The Manchester Free Press

Monday • March 9 • 2026

Vol.XVIII • No.XI

Manchester, N.H.

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News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
Updated: 13 min 13 sec ago

Billionaire-Backed Organizations Fund NH Progressive Candidates: Republicans Should Take Note.

Sun, 2024-03-10 14:00 +0000

One could be forgiven for mistakenly believing that Jennifer Mandelbaum was running unopposed in the Rockingham District 21 special election. The 32-year-old contender for a seat in the NH House of Representatives, whose race reaches its conclusion on March 12, is virtually ubiquitous both online and in signage.

How has a hitherto unknown candidate in an obscure contest established such sudden name recognition? I suspect the answer is a progressive advocacy group known as 603 Forward, which has hosted public events with Mandelbaum and invested in the election, according to campaign finance reports.

Founded in 2019 by Lucas Meyer and Elizabeth Wester—both hotshots in the realm of liberal political causes—the youthful organization has quickly grown into a veritable factory of progressive candidates for state and local office. Since its inception, 603 Forward has boasted over 150 successful elections, an unmatched success rate for an NH advocacy group.

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For his part, Meyer was well-equipped to launch an effective electoral machine. Not only was he a principal player in Chris Pappas’ Executive Council and Senate campaigns, the former Deputy Communications Director of the NH Democratic Party, and a consultant for the energy and tech industries (among others); he currently leads a public affairs strategy firm called Catalyst Advocacy.

Wester is likewise no small player in the world New England politics. Best known as the NH State Director for Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign, the Massachusetts native is also an alumna of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and several Democrat congressional offices.

It should come as no surprise that both of these rather flourishing characters were also accomplished collegiate athletes — a vigor they have seemingly carried into their hale and hearty careers in activism. But to call 603Forward a purely grassroots organization would be an error. Like most movements, its true origins can be traced to the ever-entangled and endlessly-moneyed powers.

Although it solicits donations, 603 Forward is mainly funded by grants. In fact, grants were the sole source of funding used to launch the group in 2019, according to its 501(c)(4) IRS filings.

From whom do these funds derive?

Reports from 2022 alone indicate that 603 Forward was the recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash awards from leftist donor clearinghouses like the New Hampshire Progress Alliance (“NHPA”), Run for Something, and the Rural Democracy Initiative (“RDI”). Indeed, RDI awarded two grants to this and other progressive NH causes in the same year.

RDI boldly proclaims its ominous objectives in no uncertain terms:

“We establish multi-year relationships with grantees. We invest in efforts that have the power to change immediate statewide and local electoral, public opinion, and policy outcomes, and at the same time RDI extends our impact by building sustainable organizational infrastructure that will support rural people working to transform America—and therefore the entire country—for decades to come.”

A review of the states and communities targeted by the Rural Democracy Initiative (i.e. AK, AZ, GA, NH, NC, ME, MN, MT, MI, OH, PA, TX, VA, and WI) plainly reveals the ultimate objective of their efforts: to strike at the rural conservative bases in key swing states and establish an enduring liberal majority. Ignore the many platitudes they espouse about the country worker. Radical entrenched transformation is RDI’s actual ambition.

The origins of RDI itself are obscure, but not untraceable. One name emerges especially from amidst the fog: William Carter.

Carter is a West Virginian string musician and wealthy financial manager who operates the firm of McKinley Carter Wealth Services and is a key founder of RDI. Carter’s business manages approximately $2 billion in total assets between its purported 5,262 clients, placing it among the largest firms of its type in the United States.

Naturally, Mr. Carter is not the only apex predator in the jungle of donor dollars. Run for Something and NHPA are backed by several shadowy nonprofits connected to billionaire megadonor George Soros (including the North Fund, Open Society Policy Center, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund).

But RDI’s expressed mission to develop a wide-reaching “network of donors” bent on “transforming America” seems to be the most keenly focused on impacting local elections in communities like NH, and Carter is an apparent fountainhead of this comprehensive program.

Billionaire-hating liberals be warned: you are far from immune to their influence.

That rich men have coopted our essential civic processes is no bombshell. On the conservative side, the Koch family’s Americans for Prosperity (AFP) operates a relatively powerful branch in NH, which advocated for Nikki Haley during the 2024 Primary almost to the point of nausea.

But the comparison is hardly equal. While 603 Forward is successfully recruiting and advancing candidates at all levels of government, conservative-minded political prospects are hardly supported by the Republican Party itself. While liberal syndicates have effected hundreds of local victories over the course of a few short years, the conservatives have all but completely abdicated their role in the process.

During the hotly contested November 2023 election, even the local Republican Committee hosted no recruitment events or candidate forums, had no social media activity, published no direct mail, posted very limited signage, and offered no sample ballot to voters in contested cities like Dover and its environs. Meanwhile hardly any Democrat candidate was lacking in any essential support.

The subsequent liberal victories in diverse House special elections—and now, the accelerated rise of Jennifer Mandelbaum against her GOP challenger—evidence the same pattern.

Where is our knight in white satin armor? Will our state ever bring forth a conservative Meyer, Wester, or Carter who will effectively organize GOP money and energy into a fruitful statewide operation? There is no reason why both sides should not be able to participate with equal strength, if certain Republicans will consent to desist in their genteel fantasies about American society and agree to truly involve themselves in the necessary civic mud.

If Republicans fail to learn the lesson of past defeats, the sway of local elections will ever more incline away from the right. It’s behind time for Republicans to learn from their shrewder Democrat counterparts by recruiting, training, and supporting bankable candidates.

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

An Inconvenient Truth About Recycling

Sun, 2024-03-10 12:00 +0000

The New Republic was gobsmacked by a 2022 report that claimed only 5-6% of plastics entering the recycling stream in America were actually recycled. Most of them are relocated until they end up in landfills, incinerated, or in a turtle’s nose photo-op.

We should blame Big Oil.

Among the biggest plastics producers in the U.S. are ExxonMobil and Shell. Shell opened a giant petrochemical plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, in 2022. On the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, it admitted that costs for the project had soared 130 percent past the original estimates. An investigation by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found that, in the first year of the plant’s operations, its polyethylene units—which convert ethylene into tiny plastic beads—were shuttered as often as they were operational. Shell announced this week that it would be pulling out of talks to build a new petrochemicals plant in Basra, Iraq, having said it’ll cut down on “mega projects” like the Beaver County facility.

The gig is up. Thirty years of knowing that recycling was just a lie to protect the plastics industry has been exposed. The petrochemical cat is out of the single-use thin film bag. We have you where we want you. Except you don’t.

Recycling hasn’t worked for years, not just for plastics. Considering all the moving parts and processes, it is cheaper and less carbon-intensive to use new and bury or burn the old.

And that island of floating plastic bobbing about in the ocean that no one can find is a byproduct of recycling. Much like all the other bad things happening to the planet, most come from Asia, where a lot of America’s recycling has traditionally ended its life cycle. In other words, it would be better for the oceans if we buried or burned it, but the New Republic’s author never goes there.

Incinerators are notoriously bad, says the Climate Cult, but we have a better chance of using them to generate electricity and finding stack scrubbing technology to pull out impurities in the exhaust than we ever had of making recycling a lower carbon footprint endeavor.

Then there’s the biggest question of all. If plastics are not or cannot be recycled (even if it makes economic and emissions sense), what do we replace them with? Wood, cardboard, glass, or metal.

Any guesses as to how much more carbon-intensive those are than plastics individually or in total? Manufacturing, transportation of raw material and finished product (they weigh a lot more), and what about disposal? You can recycle cardboard, some glass, and metal, but the post-consumer process is an emissions bitch and not at all cost-effective, so most of that will end up in landfills, too.

And if you thought reusable shopping bags were carbon-intensive (or more likely didn’t know or pretended it was a conspiracy theory, just like how recycling was a lie), wait until they can’t make them with petrochemicals.

You can talk about environmental injustice until the genetically modified lab meat cows come home. This transition will make everything more expensive, which, the last time I checked, was precisely what the Climate Cult wants. If people can’t afford it, they use less, which aligns nicely with the left’s admission that this is what they want and the reality that they’ve made things like food, electricity, and water exponentially more pricey as a matter of policy.

The real problem, aside from an unhealthy obsession with hating big oil and affordable living, is that they hate you. People are the biggest problem, and it’s one the globalists have been working on. What do you think Medically Assisted dying is all about? They make you miserable, convince you that death is what’s best for the community, and then recycle your organs into elites whom they are convinced will do more with them than you ever could.

And you can’t do the transplants without a lot of unrecyclable single-use plastics (medical waste), so the New Republic is either yanking their chain or yanking their own. You decide which.

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

NH House, Selectively Reactionary?

Sun, 2024-03-10 10:00 +0000

I just read today’s “Judy Aron Report,” which is a great thing to do the day after the House meets. One of many reasons to encourage others to do the same is that she captures most of the items of great public interest.

One of those things is enemy camp member and former Speaker Shurtleff’s taking of the gavel and his motion to suspend the rules for his late-season and election-year “feel-good bill.”

I have yet to know of anyone who disagrees that the Harmony Montgomery tragedy was a terrible thing. I’m sure we all can agree that many changes need to be made as a result, but the nuts and bolts of those changes are likely where there’s disagreement. However, there’s plenty of material on that for separate discussions.

I’m here to discuss Rep. Arlene Quaratiello’s newly deceased bill, HB 1308 (relative to parent access to children’s library records), as a “post-mortem,” if you will.  You might remember my previous article on parental rights and Library Lewdness and another on how YOU are the (library’s) CUSTOMER. For your “reference,” to use some “libraryspeak,” tune into 1:11:01 in this video when Arlene’s bill comes up.  Arlene took the mic and made some more points that I didn’t even think of, such as the dastardly UNFUNDED MANDATE.

Then, Queen Heather, whom I’ve previously discussed before, made her retort, defending the ITL committee recommendation.  When done speaking, she “refused to yield” for a question at 1:18:50, which reminded me of two occurrences on the “other side of the wall” that happened yesterday.

At 3:59:30, Senator Gray asked Senator Twitley if she would yield, and she acted like her law degree came from the Lionel Hutz School.   Obviously, she has never watched C-SPAN.  I recommend watching her buffoonery for yourself.  Then, later on, at 4:13:08, Senator Avard had a question for Altschiller after her pearl-clutching diatribe, and she refused.  I’d sure hate to be in a road rage situation with any of those three angry women, even if YIELD signs were facing them, but I digress.

Back to Arlene. You heard in her speech that she requested the ITL be voted down so another amendment (addressing the opposition’s issues) could be introduced. As a lay observer of both chambers, I thought it was etiquette to allow for discussion of new ideas because I’ve observed it happening before in a bipartisan manner, but that’s just me. Sadly, HB 1308 died in a 194-170 roll call vote.

So in keeping with the topic of reactionism, we have the new Shurtleff bill that does nothing for the political process, but the lame duck Damn Emperor did commit to signing it.  Interesting.  Remember the prognostications of Chris Buda. And then there’s the Uniparty, um, I mean gun hater Rep Meuse collaborating with House Criminal Justice Committee Chair Terry Roy in sponsoring HB 1711, which does not resurrect the lives of retired Franklin Police Chief Bradley Hass or any of the Lewiston victims next door in Maine.

So, just a thought here, but let me first say that I do NOT encourage anyone to build a bomb. It is important to get that disclaimer out of the way, so consider it said.  What if you’re a parent and you suspected that your kid went to the library and checked out “How to Build a Fertilizer Bomb” by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and your request for such records was refused?  That is, after all, what the American Library Association (ALA) would want librarians to do.

But wait a minute. What if there was an EXEMPTION for any kid not in any subset of “LGBTQABCDEFG,” as Chris Salcedo would say?

Town elections are coming up, and you might consider asking your library trustee candidates if they would agree to stop paying dues (your tax dollars) to the ALA.

 

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Night Cap: In Defense of Livestock and the Errant Motives of Those Who Attack Cows….

Sun, 2024-03-10 03:00 +0000

Climate “warriors” and animal rights activists are out in far-left field on cows and livestock farming. The attacks against cows and agriculture have become so ubiquitous that a nearly universal brainwashing has succeeded in conditioning consumers and academics to simply believe cows are bad for the planet—all cows, all the time. But this is the exact opposite of the truth and indeed pushes humanity toward great peril: There is a reason European farmers are rising up in revolt. Ultimately, these activists are clamoring for their own destruction through totalitarianism and starvation. What’s needed is a recovery of actual farming.

I am not defending industrial farming. For a century, America has watched academics, government agencies, and corporations shrink family farms in the name of progress. Ignoring soil experts like Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry, the technocrats pushed for consolidation of farms, destroying waterways, pushing small families into poverty, and packing more and more animals into tighter and tighter spaces for “productivity” and “progress.”

As the animals sickened under such conditions, the same groups peddled antibiotics, hormones, and other chemical “solutions” to maintain profit margins. The activists who claim humanity must now abandon all animal consumption are non-farmers who have fallen for a triple scam against cows and small farms:

1) They make it sound as if all cows were raised industrially. This enables animal rights activists to use the most egregious animal treatment to slander all farming. It also allows climate alarmists to condemn all livestock because industrial ag concentrates plumes of water, air, and soil pollution into crises not present with traditional regenerative agriculture.

2) Activists also claim livestock is a human health problem. This, too, is built on decades of carb-pushing propaganda that falsely claimed eggs and milk were evil and that red meat causes cancer. Increasingly, it appears that the surfeit of carbohydrates is the culprit and that grass-fed meats are much healthier than grain-fed. A much greater health threat is presented by glyphosate, atrazine, and a plethora of toxic food (and packaging) contaminants, but corporate America would much prefer to target and scapegoat cows.

3) Both groups join together in the simplistic claim that the only solution to the problems technocrats and corporations created by consolidating natural agricultural systems into artificial, industrial death camps is for the exact same groups of technocrats and corporations to rescue humanity using GMO cropping in lieu of cows and other livestock.

One quite typical and typically absurd article recently called to “recogniz[e] the reality that stopping consuming animals and animal byproducts greatly benefits animals as well as the planet.” Both claims are dubious, yet this article touts the usual talking points:

More people eating vegan diets is backed by research confirming the significant impact it would have on planetary health just as much as consumer health, per the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

From the risk reduction of certain cancers, dire diseases, and chronic conditions to the compassionate sense in knowing that a vegan diet does not involve the suffering or use of animals for human consumption, the vegan diet is the clear standout amongst a crowded and muddled field of modern diets.

Related criticisms of cows for their flatulence display either utter ignorance or a deliberate scheme. Cow burps are accompanied by cow manure, which is a vital fertilizer that, when properly fed to soil, causes more methane and carbon dioxide to be sequestered than the cow ever created. The alternative crops we are told we will eat are to be raised using GMOs (saturating the soil with more glyphosate and other toxic chemicals) and synthetic fertilizers that release nitrous oxide and other pollutants (urea is manufactured from methane!).

The technocratic math doesn’t add up. Small wonder the genuine farmers of the world are standing up in droves in Europe: they see the destruction of their livelihoods and the ecosystem by those feigning its rescue to seize yet more power.

If humanity keeps following misinformed (or duplicitous) people into the ignorant dependency and environmental destruction of this faux eco-cause, perhaps it is well deserved—one ignores one’s food at one’s peril. But this ignorance threatens to sweep all before it aside, not just through totalitarianism (to “save the planet” we must sacrifice all individual liberties) but because expanding humanity’s industrial ag diet will drench the land in neonicotinoids which will kill the bees, atrazine which will kill fish and saturate groundwater, and a host of other chemicals yet to be created to fix the problems these and other man-made disasters cause.

If raising cows humanely is good for people and the land, it’s also good for the cows. Not all industrial livestock practices are as inhumane as the activist agitators claim. It is unpleasant for humans to imagine being housed in a crate, but farrowing pens save piglets’ lives—even veterinarians support them. But not the activists, who believe (as with hunting rights and wildlife management by biologists) that their moral claims are superior to what farmers or hunters, or veterinarians or wildlife biologists, know about animals.

I raise animals traditionally. They never miss a meal, are always with water and housing, run on green pastures, raise their own young, and are slaughtered here where they were born with zero suffering. Those who lump this form of animal husbandry together with industrial factories are either dishonest or profoundly uninformed. Farmers do not enjoy taking life in order to eat well and live: it is an ancient practice entailing humility, reverence, and gratitude.

Climate and animal rights activists may unwittingly further the aims of those who seek to seize control of all food (and its “equitable” distribution”) in the name of saving the world. The World Economic Forum, which seeks to lead the world into yet greater technocratic industrial agricultural dependency, is populated by “partners” who have been among the worst actors in destroying farming, the ecosystem, and animal welfare: Dow, Monsanto (now Bayer), Cargill, Syngenta, JBS…. The list is hundreds of consumer-poisoning corporations long.

This global coordination of corporate “stakeholders” is served by climate/vegan activists, begging Big Brother Ag to rescue them from carbon dioxide, while sparing farm animals from slaughter. But it is not the traditionally raised animals who need rescue: While the vegan/climate alliance lumps soil-building animal husbandry in with factory meat production, the industrial masters were busy at work. New “plant-based” products are highly processed, adulterated with dubious chemical additives, costly, and not very flavorful.

Most of the humans who embrace this baloney about climate-killing cows and cow-killing humans have eagerly thrust their necks into a parallel industrial dependency and blind trust as the factory animals they seek to liberate. Chomping against nature’s bit to expand industrial food production in the name of saving either animals or the planet is a fool’s mission, begging for servitude. I do not say this here to condemn but to spare these well-intentioned but misinformed people the consequences of what they are seeking.

The technocratic destruction of America’s farms (documented in Wendell Berry’s seminal work, The Unsettling of America) pushed millions of Americans into cities for work, where they are disconnected from the soil microbiome upon which the human companion (the stomach) depends. Inhaling toxic air, crammed into compact housing, feeding on plastic-wrapped factory fare trucked into the cities, drinking a long list of unpronounceable chemicals in their tap water, more and more Americans are waking up to their Orwellian enslavement and embarking on homesteading journeys, or at least trying to reclaim a responsible relationship with their food.

In the cities, the vegans and their climate warrior allies dine on styrofoam-packed vegetables raised with tasty glyphosate and atrazine (a ubiquitous endocrine disrupter that imitates estrogen). These consumers do not rebuild soils like cows, and their regenerative masters do, but they advocate for more regulations against farmers. They strive to protect bees from suffering by embracing policies that will extinguish all bees; they embrace no-animal policies that, in the name of animal welfare, will end all livestock animals being alive—and with them, the manure upon which plant agriculture has always depended will vanish.

Sickened by toxic food (and perhaps a deficiency of vital amino acids), big-ag consumers will need more medications to counter the ill effects of their unnatural diets. No worries—the same technocrats are available to proffer more drugs, just like with the CAFO cows. Drugs for obesity replace exercise; bottled water is teaming with microplastics; new antibiotics may be effective for a little while longer. Rushing to enslave themselves like animals in a cage, the animal rights and climate activists who think they are on the “right side of history” are unwittingly reinforcing their dependence on the corporations that have long damaged the ecosystem and human health.

My cows and sheep have much healthier lives and much greater freedom than these self-enslaved human consumers. My livestock do not require rescue from a generation of people so disconnected from farming that they are attacking the natural systems upon which their future health and food security depend.

My animals are that future.

 

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

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

The Science of Censorship – NSF Spent 39 Million to Suppress Free Speech and Public Debate

Sun, 2024-03-10 01:00 +0000

The cabal of US Intelligence agencies responsible for the censorship industrial complex can welcome a new member. New to us. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has been fingered in a new Congressional report alleging tens of millions were spent on AI to censor the public.

“In the name of combatting alleged misinformation regarding COVID-19 and the 2020 election, NSF has been issuing multimillion-dollar grants to university and nonprofit research teams,” reads the report by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

“The purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop AI-powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others.” ..

The efforts included tracking public criticism of the foundation’s work by conservative journalists and legal scholars.

The NSF also developed a media strategy “that considered blacklisting certain American media outlets because they were scrutinizing NSF’s funding of censorship and propaganda tools,” according to the report.

NSF denies all of it while admitting that it funded Track F, which the report claims is “a systematic federal effort to replace human “disinformation” monitors with AI-driven digital systems that are capable of vastly more comprehensive monitoring and censoring.

The Obama regime, which began in 2009, invested heavily in at least two ideas—weaponizing federal agencies and large-scale illegal surveillance (foreign and domestic). The rage campaigns against Trump have all proven to be inside smear jobs with the knowledge of high-ranking political appointees and elected officials. The Twitter files exposed the natural evolution of weaponization and surveillance in the form of deliberate Censorship. And the proposals from schools fishing for the grants might as well be NSF whistleblowers.

One illustration that the group provided to NSF in its funding pitch was its ability to “crawl” more than 750,000 blogs and media articles on a daily basis for misinformation and fact-checking on themes such as “undermining trust in mainstream media,” “fear-mongering and anti-Black narratives,” and “weakening political participation.”

“As [Scott] Hale, the director of research at Meedan, explained in an email to NSF, in his ‘dream world,’ Big Tech would collect all of the censored content to enable ‘disinformation’ researchers to use that data to create ‘automated detection’ to censor any similar speech automatically,” the report reads.

Another University “received $5.75 million in NSF funding “to develop a tool to ’empower efforts by journalists, developers, and citizens to fact-check delegitimizing information’ about ‘election integrity and vaccine efficacy’ on social media.

The tool “would allow ‘fact-checkers to perform rapid-cycle testing of fact-checking messages and monitor their real-time performance among online communities at-risk of misinformation exposure,’” the congressional report reads.

If it walks like Censorship and talks like it,

The National Science Foundation can claim whatever it likes about its intentions. The grant winner applications outline how their AI tool can sift massive amounts of private speech in search of messaging that challenges the government’s approved narratives. Label it as misinformation or identify themes to which the state can launch counter-insurgent narrative warfare; that’s what you’re funding.

Taken as part of the ongoing mission to spy on citizens and control what they see, hear, and read, perhaps someone needs to censor their budget out of existence along with any number of other agencies whose mission creep extends to laundering tax dollars in service to an authoritarian surveillance state.

 

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Manchester VA Whistleblower Part 3: Contact with Hassan, Shaheen, Pappas

Sat, 2024-03-09 23:00 +0000

“We’ve all heard the sensational stories of whistleblower retaliation in federal agencies, but I have the sense most potential whistleblowers get left in the dust of federal bureaucracy, with multiple oversight agencies passing complaints back and forth and little resolution.  My biggest fear in this process was retaliation, but I would prefer that over the feeling of alienation.”  This is an excerpt from a letter I sent to Senator Shaheen, Senator Hassan, and Congressman Pappas. I eventually had interactions with staff members from all three; mostly disappointing.

In part one of this series, I discussed the injustice I witnessed in the care of our nation’s Veterans and the malfeasance of management at the Manchester VA. In part two, I discussed the stonewalling I received from the federal oversight agencies after I worked up the courage to blow the whistle.

The only option I had left was to contact our elected representatives and inform them of the experience of a whistleblower.  Senator Hassan and Congressmen Pappas are both on their respective Veteran’s Affairs Committees.  Hassan recently asked the Secretary of the VA to address the failing infrastructure in Manchester, and Pappas has addressed issues of whistleblower retaliation within the VA and the oversight agencies.  All of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation make periodic visits to the Manchester VA to shake hands with employees, take pictures, and visit with management.  I’ll let the reader decide if these are meaningful visits or mere photo-ops.  In my opinion, this isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue but more of a dysfunction of the bureaucracy.

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My first reply was from a Veteran’s representative for Congressman Pappas.  We emailed back and forth for two months, and I was repeatedly told they were reviewing my information.  Eventually, I was told the oversight agencies have never shared information with their staff, and there is likely little they can do.  I guess whistleblowers are not the only ones whom these agencies are stonewalling.  I’m not sure how Congress can conduct oversight if the agencies refuse to share information.

Worse was the phone call from Senator Shaheen’s staff member, who rushed me off the phone after he independently determined my mistreatment was due to my choosing to be anonymous.  He informed me he would call the VA New England Director to inquire about my case, but he never called me back and did not return my call when I attempted to follow up.

Eventually, I did receive some hope from the staff of Senator Hassan.  I spent time talking on the phone with one person and emailing back and forth with another.  For the first time in eight months, someone spoke to me and listened to what I had to say.  I was told my case was used to inform meetings where communication among the agencies was discussed, and they reached out to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and received a response to my concerns.

The response from OIG was a disturbing act of gaslighting and excuses of why they didn’t address my concerns, which included not having evidence of harm, too much time passing, and “Covid.”  Most disturbing was only one of my issues was forwarded to VA New England “for awareness,” meaning none of the other issues were forwarded as I was led to believe that nothing was investigated, and there was no follow-up or actual oversight.  This is why I’d asked to speak with a human being to ensure all information was being communicated by all involved agencies.  Additionally, they suggested I should have kept better records to determine if harm occurred to Veterans.  This would not only violate VA policy but also patient privacy laws.  It seems the oversight and investigation agency was suggesting I do my own oversight and investigation.  Of course, I was still not given a point of contact at OIG, so my reply was to Hassan’s staff asking they send it to OIG (talk about a bureaucratic nightmare).

It’s been over a year since I started this journey, and I have yet to speak with anyone at OIG or VA New England Headquarters about these issues.

I want to take a minute and say that most of the Veterans at Manchester VA are receiving good medical care.  There are good people working at the VA, many who are true advocates of the community, but when there are issues that need to be addressed, management fails almost every time.  When I think about the staggering number of managers walking around the Manchester VA on any given day, this is just not acceptable.  The common mantras “we’ve always done it that way” and “look where you work” wouldn’t be a reasonable excuse in any other Manchester Hospital, and it shouldn’t be at the VA either.

This three-part series demonstrated not only a failure of VA management but also a failure of oversight on a staggering scale.

I will supplement this series with commentary and opinion pieces in the future.

 

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Everything Is A Laughing Matter For Libs

Sat, 2024-03-09 21:00 +0000

The New tact for the Democrats is rude, insulting, and degrading. Four women sat on the opinion desk of MSNBC on Super Tuesday and had a good laugh at and insulted every Republican in this country. These people were thrilled that Joe Biden was elected and pledged to be the great unifier.

He failed miserably, and the legacy media is falling into the pit of despair with him. Nothing is funny about Joe Biden’s America, and these people insulting us like we are meaningless individuals is disgusting.



Jen Psaki, Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow, and a no-name to balance the set laughed at Republicans in an attempt to minimize the Party and its supporters. Maybe this is the reason that nobody watches this network. They started with the polling data indicating that immigration was the number one concern for Republicans. Psaki had a good chuckle over Virginians who were concerned about immigration. Maddow quickly pointed out that Virginia has a border with West Virginia. This line got a chuckle, but why? It was insensitive to the good folks of West Virginia.

Joy Reid then went into a monologue, with the other three nodding in agreement, that Republicans are a one-issue Party. That one issue is Race. What an overpaid, undereducated Harvard Ass. Joy Reid is the next generation Al Sharpton, who can twist any topic to Race. Reid is an example of wasting good money on an Ivy League education because, in the end, it is useless for most people. She went on to claim that all Republicans are obsessed with a flow of “brown people” crossing our border. Republicans are concerned about people of any color coming from over 150 countries to break into America. We Republicans will debate any Radical Leftist at any time on any topic. The dim Karine Jean-Pierre can say daily that Joe Biden has done more in his three years than any President has done in two terms in 50 years. She can say it, but no one believes it, and by the polls, that includes Democrats.

This quick video clip highlights a significant difference between Democrats and Republicans. We, on the Right, respect life, whether it is an unborn fetus or Laken Hope Riley. We do not laugh at the plight of Americans in this new Biden America. We pledge to make sure Biden does not have another four years to further destroy our once great country. It must have taken a lot of effort to get four ignorant, callous, and offensive women on the same panel at MSNBC, or maybe I am wrong, and they could have pulled any four people out of their cesspool of talking heads and had the same results.

Rachel Maddow explained on Tuesday night that MSNBC has a policy of not showing any speeches by former President Donald Trump, saying the network opts not to give lies a platform. We can assume, then, that the network will not cover the State of the Union

 

The post Everything Is A Laughing Matter For Libs appeared first on Granite Grok.

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