Thursday • January 9 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.II
Manchester, N.H.
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We all should think about what’s coming in the economy in order to be able to tighten up our finances and safeguard the home front, and there is an advantage in understanding when to tighten our budgetary belts. What do the economic stats tell us?
We want to thank Marc Abear for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
Statistics are more reliable indicators of coming economic change than political utterances. We are entering the silly season yet again, so The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) just released a report stating that American businesses are changing their workforce. They are moving to more part-tim (PT) and fewer full-time (FT) workers. There are about 450,000 more part-time workers who want full-time work. There are now 4.2 million involuntary part-time workers. That’s a 12% increase from the prior month.
A marked increase in involuntary part-time workers has accurately predicted a recession or economic downturn in the past. One stat is indicative, but all data needs corroboration. So, are there other things pointing in one direction or the other?
Now let’s talk inverted yield curve. That may not be what you discuss over the breakfast table. What is an inverted yield curve?
Well, when the U.S. government sells its debt to investors, it promises to repay the debt in either the short term, less than a year, or the long term, greater than a year. Short-term debt usually carries a lower interest rate than long-term debt.
There is a reason for this behavior. Longer-term debt means the money is tied up for a long time. There is always a risk your money will lose value over time from inflation. So long-term debt has to build in this inflation risk into the interest rate where, in the short term, this is less of a concern.
So, back to the inverted yield curve; what has happened is, short term interest rates are higher than long-term interest rates. When this happens, it too is an indicator a recession is coming. That has been true every time going back to 1978. The recession tends to hit about 15 months after yield inversion. Two indicators are a stronger indication than one.
Is there anything else out there we can and should look at? Well, yes. Yes, there is. The Federal Reserve is reporting rising credit card debt and depletion of savings. The pandemic stimulus money is gone, out of the economy. A lot of us have less financial cushion if a recession comes.
We are getting mixed economic signals. There are storm clouds. Clouds don’t always bring rain. But it is a good idea to note when there are storm clouds as we decide whether to bring an umbrella if we are going out. Just saying, don’t get caught in the rain without your umbrella.
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Christopher Wray is a shameless, arrogant LIAR. The FBI is the modern-day equivalent of the Stasi. Yet the House GOP is content to preen for the television cameras … “GOP grills FBI Director,” “Wray on the Hot Seat,” blah, blah, blah.
Nancy Pelosi would have impeached Wray months ago. Kevin McCarthy has NO BALLS, or he is not really in charge.
When the FBI can, WITH IMPUNITY, interfere in elections on behalf of the Democrats, terrorize pro-life activists, terrorize people exercising their First Amendment rights by protesting a rigged election (including fomenting a riot), terrorize parents for speaking out at school board meetings, etc., etc., etc. … you don’t have a free country. You have a POLICE STATE.
But keep your eye on the ball … it’s PUTIN who is the real enemy. Not Wray, not Garland, not Mayorkas, not the actual Communists controlling the figurehead/imposter President. It’s PUTIN. PUTIN, PUTIN, PUTIN, PUTIN, PUTIN.
The FBI is a lawless, extraconstitutional agency that’s been violating Americans’ civil liberties & various federal laws from the get-go, yet has never been fundamentally reformed, nor have individual agents been held accountable for the most egregious crimes.
Today is but the… pic.twitter.com/5r12yKn2VJ— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 12, 2023
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For decades, we have had modern-day “people from the past” yammer that NH NEEDS A COMMUTER RAILROAD! With stops at various places like Manchester and Nashua. They talk about the “enhanced economy” and “less emissions” as those folks who “bedroom” here in NH go to jobs in MA on the train.
Frankly, I know this idea is little more than a longing for this 19th-century technology and convenience – which is to say “not very” for the vast majority of NH residents who would be expected to fork over their money to pay the subsidies for the tiny minority that would use it. Why else hasn’t a private company come along and done the work because they believed there was a universe of customers that would use their services (in sufficient numbers to pay the startup capital costs, operational outflows, and maintenance upkeep of their system)?
They are smarter than the NH politicians who want this and have no financial skin in that game – who look at us as piggy banks to pad their progressive “resumes.”
If they were truly wise and prudent (ok, I know – you can stop laughing and wincing now), they would see their choo-chii future in this story.
$10 Billion Boondoggle Opens
Honolulu officials worried that their new train would be “overwhelmed” with riders when it opened at 2 pm on June 30. They needn’t have worried; a local news station reported that “scores of people lined up to ride the trains, which were free the first five days of operation. In fact, about 9,000 people rode the train the first afternoon. Considering that each train can hold 800 passengers and they ran six times an hour until 6:30 pm, they were operating at about 40 percent of their capacity on opening day. Over the next four days, another 62,000 people rode the trains, less than 25 percent of their capacity. When the agency began to charge fares, daily ridership fell to under 1,300 per day, or about 2 percent of the rail line’s capacity.
Taxpayers spent $9.9 billion, or $900 million per mile, for this 11-mile line to nowhere.
1963 was when the talk started in Hawaii. That was 60 years ago, and it was supposed to be “easy.” The price went from $350K for a study to a finished cost of $10 billion. The long story can be found here. It is a fascinating tale of over-promising and under-delivering with absurd low-ball estimates that ended with “it cost WHAT to build”?
The full 20-mile stretch (they’ve only got 11 miles so far) is estimated at close to 12.5 billion. And guess what, folks! Even though most US Citizens will NEVER step foot in Honolulu, we’re ALL paying for it. The Federal Government has become not much more than a washing machine that cleans us all of our money, washes-rinses-folds-and “puts it away” in someone else’s pockets. And most projects end up with this lovely line as well:
Construction was plagued by wheels too narrow for the tracks, cracked pillars, safety issues (that were solved by firing the whistleblower), and other problems.
Of course, the Government’s doublespeak of the guilty vs innocent is mind-boggling. I’d suggest that everyone in NH against the Choo-Choo Train Totalitarians read both articles for backup when this issue raises its smokey stack again. After all, I’d bet this line would be the “final word” for use, too:
Instead of Skyline, the city’s name for it, one local activist calls it the Skylying.
HT | The AntiPlanner
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Our fundraiser lost some of the steam these things enjoy in the early weeks, but we’re still making our way toward the goal thanks to so much generosity. We’re at 29%, with most donations as checks or through PayPal.
Thanks to everyone who has given so far, but I’m writing in the hope that we can get over the 30 percent mark this weekend. If you have yet to give and can (if you can’t afford it, we’ll manage – please take care of yourself and your family first), please consider writing a check – email steve@granitegrok.com for the address, or you can donate at GiveSendGo. And there’s always PayPal (which charges a transaction fee).
Thanks also to the donors that opted for a monthly subscription, available through GiveSendGo (no transaction fees) or PayPal. We count it all toward the goal and appreciate every dime you part with in support of our ongoing mission. To explore new worlds … wait, sorry, different mission.
Ideally, we can wrap this fundraiser up in a few months and focus on the 2024 election, local reporting, projects, and updates. If not, we’ll keep at it.
Every donation helps and is greatly appreciated.
Thank You.
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What would be Edward Arsenault’s need to tell a priest never to talk about this box of sex toys again? Why was he then transferred to St. Luke’s Institute in Maryland when this came out?
Read Part 1: Sicilian Ceramics, Florida Boys, NH Law Enforcement, “Spotlight,” and (it sounds like) HBO’s “White Lotus”
And why would an assistant Attorney General, Jane Young, sort out a deal with Arsenault to give him a soft sentence?
The West Palm Beach Sicilian vase show of Arsenault’s becomes more intriguing when you discover that that Andrew H Crews, on the board of NH Children’s Advocacy Centers and on the board of Granite One Health — connected to the Catholic Medical Center- mysteriously stepped down as CEO of “Autofair,” New Hampshire’s largest car dealer and the company was sold to an agent in…….West Palm Beach in December 2021, just as the Senate Ways & Means Committee was starting to probe Governors about the Pandora Papers.
New Hampshire is home to $932.5 billion in Pandora Papers — hidden trusts, LLCs, and non-profits hiding money. And who else ended up in Florida after it was discovered that his associate Jeff Hatch was trafficking fentanyl across state lines but Eric Spofford, who owned Granite Recovery Centers — also connected to the Catholic medical/insurance enterprise. He’s now suing NHPR for defamation after a report that employees at the center claimed he’d sexually assaulted them and reported it to NHPR. NHCADSV, I believe, saw the Granite Recovery Centers as a new market for their victim entrepreneurship expansion venture.
We want to thank Claire Best for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
Not surprisingly, NHPR is resisting a judge’s orders to turn over discovery to Eric Spofford. The chances are that the NHCADSV (with Brian Harlow’s planning skills) was involved in providing NHPR with the narrative that would hopefully result in a contract for them at the centers. It didn’t quite work out, as the centers shut down after the expose of Jeff Hatch’s fentanyl trafficking business. He said he was part of a larger network, but nobody ever probed what that network was. He was given a ridiculously light sentence too.
From social media, it looks like Edward Arsenault and Francesco Bolognini met online. Now that he’s been defrocked, it seems Monsignor Arsenault’s “Virtus LLC” never had any real desire to “Protect God’s Children” as it claimed. With the cover-ups of Boston Police’s Patrick Rose, it’s not hard to see that the New Hampshire judiciary and non-profits are more interested in protecting pedophiles and sex rings than addressing them because of the money involved for the NHCADSV/SNAP, law firms, police & prosecutors budget planning.
The Boston Herald has been denied a FOIA request for documentation from the investigation of Rachel Rollins, US Attorney for Massachusetts, who was recently forced to step down for unethical activities.
When is US Attorney Jane Young, Federal Prosecutors Scott Murray (told the public that police & prosecutors had investigated St Paul’s School and found nothing to prosecute other than Owen Labrie), Geoffrey Ward (deleted the files of corrupt police officers with no explanation) and NH Supreme Court Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald, NHCADSV/SNAP going to be investigated for deals, kick-back schemes with Arsenault, local attorneys, police, priests, governors and media?
The pattern of insidious corruption continues, and it directly puts children in danger: Manchester, New Hampshire, Police allegedly deleted emails from Mayor Joyce Craig regarding the disappearance of Harmony Montgomery. The speech and facial expressions of the Manchester Police Chief in interviews about her disappearance show that nobody is telling the truth. His department’s accounts of welfare visits were inconsistent as well. It wasn’t just that they dropped the ball. It is that the NHPD, DCYF, and related agencies are complicit in covering up abuse & trafficking, not addressing it.
What is very clear is that there is a pattern of dishonesty and that the Concord Monitor, Boston Globe, Union Leader, WMUR, NH Press Association, and Associated Press are going with narratives that are provided, curated or censored. From Amanda Grady Sexton’s bio, it would appear that she and the NHCADSV/SNAP are doing the curating and censoring to further their & the State’s public officials and affiliated attorneys’ RICO interests — not the public interest. “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine,” including if that means being complicit in and covering up crimes against children.
The Boston Globe Spotlight team only exposed a carefully curated part of the story of priest sex abuse — enough that the public would back off. A member of the same Spotlight team (Jenn Abelson) executed the same when it came to St. Paul’s School in the memoir “I Have The Right To.”
Judge Richard McNamara decided to keep the Grand Jury Criminal Investigation report in to St. Paul’s School private. He quoted Mark Twain in his ruling:
In a 23-page order, McNamara wrote that grand jury testimony can involve all sorts of false, damaging and one-sided information, and New Hampshire has no historical or legal basis for releasing such information.
“Mark Twain famously said that a lie is halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. In an internet age, he might have added that the lie will forever outrun the truth as search engines become ever more efficient,” McNamara wrote.
His ruling decided a case that had been argued in secret.
Eight people who either testified or cooperated with the grand jury retained a lawyer to fight disclosure. David Vicinanzo said they did not want their information or identity out in the public.
He called McNamara’s order a “full-throated defense of the grand jury as an institution.”
David Vicinanzo is also the NHCADSV’s attorney. His clients got a deal out of it. He had been Gordon MacDonald’s partner at Nixon Peabody. He is now one of the attorneys representing victims of sex abuse at the YDC and in a dispute with one of his former clients who claimed he was seeking too much money (40% of the settlement).
The report on historic sex abuse, which St. Paul’s School published in 2017 and didn’t cover the period from 2009 onwards, was carried out by Scott Harshbarger, who is listed in Bernard Goldberg’s book “100 People Who are Screwing Up America”. This is the reason he is in it:
40. Scott Harshbarger (Mass. Attorney General)
Harshbarger built a child-abuse case against a day-care center’s owners using solely testimony from forty children. Upon investigation by the show 20/20, the testimonies appear forced by Harshbarger. Harshbarger was relentless in keeping the accused behind bars, and he remains as a force in the general climate of child-abuse hysteria.
Scott Harshbarger would have been AG General in Massachusetts during the cover-ups of Boston Police Union Chief Patrick Rose and his pedophilia. I suspect that he was referred to St. Paul’s School via Michael Delaney, former AG of New Hampshire who was representing St. Paul’s School but, per a report to the US Senate Judiciary Committee, tampering with State witnesses (including with the son of Governor Maggie Hassan’s legal counsel) in the courts before they testified. A large part of Michael Delaney’s law firm’s business (McLane Middleton) is advising schools on compliance regarding sexual misconduct protocols. It also has a Government strategy business. The unlawful interests for these can’t be hidden. Just like the Diocese of Manchester, St. Paul’s School was a cash cow for the attorneys, police, courts, and non-profits. Performative scandalous PR ventures hiding extortion rackets and protecting the real predators — the friends of the New England Club of attorneys, journalists, administrators, police, and non-profits.
What if the real scandal actually involves grooming, kidnapping, raping, and trafficking with the help of the police, attorneys, and courts themselves?
There is something New England’s courts don’t want to admit: Jane Young, who is now US Attorney for New Hampshire, arranged/agreed to Arsenault’s plea deal when she was assistant AG for the state. She shook hands with him in the courtroom.
AG Phil McLaughlin was congratulated on the “creative solutions” in the Catholic Priest Sex Abuse scandal- everyone kept their jobs, and a lucrative extortion racket ensued.
Gordon MacDonald and David Vicinanzo, for Nixon Peabody, were sorting out fast deals, and Edward Arsenault was assuring everyone that insurance would take care of the settlements and the Diocese wouldn’t lose money. He was CEO of Catholic Risk Retention Management. He was also on the board of CMC, from which he stole. Yet his job role was to increase profits for the hospital. And while he was incarcerated, it appears he was still able to consult on risk management and to profiteer from it. It’s obviously lucrative because he managed to pay off $300K in restitution in a remarkably short amount of time. Inmate wages are cents on the hour.
Edward Bolognini follows Governor Sununu on Twitter. He also follows Donna Soucy, a prominent Democratic leader in New Hampshire who was once the legal counsel to the NH Banking Department (in 2006 when Arsenault was at the Diocese) when it was engaged in the FRM Ponzi scheme. She managed to escape scrutiny from the joint legislative committee investigating the scheme by joining Maggie Hassan’s campaign. Michael Delaney was the AG when the FRM Ponzi scheme came to light. His office was also involved in the cover-up. He has also been criticized for allowing police to make cash payments to each other. His wife was legal counsel for the Department of Revenue.
When AG Gordon MacDonald was nominated by Governor Sununu to become New Hampshire’s Supreme Court Chief Justice, he received two bizarre endorsements:
One was from Amanda Grady Sexton of the NHCADSV, who evidently didn’t have a problem with MacDonald’s defense of the Diocese and a priest’s grooming of a young teenager with pornography. The other was from Brian Harlow, also of the NHCADSV. Harlow had allegedly been the first victim found by Jim Rosenberg (at the time an assistant AG for Phil McLaughlin) to come forward in the Diocese of Manchester sex abuse scandal. It’s very curious that a victim advocate and survivor would both endorse an attorney who had defended the Diocese, which covered up decades of sex abuse and pedophilia.
Brian Harlow, of Concord, offered perhaps the most surprising words of support. A victim of clergy sex abuse, Harlow said at the hearing he met MacDonald when MacDonald represented the Diocese of Manchester. MacDonald, he said, helped him take “immeasurable steps toward healing.”
The non-profit Times Up was formed in response to the #MeToo movement following the NYT expose of Harvey Weinstein. But author Ken Arletta (“Hollywood Ending”) had tried to expose Harvey Weinstein for years. NBC shut down Ronan Farrow’s expose. Vanity Fair did a reputation clean-up piece when Malia Obama went to intern for Harvey Weinstein. It turns out that Times Up was protecting predators and using funds to promote celebrities but not really helping many victims. The message was a great distraction from the harsh fact that the Clintons, Obamas, and others had spent the last decade praising Harvey. Coincidentally Times Up had PR representation from SKDK (with Anita Dunn and Hilary Rosen at the top of it. These were Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s PR experts).
When the priest sex abuse scandal started, the nonprofit SNAP opened. Is SNAP, in fact, just like Times Up — creating a narrative to protect the real truth from coming out? SNAP has only been very mildly critical of Edward Arsenault. What if it’s all a money laundering, sex trafficking, and extortion racket that is being carefully protected by the New Hampshire & Massachusetts Bar Associations who want to keep the money pouring in?
Considering the recent exposure of New Hampshire’s police corruption and the City of Boston’s cover-ups of Patrick Rose, Jim Rosenberg’s statement below hasn’t aged well:
Jim Rosenberg, who with Will Delker, the head of the criminal division, undertook the inquiry, said that McLaughlin was the architect of the approach that eschewed criminal proceedings against the church hierarchy in favor of full disclosure and a commitment to cooperate with law enforcement. Rosenberg said that the outcome was preferable to what could have been expected from criminal proceedings. Noting that McLaughlin assembled a coalition of victim advocates and law enforcement officials, he stressed that “creative remedies were achieved by Phil’s leadership.”
Jim Rosenberg’s law firm Shaheen & Gordon (who represented Ghislaine Maxwell in New Hampshire) has hired Concord Police Officer Julie Curtin for claims made by Nicholas Huppe, aka Niko Roswell, against the Diocese for cover-ups of his own child sex abuse and trafficking involving his mother, father (a police officer) and grandfather (a decorated marine). His mother worked at St. Mary’s, Rochester, New Hampshire. He claims she was paid in cash too.
Creative solutions come in Italian Ceramics in Florida, Catholic Risk Retention Management, the New Hampshire AG’s office, and cash payments.
The post Part 2: Sicilian Ceramics, Florida Boys, NH Law Enforcement, “Spotlight” & Fmr. Monsignor Edward Arsenault — Sounds Like “White Lotus” appeared first on Granite Grok.
We have a standing rule. If you find someone that accuses GraniteGrok or one of its authors of Hate or calls us a Hate site, we ask that you politely inform them that our lawyers would like the evidence, and could you forward it to us? No one ever sends us anything.
That is instructive. And I’m not just trying to be clever. In most cases, they’ve never read a word we’ve written or seen the words attributed in context. They are regurgitating a slur based on a false stereotype perpetrated by whiners, and no one here cares unless, by care, you mean, “Oh, look low-hanging fruit about which we might write.”
I assure you no one on our site is intimidated or losing sleep. But it is a warning of sorts. These are typically the same folks who insist on things like hate speech, hate crimes, hate tribunals, and even prosecution based on the above. If that’s your verb, then any indiscriminate accusations using the word “hate” suddenly represent a significant risk to the accused. You’ve (potentially) defamed someone and are susceptible to a lawsuit without evidence of actual crime or malice.
We will be happy to take your money and watch you pay our legal fees, but we’d rather you leave us be while also knowing that’s impossible. Progressives lack the capacity to leave others alone. Happily, nothing like that is in the pipeline, on the horizon, brewing, forthcoming, imminent, or expected. The Attorney General of New York, however, finds herself in that situation. She is being sued. As your typical A-list Lib, she has done what many do; echoed accepted thought in what passes for the progressive collective consciousness, not at some swanky private uptown fundraiser, but in public.
During a press conference held by New York’s Democratic Attorney General, Letitia James, to announce the filing of a civil lawsuit against Red Rose Rescue and several pro-lifers for an injunction to block the group from protesting within 30 feet of abortion mills, James branded the group’s members as “terrorists” without evidence to support the claim.
“It is my duty and my honor and my responsibility to keep individuals safe from terrorists, and that’s what they are,” she said in reference to Red Rose Rescue, as The Washington Times reported.
James’ lawsuit, however, does not accuse the group or associated pro-lifers of terrorism, which AFLC noted is because “there are no facts to support such a claim of criminality.”
Perhaps Red Rose Rescue should have burned down some black-owned businesses near the abortion clinics where they gather. These violent and destructive acts referred to colloquially as mostly peaceful protesting (Summer of Love 2020) were never once labeled by the left as terrorism, nor were its Marxist BLM and Antifa perpetrators referred to as terrorists by anyone in Letiata’s progressive class of rhetorical wordsmiths.
One of the plaintiffs in AFLC’s lawsuit, Miller, a co-founder and spokesperson of Red Rose Rescue, told LifeSiteNews that James’ “terrorist” claim is a “total propaganda lie – born from sheer pro-abortion politics.”
“Those who participate in Red Rose Rescues are quiet, loving and completely peaceful,” Miller said in a statement. “Terrorism doesn’t save babies from abortion – love saves babies from abortion – and Red Rose Rescuers are committed to acts of love.”
Miller pointed out that the Red Rose Rescue code of conduct requires members to “refrain from violence of any kind” and to avoid “profanity, cursing, yelling, screaming, or loud arguing.”
Defamation has a high bar, but Red Rose Rescue is not a “public person.” The recent spate of attacks on pro-life aligned centers helping women with unexpected pregnancies doesn’t help. Red Rose Rescue has also referenced “the chilling effect on Plaintiffs’ rights to freedom of speech and expressive association.”
The high bar may be a lot lower when it’s the State’s top cop doing the name-calling.
The post Defamamed? – Pro-Life Protesters Sue Attorney General for Calling Them Terrorists. appeared first on Granite Grok.
So the NHGOP Establishment wants Joyce Craig as the Communist … oops, I mean Democrat gubernatorial nominee. Be careful what you wish for, NHGOP Establishment.
According to NH-NeverTrump Journal, Craig would be easy pickings because:
“Voters don’t want a governor who’ll turn New Hampshire into Manchester,” said House Majority Leader Jason Osborne (R-Auburn). “Craig is the New Hampshire Democrats’ Donald Trump: The more she campaigns, the more Republican voters will turn out.”
Craig is finishing her third term as Queen City mayor, where she has come under fire over the issues of crime, homelessness, and opioid overdoses. Manchester suffered a 22 percent increase in suspected opioid overdoses in 2022, … The number of opioid-related deaths jumped 41 percent.
And the homeless problem reached a crisis point this past winter with the deaths of two deaths of homeless people and the discovery of a baby born in a wooded area in Manchester over the Christmas holidays.
Yet despite all this “Craig’s Chaos,” Joycie cruised to reelection not once but twice. Joyce Craig is the proverbial poster child for the NHGOP’s inability to connect with voters:
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Democrats in the Vermont legislature overrode a veto by Gov Scott, allowing 16 and 17-year-olds in Brattleboro, Vermont, to vote in local elections. My first question is, why are you discriminating against 13-15-year-olds?
I thought they were old enough to choose live-changing pharmacological gender transition or mutilating surgery.
The pat answer to my query undergirds the entire argument for letting anyone 16 and upvote in the first place. They pay taxes.
“One of the biggest selling points for me is the fact that teenagers do work and they do pay taxes,” said Daims. “And we are a country built on the foundation of ‘no taxation without representation.’ When I was 16 I started working, so this felt really close to home in that way.”
Wouldn’t it be easier to stop taxing them? We’re talking about Democrat rule, so that is never an option. But their taxation argument leads nicely to a point I’ve made for years.
If being taxed justifies the right to vote because of all that taxation without representation business, then no state should legally be able to tax anyone who is not represented in the state legislature. Democrat states tax out-of-state residents who work in their states but do not allow them to vote in that state. It must therefore be legal and reasonable to deny the right to vote without regard to taxation.
Federally, the government has run up more than 30 trillion in federal debt, upon which there will be tens of trillions more in interest payments for debt service, paid for by people who are not yet alive to work or be taxed. They did not vote for anyone who spent that money or for the spending but must shoulder a tax burden decades before they have the shoulders to bear it. As I’ve been prone to add: talk about a voting rights issue.
Then there is Governors Scott’s argument, which balances on another ideological hobby horse of mine regarding Democrat policy. Contradiction.
“…the Legislature has repeatedly raised the age of accountability to reduce the consequences when young adults commit criminal offenses,” he said in his veto letter. “They have argued this approach is justified because these offenders are not mature enough to contemplate the full range of risks and impacts of their actions.”
Democrats have led the charge on state-wide laws prohibiting anyone under 21 from legally consuming alcohol, owning a firearm, or purchasing tobacco or vaping products. Still, they are responsible enough to sit on boards and committees and vote to spend other people’s money, including bonds that transfer the debt to future taxpayers. (Note: there was a past concern about state law prohibiting minors from such powers while they can enter into some contracts and file lawsuits with the assistance of someone of majority age.)
And it looks like municipal and county governments can regulate possession, consumption, and open container laws concerning alcohol. If I read that right, lowering the drinking age to 16 is on the table, and if not, why not? They are responsible enough for this but not that.
How about tattoos? Vermont restricts the employment of 16-18-year-olds, prohibiting them from higher paying jobs that would result in more of those taxes you’ve decided give them the right to vote.
Here’s a big one: Anyone under 18 cannot by law give consent except for treatment for sexually transmitted disease or substance abuse (parents or guardians must be notified).
Lots of contradictions, but it’s okay. These are Democrats, so nothing needs to make sense, especially when the only goal here is to tap into what is more than likely a majority Democrat voting population to secure the one-party state.
As if that is a problem in Brattleboro or anywhere else in Vermont.
The post There’s Plenty Wrong with Brattleboro, Vermont Allowing 16 and 17 Year Olds to Vote appeared first on Granite Grok.
There’s a shop in West Palm Beach, Florida, called “Da Franz.” Its website indicates it sells Sicilian ceramics. Its business registration indicates it belongs to Edward J Bolognini and Francesco Bolognini-Arsenault.
We want to thank Claire Best for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
The business was opened in June 2021 and states that it is formed “to import the beauty of Italy, in all its forms — to the United States.”
Edward J. Bolognini, formerly known as Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault, pled guilty to theft from the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, where he had been fast promoted to effectively run the finances and compliance of not just the church but also the insurance for all Catholic institutions (schools, hospitals, childcare centers, nursing homes, mental health institutes, etc) in the US and quite possibly around the world.
The extent of his power and network was extraordinary and could be compared to that of Jeffrey Epstein. His rise in the 90s and 2000s coincided with the growth of several New England Law firms, including Nixon Peabody, out of which came the former AG of New Hampshire: Gordon MacDonald, who is now New Hampshire’s Supreme Court Chief Justice.
AG Gordon MacDonald’s deputy, Jane Young, is now the US Attorney for New Hampshire. MacDonald (at Nixon Peabody) had worked closely with Arsenault sorting out dozens of quick settlements on behalf of the Diocese for complainants of sexual abuse — many of which were filed with little to no evidence.
“Arsenault refused to say yesterday whether the church had acknowledged the validity of the claims in Hutchins’s lawsuits as part of the settlement, telling reporters to read his press release. Arsenault’s press release hedged on accepting responsibility, referring to victims as people who had “reported” abuse.”
AnnMarie Timmins authored the above article for the Concord Monitor. She went on to marry one of the prosecutors against the Diocese: Will Delker.
Details about what exactly Edward J Arsenault did to land him on the wrong side of the law or how it got discovered in 2014, some years after he left New Hampshire and was presiding over St. Luke’s Institute in Maryland, were rather vague in New Hampshire’s local newspapers. Published charges included stealing from a dead priest’s estate, having inappropriate sexual relations with a minor (at least in initial reports), and stealing from a Catholic hospital — the Catholic Medical Center in Manchester where he had been in charge of increasing profits. The hospital has recently been in the news after fines for a kick-back scheme and for ignoring complaints against a surgeon whose malpractice resulted in multiple patient deaths. NH Catholic Charities is now presided over by Bishop Peter Libasci, who was accused of historic sexual abuse in 2021, which he denies.
One can’t help thinking that Edward J. Bolognini, once Monsignor Edward Arsenault, is somehow the kingpin in a gigantic international insurance fraud, drug trafficking, and pedophile scheme. And that others in New Hampshire’s police departments, law firms, non-profits, news organizations, and judiciary don’t want prying eyes looking at. But the public should be looking at this with a magnifying glass.
The receipts point to an alarming pattern of cover-ups and extortion rackets while the game goes on. Is it just a coincidence that Edward Arsenault’s 1999 venture “Virtus LLC — Protecting God’s Children” is registered at 10 Ferry Street, which just happens to also house an enterprise connected to Jeffrey Epstein: International Rescue Committee? Or that Ghislaine Maxwell was found hiding out in New Hampshire and that a director of her fake non-profit “TerraMar” came from Portsmouth, New Hampshire?
Boston Police Union Chief Patrick Rose has been known to the police, DCF, and the City of Boston as a pedophile since the early 90s, according to a recent lawsuit following his convictions for 25 counts.
Edward Arsenault made frequent trips to Boston, clocking up charges to the Diocese starting in 1999. He worked with journalists (Boston Globe’s “Spotlight Team” included, I believe), and he was close to the police — James F McLaughlin in particular, who looks more like a pedophile than a sex crimes officer.
McLaughlin had been known for his corruption dating back to the 80s — several years before he framed Father Gordon MacRae, who still sits in Concord Prison today after 28 years, denied justice, while Edward Arsenault (defrocked by the Vatican, unlike MacRae, who maintains his priesthood status), roams free between Florida, New York, and DC with addresses in all three accompanied by his young Italian husband, Francesco Bolognini-Arsenault.
A sex addict monsignor with accounting acumen and running PR with pedophile police officers, what could go wrong? It sounds like the Jeffrey Epstein way of doing things, and perhaps they were both “intelligence,” and hence the light sentence. Was Monsignor Edward Arsenault ever a bona fide priest who truly believed in Catholicism, or was he just sent to infiltrate it for the FBI — a promiscuous and savvy informant behind a trafficking and extortion racket?
Edward Arsenault was released from NH State custody on September 14, 2015, just 17 months into his mandatory 4-year minimum sentence in State prison. He never got transferred to prison, however. Bizarrely, the day before his release, Amanda Grady Sexton of the NHCADSV wrote an op-ed in the Concord Monitor arguing in favor of a computer felony conviction for 18-year-old Owen Labrie from St Paul’s School, whose criminal trial became a landmark for New Hampshire in prosecuting high school sex crimes. A city councilor for Concord and in charge of the “Public Safety Committee” to whom the police chief reports, she claims in her bio that she helps police and prosecutors with strategies to shape media messaging. The Concord Police website indicates that it works closely with local non-profits.
Telling the public to look in one direction while secretly arranging something illicit is a noticeable pattern when it comes to NHCADSV and Amanda Grady Sexton, who also works on messaging for the DCYF, which was instructing interns to delete files of child sex abuse at the State Youth Detention Center. The NHCADSV never made any comment about this practice. The YDC is implicated in the Diocese Priest sex abuse scandal via Edward Arsenault, who allegedly fabricated stories to the YDC about a priest who’d been dismissed after finding pornographic material and sex toys and coming forward to report it to him.
On the board of the NHCADSV is Brian Harlow, who was allegedly one of the people who made a claim of priest sex abuse at the Diocese. He’s a co-leader of SNAP which has been severely criticized for kick-back schemes. He was “selected” in 2011 to serve on a planning committee for the NHCADSV.
What were the words in Arsenault’s press release from 2002?
“Arsenault’s press release hedged on accepting responsibility, referring to victims as people who had “reported” abuse.”
Brian Harlow spends his time as an advocate for those in need. In 2011, Brian was selected to serve on the planning committee to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight series exposing the cover-up of Catholic clergy sex abuse in the Boston diocese. In 2012, Brian began serving as co-leader of NH SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
Was Amanda Grady Sexton involved in a scheme with Brian Harlow to throw some journalistic sensationalism to smear Owen Labrie & St Paul’s School in order to avert attention from Edward Arsenault’s release? It looks like it. Her organization, the NHCADSV, with Brian Harlow as a planner, became a financial beneficiary in the conviction and aftermath of Owen Labrie. Brian Harlow had been solicited by Jim Rosenberg when he was in the AG’s office as the first victim to come forward in the 2002 Diocese Priest sex abuse cases, which were all settled with money passing hands but no prosecutions or convictions.
Jim Rosenberg was the best man at Prosecutor Will Delker’s marriage to AnnMarie Timmins. Delker then became a judge like Bernard Hampsey, who’d corresponded on personal stationery with priests during the 2002 investigation into the Diocese. Hampsey felt the need at the time to threaten Rev. James “Seamus” MacCormack when he “became aware of a serious rumor that reflects on me personally and perhaps professionally.”
Coincidentally, Jim Rosenberg (after he left the AG’s office and became a partner at Shaheen & Gordon law firm) represented Andrew Thomson, the son of Governor Maggie Hassan’s legal counsel, in the State v Owen Labrie. Thomson became a principal witness against Labrie even though the prosecutor admitted to the judge that she was aware of a deal that had been made for him in light of sexual misconduct he’d been engaged in involving a minor at the school. Prosecutor Catherine Ruffle managed to get that confession sealed until eight months after the trial. As soon as it was unsealed and the deal became public knowledge, she retracted her statement, claiming to have misspoken. Former AG Michael Delaney, representing the school, corroborated her claim and said that no such deal had happened.
“But it gets worse. The other St. Paul’s males, the ones paying full freight to attend the school rather than on scholarship like Labrie, who testified against Labrie, also sent C.P. computer messages seeking a sexual tryst. Yes, exactly what Labrie was convicted for doing, except it never came out on cross that the good guys who testified for the prosecution were as guilty, if there is anything to be guilty of, as the defendant. And these witnesses lied about their relationship to C.P. at trial.”
Lies beget liars in New Hampshire’s courts. She knew Andrew Thomson was committing perjury. So did Jim Rosenberg. So did Amanda Grady Sexton, and so did Concord Police. They all knew that Andrew Thomson had sent Owen Labrie’s accuser and the main state witness, Chessy Prout, an invitation to a sexual tryst: “a lap dance” and a “secret snuggle.” He knew she was 15 and under age, so he was engaged in exactly what Owen Labrie was being prosecuted for. But Shaheen & Gordon, the NHCADSV (also their client), and the State were going to get rich off this — frame the scholarship student to detract from the decades of sexual abuse they’d sorted out secret deals on, use the media to line up for the civil suit and go in and extort and hide all the records. They’d done it before with the Diocese, and St Paul’s was the perfect target for another blackmail enterprise that would enrich them all.
There were meetings between the prosecutors and the local attorneys representing the school, state witnesses (whose trial testimony revealed they’d been coerced earlier) during the trial. They all met each other, but they all kept Owen Labrie in the dark and denied him access to exculpatory evidence, including police evidence which the civil attorneys suing the school and the NHCADSV were given access to.
The school was told not to contact Owen Labrie but the prosecutors, police, and civil attorneys all shared information with each other. There was nothing independent for any of them. Just as there hadn’t been in 2002, it had become a well-oiled machine — a racketeering machine, the kind of machine that their pal Edward Arsenault knew all about and could advise on.
While the media focused on Owen Labrie and St Paul’s School, Arsenault could quietly get a handshake deal for a light sentence and early release. Who else could get off lightly in 2015/16? Governor Maggie Hassan and her husband Tom Hassan, who’d gone easy on a teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy who’d admitted sexual misconduct with a student while Tom was principal.
AG Joseph Foster decided not to prosecute even though the school was keeping two sets of records, and DCYF admitted to deleting files. Governor Hassan appointed him to his position. There was a media blackout. NHCADSV got a nice contract out of it all, however, just as it did out of the targeting of St Paul’s School. A math teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy was allowed to carry on until he was finally charged and convicted last year.
Instead of going to Concord Men’s Prison, Arsenault was transferred to a high-end condo (funding unknown) at 91 Lawrenceville Road in Salem, New Hampshire. He lived there under parole supervision with an electronic bracelet until his remaining sentence was mysteriously terminated by Judge Diane Nicolosi on April 4, 2017. One day later he received employment from Tulsa-based McCalmon Group Inc. — an interesting coincidence.
Diane Nicolosi had prosecuted a case once called State v Laurie in which she failed to inform the defendant of corruption and credibility issues of the police who testified against him. This became the case that years later resulted in the “Laurie List” (the secret list of New Hampshire’s corrupt police officers), which AG Gordon MacDonald tried to argue should not be released to the public. New Hampshire’s top sex crimes police officer who’d dealt with the Diocese and DCYF and framed Father Gordon MacRae— James F McLaughlin — was on that list. Yet not a single defendant who was investigated by him has received a new trial.
There’s a weird proximity between the timing & landmarks of favors granted to Arsenault for his convictions and the landmarks of strikes against Owen Labrie for his convictions, retrial, and appeals. Racketeering, blackmail, bribery, cover-ups, and a peculiar intertwining of church and state, police, prosecutors, lawyers, certain journalists, and non-profits dictated everything. How is it that the State’s top prosecutors could give a backhand deal to Edward Arsenault and allow him to continue to consult behind bars after his crimes against the Diocese?
Edward Bolognini claims he changed his name because he got married. We assume to Francesco Bolognini-Arsenault. There are also reports that Bolognini was his mother’s maiden name. He works in a non-profit (ReServe) in New York, besides having several other businesses, including the Sicilian ceramics venture and a luxury condo in Florida.
If you watched season 2 of the HBO show “White Lotus” and then you read about accounts of hidden paraphernalia found in the Diocese of Manchester removed by Monsignor Edward Arsenault when they were discovered by another priest, you might start to wonder what’s really behind the Bolognini-Arsenault Florida Sicilian enterprise and that secret agreement with Assistant AG Jane Young — the handshake. What would be Edward Arsenault’s need to tell a priest never to talk about this box of sex toys again?
Why was he then transferred to St. Luke’s Institute in Maryland when this came out, and why would an assistant Attorney General, Jane Young, sort out a deal with Arsenault to give him a soft sentence?
Watch for Part 2 Later Today …
The post Sicilian Ceramics, Florida Boys, NH Law Enforcement, “Spotlight” & Fmr. Monsignor Edward Arsenault — Sounds Like “White Lotus”. appeared first on Granite Grok.
Ilhan Omar has tried to sell herself as a moderate Muslim. This manifests as systemic anti-Semitism on one hand and marrying a white devil on the other—an extremist balancing act.
A polite way of leading into recent comments by Rep Omar, who says – beyond all sense or sensibility – that she wants Muslims to play nice with the gender-bending crowd.
Omar … suggested that because Muslims and people who identify as LGBT are both supposedly “marginalized communit[ies]” in the United States, the former should not “punch down” against the latter. “Solidarity for us has been lifesaving, and that solidarity needs to exist for others whose lives need to be protected.”
“We should not be the ones who are, you know, making people not be proud to celebrate who they are and who they choose to be,” she continued.
What’s next, telling Muslim parents their boys are girls? It would have been easier to get hypocritical corporations to push pride month products in the Middle East, which they’ve never done. But they have tried the former in the UK.
England has broken new ground in the culture war. A Muslim woman has removed her child from a school with predominantly Muslim children. Why? They are teaching something called CHIPS.
“Challenging homophobia in primary schools – and it’s totally against Islamic beliefs.” …
Fatima is a woman who says she respects the Equality Acts but believes they “can be implemented without the promotion of homosexuality.”
Oil and water, as they say, don’t mix, so if you’ve got your little black heart on diversity by any means, you will have to shake constantly, which is bound to result in some less-than-desirable pushback.
That should land them in the Left’s Hater’s guidebook to intolerant people. May object strenuously to others’ religious views or the absence of them. Have been known to throw gays off rooftops in some foreign countries or ban pride flags in or on public buildings.
Then there is this creative bit of Bullsh!t. “We should not be the ones who are, you know, making people not be proud to celebrate who they are and who they choose to be.”
I have been married to a white woman (for almost 30 years), am white, Republican, conservatarian, and Christian parent, and advocate for free speech. Your party, “the ones who are, you know, making people proud to celebrate who they are and choose to be,” hate all of that. You don’t want anyone to be any of those things (certainly not two or more) and have no issue with using street thugs or the police state to silence them.
You say ‘Be You,’ but what you mean is be you, as in just like you. The room full of people who look different but say and think the same things.
Boston University student Diana Soriano suggested to her peers that the classroom could benefit from more intellectual diversity. Most classrooms would. So, how was her suggestion received? She was compared to a well-known student who had been labeled a neo-nazi.
That was for daring to suggest a classroom could be an open forum for competing ideas.
You sense the irony. Smart people calling you a fascist for suggesting the inclusion of opposing ideas. Open debate. Diverse thought. In the inclusive excellence, equity and diversity culture? Those words are Newspeak for a room full of people who are labeled differently and may even look different but are required to think the same.
The liberal utopia.
It is all a lie. Everything about the Democrat party and its diversity narrative is a lie. You aren’t “making people proud to celebrate who they are and choose to be.” You don’t want them to get along; you can’t. The division is how the left takes over, and I feel certain you know that.
Victor Davis Hanson has a great bit about this (and how Barry Obama led the charge to destroy race relations in the United States). The deliberate disunion of a thriving melting pot of people who looked different and were not just free to have different ideas but did not see this as a bad thing.
The post Ilhan Omar Tries to Walk on Oil and Water appeared first on Granite Grok.
While Americans were enjoying hot dogs and fireworks this Fourth of July, federal Judge Terry A. Doughty commemorated Independence Day by striking a blow for the separation of big tech and state. Specifically, he issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting a number of government officials and agencies from communicating with social media companies to request they censor certain posts.
Judge Doughty wrote that “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” This may seem like hyperbole until one considers that the list of those affected by this injunction includes White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State and Health and Human Services Departments, as well as the Justice Department and the FBI.
Among the plaintiffs are Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff and Stanford Professor Jay Bhattacharya. Professors Kulldorff and Bhattacharya were among the health experts who big tech censored at the behest of government because they dared question the government’s message regarding covid. People questioning government supported claims of the benefits of lockdowns, the efficacy and safety of covid vaccines, the use of masks to protect against infection, and vaccine immunity being superior to natural immunity was silenced.
Eventually the establishment was forced to admit that many of the arguments of those like Kulldorff and Bhattacharya were correct. However, by that point many of those courageous enough to speak out had already suffered irreparable damage to their reputations and careers. Contrary to the covid authoritarians and other users of science claims to promote statist policies like the anti-“climate change” movement, science is in fact never settled.
While much of the lawsuit concerns covid censorship, some of the components revolve around efforts to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story. The effort to suppress and discredit the story may have influenced the election. Some Biden voters would have voted differently had they had full access to the information.
The suppression of the truth about covid and the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story were both justified as serving a “higher good.” With regard to covid, the online censorship was justified as necessary to protect public health. In the case of the laptop story, it was justified as necessary to prevent Donald Trump from winning a second term. The now more widely known revelations regarding Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the possibility that his father not just profited from them but used his position in government to be an active participant may help Donald Trump regain the Oval Office in 2024.
Reading the emails between government officials and employees of big tech companies shows that government officials clearly believed they had every right to tell these private companies how to run their businesses. The government officials even “reminded” them that the companies were in danger of having increased regulations imposed on them by the White House and Congress. This shows the folly of those who think that increasing government involvement with big tech will somehow reduce big tech censorship. The only way to make the internet a free speech zone is to build on Judge Doughty’s decision: separate big tech and state.
Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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Depending on the narrative, you can’t get Progressives to stop using the word “science,” but when the science contradicts the approved narrative, referencing it or teaching it is discrimination and bigotry. And being a professor of color doesn’t protect you.
In his role as an adjunct professor, In November 2022, four of Dr. Varkey’s students walked out of his class when he stated, consistent with his study of human biology and religious beliefs, that sex was determined by chromosomes X and Y. In two decades of teaching these basic, unremarkable concepts, no other students complained. taught Human Anatomy and Physiology to more than 1,500 students since 2003. During Dr. Varkey’s 20-year employment as a biology professor at St. Philip’s College, he consistently received exemplary performance reviews and was never subject to discipline. Throughout that time, he never discussed with any student his personal views—religious or otherwise—on human gender or sexuality.
The dude taught the science of biology. But one day, last fall, “four of Dr. Varkey’s students walked out of his class when he stated, consistent with his study of human biology and religious beliefs, that sex was determined by chromosomes X and Y.”
Science melted these snowflakes, who then used their tears to grease the wheels of campus social justice. Two months later, in January, Dr. Varkey was terminated for his “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter” and that his teaching “pushed beyond the bounds of academic freedom with [his] personal opinions that were offensive to many individuals in the classroom.”
First, Liberty is representing Dr. Varaky in defense of his religious liberties, which I find ironic. His termination is based on the preference for one belief system over another—the universities social construct to explain a view of the world different from his. The school used non-scientific socially constructed gender theory to unemploy a man of science based on his not sharing that faith (or any faith): the very definition or its equivalent of state-based religion.
He will be made to believe as we do or not at all.
So, there is no wall of separation, it seems, between the belief that gender is fluid (a mental or emotional state) and the scientific fact that no matter what’s in your head, the physical structures with which you are born (or saddled, if you prefer) is undeniably a product of your chromosomal makeup.
The bricks of creation build the body. What the brain decides that means at any point after the body is born – assuming it survives other progressive cultural norms to reach air and daylight – isn’t even relevant to the course of study. Biologists don’t concern themselves with what the mind projects from the body when complete. That is the realm of philosophers, psychologists, mythologists, and priests, all of whom have similar rights ar Dr. Varaky – in this country.
One has to wonder what comes next from the Pharisees of gender study – that toes are not toes? It’s a fair question. Why is the mythology limited to genitals and sex parts, which make up a fraction of the physical body over which the brain is supposed to have control?
The post #Woke College Fires Biology Professor For Teaching Science Instead of Gender Cult Dogma appeared first on Granite Grok.
It’s pathetic how delusional most Republicans are. They actually believe that 2024 … despite what we saw in 2020 and 2022 … will be a fair election. Perhaps stupid is a better description than delusional.
Would a system that labels you a criminal after you blow the whistle on the corruption of the imposter/figurehead President and his family really allow a fair election? What am I talking about, you ask? The whistleblower who disappeared … then surfaced to blow the whistle on the Biden-crime-family … was, almost immediately after surfacing to blow the whistle, charged with various crimes by the Biden-Gestapo:
In a stunning twist, the Biden DOJ indicts Dr. Gal Luft, a Biden corruption whistleblower, for not registering as an agent of CEFC China Energy, while Hunter, James, and Sara Biden simultaneously collected millions from CEFC China Energy without registering, also violating FARA.… pic.twitter.com/WfLP9j9feN
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) July 11, 2023
BREAKING: Just days after Biden corruption whistleblower Gal Luft came forward with the following video detailing Biden family corruption, the DOJ announces multiple indictments against him.
The Department of ‘Justice’ solely exists to protect the Washington elites.
After… pic.twitter.com/UEZeyjmcE9
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 10, 2023
BREAKING: The DOJ has announced charges against missing Biden corruption case witness Gal Luft after he reappeared to detail allegations against the Biden Family.
pic.twitter.com/pUWBEhOhgg
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 10, 2023
BREAKING UPDATE: The DoJ has announced multiple indictments against Dr. Gal Luft, just days after the NY Post's bombshell report featuring a 14 min video of Luft leveling explosive allegations of the Bidens selling out American interests to the Chinese.
Dr. Luft alleges that the… https://t.co/JvmZQ6q1Ey
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 10, 2023
The post Blow The Whistle On Biden Corruption … Go To Jail In The Police State Of America appeared first on Granite Grok.
I have been a strong advocate for body cameras on public school teachers, and nothing I have seen since has dissuaded me from the idea.
According to a warrant sent to 11Alive on Monday, 30-year-old Amelia Ressler, of Carrollton, performed an “indecent act” in class, allegedly pleasuring herself, while 19 eight-year-old students were present.
It happened on Jan. 28, authorities noted in the warrant, between 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Mt. Zion Elementary School. …
According to the affidavit, “a person commits the offense of child molestation when such person does any immoral or indecent act to or in the presence of or with any child under the age of 16 years with the intent to arouse or satisfy the sexual desires of either the child or the person.”
“The substitute teacher and self-proclaimed feminist allegedly recorded herself in the act and disseminated the video,” So, there’s video evidence, and nineteen 8-year-old were her audience.
[Amelia] Ressler posted the 13-second masturbation video on Snapchat that led to her arrest, according to The Exposure, a Facebook page that claims to be an anonymously published news source working for “the betterment of our communities.” The Exposure claimed to have seen the video and shared information about it. The Georgia-based social media page posted a screenshot of the video showing a person they say is Ressler, wearing leggings, with her feet up on a desk. Another screenshot shows what appears to be her hand in a mitten between her legs.
She’s in jail, but here’s the strange thing (and the question). In a lot of states, if the same teacher had shown them anything similar in (say) a book (with or without snap chat video), any objection would be pitched by the usual subjects as an assault on education, free speech, teachers, and labeled book banning.
Tell me I’m wrong.
Note: The generic featured image was replaced with a montage of the alleged perp after publication.
The post A Question for the “They are Our Kids” Schoolies after Teacher Films Herself Masturbating in Front of a Class room of 8-year olds appeared first on Granite Grok.
RSA 193-H:2 says flat out that: Schools shall ensure that all pupils are performing at the proficient level or above on the statewide assessment as established in RSA 193-C.
Notably, it doesn’t make exceptions for kids with special needs, kids with test anxiety, or anyone else.
Now, if you interpret this as saying,
Schools shall assign pupils to grades according to age, and then do whatever is necessary to get all pupils in those grades reading at the corresponding grade levels.
…then it is easy to dismiss it as an impossible task — especially when you consider that the schools don’t actually know how to teach kids to read.
It’s also easy to dismiss as a suggestion rather than as a statute since there is no penalty specified for failure to comply.
But if you interpret it as saying,
Schools shall assign pupils to grades according to their reading levels at the end of the previous year.
…then this would automatically bring every school into compliance with the law. If a pupil reads at a 4th-grade level, then he’s in 4th grade, regardless of how old he is.
Note that nothing else has to change. No new tests have to be administered. No new statutes or regulations have to be enacted. All we have to do is recognize that it makes more sense to understand the phrase ‘shall ensure’ as a method, and not as a goal.
This would also have some important secondary benefits. It would, for example, put an end to social promotion. It would motivate students to learn to read by putting the more enjoyable electives off limits until the more fundamental skills have been mastered — which is simply following the age-old parenting principle of making kids eat dinner before they get to eat dessert.
And it might even, in time, make our graduation rate meaningful. Right now, with a graduation rate above 90%, and proficiency rates below 40%, graduation is little more than a reward for attendance.
What possible reasons could we have for not doing this?
The post What Do We Mean by ‘Shall Ensure’? appeared first on Granite Grok.
In his youth, Jordan Peterson worked with the socialist party in Northern Alberta—good folks who were mostly concerned about the working class. And everything was going along fine until he met the real socialists and encountered a life-changing disconnect.
” He got disenchanted, in part, because when he went to eh conventions of the party, met the radical types, and they are the same as they are now, I thought, what the hell’s up with you people? You’re just bitter and resentful. You claim to be caring for the poor but that’s just a lie. You’re just bitter and resentfull.
He adds some excellent points, some of them humorous, about small business and work and political ethics and interests of the productive class who (he believes) have the moral upper hand. But they don’t know what to do with that.
He then explores the problems they (and conservatives in general) have when trying to articulate their ethos or their troubles when confronted by the political left.
About eight minutes and very interesting. You may want to watch it more than once. I did.
The post The Left has No Moral Authority They are Just Bitter and Resentful appeared first on Granite Grok.
1. Giving (a few) hours’ notice for a meeting as important as yesterday’s rain tax meeting is not only irresponsible, it’s downright sneaky. It was so obviously planned far in advance, and boom, the people don’t need to know. You obviously don’t want the public to know what ridiculousness you are up to or public input… You’re all really transparent!!
2. This tax, or as you call it, a utility, is a desperate attempt to undo your zest for overdevelopment while mismanagement of the general fund. 3m worth… There’s a story here we’ll never know, I’m sure. You already have a city water problem, now a sewer problem, a parking problem, good thing people are pulling their children out of public schools, or we’d have another problem. How many obscure “utilities” or taxes can you create?
3. There is NO INCREASED NITROGEN in great bay!!! SEE CHART from NHDES; the levels are lower than at the start of testing!
It’s a lie. The city has the burden of proof of why folks are charged and exactly how much impact their roof has. You know, science, not imagination. If roofs do not produce nitrogen, and I’ve had my property tested, and no increased nitrogen exists, those properties either should be exempt or given reparations from the worse offenders if any exists. The cost to test everyone’s roof is unknown and absolutely unreasonable. This lie will unravel because the stormwater is supposed to go into the wastewater treatment plant, which, per the EPA contract, is supposed to eliminate nitrates prior to discharge anyway. So just call it what it is, a tax, and stop messing with nature. It would be far better for homeowners if it were a “tax” because utilities are not deductible on our federal tax returns…Besides, the city and state are the worse offenders of chemicals, pollution, and nitrates into the earth. eco tyranny at its best
4 signing the EPA contract was a crime, period. The EPA cannot write laws or tax us. When this tax/utility is challenged in superior court, it will lose… It’s happening all over the country as the people are challenging the EPAs overreach. It’s truly amazing how many citizens have absolutely no clue about the contract or the rain tax… By design
5. This fee will impact the poor, fixed-income renters and the cost of doing business in this city. You can sugarcoat it all day long with excuses, but it will hurt people. This tax will only go up. You all have to live with that! Why should people with septic and well pay!? Oh, that’s right, the EPA says all septic systems have to be replaced!! Can’t wait for that bill… Yet septic/well have absolutely no impact on any of this agenda…
6. You are taxing us TWICE for square footage. And the impact list made by satellite imagery is also dumb. No testing, no real science, just Willy nilly taxing… Rain! I see CO2 tax on the horizon… Not one of you has a clue about the land and its resources. Just the mere fact UNH is involved in this is a contradiction! Because the UNH extension is telling farmers to put nitrogen back in the soil!?!? I’ll stick with thousands of years of tried and true than smoke and mirrors…
7. Rather than encourage open space and woods (btw, trees eat CO2), you are overdeveloping, period. You are in direct violation of everything the rain tax is supposedly about. Especially the nonsensical “waterfront” mess. No BMPs, no thought of responsible ecological impact directly on the river, just greed. Yet, us serfs have to pony up… Ok
8. It’s very difficult to find details on your rain tax within the city. The first committee is gone, replace with a shiny new one who is not listed anywhere to email or call!?!? Transparency, right
9. I’m formally requesting all fees associated with consultants, including the one last night.? How many staff estimated to police the list of exceptions? “Not use fertilizer.” Are you kidding me!? Are we going to pay to have everyone’s lawns tested!?!? This is the most unreasonable piece of drivel ever created and impossible to police, and it smells of communistic control… You can get a reduction, but we have to determine if you do. Since when does the government, the people who serve us, get to wield such powers…
10. The whole concept is BUNK. You believe that because you are elected or placed on some committee gives you superpower? Did any of you even stop for one millisecond to think if all this may actually hurt the environment? Vernal ponds eliminate nitrogen; at what level do you starve aquatic life? A delicate balance of nature. You don’t know; no one does. The absolute provable fact Great Bay healed itself after the 2006 floods is not enough for you. It’s all an excuse to tax and make yourselves feel good when you’re actually doing harm.
THIS IS AN IRRESPONSIBLE EFFORT TO ADD MORE TAX BURDEN TO THE PEOPLE. AND YOU ARE NOT TRANSPARENT FOR A REASON! TAXING RAIN IS A GATEWAY TO TAXING AIR… GOVERNMENT OVERREACH AT ITS BEST.
Email to the over city council
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Meme-Maker, Meme-Maker, make me a meme. Not too obscene, if you know what I mean. Meme-Maker, Meme-Maker make the left dread the memes you see in your head. No? Yes? Fiddler on the Roof? Maybe?
In keeping with the ‘Grok meme tradition, Monday memes are always followed by a Wednesday overflow post with…more memes and a few “other” bits inserted as meme palate cleaners.
Not everything here is for all ages, so please scroll responsibly.
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I have written previously about the bizarro world the Left lives on. At the time, mostly the Radical Left had gone off the rails. We had no conception of how much worse this alternate world could get. It is no longer the fringe but the majority of the Left that has a warped view of the country’s state and a vision of how it should be.
It is exhausting for those on the Right to see how our country and lives have changed for the worst in the last two-plus years, and we fear how much worse conditions can become. Barack Obama was a harbinger when he said that Democrats would transform America, but it is alarming when Joe Biden claims he needs six more years to finish the job. What more in God’s name can they do to destroy the United States of America? The limits to their imagination are infinite. What does finish the job look like? Let’s look at some of the more drastic initiatives.
Sovereignty: our Border has been eliminated. An unchecked number of illegal immigrants enter our country daily. There is no vetting, and our Border Patrol is a welcoming committee, not a security force. These millions of people from over 160 countries are spreading out to every corner of America. Schools, auditoriums, hotels, and even personal homes are temporary shelters. These people are putting a tremendous burden on local resources and negatively impacting housing and schools. There is no plan or indication of how many illegals are too much for the Left. Guns, drugs, and crime are also part of this mass migration.
Children: we have lost respect for our children’s lives and human life in general. The movements to increase abortion rights, infanticide, and euthanasia instead of health care are the norms of the Left. Schools are now working to come between students and families, and chemical castration is now a viable option and no longer child abuse. Human trafficking is disavowed and labeled a Right Wing Conspiracy Theory. CRT, ESG, BLM, and LGBTQ have replaced ABCs in today’s schools. Children have become tools to promote agendas and secure power. Indoctrination has usurped education, setting up future generations for failure.
Crime: the term crime has lost its meaning as offenses are downgraded, bail is becoming nonexistent, apprehension is more of a crime than the crime itself, and radical Soros-placed DAs are decimating the safety of our neighborhoods. The DOJ, FBI, and CIA are weaponized against Americans while protecting our most famous crime family living in the White House. Criminals are set free, parents targeted, and indictments are the new campaign tool to thwart your opponents.
Drugs: it took this Administration 30 months to acknowledge the Fentanyl epidemic, and they are too fearful of China to call out the source. We wonder where our workers have gone, but maybe we need to look no further than the drugs plaguing our society. With 100,000 Fentanyl deaths a year, thousands more from opioids, the impact of drug addiction on our workforce-age population, and the growing number of people willing to abandon life to be homeless on our sidewalks, it should be no secret why help wanted signs go unanswered.
Free Speech: our first amendment is meaningless to the Left. If someone on the Right speaks out against the Left, they are labeled as racist, anarchist, enemies of the state, and threats to Democracy. The media works in unison with the Left, and more than half of the country has no clue as to happenings in the country. The Administration that promised to be the most transparent lies to us daily with no accountability. Our press secretary calls it irresponsible to ask questions as she lies to answer them.
This list is the tip of the iceberg and is stressful to put to paper. We continue to tell our story and urge the Right to continue to fight to save this great Republic, but it appears more futile every day. We cannot stop and must dig deep for the inner fortitude to fight on.
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