Vermont taxpayers are screwed. Their Democrat majority government can override any Phil Scott Veto (assuming he’s not also part of the problem) and where there are Democrats, there will be higher taxes and little or nothing to show for the taking. The failed public education experiment is a great example.

Twenty years ago (2004), Vermont had a problem.

A total of 39 schools, or 13 percent, failed to make what is defined as adequate yearly progress this year, Education Commissioner Richard Cate said Tuesday. The results, he said, should be used to better understand how to serve all Vermont students and not to judge schools. “If identification doesn’t mean that terrible things are going to happen, I don’t think we should care quite as much about numbers as we should about the needs of kids,” Cate said. “All I really care about is that all the kids are served.”

If you compare the 2003 troubles reported in that 2004 article to the 2024 troubles (or the 2023 proficiency results), the needs of the kids cost exponentially more while fewer of them are “being served.” Competency is down, and grade-level reading and math are down.

“Bellows Falls Union High School Principal Kelly O’Ryan told the school’s budget committee this week that seven freshmen out of a classroom of 14 students were reading at a first-grade or elementary school level.”

It’s not that only half of the high school students can read to grade level. It’s that half of them can only read to a first-grade level.

It’s not just Bellows Falls but statewide.

As has been reported, Vermont test scores are dropping significantly and have been for over a decade. A recent deep dive revealed that our public schools have been teaching kids to read the wrong way for over a generation. Along that line comes a story from the Brattleboro Reformer, Low Reading Scores Alarm BFUHS Board, in which the Bellows Falls Union High School principal revealed that half of the freshman class “were reading at a first-grade or elementary school level.”

The one thing that IS up is school budgets and spending which brings us to Town meeting 2024. Multiple outlets have reported that a third of towns rejected their school budgets last week. What one commenter suggested might be a historical record.

Well, the reason that so many budgets failed is because property taxes were projected to skyrocket by nearly 20%. And that’s because, collectively, the budgets that were put before voters represented a $230 million increase in education spending. So even before all these budgets went down, lawmakers were already saying, ‘This is a crisis. Something has got to give.’ Tuesday’s results confirmed for them, that they have a mandate for change.

VermontGrok regular Rob Roper wrote about this latest tidal wave tax and the spending last December.

Vermont already spends more per pupil than almost every other state in the Union at the official count of $22,953, but the NEA pegged the number at $25,053 in 2022-23, which is the number you get when you simply divide the education budget by the number of students. And what are we getting for all this increased spending year after year? An unmitigated disaster of falling student outcomes, rising classroom violence, and a shockingly arrogant lack of accountability or common sense by public school officials.

Democrats can’t imagine a solution that doesn’t involve throwing more of your money into a bottomless hole. In the case of public Ed, however, they get some back from union dues to campaign coffers to boots on the ground, and more often than is reported – electioneering. Democrats benefit from recycling your hard-earned dollars through an institution that can’t seem to do much else unless turning generations of kids into helpless illiterate gender queers can be viewed as another positive (though again, you’d be right to wonder for whom).

After spending a barrel of one-time money, Vermont is over a barrel. The state used inflation-driving COVID bailouts to grow school budgets, and taxpayers were left holding the larger bag. That was not an accident. It is a well-honed tactic of government-first progressives: Make government bigger and then cry about how awful things will get if they have to propose cuts. Anyone who dares is smeared, and taxes rise perpetually to fill a space that didn’t exist before the one-time money came along.

Wash, rinse, repeat. When the institution continues to fail, the solution is more money to pay for more failure—a doom loop that few ever escape.

Public education has been in decline for decades, and for just as long, Amininstrators union loudmouths, and politicians have blamed it on money. But the only thing more money can be directly connected to in government schools is dumber children. As the budgets have grown, kids have become less capable, less proficient, and ill-prepared for anything outside that fiscally bloated womb.

It would be nice if you could invest that in something else, but the other problem with electing Democrats is they will do whatever they can to trap your kids in their doom loop.

What exactly you plan to do about that is your decision, but a good start would be to stop electing Democrats for at least as long as your schools have been failing.

The post More Money Will Only Make The “Public Education Problem” Worse appeared first on Granite Grok.

Growing up in China, I never heard of parental rights. Every child in China belongs to the State. After Mao used urban youth Red Guards during his Cultural Revolution, he forced them to be re-educated in the countryside. My uncles were sent hundreds of miles away from home for ten years, and my grandparents had no say.

As a student, I was subjected to forced indoctrination in government schools, centralized curricula, testing, data collection, secret “Student Files,” and mandatory vaccinations.

Student Files for each child included grades, speeches, behaviors, rewards, violations, punishments, physical health, mental health, vaccine shots, religion, family members inf. No parents were allowed to see what was in these files.

Our school day started with chanting “Long Live CHAIRMAN MAO, LONG LIVE CCP” and red songs like “My parents are dear, but Chairman Mao is dearer.” We were required to memorize Mao’s quotations, writing dairies reviewed by teachers, report on our family and neighbors for anti-gov speeches, and confess our own incorrect thoughts.

There were posters in schools and communities in front of your eyes everywhere.

Our music and art classes were about showing affection and loyalty to Mao, demonizing the oppressors. I never questioned anything. It was effective in convincing people that if you see something and hear something daily, it must be the truth. I would see Mao’s face in the clouds and in the fire under our wok, smiling at me. I thought Mao was a God until he died when I was 12. That was my first awaking moment.

What happened in China is happening here in the US. I opposed Common Core, centralized education standards, testing, and data collection over ten years ago. I enrolled my kids in a charter school where I served as a board member and a chair. Today’s school kids are being indoctrinated with CRT, the 1619 project, SEL, DEI, Gender Ideology, LGBTQ agendas, etc.

We want to thank Lily Tang Williams for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.

Kids are encouraged to keep secrets from parents, health centers in schools keep separate files, and teachers are not required to inform parents about a child’s gender identity change. Some School teachers and counselors are political activists who brainwash and train kids to be SJWs.

Parents are being sidelined, if you dare to challenge age-inappropriate books in schools, you are called bigots, and book banners. If you go to school board meetings speaking up against their indoctrination, you could be a “domestic terrorist”.

The fact that I must go to the State House and Senate to testify to support parental rights bills is concerning. It is absolutely necessary, though. It clarifies and protects one of the most ancient of all human rights – parental sovereignty.

The deepest human bond is between parents and their children. This bond must be protected from being torn by any political agenda. In America, children still belong to their parents, not the government, not the institutions, not any collective groups.

In America, children belong to their parents, not state. Parents have the right to choose the best suitable school for their children. Parents must have the right to know what their children are taught in school, Parents should have the right to access all their kids’ personal data, health records, and make informed medical decisions with/for their children.

Schools should not be political battlefields or indoctrination centers. Schools should be places of joyful learning focusing on academic subjects like reading, writing, math, and science — not places of social engineering with divisive political agendas and age-inappropriate content.

Girls should always feel safe to use their bathrooms, boys, too. Girls’ sports should not be crushed by men who identify as women.

Parents, grandparents, and good teachers, our kids need us more than ever. They are the most vulnerable, innocent, and precious humans and need our love, guidance, and protection.

Local town elections, including school board elections, are coming up on March 12th. Show up to vote for the candidates who represent your values and respect your parental rights. Make it your priority to get involved in your kids’ schools and their lives at home, including their social media activities.

If your state can’t pass a parental rights bill, try to work with local districts or towns to protect kids. At the Federal level, make sure your candidates will pledge to sponsor or co-sponsor a bill to abolish the DOE and return education to local control and parental control. That is what I will do when I get elected.

We need concerned citizen groups willing to be fierce, Mama and Papa Bears ready to protect the children. Your children, families, and freedoms depend on this. Take action now before it is too late.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBoBBQUpa4U&t=225s
Lily Tang Williams
Republican Congressional Candidate NH02
www.lilytangwilliams.com
Reminder: Content about candidates or by candidates is not an endorsement by GraniteGrok.com or its authors.

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Several Gmail users have emailed me to say they got the newsletter this morning. I checked, and we are in 100% compliance with Gmail’s requirements for now, so if you use Gmail and don’t see it today, it is in your spam folder (mine was).

Compliance with Outlook, Comcast, and several other mail services has also improved, but they are not 100% compliant, so we will continue to work on that.

As a reminder, we now are delivering two newsletters daily. The AM version will have the posts from the previous evening. The PM version will have the posts from that day.

I’m excited to learn that we are making progress.

Again, check spam, and then, if you are still not receiving it and know you signed up, please let me know.

steve@granitegrok.com

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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.

We want to thank D. S. Dexter Tarbox Jr. for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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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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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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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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