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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

HT | WND

The post A Win for The Little People – A Warning to the Bureaucracy appeared first on Granite Grok.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post BRICS: The Acronym Is Not Growing, But It’s Power Is appeared first on Granite Grok.

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

But they are all true.

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

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

 

The post Victor Davis Hanson – ‘If I Told You Ten Years Ago …’ appeared first on Granite Grok.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Claudio Grass | Mises Wire

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

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

The post “Debanking”: The Latest Assault on Freedom of Speech appeared first on Granite Grok.

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

If you’d like another example,

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

The post Climate Committee Says Don’t Run Electric Heat Pumps at Night appeared first on Granite Grok.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The post Warning to Parents: They Are Trying to Turn Your Public School Into a Mental Health Clinic appeared first on Granite Grok.

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

The post Elected Democrats Left on Twitter Will Be Fleeing the Platform – Elon Musk to Eliminate Blocking appeared first on Granite Grok.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank. He is also a regular contributor to VermontGrok!

 

The post When A School Board Member Actually Puts Kids First appeared first on Granite Grok.

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

Nothing to see here.

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

 

 

HT | Daily Wire

The post Massachusetts Illegal Alien State of Emergency Update: Healey Calls Up the National Guard! appeared first on Granite Grok.

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

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

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

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

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

Farmer Attrition

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

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

Migrant Farmworkers Aging Too

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

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

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

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

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

Foreign Farming Dependency?

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

The post America’s Farmerless Farming Future? appeared first on Granite Grok.

For any enterprise to succeed, it has to take actions that will move it toward its goal. Perhaps more importantly, it has to say no to actions that won’t do that.

This means it has to articulate a goal in a simple, straightforward way so that whenever it is contemplating a possible action, it can ask: Will this move me closer to the goal? If so, it’s worth doing. If not, it isn’t.

That is the role of a mission statement. It’s a kind of guiding star, a way of deciding when to say yes and when to say no.

For example, this is the mission statement of Southwest Airlines: ‘To be the world’s most loved, most efficient, and most profitable airline.’

Here was President Kennedy’s mission statement for the space program: ‘This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.’

Simple, but not easy. Ambitious but achievable. And very, very clear.

One of the largest enterprises in New Hampshire is its public school system. What is the mission statement for this enterprise? Unfortunately, no one seems to agree on that.

The more people you ask — legislators, judges, bureaucrats, parents, teachers, taxpayers — the more answers you get: To provide children with bright futures (college and career readiness) and pleasant presents (sports, hobbies, opportunities to socialize with friends); to create a workforce for employers (with subsidized daycare for employees); to allow us to compete in the global economy; to promote tolerance and inclusivity, and so on.

But the public school system does have a mission statement of sorts, at least on paper.

The state constitution is clear in saying that education is ‘essential to preservation of a free government.’ That’s the why.

The state supreme court is clear in saying that it is the responsibility of the state to provide ‘each educable child an opportunity to acquire the knowledge and learning necessary to participate intelligently in the American political, economic, and social systems of a free government.‘ That’s the what.

The legislature has been clear in saying that ‘schools shall ensure that all pupils are performing at the proficient level or above on the statewide assessment.’ That’s the how.

That last bit is buried so deeply — in RSA 193-H:2 — that you almost have to be Indiana Jones to find it. And it recently survived an attempt to repeal it on the grounds that no one was really taking it seriously.

But what would happen if we adopted RSA 193-H:2 as the mission statement for our public school system? That is, what if New Hampshire embarked on what we might call the ‘Granhattan Project,’ a program similar to the moon landing or the development of the atomic bomb? A program attaching a real sense of urgency to a goal that is simple but not easy, ambitious but achievable, and very, very clear.

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

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

But we can only do this if we have a yes that is clear enough and understood to be essential enough to let us say no when we need to. To turn away from incidentals that distract from essentials. To follow our guide star instead of veering after each new shiny bauble that appears on the horizon.

And if teaching every student to read is the wrong mission statement, let’s come up with a better one.

How might we do that? One way would be to encourage stakeholders to make lists of all the things they think schools should be doing. Compile the lists and see which items show up 95% of the time.

(It’s the same basic idea as voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame but with a higher threshold.)

The idea is to find consensus in order to avoid contentiousness, to cooperate with our limited resources instead of competing for them, to pull together in a common direction instead of pulling in a dozen directions at once. To chase just one rabbit and catch it instead of chasing a dozen and missing them all.

Zig Ziglar expressed the idea behind a mission statement this way: ‘You can’t hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot see a target you do not have.’ And even more simply: ‘If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.’

I have yet to see a more accurate description of our public school system. We can do better, and we need to do better. A great first step in that direction would be embracing RSA 193-H:2 instead of eliminating it or continuing to ignore it.

 

[This was originally published at the author’s blog at Bare Minimum Books.]

The post The Granhattan Project: 95% Literacy By 2030 appeared first on Granite Grok.

I went grocery shopping yesterday and observed paranoid culture in action. The few (both employees and customers) who never stopped wearing a mask have been joined by a few handfuls of others. Mask tyranny has crept back into the collective consciousness.

Several patrons were masked—more than I usually witness. But the majority of the customers, and they were numerous, were going about their business as if they’d not heard the news. There’s an election coming, and we’re at DEFCON ONE.

Arguably, there’s been mixed messaging. Both a Hollywood studio and a major Hospital chain had announced mask mandates then walked them back. But news that other hospitals were priming the mask mandate pump have littered news feeds for days and the online chatter is seeping into the subconscious.

The trained mules are already getting masked, but the CDC hasn’t released any mandates, according to the CDC. This is all organic terrorism.

Lone wolves, if you prefer.

Officially,

 

The agency also doesn’t currently have any mandate in effect, and the “CDC’s advice for individual and community actions around COVID-19 are tied to hospital admission levels,” the spokesperson said.

Earlier this week, a CDC spokesperson told NBC News that there have been no agency discussions about bringing back mask mandates, which comes as a handful of hospitals and offices around the country started reimposing them this month. There has also been speculation that federal officials may bring back mandates or even push for lockdowns, similar to what happened in 2020.

At the same time, the CDC hasn’t issued any updated guidelines regarding mask mandates on its website.

 

The CDC has “recommended that transportation workers, travelers, passengers, and others get the COVID-19 vaccine “before they travel.” This must be to ensure that they catch COVID and bring it home, but nothing about masks, as if they’d need to say a word. The usual suspects know the drill.

 

• In Massachusetts, UMass Memorial Hospital confirmed in a statement on Aug. 24 that it would reimpose masking for staff. Patients and visitors are exempt from the mandate, it stated.
• In New York, several upstate hospitals have required masking for anyone who goes into the facilities.
• In California, a Kaiser Permanente facility in Santa Rosa said it would reimpose its mask mandate, but it then issued a statement several days later saying it only applied to staff.

 

Smoke and mirrors. There were plenty of studies prior to 2020 that showed masking as ineffective for reducing flu transmission. There have been scores of new studies since that confirm that, plus research indicating a rise in health risks.

The only benefit to masking is regime-based. They and the peeps can identify who the rouble makers are becasue they aren’t wearing them.

That works for me.

 

The post CDC Says No Mask Mandates …For Now. appeared first on Granite Grok.

In our sports vernacular, the expression “losing your fastball” is a euphemism for no longer being able to perform to previous standards. After fireball-throwing Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton lost his fastball in the 1960s, he threw knuckleballs to extend his career.

Everyone “loses their fastball” eventually, as time takes that inevitable toll on one’s cognitive and physical skills. Even Tom Brady eventually retired from football.

When brain surgeons lose their fastballs, they need to retire, lest someone gets accidentally lobotomized. Would that politicians had the good grace to do likewise? Even the great Winston Churchill sadly held on as British Prime Minister into his eighties when he was well past his political prime, to the general detriment of his country, circa 1955.

The late Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown retired in 1965 at the top of his career, after nine great seasons, as opposed to Hall of Fame outfielder Willie Mays, who was a sad shadow of his former self when he retired in 1973 after 23 big league campaigns. He held on too long.

Our 46th U.S. President, Joe Biden, clearly lost his fastball long ago, as we all watch his daily decline—muttering, stuttering, shuffling, and falling down as his mendacious incompetence embarrasses and endangers our country. Some say he never had a fastball to begin with, that he made it to the top as a junk pitcher with spitballs, screwballs, curve balls, and sliders—along with lucky timing and the proper patrons.

(Thanks for foisting Joe Biden on us, President Barack Obama. Not.)

All of which brings us to revered New England Patriots head football coach Bill Belichick. It was only four years ago that he won a record sixth Super Bowl as Pats head coach. He was seen as a genius by many—the “greatest coach of all time.” Since then, of course, he lost Brady (his fastball?) and the team’s struggled. The Pats didn’t even make the playoffs last season. His staffing choices, personnel decisions, and play calling come under increasing scrutiny and criticism. The Pats seem to be on a treadmill to oblivion.

Is Belichick pulling a Willie Mays?

Belichick and Seattle Seahawk coach Pete Carroll are in their seventies. No other NFL coach is older than 64. L.A. Ram coach Sean McVay is only 37 and won a Super Bowl at age 34, demonstrating that one doesn’t have to be old to be successful.

Belichick trails the all-time winningest NFL coach, Don Shula, by 30 victories. Might Shula’s 328 career wins be a personal goal for the Pats coach? That would take at least three more years.

Sometimes a fresh face is needed. In 1988 the struggling Red Sox replaced manager John McNamara with Joe Morgan at the All-Star break. The BoSox won their next 12 games.

Another lousy Pats season will only increase the calls for Belichick to retire. If the team can have a successful season, then that might be even more reason for Bill to step down and retire to Nantucket on a positive note.

Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack managed that team from 1901 until 1950. During his last season, the 88-year-old Mack saw his team go 52-102 and finish in last place in the American League. One might wonder why the A’s owner kept Mack in the dugout for so long. Well, Connie was the owner!

Pats owner Bob Kraft, himself 82 years of age, will no doubt have a candid conversation with Belichick if the Pats flounder. Many team owners somehow retain their fastballs. And fans have fastballs too. Time will tell.

As for Joe Biden, he apparently thinks he’s who our country needs as president for another four years. Most disagree. Ditto re: 77-year-old Donald Trump. America needs a 2024 version of Joe Morgan. A younger, fresher face.

And voters never lose their fastballs!

 

State Representative Mike Moffett of Loudon is a former sports management professor. He chairs the House Committee on State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs.

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With the Sanborn scandal breaking the news just hours ago, it unsurprisingly spawned much discussion online. I thought about my House Committee assignments article at the beginning of the year.

We want to thank Julie Smith for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
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I’m unsure if there’s enough material aside from the usual WMUR and NH Journal offerings in an ordinary internet search on the Sanborns. I took an even closer look at House LEADERSHIP assignments. We already know that most, if not all, committees are evenly divided, including the ones of great public interest. Remember Education, for example, sent SB 272 to the whole House without any recommendation due to it being a tie? Go figure.

I found Democrats with vice chairmanships in the following four committees: Children and Family Law, Fish and Game, Public Works, and Rules. And on top of that, Leishman is a Finance CHAIR! Under no circumstances should any intelligent person give the checkbook to ANY Democrat, ever.

What was Sherman Packard thinking?

And about our Speaker, I am calling him out as a Uniparty establishment RINO and think that a House coup might produce some good, assuming his replacement is not Wilhelm. I would recommend someone competent, seasoned, and respectable. Judy Aron, Carol McGuire, or Paul Terry might be a few ideas to consider, but perhaps there are others(both people and noteworthy reasons).

And let’s not forget that in addition to the Speaker opening a corrupt can of worms, he called former Rep Anne Copp a bitch for not wearing a mask while the microphone was on.

 

 

The post Mr. Speaker, YOU are the Captain of this Ship of Uniparty Corruption! appeared first on Granite Grok.

We can put the entire Biden corruption situation to bed. Eric Swalwell has told us so, and you have to believe a U.S. Representative who slept with a Chinese spy. At least it was a female Chinese spy. This fact obviously carried some weight with Eric’s wife.

She is still with the scumbag.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Minority Leader in the House and on the short list of Democrat presidential candidates, doesn’t need to review or justify the facts. He just knows the U.S. people recognize Joe Biden as a good and decent man; therefore, all he did wrong was of no consequence. What a crock. Joe Biden is an older man who sucked off the American taxpayer for his entire career. He never had a private sector job or created anything besides huge phony LLC bank accounts funded by bribe money from foreign countries and entities. He plays the system like a Stradivarius, but he, Hunter, and the whole rotten family are playing off key.

I have tried to maintain a modicum of decency and civility in my writing and feel I have been successful in over 1,000 publicized posts. I cannot be in this case. Biden, the Democrats, and the mainstream media are gaslighting us Americans. We need to blow out the torch on this load of B.S. There is nothing good or decent about this man who hoodwinked the American people into putting him and his doctor wife in the White House. He is a conman who made a career in the Senate by fooling the voters of Delaware. He failed twice in his quest for the Presidency and had to withdraw both times after being found to be a plagiarist. And somehow, he got Barack Obama to choose him as a running mate. He ran for President a third time to save the soul of America. He needs to pray to God to save his blackened soul.

Forget the let’s go high when they go low. That will make us the better person but losers. We have to meet these people where they live in the swamp and the gutter. It is not a joke. Whether local, state, or Federal, the Democrats have one mission. That is to control our lives, make us dependent on Government, spend our money like drunken sailors, and keep themselves in power. They will never have the best interests of the people in mind.

These people hate America. This is why they want to destroy or distort American history. This is why they despise patriotism and why they promote Socialism over Conservatism. It is all about raising the few to a higher level and to hell with the general population. They call everything on the Right racist, which is the epitome of projection. They are failing our children with indoctrination instead of education. And Joe Biden, the man who promised to return decency and civility to the White House, has been the most divisive President in history. And the only thing he has brought to the White House is a low-life, alcohol and drug-challenged son who is there to avoid the law. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

The post Joe Biden Is A Good And Decent Man-Not appeared first on Granite Grok.

Looming mask mandates are a hot topic as Hospitals ponder reimposing them on not just staff but patients. The variant chatter is also getting louder, along with calls for a fresh round of vaccines or boosters. The speculation is whether enough people have had enough of that.

One American, the guy who was in charge when the original mandates hit the stress, the commander and chief “booster” of operation warp-speed, has some thoughts about it.

 

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused “left-wing lunatics” of fear-mongering about new COVID-19 variants in order to justify the reintroduction of their left-wing lockdown and mandate policies, which included the use of drop boxes and mail-in ballots in 2020, in a bid to rig the 2024 election.

President Trump made the remarks in a video posted on Aug. 30 on Truth Social, saying that his message should serve as a warning to every COVID-19 “tyrant” who not only wants to “take away our freedom” but who would be playing into the hands of those wanting to exploit COVID-19 restrictions to interfere in next year’s election.

“The left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fear-mongering about the new variants that are coming,” President Trump said in the video.

 

One of my issues with Trump since the pandemic has been his continued talk about how he helped make Operation Warp Speed possible. Even after he was shown the door and the vaccine he helped fast-track proved to be a dangerous disaster, every speech included an ode to his involvement in helping get those vaccines out into the world. He may still think that’s a good thing, I’m not sure, but he has come around on the rest of it.

 

“Hear these words: We will not comply!” the former president continued. “We will not shut down our schools, we will not accept your lockdowns, we will not abide by your mask mandates, and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates.”

 

Watch for yourself and let us know what you think.

The post Watch: Trump has Some Thoughts about the Election Infection and Rumored Mandates … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Please explain to me how any GOP Presidential candidate wins when the “swing States” continue to allow ballot-harvesting … when we have “Election Month” instead of Election Day, so Democrats can harvest votes before voters even have a chance to compare the candidates … when Zuckerbucks and the equivalent continue to flow into “swing States” effectively converting local elections offices into Democrat GOTV operations … when the Deep State continues to interfere in elections … when the Regime-media and Big Tech continue to censor the “news” (Maui? What Maui?). And if your answer is … Elon Musk is with us! He’s with us! … know that Twitter (now X) is reinstating censorship for the 2024 election:

Twitter’s new policy, called “Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach” in a nutshell (see @Safety)

(And, yes, I know it’s “X” now, but honestly it’s just the same old Twitter, censorship and all)

When he locks my account, know I appreciate every one of you who have stood by me. pic.twitter.com/fmoVL7YGCb

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) August 31, 2023

 

The post Twitter (X) Reinstating Censorship For The 2024 Election … But Just Keep Pretending 2024 Won’t Be As Rigged As 2020 appeared first on Granite Grok.

RCP Polls continue to show Donald Trump as a Republican Primary-voter favorite for the nomination. Economist/YouGov has Trump with a 36-point lead. HarrisX has it at 45 points. But the Young Republican National Federation Convention picked DeSantis over Trump.

The Young Republican National Federation (YRNF) hosted its annual convention in Dallas, Texas, from August 16 to August 20. The organization focuses on registered Republicans ages 18 to 40, to “provide them with better political knowledge and understanding of the issues of the day,” according to its website.

After the five-day convention—which included speeches from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Florida Congresswoman Kat Cammack and former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake—36.6 percent of the attendees indicated that they wanted to see DeSantis as the next Republican presidential candidate. Trump trailed with 35.4 percent of the vote.

 

DeSantis took the poll with a 1.2% margin, which is something. It’s a big something, actually. It means that if Gov Ron can get young Republicans off the sofa and out from behind whatever screen they are staring at, his chances improve a lot. Bad news for everyone else, though.

 

The other GOP candidates polling in the top five were businessman Vivek Ramaswamy (9.1 percent), former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (7.5 percent) and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott (5.5 percent). Roughly 6 percent of participants indicated that they wanted someone else as the next nominee, according to poll results.

 

Wait, there’s more.

 

Republican voters also appear to be attracted to younger candidates. Several polls taken after the first GOP primary debate last week showed that the two youngest candidates on stage—DeSantis, 44, and Ramaswamy, 38—were considered the “winners” of the two-hour event.

In one such poll taken by The Washington Post/FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos, 29 percent of the Republican voters surveyed said that DeSantis won, while 26 percent selected Ramaswamy. Another poll, by Leger for the New York Post, found that 23 percent of the 1,800 self-identified GOP voters interviewed said that they felt Ramaswamy came out on top, while DeSantis earned 21 percent of the vote.

 

Vivek has come a long way from being nobody in the political realm, which explains why he has been taking a beating (at the debate and everywhere else). I’ve received a pile of emails from folks with links, grousing about his sketchy background. I’m not rising that wave at the moment. When Trump ran in 2016, we were quite brutal about his lack of experience and past ties to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. We backed him to keep Hillary at bay when he won the nomination, but we weren’t as excited about it as we could have been.

But it worked out. Trump may not have been the most polite president, but he did something no other Republican did. He pushed back hard and kept a lot of promises. As Grokster Aaron Warner wrote a few days ago about Trump’s supporters,

 

They voted to protect the border, he promised to build a wall, and he did.  They wanted more jobs for Americans, and he delivered manufacturing plants to the states.  They wanted to get out of endless wars, and he refused to start any.  They wanted fewer taxes, and so he cut them.

Though he was pilloried as an arch-white supremacist, misogynist, and racist, he somehow managed to create an economy where more black female entrepreneurs succeeded than at any time in history. He freed black prisoners and guaranteed funding to Historically Black Colleges ten times longer than America’s first black president, Harvard’s very own Barack Obama.  CNN’s own black analyst, Van Jones even had to tip his hat to Trump’s victories for black Americans.

We wondered about NATO spending, so he took the member countries to task.  We didn’t want to suffer the economic disaster of the climate change accords in Paris, so he withdrew us from them.  We were tired of fearing Middle Eastern terrorists like ISIS, so he took them out, and we were even more tired of funding them by buying their oil, so he opened up our pipelines and made us energy-independent.

 

He blew it on the pandemic, mostly by surrounding himself with the wrong people and then letting them have a microphone every day. At least a few Republicans I know will never forgive him or can, and if that’s you, be you just remember the left will try to steal the election regardless of who the nominee is.

As for DeSantis, I’d like to see him poll better. It would keep Trump on his toes and force him to address tough questions like, if they play pandemic politics again, what are you going to do? He posted some video on that here (I have a write about it at 6:30), so that’s a step in the right direction, and we know he’d hold money back from states that deprived you of your rights – assuming he’s serious – but how do we know until he is pressed for direct answers?

That won’t happen if he skips all the debates that he could. Someone polling 30-40 points ahead of the nearest challenge has nothing to gain by standing next to a bunch of folks who, combined, still have less support. But I’d like to see him take the heat. Debate is good. And DeSantis might have found some wind he can get beneath his wings.

 

 

The post DeSantis Trumps Trump in Recent Poll appeared first on Granite Grok.

Without the erroneous public perception and judgment of the state as just and necessary and without the public’s voluntary cooperation, even the seemingly most powerful government would implode and its powers evaporate. Thus liberated, we would regain our right to self-defense and be able to turn to freed and unregulated insurance agencies for efficient professional assistance in all matters of protection and conflict resolution. —Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Production of Defense

In contemporary times, the state has assumed an aura of sacred infallibility, commanding zealous and unquestioning devotion from its citizenry. This blind allegiance mirrors the fervent tribal reverence once conferred upon shamans in ancient societies, where faith and tradition superseded rational inquiry. However, unlike those organic, community-rooted systems of old, the modern state’s claimed supremacy stems not from any factual basis or empirical assessment but rather from pervasive myths surrounding its purported omniscience and benign intentions.

The State as Manmade Myth

Despite the prevailing sentiment, the state does not innately possess powers exceeding those held by ordinary individuals. The state is a human invention, devised as an organizational tool to coordinate collective affairs, not as a deity to be worshipped without reservation. And yet the average modern citizen acquiesces without resistance to the state’s declared authority, obeying its often ambiguous dictates as if they were divine commandments inscribed in stone.

Like pagans conducting rituals to appease temperamental spirits, voters today participate in elections and political processes, hoping to shape their nation’s destiny and align it with their own interests. But these efforts primarily serve to perpetuate the mythological legitimacy of the state apparatus, just as pagan rituals functioned to intensify a shaman’s exalted status among the tribe. Neither shamans nor states truly possess the far-reaching powers attributed to them by their faithful adherents. Their authority stems not from empirical facts but from the circulation of persuasive myths and the inculcation of social conditioning.

By recognizing the human origins and agenda-driven mythmaking processes that grant legitimacy to state power, we can begin to fundamentally reevaluate the relationship between the governors and the governed. This shift in perspective empowers us to challenge the sacrosanct prestige of the state and explore alternative organizational forms that prioritize individual autonomy, voluntary cooperation, and spontaneous order.

The Fiction of State Omniscience

The misplaced confidence in state authority is often rooted in an inflated notion of its knowledge and capacities. The state is frequently portrayed as an omniscient, omnipotent entity capable of expertly designing and engineering society, as well as benevolently guiding the masses toward enlightenment. In reality, no singular organization or institution, irrespective of the resources and technological prowess at its disposal, can ever hope to attain total insight into the unfathomably intricate and constantly evolving network that is human civilization.

The belief that imperfect and fundamentally limited human institutions can completely understand and manipulate dynamic social systems is a fiction, a delusion of grandeur. And yet millions of people continue to voluntarily relinquish their personal agency to the mythic idol of the state, placing implicit and unquestioning faith in its imagined omniscience and benevolence. They surrender autonomy over their own lives to participate in the spectacle of elections that promise change yet repeatedly fail to deliver meaningful reform to unseat entrenched interests.

The Triumph of Spontaneous Order

In stark contrast to the top-down control paradigm, free-market anarchists argue that authentic and enduring social order largely arises spontaneously from the bottom up, not by centralized governance and imposition. The evolutionary emergence of diverse human languages provides a compelling illustration of this basic principle in action.

Language developed gradually over millennia through decentralized networks of voluntary interactions between individuals and groups seeking to communicate, cooperate, and find shared meaning. No central authority or government decreed the proper grammar or vocabulary, yet complex and subtle linguistic structures emerged informally over time through practical usage and the adoption of successful conventions. The structures of language arose spontaneously from human action but not human design.

Similarly, individuals can successfully cooperate to fulfill basic human needs and organize complex societies without reliance on authoritarian oversight or coercion. By leveraging reason, trial and error, reputation, competition, and the universal human capacity for recognizing and pursuing shared interests, people can develop sophisticated consensual social systems far exceeding in complexity and subtlety than any state bureaucracy could hope to articulate through legislation.

Robust extended orders in the form of organic moral codes, common law jurisprudence, sound money, and dynamic markets all evolved through decentralized processes well before the rise of the modern bureaucratic nation-state. Even ecosystem development and the self-organization of nature reveal the remarkable capability of spontaneous orders to achieve symbiosis amongst diverse constituents following simple, localized rules, but there’s no conscious, top-down design.

Decentralized evolutionary processes demonstrate the power to generate functional complexity and harmony that vastly exceeds the boldest designs of even the most well-meaning political planners and social engineers. The pledge of allegiance to centralized authority is philosophically flimsy when contrasted with the beauty of emergent spontaneous order arising freely, unencumbered by parasitic external manipulations. Though the state holds aspirations to achieve and maintain order, it cannot duplicate the dynamic elegance and intricate complexity birthed by decentralized networks of freely cooperating individuals.

Unveiling the Façade

On closer and more critical examination, the projected aura of state power and authority unveils itself as a thin façade. The state is comprised of intrinsically imperfect human institutions that remain vulnerable to the same pitfalls and limitations as any other human endeavor. Its weaknesses and failings become rapidly apparent whenever its policies or attempts at social engineering prove unsustainable, provoking unrest and ultimately open resistance from the populace meant to submit to its authority.

When the state aspires to abolish private property ownership and dictate every aspect of economic behavior from the top down, it leads to catastrophe. Totalitarian experiments in social engineering imploded under the weight of their own internal contradictions. No individual or institution, no matter how ambitious, can substitute their limited knowledge and flawed human judgment for billions of dispersed decisions and transactions made by localized actors with direct knowledge of their own unique circumstances and subjective values.

Like a cancer, government bureaucracies grow unrestrained, coalescing into sprawling hierarchies that centralize power. This concentration enables an endless list of egregious civil liberty encroachments—warrantless surveillance, censorship, and prohibitions. These symptoms underscore the diagnosis: unfettered state power threatens freedom.

The Path beyond State Worship

When contrasted with the darker aspects of human nature manifested in the predatory state, the decentralized philosophy of voluntaryism and free-market anarchism provides a compelling antidote to the destructive impulse toward state worship exhibited across societies. It seeks to completely dismantle the veneer of legitimacy and pedestal upon which the state stands and restore agency to the sovereign individual as the fundamental unit of ethics and civilization.

Free-market anarchism strips power away from entrenched, coercive, elite institutions and vests it within ordinary people possessing the natural capacity to successfully cooperate through voluntary exchange. In place of the state’s monopoly on legal violence, voluntaryists recognize that rather than attaining power, common people are most fulfilled when empowered to pursue their own diverse values and self-interests harmoniously and noncoercively to the greatest extent possible through economic and social freedom. They realize humanity’s potential through emancipation from domination.

In envisioned anarchic systems, individuals would be liberated to contract with one another on their own terms and by their own consent. Voluntary interaction allows decentralized solutions to emerge based on direct feedback, spontaneously coordinating the needs of the participants involved. Without a coercive centralized authority legally imposing its limited will and ignorant grasp of local knowledge, voluntary decentralized networks can permit an outpouring of diverse bottom-up solutions adapted to a tapestry of local conditions and individual preferences.

Superstition, blind submission, and abandonment of personal responsibility may have dominated premodern tribal communities. But retaining these anachronistic psychological tendencies manifest as irrational faith in state power represents regression, not human advancement. True progress demands skepticism, critical analysis, and debunking of the many myths cloaking the state. Only through emancipation from falsehood can the politics of sociopathic domination be displaced by voluntary civil cooperation grounded in the advanced economics of free choice and sound money.

As the mental shackles and superstitions of obedience-based state worship are cast off, ordinary people regain control over their economic and social destinies, realizing the transformative potential of unrestrained cooperation through the exercise of their natural liberty. Freed from the depraved folly of submitting to human political authority and emboldened by an ethical philosophy of self-determination, we can forge a new path forward toward unprecedented human flourishing. The crucial task before us is clear: we must challenge institutionalized assumptions, shatter existing paradigms of collective identity that diminish individual worth, and evolve society beyond the crippling grip of mysticism, coercion, and unreason. A brighter future awaits those willing to abandon the false prophets of the past while actualizing their own innate power as individuals to shape our shared destiny. But the price of transcendence is eternal vigilance.

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

The post The State as Modern-Day Superstition: Unraveling the Illusions of Authority appeared first on Granite Grok.

To all those who are sending in memes, thank you!  Keep them coming please, as it helps me gather weaponry to fight the Left.  Please do share this post, and if you share an individual meme, consider mentioning you saw it on the Grok!

Speaking of, from this week, Monday Edition and Wednesday Edition.

 

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

 

 

 

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I was listening to Jeff Kuhner talk about this.  If – and it’s IF – Trump can strip away another 10-15% of the black vote, that’s yuuuuuge.  The problem is… it’s not the votes that count.  It’s who counts the votes (and fabricates as many as needed)… as we saw in 2020.  And IMHO 2022.  On rising black support for Trump:

BLACKS FOR TRUMP……more and more! (barenakedislam.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Specifically on Covid / medical – because it’s that important to highlight:

Suddenly & Unexpectedly – Coquin de Chien’s Newsletter (substack.com)

Fascinating work.

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Mortality Rates are lowest among the Unvaccinated in all age-groups (theleadingreport.com)

The unJabbed aren’t dying.  So who is?

 

 

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On trust:

Bob Balayone: Aug 25, 2023, “Alberta woman dies after being denied transplant for refusing to get COVID vaccine. Sheila Annette Lewis refused the COVID-19 vaccine, and was denied a lifesaving organ (substack.com)

Now, I’m not suggesting anything, nor advocating anything.  But MHO is that if those who set this policy suddenly developed high velocity lead poisoning, or some such, and I were on the jury of the guy who did it… I’d accept the They needed a little killin’! defense.

And the CDC?

10 Years After HHS Asked CDC to Study Safety of Childhood Vaccine Schedule, CDC Hasn’t Produced It • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)

Covid to blame for just 1% of weekly deaths from all causes across the US, CDC data shows | Daily Mail Online

Don’t forget they’re shutting down the VSAFE adverse event data collection program… just as they’re also recommending Jabs for everyone.

CDC Now Refusing New COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports in Its “V-Safe Program” – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

 

 

 

 

 

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Dr. Michael Yeadon needs no introduction:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/believe-them.mp4

 

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Norway LOCKED man in psychiatric ward for questioning mRNA shots (substack.com)

They’re dead set to stifle any information that doesn’t meet The Narrative.  More:

The Road to Totalitarianism (Part 3) – CJ Hopkins (substack.com)

Related to totalitarianism and being watched, at least IMHO:

Invisible QR codes embed object data into infrared tags (newatlas.com)

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MRNA Stock Game Over? Not Quite, As Moderna Boosts Its 2023 Outlook. | Investor’s Business Daily (investors.com)

Now how would they know this?  Speaking of the Jab companies in general:

Pfizer Admits Cover-up: ‘mRNA’ Covid Shots ‘Modify’ DNA – News Addicts

 

 

 

A new study shows covid injections cause VAIDS in children – The Expose (expose-news.com)

 

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Bayou Renaissance Man: Ominous warnings from Tucker Carlson – assassination and war

I am seeing increasing numbers of memes highlighting the absolute inaction of the GOP in the face of Democrat actions against Trump, against free speech, guns, and liberty in general.  I’ve posted many.

Election Integrity T-Shirts Banned at 8th District GOP Fish Fry: Attendees Told to Turn Shirts Inside Out or Leave — Allowed to Re-Dress After Exit of Kemp and Raffensperger at the Event | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hᴏft

It’s one big club.  And you ain’t in it.  Consider this bit of backstabbery at the GOP Elite levels:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/charlie-kirk-on-gop-coup-against-trump.mp4

 

 

My view is this: the Deep State and uniparty are terrified of Trump.  Why?  He set back their plans.  And he demonstrated what being actually pro-American / America First meant and what the results were.  Absent him, they had plans:

 

 

So even as every attack on Trump seems to increase his support, I have zero doubt they’ll get desperate enough that they’ll off him.  Or, at least, will try.

 

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PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA

 

Politics — Not Science or Health — Behind Return of Mask Mandates, Critics Say • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)

Worth reading in its entirety.

 

 

OK, so it looks like mask mandates are coming back, at least spottily.  Let’s start planning NOW on how we will fight back.

There is certainly open non-compliance as an individual.  But I’m thinking about other strategeries as well:

• Arrange no-mask invasions of stores. Get 10-15 people together and go in at once, flash mob style.  I’m up for that from the get-go.
• If you have a lot of people interested, stagger them. Hit one store, then 30-45 minutes later have another group hit a different store.  If you have enough people do it again at another location.  So overwhelm the police that they see the wisdom in not enforcing it.
• In parallel, tell the police they have the option to simply not enforce them.  If you have a family member or friend who is a cop – time for a heart-to-heart conversation.

 

 

Make sure you tell them WHY.  Not to the clerks – they’re just employees.  To corporate, via letter.  Emails and website messages can be set to be File-13ed automatically with certain key words.  Letters, while old fashioned, have more significance.  Post about it to friends.  Get them to write in too.  Create an avalanche of letters.

 

 

ANY OTHER IDEAS????

 

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Maui Police Chief Ordered Cops To Block Cars From Fleeing Fire Allege Eyewitness.

 

 

The police are supposed to be our first-line defenders.  And they’re being coopted into being our enemies.

 

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I used to tell students…the difference between poetry and you is you look in the mirror and say, “I am getting old,” but Shakespeare looks in the mirror and says, “Devouring Time, blunt thou thy lion’s paws.”

 —Jim Harrison

 

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In the Shadow of Trump

 

 

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Pick of the Post:

 

 

IMHO guaranteed to make any liberal blow their gasket.

 

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Collected links with commentary, mildly organized:

 

Big Fat Lies about Saturated and Unsaturated Fats – The Expose (expose-news.com)

Highly recommend the book:

The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet

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Canada Forest Fires Trend Has Gone Down Since 2000, Data Defy Alarmist Claims (notrickszone.com)

Inconvenient data.

Over 1,600 Scientists Declare There is No Climate Emergency – Geller Report

It’s not up to a majority vote, or “consensus”… it’s what the data say, and what good scientific practices like replication say.  And peripherally, related to fires:

Over 2,000 Children Missing From Lahaina Public Schools Two Weeks After Maui Fire: Report | The Gateway Pundit | by Kristinn Taylor

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Jacksonville sheriff: “The problem is the individual”, not guns – Bearing Arms

Brings to mind the Reagan quote:

We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

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Bayou Renaissance Man: Credit cards are flashing danger signs for the economy

Multiple signs are pointing to a crash.  From the same site:

Bayou Renaissance Man: When the State decides it, not you, “owns” your children

I’m aware of a number of families that are banding together to homeschool their children as a group, hiring a trusted teacher (paying partly in cash, partly in kind) to oversee their learning, sharing the burden of supervising them at a central location each day, and planning joint extra-curricular activities.  They see it as defending their kids – and I can’t disagree.  I only wish more families were following their example.

OK, Groksters, I think we need to get working on this as a backup in case our schools go loony.  Or they mandate the Jab.  I can teach Math, Science, and depending on, a couple of other subjects.  And from a Telegram contact over in the UK:

3 Ways for Parents to Navigate Destructive Gender Ideology in Schools

And on corrupting kids in general:

HORRIFYING: New Mandatory Hospital Staff Training Promotes Sexually Transitioning 4-Year-Olds – Geller Report

Los Angeles Public Schools Partners With Trans-Radicals Who Push Sex-Change Surgery On Children – Geller Report

And the madness continues:

Sooner or later, these transgender freaks and their commie ‘woke’ enablers will find themselves on the receiving end of a bullet right between the eyes (barenakedislam.com)

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South Africa: Attackers Chant “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer” Before Stabbing Woman with Spear | The Gateway Pundit | by Richard Abelson

No no no, South Africa is a rainbow nation and this could never happen.  Speaking of violence (cheesecake alert – NSFW):

Rule Five Political Violence Friday | Animal Magnetism (frombearcreek.com)

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The Charge is the Fraud – The American Mind

ANYTHING to keep Trump from running.

Trump Beating Biden Big IN 2024 General Polling – Geller Report

Dershowitz: “[There’s] No Plausible Case For Denying Donald Trump The Ability To Run For President” (rumble.com)

“Orange Man Bad” is enough.  Related:

CASE CLOSED: All Trump’s lawyers have to do to exonerate their client is show the court this video (barenakedislam.com)

 

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Palate Cleansers:

 

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Turn the O into a zero and the other i into a 1 and you probably have a really good one!  Now, one that I learned is to use the first letter of a phrase, and then change some similar to the above.  One that was mentioned when I worked in automotive was “1ltdmCrf!”  “I like to drive my Corvette really fast!”

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And don’t forget… come back Monday for another edition.  Same Meme Time.  Same Meme channel.

 

The post Memestream News: Friday Edition appeared first on Granite Grok.