This week, the House started public hearings on the new bills. My committee first met to review the performance audit of mental health professional licensing.

There were no surprises; the auditors found conflicting requirements, various laws not enforced, and leisurely activity by the licensing boards. Most of the statutory changes suggested have been submitted already, so this audit was mostly a map of things to be aware of as we proceeded this year.

Then we heard seven pension bills, all of which were sent to subcommittee. HB 1647 was a recommendation from the retirement commission I chaired this fall, restoring the pension multiplier to 2.5 (from a staggered 2.0 to 2.4 currently) for Group II (police, fire, corrections) employees not vested in 2011. It improves the pensions for all GII employees, including new hires. HB 1653, adding overtime back into earnable compensation for only the employed but not vested group, and HB 1673, changing the calculation of final compensation for that group, both had moderate costs that compounded the effects of other changes, so we need to be careful about increasing costs.

We want to thank Carol McGuire for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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HB 1299 added the fire instructors at the community college to GII if they had at least ten years of service before becoming educators in an attempt to recruit New Hampshire professionals. Teaching is a Group I activity, and going to GI after a career in GII is generally disadvantageous for the person, both because there are some special benefits that are only available if one retires directly from a GII position and because the federal government penalizes Social Security if there is a GII pension (GII does not pay into, nor earn, Social Security benefits.) The committee was skeptical mostly because there are only two instructors in this program, and we hate making exceptions for only a few people.

HB 1211 would increase the maximum hours worked by a retiree for ten years to allow localities to hire them to cover openings. Since very few retirees work anything close to the maximum number of hours, I’m not optimistic we’ll recommend this bill.

HB 1421 requires the retirement system to hire two investment consultants rather than one and only renew the contract of the one with the better results. It’s an interesting idea and might improve the investment results, but the bill puts this competition in the wrong statute.

Finally, HB 1307 grants a $500 stipend to disability retirees who didn’t get last year’s bonus because it was restricted to those who retired after at least 20 years of service. Disability retirees don’t choose to retire early.

The committee will be holding hearings at least two days a week for a while since we have 66 new bills assigned.

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Last week, yet another election-process challenge was argued in court: this time, federal U.S. District for New Hampshire. At issue was the sleight-of-hand unauthorized extension of primary voter dates to change party – part of a schema of Trump-haters to empower non-GOP outsiders to vote in the state GOP primary election, then to switch back to their own ‘other party’ affiliation to vote in the general election.

Crafty? Slick? This Machiavellian maneuver by high-level authorities (both government and political party leaders) was yet another scheme to keep the leading contender for U.S. President off the state general election ballot. It has a name – this disruptive practice is called a ‘tactical voting’ practice.

There have been 64 election challenges across the nation since the 2020 election results were announced, each filed by a diverse set of interested parties challenging every kind of conceivable plot and project to illegally gather, create, invent, destroy, and manipulate computer data, voter rolls, and paper ballots in ways that alter true vote outcomes. It occurs at polling offices, virtual data repositories, print shops, using ballot machines, and now by an SOS email to every precinct officer. Whether these ideas of stolen and altered election results are illusory and ill-thought or whether there is merit and true evidentiary substance to these claims is yet to be seen because of manipulation of the third branch to avoid looking and hearing these 64 case challenges.

Standing to Sue is a legal concept that bars the doors to the courthouse to those who have nothing at risk, no losses (actual or potential), and therefore, people who file a claim are deemed to be bringing spurious cases – alleged to be unfit litigants and attorneys without character, fact, or valid right to sue for relief under the law.

We want to thank Caroline Douglas for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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Last week saw a multitude of New Hampshire supporters show up for a court hearing where state GOP Party Committee member (and past gubernatorial challenger) Karen Testerman appeared–to explain to the judge why she should be allowed to advance her lawsuit to discovery and trial stages – a lawsuit alleging state officials quietly and irreparably altered the GOP primary voting process –causing irreparable harm if not corrected using legal process.

Testerman’s case is #65, although it is hard to keep track.

The NH SOS and GOP chairman challenged Testerman’s right to sue them (she sued along with two other GOP citizen co-parties) over their manipulations of law using the authority of office that quietly (some would say secretly) was planned to alter and corrupt the State GOP primary election outcome.

The primary election is less than two weeks away. If the government officials’ challenge to Testerman’s fundamental right to bring a law case against them is not decided, then de facto, the altered primary process will proceed with thousands of registered Democrats and Independents (now temporarily casting GOP primary votes) deciding if Donald Trump will be listed on the general election ballot this fall.

Americans have been increasingly disappointed for several decades over the collapse of the American Dream in areas of work, economic freedom, and individual reward for their hard work, discipline, risk, and product quality. The crashing American dream also includes widespread loss of faith in the political systems and in many government actors—elected and appointed bureaucrats with power acting against duty and morality–while unfettered courts that can – do or will not allow legal actions by citizens to be heard to correct administrative injuries, errors, and outright abuses of government authority and power.

Here, those who have access to top-level authority over the primary election processes are again being challenged for their failure to follow the rule of law by altering the process and/or by acting unethically to corrupt the election outcome. The question is, are they above review? Above the law? Or is there oversight of the highest offices of state political election power?

The U.S. Supreme Court this summer ruled on two cases that States may not duck or avoid court cases challenging state rights, including voting law. These are Marbury v. Madison caliber cases – finding a basic duty in court judges to allow 2nd Amendment cases (landmark decisions in Heller v. District of Columbia (2008) & NY State Pistol Club v. Bruen (2002), which firmly set the standard of review for judicial review of American fundamental rights (overruling the disingenuous universal pre-2023 court trick of manipulating to shift the state’s burden of proof over to complaining citizens.) This burden-shifting manipulation (of the state burden onto the backs of citizens). This means a citizen’s right to access to court to right a fundamental wrong. The Right-to-Sue-in-court had been shifted into oblivion by standardized modern court practice. Moore v. Harper (2023) also established rules on judicial review (in a redistricting challenge involving independent redistricting theory). Courts are not free to legislate from the bench or act in an inappropriate manner, wrote the U.S. Supremes, so does the present NH process of barring access to justice –by denying a party voter the right to sue for relief meet this new U.S. standard? Does it mean courts can avoid hearing these cases at all, much less to rule in a timely manner? And with the election less than two weeks away?

[See another recent NH Supreme Court case argument on YouTube at Daniel_Richard.com.] 

A voting system is spelled out in the State Constitution with the required process; so the state administrator’s exploitation of his SOS power of office to quietly manipulate to alter what is a detailed Constitutional mandate into something else in practice– is a boldfaced manipulation of official power.

After the Civil War, this country saw an avalanche of exploitation, manipulation, and corruption in office, writes author William Caldwell in his book Cynicism and the Evolution of the American Dream (highly recommended reading). Here, cynicism extends not only to state election officers but to their overseer – the court judiciary/system. Who else can hold them accountable? What other timely recourse is available for oversight of bad government actors under American law?

In 64 election-challenge-cases, judges declined to hear all cases but one. 

In many, the political, occupational, and financial retaliation against attorneys who filed the cases and challenged the government’s political narrative–was beyond harsh. It was designed to ruin and destroy the professional and private lives of those who acted in good faith for Americans who challenged overarching national narratives that the last election was fair and honest. The widespread perception across ‘common’ America is the last election was manipulated and stolen. The power of the state is punishing harshly and unfairly those who DARE to ask for the American open trial process for public exposure of underlying facts, discovery, and for a publicly-monitored trial decision on the fairness and ethics of those election practices. Are they American values? Or are they manipulated by political corruption? Don’t we deserve to hear and decide individually—by public trial process–where facts and evidence are openly presented?

If the lawsuit allegations are political lies, are underlying facts present, waiting to be discovered, processed, and presented in court at trial? The greatest risk of this process is truth to power.

Is truth being suppressed systematically, using legal tools designed to avoid the so-called ‘frivolous lawsuits’ – alleged to be filed in court by mentally incapacitated and unfit lawyers? Those are hard-ball political and bar corporation tactics now routinely being used to systematically suppress (and oppress) American critics, cynics, thinkers, open challengers, and, yes, attorney whistleblowers.

Who but? The moral implications of fitness to sue being herded through the narrow padlocks of preliminary court hearings is one of semantics – whether or not a citizen lacks standing to sue– is an affront to democracy, Americans, and the ideals we espouse for fair elections.  Government actors (as the above cases indicate) have no such pre-requirement to sue us, so the double standard – that citizens have a fundamental right to sue but cannot until they jump through court procedural hoops ad nauseam – is being used nationally by those in power to suppress the fundamental rights of American citizens to question politically altered traditional voting processes.

The lack of transparency and the exponential harmful impact of cutting-edge data processing technology means the capacity to alter electronic processing exists without accountability. Other more mundane alterations of voting dates, registration, verification, even mule-vote processing and other signature or verification anomalies all mean there exist invisible vote-changes and that Americans now are told to address by trusting those in power.

American skepticism is a national trait – from early pioneers, farmers, and cowboys to moon explorers, skepticism kept our ancestors alive in body and spirit – and thriving when bureaucracies and politicians were wrong and failed. Whether flaws in the recent voting changes are intentional or in error, skepticism is still a healthy American process.

The inability to challenge in court and obtain a public trial, to view and challenge the unseen manipulations of data and law, to expose manipulated voting processes, means the high technology voter processes (corrupted by unaccountable political actors) can exist. These processes are designed to invent, harvest, and file absentee ballots, fraudulently manufacture and/or falsify ballots and voter rolls, and other irregularities at the polls. These crimes arguably fall into the same category as this underhanded manipulation of the party primary registration calendar.

All are designed and enacted to alter a fundamental national tradition of voting—and appear to be accompanied by the certainty that courts everywhere will not open the doors (floodgates?) to citizen doubts about the authenticity of voter registration, certification, and the election processes. That’s the preliminary bar of unequal standing to sue protocol. It leaves citizens with no recourse at law.

Why should a state administrator be immune from these irregularities, manipulations, and violations at law? Where does this immunity come from? From the invisible protection of the overseeing branch – judges who slam shut the door to the courthouse?

This is a cynical age. National political strategists and operators planted practices and campaigns leading to this now widespread cynicism of voters. Testerman’s lawsuit is a ray of hope that American rights still exist; and that election law overseers will recognize the basic duty to stop unequally barring access to the courthouse.

Caroline Douglas, J.D. is a former NH attorney, former co-author of the New Hampshire State Law Treatise on Family Law, and author of several law treatises, including The Dark Side, a law treatise on judging (with memoir). She is a national whistleblower and can be reached at nssri@pm.me

Note: as this op-ed opinion was being sent out for publication, a notice of the court’s decision barring the Testerman claim from the court was received – denied by the judge who raised the issue of standing. This proactive protection of a state court actor was based on an alleged lack of standing—by an oral ‘motion’ initiated by the judge. Slam the door shut. Firmly. Yet again.

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Donald Trump winning the Iowa Caucus is not a surprise – well, maybe to a few DeSantis and Haley staffers on Twitter – but that doesn’t mean no surprises are coming out of Iowa.

Trump’s winning was not in doubt. What was who came in second, and how close did they land to the winner?

AP, no fan of The Donald, doesn’t know that answer, but they called it for him at 8:30.

Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses on Monday, seizing a crucial victory that reinforces the former president’s grip on his party at the outset of the GOP’s 2024 nomination fight even as he faces extraordinary legal challenges that could complicate his bid to return to the White House.

The magnitude of Trump’s success is still coming into focus and it was not immediately clear who would emerge as the second-place finisher, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Caucus voters endured life-threatening cold and dangerous driving conditions to participate in meetings that unfolded in hundreds of schools, churches and community centers across the state.

The winter weather was a test fidelity, which likely played a factor, but reliable primary and caucus voters tend to turn up no matter what. The difference will be who showed up in addition to that to cast a vote for their favorite.

The Trump Campaign did not wait to celebrate:

“The people of Iowa sent a clear message tonight: Donald Trump will be the next Republican nominee for President. It’s now time to make him the next President of the United States.

Early results had Trump with 75% of the vote. A more sober average brings that down closer to 60%. The actual total will take a while longer to work out, but the Dems aren’t running it (their “caucus” doesn’t even count), so we should know well before morning those final results.

We’ll have an update at 8 am, if you want to sleep in.

HT | Red State

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I used to agree that teachers are not being paid enough, but not so much anymore. I do believe we should support students going to college for teaching degrees. It is the only group I would agree to help with paying college loans, no others.

First, Schools have no business teaching social issues in a manner to sway students instead of teaching them to learn for themselves. If students know a teacher’s belief in certain social issues, then the teacher is not teaching; they are preaching.

Second, schools have no business taking on the medical issues of students. School nurses were supposed to be there for emergencies only, then either call an ambulance or the parents. It is not the job of schools to diagnose children, offer medications, or give recommendations for medical care.

We want to thank Ken Goodall for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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Some schools have been giving covid tests without parental notifications, suggesting students have ADD or ADHD and recommending medications, sending students home with antidepressants, and lying to parents and not informing parents when a student suffers from gender issues. Some New Hampshire schools have a policy to omit the truth, which is lying to parents when it comes to gender issues.

One Maine school just recently was accused by a parent of sending a bag of medications home with the student, including Zoloft, a strong anti-depressant.

In Exeter, the school banned a student from a sporting event for being overheard, saying he would not use They or Them in conversation. A lawsuit is pending, and I hope Exeter loses big time.

Then, of course, what I believe to be smut in schools, which one teacher already told me they did not care how young children were to read about sex. That is fine as their opinion, but schools are not set up based on one person’s opinion. When books rated at 14 years of age are handed to an 11-year-old, as happened in a Maine school, this is unacceptable.

Now, as for the scores, I do not know about other state schools, but NH has some very poor proficiency scores on the state tests, even in the better southern schools like Exeter and Hampton. The state testing shows only around 75% of students are proficient in English, 65% are proficient in Math, and only 60% are proficient in science. These scores are from the State website based on Exeter, Hampton, Brentwood, and Portsmouth.

Until public schools improve the scores and stop forcing their social beliefs onto students, pay raises are not justified. There must be a way to connect teacher’s pay to the success of their teaching. I wish I had an answer, but I do not. The Educational System today is failing; something needs to be done.

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The proper response, whenever someone tells you that Biden has “failed” on the border, is to laugh in his or her face because that person is either very stupid or thinks that you are very stupid. America’s open-borders are INTENTIONAL.

They are not a failure; they are a resounding success … because the goal of the Left is to transform America into a socialist-based-on woke state.

The estimates that I have seen are 10 million new illegals since the Biden-Regime took over. Do you really believe that these people want to assimilate? The Biden-Regime is creating new countries within this country. And the vast majority of the residents of these new countries (and their children after them) will vote Democrat and give the Left permanent control of government.

But just keep pretending that America’s open-borders are a failure and that somehow we can work with and find common ground with the people who opened the borders in order to replace us.

Well, he’s correct. It’s only a crisis for people who love the country. For people who want to burn down the country, the border is not in crisis. It’s a tremendous success.

Whether he gets a second term or not, Biden has been the most successful Dem president in our history. https://t.co/IJjTXSJmee

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) January 13, 2024

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