in a brief way, a single moment in which I could shine a quick Bright Light onto DCYF when folks only seem to worry about “their numbers” and not taking families for what they are – in the vast majority of times, just real humans trying to do the best they can.

And to again shine a light on the rumor of how some uppity school districts wanting to wreck the lives of parents who still believe that their children are theirs and that they have to right to advocate for what is best for them. It is clear that “retribution” happens and all the more with the philosophy of “Childism” (the bastard offspring of Critical Race Theory that holds that all Parents are evil and oppress their children, that children are oppressed are victims that must be saved, and the Saviors are the teachers and staffs are the ones to become the new Mommies and Daddies).

 

 

 

 

 

The post I Am Returning – Finally. It Has Been Too Long. appeared first on Granite Grok.

My last article highlighted the fact that the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is only now beginning to contemplate how to write the rules regarding how Vermonters can retroactively “bank” so-called “Clean Heat Credits” back to January 1, 2023, and continue to bank them until the Clean Heat Standard goes fully into effect sometime in 2025.

To recap, the credits are earned by performing so-called “Clean Heat Measures” such as installing heat pumps, insulating building spaces, etc. The credits will ultimately be ownable and saleable financial instruments with a monetary value, so knowing how to claim them – and a system for doing so that reliably prevents fraudulent claims — is kind of a critical detail.

But there is an even more important detail that is still unresolved: Who actually owns the credit?

Does the customer who paid for the clean heat measure (individual, business, or in the case of subsidized measures the state) have primary claim to the credit, or does the vendor who did the work? During legislative committee discussions my impression was that the intent of the lawmakers, or at least most of them, was that the person/entity paying for the measure would have primary claim to the credit, but the law itself, as passed, doesn’t say this.

So, I reached out to two lawmakers, Senator Anne Watson (D-Washington) and Representative Laura Sibilia (I-Dover), who each sit on a committee of jurisdiction for S.5/Act 18, to see if they could tell me who owns a carbon credit. (Thanks to both for quick and helpful replies to my emails!) And, yes, the law doesn’t say. That’s a problem.

What the law does say, Sen. Watson reminded me, is, “Credit ownership. The [Public Utilities] Commission, in consultation with the Technical Advisory Group [emphasis added], shall establish a standard methodology for determining what party or parties shall be the owner of a clean heat credit upon its creation. The owner or owners may transfer those credits to a third party or to an obligated party.” And herein lies another problem: the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) doesn’t yet exist and won’t for a while.

Invitations to apply didn’t go out until September 22, and applications aren’t due until October 9th. (FYI, according to the S.5/Act 18 timeline, putting the TAG together should have commenced on or before August 31, so already fumbling the ball here….) In other words, the PUC can’t make a decision about what procedures are necessary to bank a carbon credit until it is established who exactly has an ownership claim to that credit, and the PUC can’t decide that until the TAG is fully set up and functioning to weigh in on the topic. Some day.

What is the TAG? “The Clean Heat Standard Technical Advisory Group shall consist of up to 15 members appointed by the Commission. The Commission shall establish the procedure for the TAG, including member term lengths and meeting procedures.” It’s basically another Climate Council, made up of volunteers receiving per diem compensation and a handful (3) of paid representatives from administrative agencies. Given the Climate Council’s demonstrated inability to reach any consensus decision of consequence, this does not bode well for a quick resolution to this question.

The legislature put the retroactive carbon credit allowance in S.5/Act 18 because they didn’t want Vermonters delaying projects for two years, holding off in order to get the credit benefit. But by abdicating their responsibility to put forward a workable plan at the outset, and handing over to a couple of unelected bureaucracies, our lawmakers have created a total clusterbleep. And to add even further uncertainty to this whole situation, Rep. Sibilia reminded me that the legislature will review whatever rules the PUC and the TAG come up with in 2025 and can change them – in this case retroactively.

When Senator Dick McCormack called S.5/Act 18 a Rube Goldberg contraption, he was underselling what a mess the whole thing is. (He voted for it anyway!) I’ll be curious to see how they untangle this web in the months to come, but I won’t be the only one watching.

Back on June 20th, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission put out the following press release, which I re-print here in full because it’s all really interesting.

CFTC Whistleblower Office Issues Alert Seeking Tips Relating to Carbon Markets Misconduct

Washington, D.C. — The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Whistleblower Office in the Division of Enforcement issued an alert today notifying the public on how to identify and report potential Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) violations connected to fraud or manipulation in the carbon markets. Voluntary carbon markets, among other measures, can support the transition to a low-carbon economy through market-based initiatives in which high-quality carbon credits, also known as carbon offsets, are purchased and sold bilaterally or on spot exchanges. As with any market, there exists the potential for fraud and manipulation.

“Alongside the continued growth of CFTC regulated carbon offset derivatives contracts, the agency is building upon its expertise to ensure the utility and reliability of these markets, as well as its ability to identify and pursue any potential fraud or abusive practices,” said Chairman Rostin Behnam. “Information from whistleblowers advances the Commission’s enforcement mission and, in turn, further builds integrity and trust in the carbon markets by rooting out fraud and manipulation.”

As described in the alert, the CFTC’s Whistleblower Office will work with market participants that report information related to potential fraud in the carbon markets including, but not limited to, manipulative and wash trading, “ghost” credits, double counting, fraudulent statements relating to material terms of the carbon credits, and potential manipulation of tokenized carbon markets. Individuals who submit such information through the CFTC’s Whistleblower Program may be eligible for certain confidentiality and anti-retaliation protections, as well as monetary awards if that information leads to the success of a CFTC enforcement action. [Emphasis added. Note: This could be more lucrative than collecting carbon credits!]

“As carbon credit markets continue to grow, we will act to foster the integrity of these markets by fighting fraud and manipulation,” said Ian McGinley, Director of the Division of Enforcement. “Whistleblowers are invaluable allies in these efforts.  We will diligently investigate all credible tips and complaints from whistleblowers relating to carbon credit markets.”

Background:

The voluntary carbon credit market is currently estimated to be $2 billion and is forecasted to grow to $250 billion by 2050, according to the Morgan Stanley Research paper Carbon Offset Market Trends and Growth 2050. Carbon credits are the underlying commodity for futures contracts that are listed on CFTC designated contract markets (DCMs). The CFTC has enforcement authority and regulatory oversight over DCMs and any trading in those markets.

The CFTC also has anti-fraud and anti-manipulation enforcement authority over the related spot markets for carbon credits. The CFTC’s jurisdiction also applies to carbon allowances and other environmental commodities products that are linked to futures contracts.

About the CFTC’s Whistleblower Program

The CFTC’s Whistleblower Program was created under Section 748 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Since issuing its first award in 2014, the CFTC has granted whistleblower awards amounting to approximately $330 million. Those awards are associated with enforcement actions that have resulted in monetary sanctions totaling more than $3 billion. The CFTC issues awards related not only to the agency’s enforcement actions, but also in connection with actions brought by other domestic or foreign regulators if certain conditions are met.

Whistleblowers are eligible to receive between 10 and 30 percent of the monetary sanctions collected. All whistleblower awards are paid from the CFTC Customer Protection Fund, which was established by Congress, and is financed entirely through monetary sanctions paid to the CFTC by violators of the CEA. No money is taken or withheld from injured customers to fund the program. The CEA also provides confidentiality and anti-retaliation protections for whistleblowers.

The CFTC’s Whistleblower Office issues Whistleblower Alerts as a way of communicating the priorities of the Division of Enforcement to the public, including potential whistleblowers and whistleblower attorneys.

 

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.

 

Anyone with information related to potential violations of the CEA or the CFTC’s rules and regulations can submit a tip electronically by filing a Form TCR (Tip, Complaint or Referral) online at https://whistleblower.gov/overview/submitatip.

Go to Whistleblower.gov for more information about CFTC’s Whistleblower Program.

The longer we persist with a carbon credit banking system with no rules in place to govern said system, the more open to fraud, abuse, and honest error that system becomes. So, friends at the PUC, the future TAG, and the future Default Delivery Agency, all I can say is you better be able to turn this Rube Goldberg mess in a secure, verifiable, rock solid carbon credit system. If not, the Feds are coming after you!

The post More Confusion/Delay Ahead for Carbon Credit Banking Scheme appeared first on Granite Grok.

They’re flying so thick and fast it is amazing.

Take heart – there will be both a Wednesday and Friday Edition.  Last week’s Friday Edition.

Remember, ridicule and mockery are effective weapons:

1. Ridicule cannot easily be fought
2. Ridicule makes the enemy angry, and angry people make mistakes
3. For those in the “squishy middle” a Thought Splinter (and Part II and Part III and Part IV) can often be hidden inside humor.

 

Now, let the mockery and mayhem begin.

 

*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Pick of the post:

 

 

The US government is LITERALLY flying them in.

 

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

 

PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA

 

 

If you have a police officer or National Guard family member / friend, start talking to them about the idea that they need to rehearse: I WILL NOT OBEY THAT ORDER.  Whether explicitly by open refusal, or a “blue flu” response, or similar non-compliance aka Sargeant Schultz’s famous “I see no-thing”! cops and soldiers better understand that if they start obeying the Globalists, they’re signing on to treason and becoming the enemy.

 

“SIR, I WILL NOT OBEY THAT ORDER.”

 

 

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

 

Palate Cleansers:

 

—

—

 

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

 

Come back Wednesday for another edition.  Same Meme Time.  Same Meme channel.

 

The post MONDAY MEMES appeared first on Granite Grok.

This clip is a bit longer than what I typically share, but the subject and content are compelling. Worthy of our attention and, more importantly, vigorous debate. The matter at hand is the war in Ukraine, what we’ve heard or been told, and what may be a totally different truth.

Our government’s embellishments about COVID, the obfuscation, deliberate lying, and the major media commitment to selling those lies and others give this conversation a good deal of merit.

Tucker Carlson is speaking with retired U.S. Army colonel Douglas Macgregor. He is an author, consultant, and commentator. He shares a very different version of the events in Ukraine, the competence of the Diplomatic core, the state of the US Military, and the Russian Army.

He says our intervention (boots on the ground) seems inevitable, that we are ill-prepared, and that Russia is not just ready but able to put America in a corner the extraction from which will result in either nuclear war or surrender in Ukraine, under terms unfavorable to the West and its Allies.

Put simply, we should not be there, and we need to get out now, or the cost will be much greater than the human rights disaster we’ve helped precipitate to date.

 

 



The post Nothing We’ve Been Told About Ukraine is True and We Need to Get Out Now appeared first on Granite Grok.

When Silicon Valley Bank and other banks failed earlier this year, the debate over the sustainability of fractional reserve banking resurfaced. Under fractional reserve banking, banks keep only a fraction of customers’ deposits in reserve. The difference is bank credit, such as government debt, mortgages, business loans, and many other kinds of loans. This practice leaves the bank open to a run, in which panicky depositors attempt to withdraw their funds from the bank en masse, but the bank doesn’t have the cash on hand. The following FRED graph gives an idea of the extent of the mismatch between deposits and reserves.

 

 

But we shouldn’t worry about bank runs because the government is here to help. In the US, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures checking accounts up to $250,000, and the banking system is regulated by a host of agencies, including the Federal Reserve, which also acts as a lender of last resort. These measures are intended to prevent and mitigate bank runs for the benefit of both the banks and their depositors. Though it should be obvious that they only conceal the fundamental problem and disperse the costs.

Murray Rothbard was a detractor of fractional reserve banking. He wrote on the changing legal definition of bank deposits—how they originated as warehousing relationships, or “bailments,” but over time came to represent debtor-creditor relationships. Ludwig von Mises also pointed to bank issues of fiduciary media (the proportion of deposits that cannot be redeemed), which artificially lower interest rates, as the cause of business cycles.

Nevertheless, a faction of Austrian and Austrian-adjacent scholars defends fractional reserve banking, saying that not only can it be sustainable, but it can also be beneficial in maintaining monetary equilibrium. I’m not convinced by this view, but it’s worth taking a closer look at one point that these scholars often make. They say that clear communication between the bank and its customers would solve the hairy problem of bank customers expecting the money at par on demand.

With such an agreement, “fractional reserve free banking” proponents say depositors would know that they are effectively creditors to the bank and that the bank is, therefore, a debtor to them. This means that the deposits are technically and legally owned by the bank and that what the depositor has is technically and legally a callable loan to the bank. Clear agreements would mean that depositors understand that there is a chance that they won’t be able to get their money (actually, the bank’s money, in this view) immediately in the event of a bank failure. Of course, central banking and government-backed deposit insurance diminish customers’ expectation of bank responsibility—how much should banks be expected to disclose about the deposit relationship if most of their customers’ deposits are guaranteed by the government anyway?

In line with other fractional reserve-free banking proponents, George Selgin argues that modern depositor agreements—the dense legalese most people skip—already establish this transparency.

 

And he is right. Bank of America does make that disclaimer in its deposit agreement. I decided to take a closer look at other big banks’ fine print to see how standard this language is. What I found is that it isn’t standard and that even when a bank (including Bank of America) does use that language, it is still ambiguous because of other language in the document, especially in regard to the availability of funds. One bank’s fine print doesn’t even mention the possibility of bank failure and FDIC receivership.

Here is what I found.

JPMorgan Chase does not have debtor-creditor language. In fact, in the first section of the agreement, in which common terms are defined, it says that the “available balance” is “the amount of money in your account that you can use right now.” This does not indicate that Chase “owes” its customers the money or that withdrawals could be delayed. Chase explicitly calls its deposit customers “account owners” and say they have “complete control over all of the funds in the account.”

Bank of America describes the deposit relationship as “that of debtor and creditor,” but this language does not appear in its online banking service agreement, which only says that the online “Services may also be affected by your Deposit Agreement.” Bank of America doesn’t say much about the availability of demand deposits but is very clear about time deposits: “When you open a time deposit account, you agree to leave your funds in the account until the maturity date of the account.”

Wells Fargo does not use the debtor-creditor language to describe its deposit relationship. Like Bank of America, Wells Fargo says that account owners have “complete control over all of the funds in the account.”

Citibank very clearly defines its relationship with customers: “Citibank’s relationship with you is debtor and creditor.” But Citi also refers to the customer’s balance as the “‘Available Now’ balance,” even though a critical mass of depositors could run to withdraw their funds and find that the money isn’t so available.

US Bank does not use the debtor-creditor language to describe the deposit relationship. In fact, early in the agreement it refers to the “Owner’s Authority” of depositors, which includes “the power to perform all the transactions available to the account.” US Bank also says that the customer’s funds are available immediately: “‘Available Balance’ means the amount of money that can be withdrawn at a point in time.”

PNC does not use the debtor-creditor language to describe the deposit relationship. It does not even have a section on the possibility of bank failure and the process of FDIC receivership, which is in all the above banks’ deposit agreements.

So, only two of these six major banks have the debtor-creditor language, and the two that do have it introduce ambiguity by promising at-par-on-demand availability of funds. We are still a long way from clear communication about the status of depositors’ money, if we can call it theirs at all.

 

Dr. Jonathan Newman is a Fellow at the Mises Institute. He earned his PhD at Auburn University while a Research Fellow at the Mises Institute. He was the recipient of the 2021 Gary G. Schlarbaum Award to a Promising Young Scholar for Excellence in Research and Teaching. Previously, he was Associate Professor of Economics and Finance at Bryan College. He has published in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics and in volumes edited by Matthew McCaffrey and Per Bylund. His research focuses on Austrian economics, inflation and business cycles, and the history of economic thought. He has taught courses on Macroeconomics and Quantitative Economics: Uses and Limitations in the Mises Graduate School. He is the author of two children’s books: The Broken Window and Ludwig the Builder. His commentary appears regularly in the Mises Wire and Power & Market.

 

Dr. Jonathan Newman | Mises Wire

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The post Is the Money in Your Checking Account Yours or the Bank’s? appeared first on Granite Grok.

There has been much speculation about what the next global psy-op will be. Is it a virus, another lab-generated pathogen, mRNA ground beef, or perhaps something more like Flint, Michigan, or the EPA’s Animus/Colorado River poisoning, but a bit more subtle?

To paraphrase Woody from Toy Story, someone’s going to poison the waterhole! Or, at least, that’s the latest buzz. They didn’t manage to vaccinate everyone, and while some people understand climate change, water is so fundamental that everyone gets it—even children.

It sounds like she’s saying that fearmongering the water supply is the next WEF psy-op to achieve global compliance…(while working on frog-marching us into line on everything else).

 

World Economic Forum signals the next global catastrophe they have planned for us… since they “failed to vaccinate the whole world” and since Climate Change isn’t exactly catching on. They’re going to do something to our water supply. They can’t help but brag about their plan to attack the water supply, and then they go on to explain why this one is going to work (because it effects everyone). When they tell you what they’re going to do, you need to believe them.

 

World Economic Forum signals the next global catastrophe they have planned for us… since they “failed to vaccinate the whole world” and since Climate Change isn’t exactly catching on.

They’re going to do something to our water supply. They can’t help but brag about their plan… pic.twitter.com/8nd2iXFiku

— Lauren Witzke (@LaurenWitzkeDE) September 30, 2023

 

Feel free to disagree.

The post Is The WEF Going to “Poison” The World’s Water Hole? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Great interview by Matt Gaetz. He explains how the UniParty prevents the normal appropriations process from taking place to create a scenario where the government is going to “shut down” unless there is a single up or down vote on a “continuing resolution” to fund the entire government. It’s a scam to give the UniParty a pretext, an excuse, a rationale for continuing the unsustainable, $2 billion in annual deficits, spending … I HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO VOTE FOR THE CR!!! THE ALTERNATIVE WAS A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN!!!

It’s rigged … like everything else. The UniParty refuses to take up single subject spending bills in order to create the specter of a shutdown and the need for a CR. Matt Gaetz is a real fiscal conservative. Kevin McCarthy is NOT … he is simply a hired gun for the donor/lobbyist class getting rich off the demise of our country.

House conservatives made @SpeakerMcCarthy agree to spending guardrails in January. He has blown through those guardrails, which is what brought us to this moment.

The only way to save America from financial ruin is to pass single-subject spending bills that are able to be… pic.twitter.com/cGlmqsbf9v

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) September 29, 2023

The post Must See Matt Gaetz … How The UniParty Uses “Shutdowns” And “Continuing Resolutions” To Avoid Accountability And Spend, Spend, Spend appeared first on Granite Grok.