Thursday • October 2 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.XL
Manchester, N.H.
With a few weeks left and only one CAT3 US landfall in 2023, the Climate Cult must be beside itself: all the boiling hot ocean water and only one landfall. The news gets worse. Nothing is coming (anytime soon) to save their narrative.
Related: It Was Not the Wettest July in NH History Nor the Hottest
The only tropical storm in the Atlantic is Phillipe, and his track is estimated to head north from the Sargasso Sea, far too far from shore to be of any use and never achieving hurricane status.
You might wonder, why, Steve, do we care? Perhaps you don’t, but you have to remember the context. July was hot. Not the hottest, but it was … hot. The media pretended there was nothing like it on record, by which they mean records they’d admit exist. A lot of people swallowed the bait, and what goes with it? The rest of the narrative.
Super-heated oceans create massive super-storms that wreak havoc on coastal communities: sea swell, flooding, damage and destruction, dogs and cats living together. But that last thing is the only thing mankind has caused. Cats and dogs can live together absent the alleged chaos, just like Hot Julys and this year’s hurricane season.
July convinced NOAA to tweak its previous forecast.
In May, it predicted “a range of 12 to 17 total named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher). Of those, 5 to 9 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 1 to 4 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5; with winds of 111 mph or higher). NOAA has a 70% confidence in these ranges.”
In early August, the prediction changed: “The outlook now includes a 70% chance of 14-21 named storms, of which 6-11 could become hurricanes, and 2-5 could become major hurricanes. The updated outlook also states that current conditions are likely to counterbalance the usually limiting atmospheric conditions associated with the ongoing El Niño event.”
As predictions go, they’ve done worse, but not much has come of getting close. Most of the storms were tropical and muddled about the middle of the Atlantic like Joe Biden looking for a hand to shake.
I wouldn’t call it embarrassing; Tropical Storm Phillipe is number 16, the fourth of his name, but when they predict 5-9 hurricanes, including 1-4 major ones, we expect them to be big and make landfall. The Cult gets giddy. Is this the year they get to use that bigger, more frequent storm narrative to socialize energy? Nope.
They must redirect their anger and frustration toward whatever sloppy excuses they can articulate. They certainly can’t say global warming makes more cyclones that just putter about the ocean never reaching land. Oh, and you’re still a denier! And their agenda is still getting rammed down our throats with CAT 5-level executive orders and bureaucratic rule-making.
They don’t need no stinkin’ storms, but it helps the optics.
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With the passing of Senator Dianne Feinstein last week, the responsibility of replacing the late Senator falls on Governor Gavin Newsom of California. Newsom’s nominee will serve until a Senator is elected in 2024 and sworn in in January 2025.
Newsom had made two stipulations when it became apparent that Senator Feinstein was failing and would not survive the remainder of her term. Newsom committed to naming a Black Woman and would insist the nominee not run for the Senate seat in 2024. He has made good on one but may change his tune on the other.
On Sunday night, Newsom named Laphonza Butler to fill the role. Butler is not a household name and is unfamiliar to most, not just outside California but inside, too. Laphonza Butler is what you get when the person making the appointment paints themselves into a corner with specific promises.
Butler is not new to politics as a campaign organizer and operative who has never held a public office. She may not be qualified to be a Senator, but she did check off the two essential boxes. She is Black and a woman who comes to the table with a bonus box checked. Laphonza Butler is a Black Woman who happens to be a Lesbian. She is a trifecta for Governor Gavin Newsom. She is not the best person available for the Senate, but she checks boxes, which is more critical in this Woke World of Politics.
Nobody enters the political world quickly; something is always in their closet. In Butler’s case, she had a huge flaw that had to be rectified Sunday night before the announcement. Laphonza Butler was not a legal resident of California but of Maryland. Butler cannot serve as a Senator of a state she does not live in. So, Butler and Newsom miraculously found a Town Clerk working on a weekend and registered the appointee as a California voter on Sunday night. When will someone throw the Red Challenge Flag and call foul on this process?
From the first stipulation by Newsom, where but in politics can you narrow the search for an employee to a specific Race or Gender? To do so in a private business environment would land you a civil rights or equal opportunity employment violation. Not for the President with his Vice President pick and his Supreme Court nominee, and now we see it is perfectly legal for a Democrat Governor. Is it legal, or is it a case of nobody having the guts to challenge these selections?
Anyone must prove residence to register to vote in a new city or state. There is no way that she could produce the documents to show that she lived in California and not in Maryland, as was detailed in her biography on the website of Emily’s List, where she is the organization’s president. Emily’s List is a political action group focusing on abortion rights.
Aside from the technicalities, Butler’s real issue is whether she checks boxes or is she qualified to be a United States Senator. Nothing in her resume indicates her ability to perform the job, but she will probably be in D.C. for 15 months and will only need to vote, however, she is directed by Chuck Schumer. That she can probably handle. She just needs to watch John Fetterman and do as he does.
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America has a free speech problem. Not so much the idea. A majority of those recently polled by Real Clear Politics think “First Amendment protections for freedom of speech is a good thing.” But they don’t all agree on what free speech is or means.
That lack of understanding has led to unhealthy opinions about the First Amendment.
A few cherry-picked bullets from RCP.
As alluded to in the opening, “Overall, 9 in 10 voters in the U.S. think First Amendment protections for freedom of speech is a good thing, while only 9% think it is a bad thing,” said pollster Spencer Kimball, who directed the RCP survey. “This is agreed upon across the demographics, like party affiliation, age, and race.”
Good in principle but not in practice.
We know what Free Speech means. The government cannot infringe on public speech; allowing that camel’s nose under the tent ends with the camel in the tent and no room for anything but what it decides. We’ve seen how that works in real life, from COVID to Vaccines to masks to closing churches to so-called disinformation ministers (official or self-reclaimed) to shuttering businesses or jailing protesters because they are registered with the wrong political party. And that’s in America.
We’ve seen worse outside our borders and as close as Canada. It’s not pretty.
But the media, including social, have created reasonable doubt in the minds of many. Instead of Free Speech, we need free speech*.
Some conditions have always applied., but the new-age version knows not the evil it embraces. If you ask the government to regulate something, especially speech, it will not stop at whatever boundary line you’ve concocted in your imagination. Once invited across the threshold, it still sucks your rights dry; any bureaucracy tasked with policing words and ideas will do that and won’t stop. You won’t be able to stop it.
Candidates will run on it, but they’ll never manage to do more than get elected. And we are only a few Supreme Court justices away from what little protection we have, as capricious as that can be. Quite often, these unelected, robed hooligans are what stand between us and sanctioned, lawful censorship. A regime that expands its speech and thought policing far and wide such that it will inevitably trample on those who believe it a good idea to regulate some speech.
We do regulate some speech, libel, slander, and genuine threats of harm, but the government bungles these often. Why anyone would see fit to allow them to manage more astounds me, but they do, and it is a growing trend we need to reverse soon. The root of which is public education. We need to teach children why speech must be free, even when we don’t like it, or they might grow up in a nation without it.
Speech is free or not, and asking the State to manage the middle ground will only result in there being no ground left upon which to stand and voice your opinion, especially if it contradicts that of those with power.
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As promised in Monday Memes, I have an overflow. My meme cup runneth over. And yes there will be a Friday edition too.
Let the mayhem, mockery, and ridicule resume:
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Having some hiccups with meme collection. I think I’ve figured out the problem but small collection this post.
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Pick of the Post:
I just had one kid at the doctor’s office. They offered the flu shot.
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Palate cleansers:
—
—
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Come back on Friday for more. Same meme time. Same meme channel.
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Kevin McCarthy is out as speaker, and people are, as they should, picking sides. Ray Cardello thinks Matt Gaetz is a petulant child without a plan. Ed Mosca is happy to see Republicans of the principle remove him for failing to do his job.
Republicans in at least one Facebook group where I lurk think dethroning McCarthy was a bad idea—party division. We are shooting ourselves in the foot. Question: if everyone agrees that Washington, DC, is broken, how do we think fixing it might look?
Did it look like the brief tenure of Speaker McCarthy?
While McCarthy was speaker, Joe, and the Democrats didn’t seem to have too much trouble advancing their agenda at a time when Kevin’s job – his only job – was to leverage significant concessions or bring Congress to a screeching halt. I don’t recall hearing any tires chirp.
Let’s turn that around. As the House ponders his replacement, can they be a disruptor? Someone who walks against the flow of politics as usual. A guy or gal who says no to open borders and uses the power of the body and the majority to cut purse strings to get the Executive Branch under control. Or will it be someone who must also agree to look the other way? A leader who, instead of returning the budget process to clean appropriations or bust, has to agree to support continuing resolutions and pork-filled omnibus bills to get Republican votes. Someone who agrees that 33 trillion isn’t too much debt, we can afford some more.
Kevin McCarthy might be a great guy and a passable member of Congress, but it took fifteen attempts before he managed enough votes to get the gavel. And only after multiple concessions to the freedom wing of the Caucus and the very thing that got him “fired” from the gig. One of those concessions was a rule allowing any member to call a vote to vacate. That’s not exactly a guy with a mandate. Any Republican pretending anything else has a poor memory.
Here’s another unpleasant truth. In the wake of his departure as speaker, only Republicans can fail to elect one of their own to the post. Democrats will reject anyone who is not an R, which is meaningless unless Republicans screw it up. Is the departure of McCarthy as Speaker an expression of distaste at the removal from leadership of a milquetoast insider, or are we afraid our Republicans will do worse?
I have a few years of experience as an observer of politics, including the ones where Kevin McCarthy was Speaker of the US House. He was no great find. He’s much closer to the Inside the Beltway party than flyover country Republicans, but he could have been more like the latter.
Twelve appropriations bills. All he needed to do was bring the budget process back into line by forcing votes on each of the individual appropriations bills, clean and neat. Democrats would have been the ones shutting down the government, and we’d be able to put a name to the department, its largesse, and who was affected. He opted for a continuing resolution which, like the omnibus bills of the past decade-plus, have helped drive waste, fraud, abuse, and deficits (plus interest) into the pockets of our grandchildren.
I’m not saying I didn’t like the guy. Given the choices at the time, he appeared to have potential, but as often happens, he hid his Georgetown flu or got a more severe case along the way. He’s not the first or the last, and such is our problem. Too few members of Congress keep the principles they claim to get elected when they get to DC – it is a rare, perhaps even precious, trait, and we need more of it.
And I get why you might think Matt Gaetz was a petulant child, but he did something of which most Republicans are incapable. He got Democrats to vote for change Republicans can believe in if Republicans can stop bitching about displacing a budding DC insider from leadership long enough to replace him with someone with a bit more backbone.
Republicans control the US House, but what exactly have they done with that? If you are unsure, compare McCarthy’s US House to any Democrat majority, no matter how slim. They act like they can’t lose and refuse to accept no for an answer. They use their power to advance as much of their agenda as they can and to block every other, regardless of which branch of government.
Was McCarthy finally moving in that direction? I saw no evidence of it. And I’m not saying the Republican majority will manage to do better, just that someone had to rip off the bandaid, or we’d keep doing worse. America is worse off under McCarthy as Speaker. Much worse.
Are you sure you want to defend that?
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About a month ago, I wrote a story about Slate Valley School Board member Curtis Hier’s battle with both the school officials he was elected to oversee and his fellow board members, who don’t seem to appreciate Hier’s desire to get to the bottom of some serious problems in the system that are negatively impacting students.
The main issue at the heart of Hier’s concerns (although there are several) is the physical and psychological abuse of students by faculty – primarily kids with special needs – and the alleged cover-up of these abuses.
From a news perspective, this would appear to be low-hanging fruit for the front pages of local and statewide reporting outlets. It has sympathetic victims our reporters usually like to cover (equity for special needs students), dramatic conflict between a whistleblower and an entrenched bureaucracy, and it explores a scandalous issue that is also a subject of statewide concern – the use of “restraint and seclusion” in our public schools.
This problem is so glaring and widespread that the state legislature introduced a bill in 2023 (H.409) banning the violent practices entirely and that Education Committee members promise will be a focal point of lawmaking in 2024. Since Hier brought attention to the issue, multiple local citizens with ties to the school have come forward with stories corroborating and/or expanding on Hier’s allegations.
Hier has filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request for redacted records regarding restraint and seclusion incidents. This was met with a threat to release Hier’s personal file from his days as a teacher. Hier started Slate Valley Transparency Legal Fund. There have been calls from the board for Hier to step down, and calls from the community for the superintendent, Brooke Olsen-Farrell, to step down….
So where is the Vermont press corps?Looking back through the archives of our major statewide news outlets, there is no coverage of this story. Even coverage by the Rutland Herald, the paper of record for the Slate Valley District, has been anemic. (Just two rather vague articles, and largely disinterested in getting to the bottom of Hier’s accusations.) It’s not because Hier hasn’t reached out to them; he has. Is it because they just don’t cover specific local school board issues? This excuse would seem to apply to Seven Days and VPR (although VPR did have one recent story on the Green Mountain School Board’s allegedly racist “Chieftains” mascot controversy). WCAX covers Burlington and adjacent school board stories, but that’s about it, so they can plausibly say it’s just not in their wheelhouse.
However, VT Digger and WPTZ do love themselves a good local school board controversy from anywhere in the state! So long as, one must now assume, it fits a certain narrative. School boards battling over racist mascots is a favorite topic for these outlets, for sure. School board conflicts over transgender policies: check! But public school employees systemically abusing vulnerable students and administrators covering it up… apparently not so much.
VT Digger routinely covers stories about local school board controversies involving members, school staff, and/or concerned parents. Just within the timeframe that the Hier events have been active, Digger dug into such headlines as, Community members urge Middlebury school district to improve its response to racism (September 27, 2023), “Alburgh School Board moves to distance itself from Grand Isle Supervisory Union (August 30, 2023), Facing no-confidence vote, South Burlington school board chair steps down (August 17, 2023), Parents say a Strafford art teacher lost her job under cloudy circumstances. They want her back. (August 16, 2023), South Burlington school board will hold vote on chair’s ouster (August 11, 2023), How did an anti-trans activist book an event at a Vergennes public school? (June 16, 2023), Brattleboro Union High School retires ‘Colonel’ moniker, replaces with ‘Bear’ mascot (June 14, 2023), At Peoples Academy, allegations of ‘systemic’ racist bullying (June 12, 2023), Orange Southwest reaches settlement in locker room lawsuit (June 2, 2023).
On September 8th Digger ran, “Independent investigation finds multiple abuse allegations at Kurn Hattin ‘supported by evidence,’” so they apparently don’t have an aversion to discussing the abuse of special needs students. But Kurn Hattin is a therapeutic independent school, not a public school, and herein, I suspect, lies the rub!
Vermont’s Left-wing media routinely puts its thumb on the scale to advance the woke agenda of the public school monopoly and its political interests. Right now, those interests include absorbing birth to five-year-old childcare into the public school system (at massive taxpayer expense) and shutting down Vermont’s independent schools and the tuitioning system that supports them so as to corral those kids and that money for themselves as well. And they feel the need to do this now while the Democrats’ supermajority, which is totally in bed with the teachers’ union, is in place and can override Governor Scott’s vetoes.
Obviously, a broad, public conversation focused on violence and psychological trauma being inflicted upon young children by public school officials and gotten away with due to lack of transparency, and competent oversight isn’t one that recommends placing toddlers into that environment to be either witnesses to or victims of these practices.
As for the independent school/tuitioning issue, the main argument that public school lobbyists have put forward to justify shutting down tuitioning is that independent schools don’t serve students with special needs, whereas public schools must and do. And public schools are transparent and accountable, whereas independent schools aren’t. Neither accusation is true about independent schools. But what Hier is trying to expose provides evidence for the exact opposite case: that public schools aren’t transparent and accountable, they aren’t actually serving special needs kids, and, in fact, beyond mere neglect, may be actively causing them serious harm.
So, says our press, nothing to see here. Move along.
The Curtis Hier story exposes two stories behind the story. 1) The public school system is not performing as it should, especially for our most vulnerable students. And 2) Our reporters and editors at our most widely read/viewed news outlets are more concerned with protecting a politically powerful special interest than they are about informing the public about serious issues taking place in the most expensive sector of state spending – Pre-K-12 education. Our ignorance is their bliss.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank. He is also a regular contributor to VermontGrok.
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Thomas Sowell is Brilliant, but that quality is not new to the man. In today’s clip, we jump into the way back machine to watch a younger Dr. Sowell lay out the inconvenient truths about how blacks are being kept down in America.
This clip is only a minute long but worth the wait, as Sowell delivers the kill shot at the end of the clip. A truth from decades ago that he has revisited many times that is as or more true today.
Modern welfare programs keep blacks in America down.
Dependence was seen as the key to holding the slaves down. It’s ironic that same principle comes up in the welfare state a hundred years later.
pic.twitter.com/FsTsnaigaG— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) October 3, 2023
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Thank you, Matt Gaetz, for exposing Kevin McCathy’s House-GOP as controlled opposition. Not a single impeachment … the military-industrial complex’s War in Ukraine continues to get funded … the DOJ’s war against Donald Trump continues to get funded … and we end up with a “continuing resolution” because, as Gaetz exposed, that’s where McCarthy wanted to end up. Gaetz was one of eight Republicans who said that enough was enough and refused to go along to get along. Nancy Mace was another:
Today I voted for the Motion to Vacate and remove the Speaker.
This isn’t about left vs right.
This isn’t about ideology.
This is about trust and keeping your word.
This is about making Congress do it’s job.
(1/7)— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) October 3, 2023
No budget, no separate spending bills until it was too late, a CR which takes spending power out of the hands of the people and puts all the power into the hands of a select few. There has also been no action on many issues we care about and were promised.
(3/7)— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) October 3, 2023
I came here to take difficult votes and do the right thing, regardless of the pressure and regardless of the threats (bc there’s been plenty of both). Today I’m voting against 95 percent of my party in the hopes of fixing how Congress operates.
(5/7)— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) October 3, 2023
I’ll work with anyone willing to do that and look forward to voting for a Speaker who shares this vision for changing Congress and getting us back on a path to delivering results for the people.#IndpendentVoice
(7/7)
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) October 3, 2023
Doesn’t sound all that “petulant” to me. Actually, sounds rather principled.
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Greenland, NH – Conservative CEO and U.S. Army Reserves veteran Hollie Noveletsky announced that she is running for Congress in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District against Congressman Chris Pappas.
Army Reserves Veteran, Nurse Practitioner, and CEO Willing To Work On Solutions To Help New Hampshire
“When I look at Washington, I see a city run by Joe Biden and Chris Pappas, who bask in inaction and empty promises, while middle-class families in New Hampshire are stuck with inflation, higher energy costs, the rising cost of healthcare, and chaos at our southern border,” said Hollie Noveletsky, the CEO of Novel Iron Works.
“For me, the choice was clear: I could either complain and do nothing or use my experiences as a veteran, a nurse, and CEO to offer conservative, America First solutions that will help New Hampshire. Washington has enough career politicians; we need a veteran and CEO willing to work on economic solutions that will help our families and fix the illegal immigration crisis, and that’s why I’m running for Congress.”
Please Submit Group communications or Press Releases to editor@granitegrok.com.
Submission is not a guarantee of publication – Publication is not an endorsement.
Noveletsky is the CEO of Novel Iron Works, which has created nearly 100 jobs across New Hampshire. She served in the U.S. Army Reserves for ten years as a nurse practitioner. Additionally, she volunteered in Sierra Leone, working with victims of the Blood Diamond Wars, in amputee camps, and victims of the sex trade, and assisted victims of Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, the Oklahoma tornadoes, and the Maine ice storms.
Reminder: Content about candidates or by candidates is not an endorsement by GraniteGrok.com or its authors.
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Great job, Matt Gaetz. You threw a temper tantrum and have no plan for your next move. When everything favors the GOP, you pulled the fire alarm and made it personal.
We have a President wearing Depends in the White House, a totally inept Vice President that nobody wants, a GOP front-runner who will spend more time in court than the campaign trail for the next year, and Matt Gaetz decided it was a good idea to throw a grenade into the GOP led House.
Kevin McCarthy had a no-win situation when he became Speaker of the House in a tumultuous battle in January. He performed above expectations for most with a slim five-vote majority but not well enough for Matt Gaetz. Gaetz has had McCarthy in his sights since McCarthy first held the Gavel, and today, he got his wish and got McCarthy expelled from the Speaker’s office. The third person in line for the Oval Office is out because a young punk from Florida flexed his muscles and got his wish.
Excellent work, Matt, but being young and stupid, you forgot to think the process through. Who is your successor? Who now holds the Gavel in Matt Gaetz’s House of Representatives? Don’t ask Matt. He does not have a clue, but the crap show we will witness over the next few weeks to find a new Speaker is all on Matt. Did I say, great job, Matt? I think so.
Matt Gaetz has a very short memory. He forgets he was almost outed from the House on charges of sexual improprieties. The GOP stuck with Matt when tossing him aside would have been easy. His way of thanking his fellow Republican Congressmen is to throw their party into major disarray. When the Republicans should be uniting and concentrating on defeating the Democrats in 2024, we are beating each other, and the Democrats are laughing at us.
Kevin McCarthy has been kicked to the curb. He worked tirelessly to keep a GOP House divided into five fractions. His job was compared to a Mafia Don, keeping the five families aligned. It was not the Republicans against the Democrats. It was the five caucuses fighting for relevance and McCarthy pulling the strings to try and keep it all together. Nobody could have succeeded under those conditions. McCarthy did his best, but in the end, one of the families prevailed, and Kevin was dead on the side of the road.
The Speaker selects his successor as one of his first acts in office. The list is kept secret and only revealed in the case of a situation like today. When McCarthy made his selections, he chose GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry, a top McCarthy ally, to serve as interim Speaker. The House will now need to elect a new speaker. According to sources, the House GOP will have a conference meeting Tuesday night, although the election is not expected to happen on Tuesday.
It isn’t easy to be objective today. I am angry, frustrated, and disillusioned as I have never been. My hope, as this country is spiraling down the drain, was that the GOP could get their act together, win this election in 2024, and turn the lousy decisions of Joe Biden around. I do not feel too good about any of that tonight.
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A State Rep. who is supposed to represent Milford recently made some political noise by switching political affiliation from Democrat to Undeclared. But this State Rep … according to her X (Twitter) does NOT consider America “her country,” DESPITE being a citizen.
Rather, she considers El Salvador “her country:”
Do her constituents know that Rep. Perez does NOT consider them her countrymen? More importantly, do her constituents know how hard-left Perez is, that she’s a Communist? Maybe all we hear about New Hampshire having the most informed, engaged voters is just another BIG LIE. OR maybe a majority of voters in New Hampshire … at least in Milford, want Communism?
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And throw in ANYONE that believes in “open borders” as well?
What is being done is what we already saw in Britain: “We don’t like the current electorate (because we keep losing), so let’s import a new one.” The Labour Party did exactly that and soon started winning more.
Now that the Democrat/Marxist/One Worlders minions running the Biden Administration (what, you REALLY believe that Biden is in charge? Hahahahahaha!) have flung open the doors and decimated our borders, this is exactly what is happening – Seen at Powerline.
Without the mass deportation of tens of millions, including their children, covering over a decade of illegal entry since DACA, the US population and electorate is going to be defined by recent arrival illegal aliens in your lifetime. pic.twitter.com/Lord75zeCY
— ib (@Indian_Bronson) September 27, 2023
Our nation is being changed right in front of us.
Now, I have no problem with immigration. When we have the CORRECT philosophy behind it (people who WANT to embrace our founding ideas, who want to work hard, who desire to assimilate while still bringing the best parts of their culture to share with us), it works. But that’s not what is happening. With the Marxism of “multiculturalism” that denies OUR uniquely American culture and wishes to stamp it out, what will happen with these millions of illegal alien invaders (mostly young men of military age and bringing crime as well as diseases we had previously stamped out like TB, leprosy just to name two) and nothing comparable to Traditional American mores into our heartland?
More importantly, of all those babies, WHOSE culture will they embrace? Historically, newcomers wanted to be Americans. With multiculturalism, they keep their native culture, and with the Left denigrating our own, WHY would they even begin to become Americans?
Remember that I used to write about the Cloward-Priven Socialist political stunt that almost bankrupted New York City? That was the scheme created by husband and wife sociologists who hated our way of life and especially hated capitalism, whose premise was to use the current laws against “The Establishment” by overwhelming the welfare system by insisting that NYC strictly follow those laws and spend what they demand. It was Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules) writ large.
They almost succeeded.
Now, seeing those results, the minions that control Biden AND hate America have rolled this out nationally. It’s goal is simple and we already see its results: the southern border states ARE overwhelmed and running out of resources – they are having to be dependent of the Federal Government.
My, my – the Feds created the problem with the aim of getting rid of the vestiges of the important principle of Federalism. How convenient!
However, the Red States did the right thing by sending the invading horde to the “sanctuary” cities and States. Martha’s Vineyard was the first virtue-signaling bastion to fail badly. I now find it highly amusing that NYC is now having to spend billions to take care of Biden’s illegals – once again, getting Cloward-Piven’d.
Will this be one ignition source for the turnaround for America?
After all, just with this decision by Biden’s minions, with no lawful deliberation or action by Congress, this is a dictator’s decision. How long will we let this go on?
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California Governor Gavin Newsom, tasked with filling the US Senate seat vacated by Dianne Feinstein after her passing, has snubbed his state’s massive illegal immigrant population. He did choose a “non-resident,” just not one from California.
I can only assume that he could not find an English speaking black lesbian among the horde of California’s undocumented “workers” who can’t find work as if unemployment is a job Americans won’t do.
Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler, whose only qualifications appear to be working on Kamala Harris’ failed 2020 presidential campaign while being a “black lesbian.” Naturally, the California governor is touting the latter. …
FEC filings from EMILY’s List record Laphonza Butler’s residence as Silver Springs, Maryland as recently as 31 days ago. https://t.co/FjZkJ9Ugf0 pic.twitter.com/2FzA8MVqfU
— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) October 2, 2023
They’ve cleaned all that residency business up almost overnight, so no worries. Laphonza Butler, who is likely still registered to vote and has been paying taxes in (and from) Maryland, was doing so by mistake. Nothing about her history there is relevant to the appointment, and any thought or word to the contrary is white heterosexual fragility expressed as racism and bigotry.
Besides, does it matter which donkey they plug into that seat? None of them will vote for Californians; they will vote for the Inside the Beltway Party.
And who doesn’t want to see someone who fundraised for Kamala for president in action? As stupid and unqualified as Harris continues to be, the person who raised money to get her elected to the Oval Office has got to be worse.
Did the same donors help get a quick close on a property in California, which we all know does not define residency. Homeowners in states all over the place vote in New Hampshire every election cycle. They feel like they live here long enough to vote and then leave. Laphonza Butler can feel like she lives in California and cast votes as if she cares a wit about the people she has been chosen to represent.
C’mon, man, she’s a black lesbian. The US Senate needed one of those, and now it has one. And she’s not over seventy!
Of course, we don’t have any illegal “migrants” in the US Senate either. Not yet. But there’s still time.
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The following is an open letter to Frank Edelblut, Commissioner of Education, and Drew Cline, Chairman of the Board of Education, regarding a document that is making the rounds offering the public a chance to comment on proposed changes to the Ed Rules that govern public schools in New Hampshire.
Dear Commissioner Edelblut and Chairman Cline,
I’ve been reading — or trying to read — the 139-page document that is currently out for public review, which identifies proposed changes to the rules promulgated by the state Department of Education.
I believe that the goal of the document is to improve the performance of students in public schools. However, the form, structure, and content of the document more or less guarantee that this goal will not be met.
The first major problem with the document is its length: It’s 139 pages. There is a well-known technique in civil lawsuits for foiling the normal discovery process by providing so many documents that the ones that will be useful to the opposing side will probably never be found. That seems to be what’s happening here. There are so many changes — and so many rules that might be changed — that there’s no way to know which ones are important and which ones are trivial without plowing through the whole thing, which almost no one will have the time, motivation, or stamina to do.
The second major problem with the document is its level of detail. It is common knowledge among software engineers that every time you try to fix a bug in a system, you end up creating at least two more. The same is true in statutes and regulations. The solution isn’t to keep patching things but to go back to the original design, the architecture, so that fewer bugs can arise in the first place. The solution is to reduce the need for particular complications by reducing overall complexity.
In the case of public schools, the underlying source of complexity is that the system is time-based instead of results-based. In any other industry, the goal would be to get students to the finish line as quickly as possible for as little money as possible. (Of course, this would require knowing where the finish line is, something that requires a shared agreement among students, parents, schools, and taxpayers about where it is. As far as I’ve been able to tell, no such agreement exists, and no steps have been taken toward reaching one.)
But in the industry of education — or more precisely, the industry of schooling — kids are kept in school for an arbitrary number of years, whether they want to be there or not, and whether they need to be there or not. Once they are there, it becomes necessary to find something for them to do, some way to fill their time and some way to keep them pacified.
If this were to change — if there were a clear and adequate definition of an adequate education that focused on the desired end state rather than on particular paths to reach it — then many of the problems that the document seeks to address would simply not exist, and the document itself could be reduced to perhaps five to ten pages, and written in clear English rather than in legalese.
Note that in technical fields, a ‘standard’ says what needs to happen, not how it needs to happen. If you’re supposed to produce USB cables, there are some behaviors that the cables have to exhibit and some tests that they have to pass in order to meet the standard. How you set up your factory, what manufacturing processes you use to make the cables, and how long you take to make them are your business.
Imagine a USB standard that says: The people making your cables have to spend a certain number of hours in training, and your factory has to run for a certain number of hours per day, a certain number of days per year. And we’ll certify whatever you produce as a USB cable.
That’s the kind of standard we have now for graduating from the public school system, as embodied by documents like this one.
A reasonable standard for graduation would say: This is what we mean by an adequately educated student. Here are the tests he can pass, the skills he can demonstrate, and the kinds of problems he can solve.
A reasonable standard would be precise. It wouldn’t include pseudo-competencies like ‘Use digital tools to develop cognitive proficiency in literacy, numeracy, problem-solving, decision making, and spatial/visual literacy.’
A reasonable standard would be consistent. If a certain kind of thinking or problem-solving ability is necessary, it would be spelled out, and every student would need to be able to demonstrate it in order to graduate.
If every graduate needs to be able to do things like ‘appreciate art,’ or ‘use technology,’ or whatever, then have tests that let students demonstrate those things and make everyone pass those tests.
To the extent that the state has a job here — and the written state constitution, as opposed to the oral one, suggests that it does not — that job is to say what product is acceptable, not what process must be followed to produce it. Micro-management guarantees macro-failure, which is what we have now. Focusing on process creates the situation that allows (and, to some extent, even encourages) administrators and teachers to ignore (and in some cases, undermine) the product.
I suspect that both of you are familiar with the book The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, but if you aren’t, I would ask you to read it since it perfectly captures the situation in which our public school system finds itself and suggests a way to deal with that situation. Briefly, Goldratt points out that when running any kind of enterprise, every possible action that might be taken needs to be evaluated, not in terms of what invented internal benchmarks it might meet, but in terms of the primary goal of the enterprise. In the case of a business, that goal is to make money. In the case of a public school system, that goal is to produce educated citizens.
Finally, unlike a manufacturing standard, an educational standard needs to be centered on two fundamental concepts: priority and autonomy.
By priority, I just mean that some things are more fundamental than others and must be dealt with first. If you’re in a course on American history, but your reading skills are below proficiency, then you should be working on reading instead of listening to someone explain history to you. If you’re not rock solid on your arithmetic skills, you certainly shouldn’t be taking algebra… but you also shouldn’t be taking courses in, say, fashion merchandising.
By independence, I just mean that the single most important thing that you should be learning is how to direct your own learning, how to become your own teacher so that you can learn whatever you want to later on. Nothing else even approaches this in importance.
Any educational standard that isn’t just a wish list must require students to develop foundational skills first and then require them to leverage those skills to learn to teach themselves. By the time a student is ready to graduate, his teachers should be acting mostly in an advisory role.
To put that a different way: No matter how much a student knows at a given moment if he’s still depending on his teachers to learn new material, then he’s not ready to graduate.
The third major problem with the document is, in fact, its complete lack of any priority among its requirements. It’s like a building code that goes into detail about how to choose the finishes on bathroom fixtures while ignoring how to tell if the foundation is solid.
Two egregious and illustrative examples of this are requiring schools to ‘teach financial literacy’ and ‘teach digital literacy.’ It’s worth asking how these affect the teaching of actual literacy.
First, when you require that schools ‘teach x,’ you’re implicitly saying that it’s okay if the kids can’t read about x on their own because you’ll provide a teacher to do that reading for them and provide oral explanations.
Education professionals call this meeting students where they are, but psychologists would call it enabling illiteracy. If you ever find yourself wondering how, in a district like Newport, 90 percent of kids can graduate while only about 10 percent of them can read, this is how.
Second, there is an old saying that if you chase two rabbits, you won’t catch either of them. By requiring so much content to be taught while not actually requiring any of it to be learned — and by establishing no priorities — you’re providing school administrators and teachers with a built-in excuse to ignore fundamentals in favor of incidentals. If ‘learning about the Holocaust’ and ‘developing an awareness of and involvement with the natural world’ are on the same level of importance as learning to read, you can guess how that’s going to work out.
If you really have an opportunity to overhaul the Ed Rules, I implore you: Please use that opportunity to create rules that (1) focus on product rather than process, (2) are results-based rather than time-based, (3) prioritize goals, (4) recognize that producing autonomous learners is the goal of the enterprise, and (5) eliminate everything that can’t be tied directly to the achievement of that goal.
In closing, I would ask that when creating those rules, you consider two crucial questions that almost never get serious consideration in discussions about education: First, if a kid wants to learn something, who can stop him? (And how much money do we need to spend to support that?) Second, if a kid doesn’t want to learn something, who can make him? (And how much money do we waste by trying?)
I would also ask that you consider these questions in the context of the world of 2023, where high-quality, low-cost pedagogy is literally falling from the sky, 24 hours a day, seven days a week — a world where a student in a school classroom has access to fewer resources, of lower quality, and vastly higher cost, than the ones available to him everywhere else.
Thank you for your consideration,
Ian Underwood
Croydon, NH
This letter was originally published at Bare Minimum Books.
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