Monday • May 6 • 2024
Vol.XVI • No.XIX
Manchester, N.H.
The history of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys has some odd turns, but the result was Vermont. It is a state that exists because of a militia that just banned militias.
Related: Slippery Meet Slope: Vermont Dems Pass Yet Another Gun-Grabbin’ Bill
Vermont on Monday made it a crime to own or operate paramilitary training camps in the state after Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed legislation introduced in response to a firearms training facility built without permits that neighbors called a menace.
Violators face up to five years in prison or a fine up to $50,000 or both, according to the law. It prohibits a person from teaching, training, or demonstrating to anyone else the use, application, or making of a firearm, explosive, or incendiary device capable of causing injury or death that will be used in or in furtherance of a civil disorder. It also bans a person from assembling with others for such training, instruction or practice.
According to the report, the law does not prohibit,
In other words, Vermont Democrats have created an incrementalist loophole in the law for redefining legal activity regarding firearms training.
To be clear, we accept that there are or may be individuals or groups who gather and train to do what Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys did beginning in 1770. A “militia organized to defend the property rights of local residents…”
They are also credited with stopping,
“… sheriffs from enforcing New York laws and terrorized settlers who had New York grants, burning buildings, stealing cattle, and administering occasional floggings with birch rods.
We are not condoning civil war or paramilitary interventions, but you can’t escape the irony. Given the current decline in rights, New York has clearly won control over the “land grants,” and modern Vermont Democrats mean to ensure things stay that way (politically), no matter how despotic their designs on power.
Make no mistake. This law will develop a case of mission creep in successive legislatures as progressive gun grabbers in Montpellier find new and exciting definitions for “legal activity” and “civil disorder.”
You can count on it.
And one more bit of irony. If ever the state has a need to contain or suppress an alleged militia, they can call on the Vermont Air National Guard for support – nicknamed ‘The Green Mountain Boys.’
The post Vermont: A State That Exists Because of a Militia Just Banned Them. appeared first on Granite Grok.
Dear Ms. Fenton, Please review the following information attached to this email. Several parents in district SAU16 contacted me today regarding a PEAR survey that would be administered to students. The notification sent home indicates all children will take this mental health survey unless a parent or guardian notifies the district that they do not want their child to complete it.
It is my understanding that this kind of survey would fall under state law that requires informed consent before a child completes a non-academic survey.
From the PEAR website :
PEAR partners with schools and youth-serving organizations to drive positive youth development by improving mental health and program quality.
From the PEAR webinar on holistic assessment:
In addition, the video from PEAR includes information on how the Clover Framework and the holistic assessment are connected to mental health. That begins at 21:22.
Federal Law ESSA requires informed consent when schools administer mental health assessments. ESSA SEC. 4002. GENERAL PROVISIONS.
As you can see from the notice sent to parents, PEAR will be gathering the data in order to conduct research on the students. Basic ethical guidelines where research is involved also require informed consent.
A notification was sent to parents, but this would not meet the regulations that require informed consent.
The post Investigation on SAU 16 appeared first on Granite Grok.
As a thought exercise, let’s pretend that Denver’s 9th District City Council member Candi CdeBaca had just proposed the following idea. That Denver should tax black and brown businesses and give that money to white businesses.
“Instead of a bid collecting extra taxation from the white businesses that are struggling, you could be collecting those extra taxes from black and brown-led businesses all over the city and redistributing them to white-owned businesses, who are not part of the bid, or who are simply just white owned,” she said. “And that’s one way to give back in the business form fashion. I think when we talk about resources being returned, this is where consumer-owned or municipally-owned resources are important.”
Sounds racist. Here’s what she actually said.
“Instead of a bid collecting extra taxation from the black and brown businesses that are struggling, you could be collecting those extra taxes from white-led businesses all over the city and redistributing them to black and brown-owned businesses, who are not part of the bid, or who are simply just black or brown owned,” she said. “And that’s one way to give back in the business form fashion. I think when we talk about resources being returned, this is where consumer-owned or municipally-owned resources are important.”
In a colorblind world of equity, this is also racist, but the term colorblind has been deemed racist by racist supremacists of color. These folks are convinced that the correct response to past injustice, real or imagined, is a radical pendulum swing to the other extreme.
Sorry, I’m not down with the struggle unless the struggle is getting back to a world where what you say and do defines you.
Human rights, and natural rights, are colorblind. Those rights don’t care about your history or politics, and the minute you add color, you are no longer talking about either. You are the problem, not the solution, no matter the color, and increasingly Democrat.
The worst outcomes in America in education, employment, and even business are found in and around the Democrat-ruled urban plantations we call cities. All that money taxed over decades has done nothing for people of color and everything for the Democrats of all colors who have trapped them in a perennial misery they blame on everyone but themselves.
Broken families, poverty, crime, and the welfare cycle are all deliberate outcomes of Left-Wing policy. So yes, there are people of all colors who have been wronged by the past, but in the present, their biggest enemy is the Democrat party which is doing everything it can to get us all so pissed off at each other that we don’t notice they are to blame.
The post It’s Not Racism to Tax People Based on Skin Color if You Give That Money to Brown People appeared first on Granite Grok.
Gun control advocates in Texas are excited because a House panel has advanced a bill to raise the age at which you can buy an AR-15 from 18 to 21.
Of course, even if passed and signed into law, the law would be struck down. As Justice Thomas asked in Bruen, is there another fundamental right where we could require this kind of restriction on its exercise?
Could we keep you from attending church until you turn 18?
Could we set the age at which you can exercise free speech to 21?
Could we say that government agents are free to search your person, papers, or effects without a warrant until you reach age 30?
For that matter, do you lose any of those rights just because you have been convicted of a felony?
A huge amount of crime is committed by children born to young mothers out of wedlock and by the children of people who have committed crimes themselves.
So could we say that you are not allowed to have a child unless you’re 25 years old, married, have passed a training course, and have never been convicted of a felony? Could we limit the number of children you have to eliminate ‘high capacity households’? Could we make you surrender your children to the authorities in case of divorce or conviction?
Some legislator should introduce that last set of restrictions as a bill — the Assault Children Ban — just to collect sound bites from the people who would oppose it. Especially when you mirror their own arguments back to them:
Why should we care about your rights, when you’ve been very clear about articulating your belief that safety is more important than rights? Keep in mind that one hundred percent of crimes are committed by people whose parents had children. Even if most children are never convicted of a crime, can we afford, as a society, to have people bearing and keeping assault children without proper safeguards in place?
Then we could play those sound bites as testimony at future hearings on new gun control laws.
The post The Assault Children Ban appeared first on Granite Grok.
Concord, NH — On Wednesday, the Marijuana Policy Project and Americans for Prosperity-New Hampshire will host a Facebook Live event to discuss HB 639, a bipartisan cannabis legalization bill that was filed by New Hampshire’s Republican and Democratic House leaders –
Please Submit Group communications or Press Releases to editor@granitegrok.com.
Submission is not a guarantee of publication – Publication is not an endorsement.
Representative Jason Osborne (R-Auburn) and Representative Matt Wilhelm (D-Manchester). There will also be a Q&A at the end.
What: New Hampshire Cannabis Legalization Virtual Town Hall — A discussion of the bipartisan bill to legalize and regulate cannabis for adults (HB 639) with public safety, health, and cannabis regulatory experts.
When: Wednesday, May 10 at 6:30 p.m. ET
Where: Facebook Live (RSVP here)
Who: Dr. David L. Nathan, MD, psychiatrist, educator, founder and past president of Doctors for Cannabis Regulation, and co-designer of the International Intoxicating Cannabinoid Product Symbol
Rick Van Wickler, Superintendent of the Cheshire County Department of Corrections (Ret.)
Barbara Brohl, JD, former Colorado Director of Revenue, Colorado’s chief cannabis regulator from 2011 through 2017, currently consultant at B J Brohl Strategies
Dr. Riley Kirk, PhD, cannabis research scientist and educator, N.H. Cannabis Association Advisory Board Member
Karen O’Keefe, JD, Director of State Policies, Marijuana Policy Project
Ross Connolly, Northeast Regional State Director, Americans for Prosperity (moderator)
Contact: Violet Cavendish
vcavendish@mpp.org, 703-498-9883
###
Founded in 1995, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) is the nation’s leading cannabis policy reform organization. MPP has played a central role in passing dozens of cannabis policy reforms in states across the country, including 13 successful cannabis legalization campaigns, and also works to advance federal reforms. Visit www.mpp.org for more information.
Press releases are reformatted
Originally published with an incorrect byline. This has been corrected.
The post New Hampshire Cannabis Legalization Virtual Town Hall appeared first on Granite Grok.
This week could be huge in the future of the Biden Crime Family and a test of the President’s belief in the rule of law. The First Son, Hunter Biden, may have made a critical mistake when he challenged the support payments he is responsible for to his daughter, Navy. Hunter faces a tough Family Court Judge forcing him to open the books without redaction. It is ironic that with all of the investigations by the Federal Government, seemingly afraid to pull the trigger on charges for Hunter, a Judge protecting the rights of a four-year-old may tear down this House of Cards.
James Comer and the House Oversight Committee are scheduled to divulge the Congress case against the Biden family, which involves accepting money from foreign governments for preferential treatment. This presentation would take the pressure off Biden’s Justice Department to levy charges against Biden or his son, Hunter. Another possibility, if the Justice Department produces charges before the House lays out its case, would be to charge Hunter with a couple of simple misdemeanors, including supplying incorrect info on a Federal Gun Application and Tax Code violations.`These charges would be tantamount to a slap on the back of the hand by Sister Superior and an affront to America-PERIOD!
Joe Biden went on the offensive this weekend by granting a one-on-one interview with the softball-throwing Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC. She fed him a question about Hunter and proclaimed there was no connection between Hunter and Joe. Why? How? Where does she get the authority to make that statement? That was a self-serving statement probably insisted on by the Biden Cartel. They are no longer the Biden Camp in my world. They are a crime cartel.
Of course, Joe answered that Hunter had done nothing wrong and is proud of his son, which drives him in his presidency. We can blame Hunter for America’s woes under Joe Biden if true.
Hunter has put Joe Biden between a rock and a hard place. If Joe sits back and does nothing, Congress and the Justice Department combined may put enough pressure to charge Hunter with serious charges that will implicate his Father and as many as eight other Biden family members. If he steps in and interjects or insulates Hunter, he may take a hit on FOX and Sky News, but nobody else will know what happened. That is the sad state of today’s media. The MSM does not care. Biden can get away with virtually any crime, and they do not care.
It will be interesting to see what coverage Comer gets on Wednesday. I hope he builds a case that few can dispute. This family may be the most corrupt machine since the Kennedys and, more recently, the Clintons. Biden is dirty. He had gotten filthy rich on his name and the backs of the American people. He deserves to be taken down like a Confederate statue during COVID.
I think Joe Biden has the audacity to believe he is untouchable. I hope that arrogance brings him down and that America still has the backbone to stand up to politicians, even a President, who has taken advantage of their position to disrespect Americans for personal gain.
The post Can Biden Keep The Law Away From His Cartel appeared first on Granite Grok.
Keep this in mind as this was definitively told to me: The District does not lie to parents. Yep, I took that person at their word, sorta (backstory later). But that is an official pronouncement. Like “Hunter hasn’t done anything wrong.” –
We all are to believe Government speech on all things.
Cue Ronaldus Magnus: “Trust but verify“. Well, I dunno about the first part, given the last two and half years of fighting the unconstitutional portions of a Gilford School Board Policy but I knew that it was time to move on from fighting on just the language of it. I learned early on that debugging code by “playing computer” can get you just so far – at some point, you have to give your application some input and see what comes out on the other end (IF you are lucky that the major path through your code actually produces something first time). So I decided to do the “verify” bit by putting an input into the GSB Policy and see what would pop out. Like any obscenely over-optimistic programmer, I had thoughts.
So, yep, I went there last week. For anyone that knows me and/or has been reading the ‘Grok on a regular basis, this is not unexpected. Frankly, I have used that question before (see here and here) during a Gilford School Board meeting to the Grandson’s Principal. That gave me the chance to berate and shame said SB over their Policy JBAB (Transgender and Non-Conforming, first issued by The Trevor Project, promulgated by the NH School Board Association, and then shoved onto the school district by woke SBers and Staff) as it forced Staff to lie to parents when asked that question of their child.
Given that the Board has finally fixed their anti-Free Speech problem (Kudoes to them for finally doing so but in which they decided they could grant a new Right to a minor child to force others to use their “preferred pronouns” in violation of our First Amendment’s Freedom of Speech), it was time for me to start concentrating on the other substantial issue – the Board giving itself the Power to force its Staff to lie to Parents concerning the transgender status of their child.
So this time, I decided that I would follow the District’s Policy KEB (“PUBLIC COMPLAINTS ABOUT SCHOOL PERSONNEL, EMPLOYEES, STUDENTS
OR ADMINISTRATION”) which mandates how complaints were to be handled. You see, back in 2017, the School Board decided to wall itself off from its voters and townfolks by telling everyone that they had to first talk to their teacher, then to their Principal, then to the Superintendent, and finally to the Board Chair. If you try to directly address your Elected Representatives, they will short-circuit that attempt and shove a complaint downward.
Sidenote: I told the Chair at the time (a Lt Col Green Beret (ret) that was fond of the word “outSTANDING!”) upon KEB’s acceptance: “OUTSTANDING!” – he was far from amused. “WAY TO GO in separating yourselves from your constituents -Aristocracy much?”.
The amusement level continued to spiral downward. They did so even as I pointed out its loophole: it disenfranchised people like me that didn’t have a child in the school system at the time (mine had long graduated) – I had no official place to start to bring problems to the Board. But I digress…
Sidenote: They aren’t the only Board that have this in place as the NHSBA has pushed this out to most Boards in the State (I’d give a link here but the NHSBA server used for policies (outsourced) is down and has been for quite some time; convenient).
So, time to get to the point – I asked the Grandson’s teacher the operative question of the day expecting that I’d receive a specific response. And yes, I have partially redacted names:
On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 3:28 PM Skip <Skip@granitegrok.com> wrote:
Mrs. <redacted>
What is the transgender status of my legal son?
-Skip
First response back – did the teacher respond to my question?
—— Original Message ——
From <<redacted>@sau73.org>
To “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
Date 5/2/2023 8:52:50 AM
Subject Re: Concerning <the Grandson>
Skip,
I do not understand your question. Has there been a change in status that you would like to discuss with me or with the administration?
<<redacted>
Well, my programming path turned out to be operational – I got the answer I was expecting by proxy – no mention of an answer to my direct question. I’m sorry but if she’s asking me about a status change that SHE assumes that I already know, why would I be asking for a status from her?
So I told her that:
On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 9:26 AM Skip <Skip@granitegrok.com> wrote:
My question is straight forward and needs only a small qualifier expansion: what is the transgender status of my legal son while in school?
-Skip
I thought that the addition was reasonable – removing my home from the equation. I also thought that the “place modifier” was simple as well. But back to the “Tip toe, through the tulips” dance (and yes, you have to be of a certain age to get that reference). Seriously, who among you DIDN’T understand my question the first time?
And yes, this will come back to the fore later on. In the mean time, one note, two note:
—— Original Message ——
From <<redacted>@sau73.org>
To “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
Date 5/3/2023 8:12:34 AM
Subject Re: Re[2]: Concerning <<redacted>Skip,
Thank you for your inquiry. There has been no discussion on the transgender status of your legal son while in school.
<redacted>
OK, did I ask about any “discussions” at all? Did I ask about any conversations that happened in school? Shades of what I said back during that School Board meeting referenced above: “that’s a dodge”:
On Wed, May 3, 2023 at 8:41 AM Skip <Skip@granitegrok.com> wrote:
>> There has been no discussion on the transgender status of your legal son while in school.
That’s a deflective retort. The answer is either he is or he isn’t. Which is it? A plain, truthful answer is all that is needed.
-Skip
And then the teacher went snippy. However, she made it clear that she had chosen her message and she was going to stick to it regardless of the intent of my question. For those of you that have the courage to ask for yourselves AND your child, watch what happened again:
—— Original Message ——
From <redacted>@sau73.org>
To “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
Date 5/3/2023 9:50:34 AM
Subject Re: Re[4]: Concerning <redacted>Skip,
This is my truthful and complete answer. There has been no discussion on the transgender status of your legal son while in school.
If you have any questions or concerns on this matter please address it with the administration.
Thank you, <<redacted>
Note that at no time was a direct answer given to a simple, unambiguous question. That’s known as lying by omission. Contrast that with:
The District does not lie to parents.
Right after that, and I suspected that it would be, I found out that this email thread was being monitored by “the Administration”.
Part two in a day or so.
The post “What Is The Transgender Status of My Legal Son?” Part 1 appeared first on Granite Grok.
The City has hired Attorney Russell Hilliard to represent a Right to Know Petition alleging record violations within Director Cumming’s Economic Development office. Mr. Cumming built a publicly financed Art Center, denying the public access to financial and construction records, and installed barriers downtown without proper noticing of public meetings. Attorney Bolton and Attorney Leonard are also involved with this.
I filed a motion to recuse both Attorney Bolton and Attorney Leonard from representing this case. Both are repeat offenders in disregarding Court rules. Their lack of candor with the court has resulted in extraordinary legal bills for the city. Both have been on a mission to repeatedly arrest me in City Hall for no justifiable reason. Their personal vitriol and animus directed at me, a citizen, has made them both unreasonable and unable to perform their duties. Reasonableness and the law should go hand-in-hand.
Attorney Hilliard, in representing both city attorneys, has cited their First Amendment Rights to freely express themselves. This comment was chilling. Both Attorneys have written public comment policy/ordinance that violates citizens First Amendment Rights to free speech. Nashua has changed its public comment policies to public compliment policies. Only Board-approved niceties can be expressed.
In 2020, Attorney Leonard crafted a revised public comment policy for the Board of Assessors, adding the language:
In 2022, Attorney Bolton crafted a revised public comment ordinance (O-22-024), limiting free speech:
(10) Crude, vulgar, profane and/or obscene remarks are prohibited: and
(11) The presiding officer has authority to terminate the remarks of any speaker when such remarks do not adhere to this ordinance or other applicable law.”
In both cases, I pointed out the unconstitutionality in approving policies that restrict speech. The Boards would not strike the language and the Attorneys have adopted a “sue us” mentality. The City has the upper hand in this game as lawyers are in short supply to assist. Few are up for the challenge of taking on Nashua and understand they are subject to heavy smearing when engaging with this City.
Friday, to my pleasant surprise, the ACLU and the NEFAC (New England First Amendment Coalition) sent a letter to Aldermanic Board President Lori Wilshire and copied Attorney Bolton pointing out the unconstitutionality of Ordinance O-22-024.
https://www.nefac.org/news/nefac-aclu-to-nashua-officials-repeal-unconstitutional-civility-ordinance/
The Board has not respected the viewpoints of citizens on this matter. Let’s see how they view the interpretation of the law from two higher powered organizations. What’s your guess?
A Lack of Transparency is a Symptom of Dishonesty
The post Attorney’s Steve Bolton and Celia Leonard Exercise their First Amendment Rights – What About the Rights of the Nashua Citizens? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Maine’s got a marijuana crisis, as in too much of it. The price has collapsed. Combined with the rising cost of electricity, growers can’t afford to operate. The result is a mass exodus of “individuals registered with the state to supply medical-use marijuana for patients.”
Rather than just letting folks find the weed they need, weed needs some guardrails; at least, that’s what some folks are saying.
“This survey makes clear that the biggest issue facing the medical program is oversupply,” said John Hudak, director of the Office of Cannabis Policy, in a statement. “That oversupply has led to massive drops in wholesale price, making it difficult for registrants to endure mounting energy costs and other market conditions.” …
The report also identifies high utility and business costs, competition with the adult-use market, and banking regulations and fees as drivers of the drop-off. Banking is difficult for many cannabis businesses because the drug is still illegal at the federal level.
But it’s not just the Feds.
“Every single year we deal with some existential threat to our ability to operate from our own state government,” he said, adding that people are “discouraged and disenchanted.”
The Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP) blames the legislature. Some growers/Caregivers oppose some the OCP says is needs doing to correct a supply problem that is also infecting the adult cannabis market. Between competition and supply, the price has gotten so low that growers can’t afford to grow (or so some say).
But it seems to me that deregulation is the fix to everyone’s problem. Less interference, not more. Marijuana entrepreneurs will find ways to profit in a legal market without any state interference, but here comes Maine to do some interfering.
The Legislature is considering two bills that could prevent more small businesses from leaving the market. One would give the state the authority to temporarily stop issuing new adult-use cultivation licenses or allowing expansions if the average price falls 20% below the previous year’s average, or if the volume grown over three months is three times greater than the previous year’s. The second piece of legislation would effectively reduce the maximum size of a newly licensed medical- or adult-use grow operation to 7,000 square feet.
More regulations will likely lead to lobbyists protecting a government-managed cartel. Small business caregivers or growers will get wiped out. Private growing will be prohibited, or if it’s not legal, never get there from here. Instead of cheap heaps of inventory, you’ll get supply chain controls to keep prices high and, for some who may genuinely need it, out of reach.
But Maine has no incentive to support low prices. It collects a 5.5% tax on medical marijuana, a 10% tax on recreational (adult use), while,
Cultivators will pay a $335 per pound excise tax on flowers and mature plants and a $94 per pound tax on trim. Immature plants and seedlings will also be taxed at the rate of $1.50. Seeds will incur a 30 cent per seed excise tax. All must be paid monthly.
The State takes in a respectable haul. $12M – $14M per year in medical and recreational marijuana tax revenue. And while 12% of all Maine Marijuana tax revenue goes to the “Adult Use Marijuana Public Health and Safety Fund,” the other 88% goes to the General Fund.
I love that. We’ll permit you to do something you might do better without our consent, we’ll call it legal at the state level, regulate it, tax it, and then use a percentage of that to tell you about the health and safety risks of the thing we’re taxing.
How about an educational program regarding the health and safety risks of government meddling and taxation? Anyone?
And we’ve arrived at my primary objection to state regulation and taxation. The state has a financial interest, as do the large growers who will hire lobbyists to help manage everyone else out of business and then build a cartel with the state. This will drive up prices but also drive away competition with increasingly burdensome licensing and other rules that add costs.
Marijuana has issues we should not ignore that I have address elsewher, but the progressive state’s addiction to revenue can’t be ignored, and Maine is getting bluer by the minute.
HT | Portland Press Herald
The post Is Maine Building a ‘Budding’ Weed Cartel? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Jason Osborne still does NOT understand why the NHGOP in particular … and the GOP generally … performed so abysmally in 2022. His thinking is STUCK in the 90s, or maybe the 80s or 70s. He believes that voters only think about the “top-of-the-ticket” and then fill in the same Party as their top-of-the-ticket choice all the way down the ballot:
The Communists … aka NH-Democrats … kicked your butt in 2022 because they work smarter and harder than you, Jason. They identify likely voters … an obvious example is college students … and they work their asses off to get those voters to vote.
The NHGOP, in contrast, indiscriminately mails out a cookie-cutter glossy flyer of the State rep candidate next to a smiling Sun-King Sununu. And a bunch of annoying texts and robot phone calls that likely reduce turnout. Jason, dear, you are helpless because you are clueless about how to win elections.
In the interest of fairness, I am going to allow Jason to respond. This is NOT Peter Tosh … and to claim that it is and that I am trolling Jason’s obsession with legalizing weed is simply the worst kind of sexist misinformation.
The post NHGOP “Leader” Jason Osborne … I’m Helpless; Totally Helpless appeared first on Granite Grok.
Your Congress created a provision in federal law (2022) for a ministry of truth and then funded it without knowing or caring what that would look like. Now we know. Introducing the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC).
From its perch atop the intelligence community, the FMIC has been designated the U.S. government’s primary authority for analyzing and integrating intelligence on foreign influence, according to a brief entry on ODNI’s website. The FMIC’s acting director, Jeffrey K. Wichman, is a former CIA executive who previously served as chief of analysis for the agency’s Counterintelligence Mission Center.
“Exposing deception in defense of liberty” is the center’s motto, ODNI’s website says. It enjoys access to “all intelligence possessed or created pertaining to FMI [foreign malign information], including election security.”
Exposing deception in defense of the approved narratives would be more accurate, but after the collusion with pre-Musk Twitter was exposed, they needed a new safe house. Nestled in the “National Security” bosom. Suckling on partisan progressive narratives as they engage in anti-free-speech domestic counterintelligence.
Not against things like the Steele Dossier, a domestic intelligence scheme blamed on foreigners but fabricated by the Clinton Campaign. Or the Hunter Laptop scheme (Biden campaign), which “intelligence officials” swore was more Russian disinformation. They won’t stand up against that stuff in the name of liberty, but if you post peer-reviewed research questioning vaccine safety or efficacy, you might find yourself on their radar.
Ministry of Truth.
Thanks, Congress. Nice work.
The post The US Intelligence Community Has a New Fully Funded Disinformation Office appeared first on Granite Grok.
From single massive mainframe computers (e.g., IBM 360/370, Multics) to networks of “minicomputers” (e.g., Digital Equipment, Wang Labs, Honeywell) to hordes of standalone Personal Computers, and now tablets, smartphones, and “the Cloud,” compute power has gone from expensive and centralized to cheaper and distributed. No one that I know of has said that this has been a bad thing. Sure, the “compute marketplaces” underwent tremendous upheaval both on an economic scale, death for many companies, and careers impacted (mine certainly was), but compute power went from the “High Priesthoods” to “common man” (or child) availability.
Power distributed is better – not a monoculture but a diverse landscape that caters to all kinds of niches, needs, and applications.
But there are those that, having SEEN all this over the last 70 years, refuse to see the analogy for economics in general from centralized control by Monarchies to the rise of capitalism to the masses. “Spontaneous Order” is the ordering of the economy not by a very few but by millions upon millions of people simply making economic decisions for their singular self-interest. For themselves and not at the behest of “those at the top” that think they know everything needed to make those decisions for others. That’s a mainframe-centric 1950s thinking in the age of smartphones that have more power than back then, but it still exists. So what got me started on this rant, where the Socialists/Communists Totalitarians in the Biden Administration are taking more and more economic control over us?
Markets enable people to coordinate their activities so that individuals can make use of the knowledge of others without having that knowledge themselves. -Randy Holcombe
Unlike the power-hungry bureaucrats (who yearn for such control mainly because they have realized that the Executive Branch has become so expansive they only have to reach down and pick up that Power), Normal people don’t coordinate. They don’t gather in homes, in bars, or at clubs and decide how they will instruct how things will run. Instead, the coordination of a Free Market comes down to one datum: Price Point. While economic totalitarians hate the idea that people can and should choose for themselves, it is the vehicle by which many decisions can be made, the chief of which is “Can I afford it?”. “DO I want to ‘stretch’ to afford it?”, what is the ‘quality’ of that item at that price?” and “Will it perform (product specifications, quality-wise) as I need it to?”.
And each of us can play that role for ourselves as we also are immersed in our “scarcity” atmosphere – what is the tradeoff that I will pay if I purchase this over purchasing this other thing (as few of us can almost totally disregard that issue like Elon Musk can)?
Prof. Don Boudreaux speaks more to this on the famous example of “I, Pencil” – we can’t know enough individually to make all those things that make our standard of living what it is today BECAUSE of Capitalism, its underlying philosophy – and its “distributed knowledge that no top-down committee(s) could ever know:
This truth, alas, is ignored, or insufficiently appreciated, by nearly everyone outside of a tiny band of economists and classical liberals. Yet one glance at everyday reality in modernity makes this truth impossible to deny.
Consider, for example, the device on which you’re now reading my words. Even if you’re a renowned computer scientist or a genius software engineer, you have no idea how to make any of the vast majority of the components of your device. You don’t know how to make the glass that is the screen, the plastic or metal that forms the casing, the tiny lens of the tiny camera that’s in that device, the electricity-generating and transmitting processes without which that device would be useless. Yet each of these myriad different things exist. Each exists because a few individuals have the specific knowledge necessary to produce it, without any of these individuals – or you – having anything close to the knowledge necessary to produce the entire device.
The millions of different individuals each with his or her own specific knowledge must have their productive efforts coordinated with each other if the final results are to be useful – are to have value. This coordination is achieved by each person being guided by market signals – that is, by prices of outputs, prices of inputs, asset values, and profits and losses.
Simply, Price Points. Everything needed to design, market, sell, and support “a widget” can be summed up in a single data point.
Advocates of industrial policy wish either to censor or to ignore the knowledge conveyed in markets. But the only ‘knowledge’ that they have to replace that which they censor or ignore comes from their hunches and personal preferences. Industrial-policy advocates simply assume that, if they can imagine some economic outcome, then the government can directly allocate resources to achieve that outcome and do so in ways that improve the well-being of ordinary people. The particular imagined outcomes, depending on what they are, might be achievable. What is not achievable, save by pure and highly unlikely chance, is the attainment of these outcomes in ways that are not excessively costly – that is, in ways that improve the well-being of ordinary people.
I bring up the apocryphal story of the Soviet Russian store that only had left shoes without the right shoe pair. Oops – the story of incomplete knowledge in a command and control economy.
Virgil Storr and Ginny Choi:
The least advantaged in market societies are better off than the least advantaged in nonmarket societies and may be better off than the most well-off in some nonmarket societies. This material fact, we argue, is of moral significance
Oh, that Thomas Sowell quote? Yes, capitalism is concerned with serving others with goods and services that people ACTUALLY WANT.
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
The post Crowdsourcing vs “Intellectuals” and Totalitarians appeared first on Granite Grok.
This is from someone calling himself Rev. Tony Pierce, an activist for reparations in California:
You know that the numbers should be equivocal to what an acre was back then. We were given 40, OK? We were given 40 acres. You know what that number is. You keep trying to talk about now, yet you research back to slavery and you say nothing about slavery, nothing. So, the equivocal number from the 1860s for 40 acres to today is $200 million for each and every African-American.
The post Quote of the Day appeared first on Granite Grok.
“There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.”
-Thomas Jefferson, 1789
What does it say about the state of our freedoms that there are now more pencil-pushing, bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with weapons than U.S. Marines?
Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the IRS, Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities.
Add in the Biden Administration’s plans to swell the ranks of the IRS by 87,000 new employees (some of whom will be authorized to use deadly force) and grow the nation’s police forces by 100,000 more cops, and you’ve got a nation in the throes of martial law.
We’re being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun.
Make that hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of federal agents armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorized to make arrests, and trained in military tactics has nearly tripled over the past several decades.
As Adam Andrzejewski writes for Forbes, “the federal government has become one never-ending gun show.”
While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, federal agencies have been placing orders for hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow point bullets and military gear.
For example, the IRS has stockpiled 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition in recent years, including 621 shotguns, 539 long-barrel rifles and 15 submachine guns.
The Veterans Administration purchased 11 million rounds of ammunition (equivalent to 2,800 rounds for each of their officers), along with camouflage uniforms, riot helmets and shields, specialized image enhancement devices and tactical lighting.
The Department of Health and Human Services acquired 4 million rounds of ammunition, in addition to 1,300 guns, including five submachine guns and 189 automatic firearms for its Office of Inspector General.
According to an in-depth report on “The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies,” the Social Security Administration secured 800,000 rounds of ammunition for their special agents, as well as armor and guns.
The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. The Smithsonian now employs 620-armed “special agents.”
Even agencies such as Amtrak and NASA have their own SWAT teams.
Ask yourselves: why are government agencies being turned into military outposts?
What’s with the buildup of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies? Even the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department have their own SWAT teams. Most of those officers are under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice.
Why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic submachine guns and hollow point bullets? For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?
For that matter, why do IRS agents need AR-15 rifles?
Why do local police need armored personnel carriers with gun ports, compact submachine guns with 30-round magazines, precision battlefield sniper rifles, and military-grade assault-style rifles and carbines?
Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country?
Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country? And what exactly are they training for? The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of these realistic urban training drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed.
We should be alarmed.
As James Madison warned, “We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”
Unfortunately, we’re long past the first experiment on our freedoms, and merely taking alarm over this build-up of military might will no longer suffice.
Nothing about this de facto army of bureaucratic, administrative, non-military, paper-pushing, non-traditional law enforcement agencies is necessary for national security.
Moreover, while these weaponized, militarized, civilian forces which are armed with military-style guns, ammunition and equipment; trained in military tactics; and authorized to make arrests and use deadly force—may look and act like the military, they are not the military.
Rather, they are foot soldiers of the police state’s standing army, and they are growing in number at an alarming rate.
This standing army—a.k.a. a national police force—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution and rule by force is exactly what America’s founders feared, and its danger cannot be overstated or ignored.
This is exactly what martial law looks like—when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force, only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it: Battlefield tactics. Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Intimidation tactics. Brute force. Laws conveniently discarded when it suits the government’s purpose.
The militarization of America’s police forces in recent decades, which has gone hand in hand with the militarization of America’s bureaucratic agencies, has merely sped up the timeline by which the nation is transformed into an authoritarian regime.
Now we find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of administrative, police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military with little to no regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.
This quasi-state of martial law has been helped along by government policies and court rulings that have made it easier for the police to shoot unarmed citizens, for law enforcement agencies to seize cash and other valuable private property under the guise of asset forfeiture, for military weapons and tactics to be deployed on American soil, for government agencies to carry out round-the-clock surveillance, for legislatures to render otherwise lawful activities as extremist if they appear to be anti-government, for profit-driven private prisons to lock up greater numbers of Americans, for homes to be raided and searched under the pretext of national security, for American citizens to be labeled terrorists and stripped of their rights merely on the say-so of a government bureaucrat, and for pre-crime tactics to be adopted nationwide that strip Americans of the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty and creates a suspect society in which we are all guilty until proven otherwise.
Don’t delude yourself into believing that this thinly-veiled exercise in martial law is anything other than an attempt to bulldoze what remains of the Constitution and reinforce the iron-fisted rule of the police state.
This is no longer about partisan politics or civil unrest or even authoritarian impulses.
This is a turning point.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.
If we are to have any hope of salvaging what’s left of our battered freedoms, we’d do well to start by disarming the IRS and the rest of the federal and state bureaucratic agencies, de-militarizing domestic police forces, and dismantling the police state’s standing army.
John Whitehead | The Tenth Amendment Center
The post Disarm the IRS, De-Militarize the Bureaucracy, and Dismantle the Standing Army appeared first on Granite Grok.
Parents and taxpayers are fighting with local school districts to remove sexually explicit, age-inappropriate material from public schools. Why? Because some kids might get the idea that it is okay to force a 6-year-old girl to perform a sex act under a school desk while someone records it.
The progressive push to sexualize young kids with no concept of sexuality is weird enough. They are literally putting ideas into their heads they’d never otherwise have considered.
When you realize the same people are trying to normalize pedophilia, it makes more sense. And it is a hill they are prepared to die on, complete with sexually explicit books (some with cartoon pictures).
And they could care less about the downsides.
Heather Gonzales, an older cousin of the 6-year-old girl, told KCBD that the girl’s family noticed a sudden change in her behavior amid indications of distress and complaints of a stomach ache.
The girl reportedly revealed that a boy had exposed himself to her in the school lunch line and that she had also been pulled under a desk and pressured to perform a sex act while another student recorded with a district-issued iPad.
The boy or boys are alleged to have assaulted the girl to make her perform the sex act.
“My daughter comes home with bruises and rashes if she doesn’t participate in these little boys’ sick games,” another parent at the protest said. “They will punch her, give her Indian burns, they’ll call her names and cuss at her.”
But wait, there’s more!
Parents who spoke to the Herald during the Monday protest outside the school district’s administrative office claimed the incident with the 6-year-old is not an isolated one.
“There have been multiple moms coming out about stuff that has been happening all year and nothing is being done about it,” one parent said. “It’s hit its peak and that’s why we’re here today, to get answers.”
Let’s pretend there is no LGBT influence or grooming at this institution. WTF is going on in these public schools that first or second-graders are not just doing this but getting away with it during class?
When the teacher collected the students’ iPads the next day, she noticed one of them had been locked with a password and took the device to the campus administrator. “Inappropriate content was discovered” on the iPad after a tech from the technology department unlocked it, according to the district.
The teacher involved has since been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, the district said.
Parents continue to protest and demand answers, but might it be too late? At least one 6-six-year-old girl has been physically and sexually assaulted in an incident involving multiple assailants – in her public school during class. That place where they say the students belong to the schools and teachers, not the parents.
Excellent “parenting” skills you got there.
HT | Fox News
The post Porn in Schools Update: Six-Year-Old Girl Forced Under a Desk to Perform a Sex Act (While Another Student Records It) appeared first on Granite Grok.
I commend Rep. Kelley Potenza on her statement regarding Ann Edwards’ judicial nomination. It’s time to rip the bandaid off New Hampshire’s Court Corruption and reveal the extremely ugly truth about what is going on.
Racketeering is a felony. Witness tampering is a felony. Obstruction of Justice and influencing justice are crimes as well. They are not victimless crimes.
Follow this link for just a small portion of what has been uncovered. I have copied in Robert Hansen, a reporter for Davis Vanguard in California, who has recently reported on a similar enterprise in Santa Clara County Court which also involves collusion between judges, attorneys, victims’ rights non-profits, police, media, prosecutors, and political activists.
Editor: View all the individual testimonies here:
The post Rep. Kelley Potenza’s Statement Regarding Anne Edwards’ Judicial Nomination appeared first on Granite Grok.
Kamala Harris has failed every task assigned to her as Vice President. Border policy, voting rights, abortion, and even water policy have all been placed in her in-basket, and she has yet to respond. Harris was an unpopular AG in California. Her Senate career was a “whatever is popular” approach, often contradicting her AG decisions. Her Presidential run was a failure. She was polarizing in debates, sparring with Gabbard and even calling Biden a racist and sex offender. Harsh words for her future running mate. She dropped out of the race before the first primary vote was cast. With her record, you know the only reason she is VP is color and gender. Her performance has been consistent in the second chair-consistently inadequate.
There have been two problems with her approach to any of her assignments – incompetence and laziness. When she has shown a weakness in grasping the task, she has done little to get up to speed. Instead, she disappears and, at times, complains about her role.
“What can be, unburdened by what has been” is a line she has used in over eight speaking engagements, and still, nobody, including Harris, understands what she is talking about. This is the story of Kamala’s speaking record. She delivers a word salad every opportunity she has to speak and show the world that she is on her game. Her incoherent ramblings only serve to embarrass the VP and supply fodder for late-night shows.
That brings us to the latest assignment for Kamala Harris as the AI czar and will oversee an effort to ensure the technology is developed responsibly. This job will require a knowledge of what AI is, its capabilities, and how it impacts society and security. Sorry, but this is doomed from the start. She is in over her head and best disappear immediately.
AI is not a new technology; many of us have experienced its impact, even if unaware. One of the most common AI functions is a grammar/writing application like Grammarly. As you type, the app is sitting in the background, not only catching spelling and punctuation errors but suggesting better sentence and paragraph structure. It is like having an assistant sitting next to you-an AI assistant. Each day, we hear of new capabilities, and the speed at which AI is progressing has caught the attention of some of the smartest among us. Even Elon Musk has suggested that research and development of AI take a six-month hiatus. The experts fear that AI is taking on a life of its own and man will lose control of the tool. They know there is a potential dark side to the technology that can harm the public at the hands of someone nefarious.
Of course, a technology break would never happen, and there is no way you could get the world to agree to a cease-fire. AI is a speeding train, and there is no stopping it and, quite possibly, no controlling it. So what can our hapless Vice President do to regulate it? Nothing. This assignment appears to be the government putting itself in the way of the free market. The only thing the government should do is protect us from a foreign adversary using AI against America or Americans. She is not the person for this job. Even if there were a miracle and she understood AI, there is no way she could intervene in an adversarial interaction. She is an insignificant speed bump when the country may need a strong firewall.
The post Let’s Put Kamala In Charge Of AI…Brilliant appeared first on Granite Grok.
California, The Golden State, symbolized the spirit and curiosity of America for decades. California was the American dream. California now exemplifies much of what is wrong with America, and how it is declining could be a harbinger of America’s future.
In new data published by the Census Bureau this week, California’s population shrunk by approximately 113,649 people from July 2021 to July 2022. There was a net gain across the state in “Natural Change,” the number of births (420,000) and deaths (318,000) during that time frame. That only tells part of the story. California’s population shrank by 508,903 people during the first two years of the pandemic, second behind only New York. A half-million people leaving California, which has a population of more than 39 million, isn’t exactly a large-scale departure — but it does have some policymakers concerned about the state’s future.
The final piece of this equation is difficult to quantify. Businesses and tax-paying residents are leaving and replaced by illegal immigrants pouring over the Border from Mexico. These new residents are placing a burden on housing, social services, and education. The other intangible is the impact on crime as these immigrants flow into California’s many sanctuary cities. Those that stay are looking at paying more of their “fair” share in a state that already has one of the highest tax burdens in the country. This exchange of residents is not a good deal for the people of California.
California is on the precipice of initiating a reparations program to exacerbate the tax situation further. The statewide reparations committee has concluded its work, and its recommendations will create a new class of millionaires in California. They recommend a cash payout of up to $1.2 million for every Black Californian resident. This plan would cost an estimated $800 Billion.
The panel’s recommendation breaks payments down by types of historical discrimination. For instance, Black residents affected by redlining by banks would receive $3,366 for each year they lived in California from the early 1930s to the late 1970s, amounting to up to $148,099. Similarly, Black residents could receive roughly $2,352 in compensation for over-policing and mass incarceration for each year they lived in California between 1970 and 2020. Those payments could amount to $115,260.
In total, from these and other payments included in the plan, a Black Californian who is 71 years old and has lived in California his entire life could receive up to $1.2 million, according to an analysis from the New York Times.
The timing could not be worse timing for California. Sacramento has decided to default on a Federal COVID loan of $18.5 Billion in debt, leaving state businesses holding the bag. Little did California businesses know that they were cosigners on the state’s nearly $20 billion loan from the federal government used to cover California’s unemployment fund shortfall during the COVID pandemic. Newsom and the State Legislature have thrown the people under the tax bus rather than owning up to their responsibilities—an example of bad policies by a state government intent on ruining the future of California.
I have written about reparations in the past, and my negative feelings have not changed. There is no link between the people of today and what happened over 150 years ago. Every feeling human being will condemn slavery, but that does not mean we all have to dip into our pockets to assuage Blacks for what happened to their ancestors six or seven generations ago. I also have to chuckle when someone says this will be a huge step toward solving our crime problems. That statement intimates the crime issue is caused by Blacks, and writing them a check will change their mindset. I am not a psychologist, but I have enough common sense to know it is a lie. Unfortunately, if reparations happen in California, the Left will push to adopt it as a national initiative. That will be a national mistake.
The post California’s Million Dollar Conundrum appeared first on Granite Grok.
Today America is under attack from within. Among the battles being fought is equity versus meritocracy. This battle is ravaging American institutions. Wherever we look, from the arts to higher education, corporate America, and the sciences, the battle is exacting a high cost.
We want to thank Marc Abear for this Op-Ed. Please submit yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
Hopefully, the battle burns itself out before it destroys America.
The juxtaposition of the issues of race and merit is ignored. We are treading a path back to racism. This is morally wrong, ethically challenged, and economically damaging to our future. It will take some serious backbone on the part of the nation’s political leadership to change the outcome. But we must try.
There is great value in telling the truth. We all know something is wrong. Most of us struggle to articulate exactly what. Let’s try to organize the truth so there is a framework for galvanizing our political leadership in the effort.
Our institutional leadership is turning against meritocracy. Their argument is we have a problem; Blacks are falling behind. They have chosen the answer, reverse racism. The truth is “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
The destruction of meritocracy today does not remedy the past ills of slavery. Neither does it make anything but privilege for the ignorant. Divide the world by identity all you want, but that breaking down of society into smaller and smaller parts makes America weaker and poorer.
The united whole is more than the sum of its parts. That is what the American dream has shown us. When we aspire together, we will work together and we can achieve whatever we can dream.
America can be controlled by diversity or meritocracy. We cannot have both. Meritocratic standards have a disparate impact on Blacks. Blacks as a group do poorly on standardized tests. That’s not because the tests do not measure correctly. Rather, the tests are objective and colorblind. It’s a statement; Blacks’ academic skills are generally lower. This is not a value judgment, it is a statement of fact.
That is a separate issue from diversity. The issue of academic underperformance by Blacks can and should be dealt with. Destroying meritocracy is not the way to do that. Destroying meritocracy makes everyone poorer without helping those most in need of the assistance.
The point is; if Blacks were not the lowest performing group, we would not be tearing down meritocracy. Some people succeed at each of the various areas of life more than others. That is because of effort and/or innate talent. Racism and racial disparity are increasingly driving the troublesome areas of decision making in our society.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act penalized intentional discrimination. It ended the use of race based standards in hiring and employment. In the 1970s the game changed and the next step became the disparate impact doctrine.
The disparate impact doctrine began as a court case. The important tenant of it is the showing of a difference became the establishment of racial intent. This is and always has been a non sequitur. Yet, it has settled in and become a corrosive cultural construct.
Perhaps the clearest example is civil service exams. At the time Blacks were doing poorly on these exams. That fact kept them from getting civil service positions, police, firefighters, etc. But the tests were not racist. They measured the skill level of the test taker in job specific areas. The tests were both relevant and merit based.
Disparate impact threw out the tests because those passing them did not represent racial groups proportionally. From there disparate impact spread into regulation and statute. That is how reverse racism metastasized.
After 30 years of institutionalized reverse racism the Supreme Court erred again. With Grutter v. Bollinger they further extended the reverse racism doctrine. The case said affirmative action in college admissions is justifiable.
It included a caveat “but not in perpetuity” which today is dropped from the application of the ruling. It has become the way we approach decision making. It has become codification of racism…which was never the intent. Perverse, don’t you think?
Today to take down any individual, organization or institution all that has to happen is to label it “White”. That is racist. There’s no other way to say it. It is racist. We are returning to a racist society. Blacks are leading the charge.
It used to be the burden of proof was on the government to prove discrimination. Today, it is enough to simply show a difference in results. And individuals, the academy, corporate America and government are abandoning objective truth in decision making.
We are adopting a reverse racist position. The burden of proof has been shifted. The accused must now prove a negative… It is a nearly impossible case to make. It should be unconstitutional. It is unfair and un-American. Just think about it. There is a way out of this.
The post Equity Kills Excellence appeared first on Granite Grok.