Wednesday • April 30 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.XVIII
Manchester, N.H.
This is an attempt to “break out” memes, links, and my commentary about the situation in Israel / the Middle East so as to not overload the standard meme posts that I do. My last “normal” meme post. And my last Israel-related one.
I don’t just have memes in the Israel ones, but lots of informative links as well as hopefully-insightful commentary, so if you didn’t see the last one, please do go look after you’re done with this one. Same thing here: lots and lots of links, info, videos, memes, and my added commentary (that I hope adds perspective and value).
*** Note that while I will attempt discretion in images that I post, not all are “squeaky clean” in terms of the eyes of the innocent. Be warned here. ***
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Hamas in its own words. (From 2009.)
From this post. Good site in general. Almost 15 years ago, and their message is unchanged.
>>>>>=====<<<<<
WAR & WHEN WILL IT END?
Understand that terror is THE WAY in Islamic warfare. Consider this recent shooting in Brussels. Now, the lesson has been taught: “We Muslims can reach you here, and there, and everywhere.” Here he is saying, “I am a fighter for Allah. We live for our religion, and we die for our religion.” (At least, that’s the translation from the post where I got this from.)
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/brussels-shooter.mp4
WATCH: Hamas Brutally Tortured Before Murdering Them, Including Children – Geller Report
The next link is to an age-restricted video; warning, graphic, and upsetting content.
Horrifying video shows the moments at the site of Israel music festival
What astonishes me are the “Doubting Thomases” who, despite evidence like this, continually scream for more proof, more proof, more proof. Yet when the Palestinian authorities cite casualty figures, etc., there’s totally unskeptical acceptance. Another distressing video:
Israel-Hamas war: ‘80% of bodies’ found, including children, were tortured
Executed without pity: Shocking moment wounded female Israeli soldiers cowering under a table after being injured by a grenade are shot dead by Hamas gunmen | Daily Mail Online
Video. Two women cowering under a table. Shot at point-blank range.
—
—
They swooped in to kill dozens at the Nova music festival. Now we reveal… How Hamas trained its murderous paraglider squadron – right under the noses of Mossad | Daily Mail Online
What did I say at the end of my prior post? Complacency. Underestimation of the enemy.
THE ISLAMIC MENTALITY
Let me be clear, while there are many, many Muslims who do want nothing but peace and all, I know because my wife is one of them the hardline doctrine of Islam is one of terror, rape, and murder of anyone not of the faith.
Complete Infidel’s Guides
Robert Spencer’s ‘The Critical Qur’an’ | Frontpage Mag
The Abomination That Is Islam | Gates of Vienna
Make no mistake about it: we are all in the front line of Jihad now and had better find some backbone and start eliminating them en masse before we ourselves are rendered extinct. It really is as simple as that, and the latest example of what are facing can be found in the person of one Feras Al-Jayoosi, he of the dead eyes and a face that defines hatred for us and everything we represent.
—
A lot of people complain about the blockade around Gaza that Israel has up. This is an indication – one data point among many – of why that blockade exists:
Police spokespersons:
Watch the documentary: The Israel Police Marines who fought in the south in the face of the terrorist attack, located packages of rice in which the Hamas organization had smuggled ammunition to the Gaza Strip.
The IDF soldiers were among the first to respond strongly to the terrorist attack that occurred on Saturday, October 7, 2023.
The fighters attacked and killed about 200 terrorists in the various fighting points in the south.
After the fighting in the battle centers, the fighters collected weapons and ammunition of the terrorists, which they destroyed and discovered ammunition inside rice packages that were in the terrorists’ equipment.
The suspicion is that the ammunition was smuggled into the Gaza Strip as “humanitarian aid” inside rice bags.
@DesertUnit0777
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/ammo-in-rice-packages.mp4
Truces are for rearming/reloading. Again, read about the Treaty of Hudaibiya and how Mohammed signed a peace treaty… and broke it when convenient. (That’s why I’ve never fully trusted the Abraham Accords – I had hope, but not trust.) The Islamic mentality is of total war, eternal war, against the kaffir. Speaking of war, and terror, repeating this excellent book link:
The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS
Eternal war by any means necessary:
Iran’s Final Solution for Israel: The Legacy of Jihad and Shi’ite Islamic Jew-Hatred in Iran
Remember how they pay martyrs and soldiers who kill Jews:
PA will pay $2,789,430 to families of 1,500 dead Hamas terrorist murderers, this month
This means each family of the 1,500 dead Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel will receive 7,400 shekels for this first month. Families of those terrorists who were married and had children will receive even more. The PA will pay at least 11,100,000 shekels ($2,789,430) this month as a reward for participating in last week’s murders and atrocities against Israeli civilians.
In addition, the 50 captured Hamas terrorist murderers will receive monthly salaries in prison starting at 1,400 shekels/month which will eventually rise to 12,000 shekels/month. Terrorists who are married and have children will receive even higher salaries. This month these newly arrested terrorists will receive at least 70,000 shekels ($17,590).
—
One of the things I highlighted in my last post was that of rape in Islam. From Mohammed raping the widow of a conquered Jewish tribe in Arabia on the same day he murdered her husband (video of the son of a Hamas official also included in my last post)…
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Son2.mp4
to the fact that rape of captive women is – absolutely – sanctioned in Islam (links in the original quoted paragraphs):
Hamas Jihadi Admits True Motive for Kidnapping Women and Children | Frontpage Mag
Around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality.
…
In January 2016, a female al-Azhar professor stated that Allah allowed Muslims to rape non-Muslim women in order to humiliate them.
—
Islam’s rhetoric is also consistent… over centuries upon centuries.
We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their [Barbary’s] pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.
Cited here about early America’s first involvement with Islam. That statement from over 200 years ago could have been lifted from modern Muslim statements today. The lesson of not paying DANEGELD was understood before… but it’s been unlearned. As has Churchill’s lesson on appeasement.
More: consider the Battle of Yarmouk, where the “Sword of Allah”, Khalid bin al-Wahid (the guy who barbecued the head of a tribe chieftain, ate his brains, and raped the man’s widow in a pool of her husband’s blood, remember?) said (bolding added):
Before battle, Vahan and Khalid met under a flag of truce to negotiate. The Armenian commander began by diplomatically blaming Arabia’s harsh conditions and impoverished economy for giving the Arabs no choice but to raid Roman lands. Accordingly, the empire was pleased to provide them with food and coin on condition that they return home. “It was not hunger that brought us here,” Khalid responded coolly, “but we Arabs are in the habit of drinking blood, and we are told the blood of the Romans is the sweetest of its kind, so we came to shed your blood and drink it.
More on that battle. But… tasty blood? Why does that sound familiar (bolding added)?
Fox News reports that jihadi web sites are rejoicing over today’s terrorist attacks in Paris. The line we have heard more than once from ISIS-related sites is, “The American blood is best, and we will taste it soon.”
Almost a millennia and a half later, they’re saying the same thing. And, from the article about Yarmouk, not just doing the same blood-drinking, but doing the same beheading (bolding added):
Things came to a head, quite literally, when 8,000 marching Muslims appeared before the Roman camp carrying the severed heads of 4,000 Christians atop their spears. These were the remains of 5,000 reinforcements who had come from Amman to join the main army at Yarmuk. The Muslims had ambushed and slaughtered them. Then, as resounding cries of “Allahu akbar” filled the Muslim camp, those Muslims standing behind the remaining 1,000 Christian captives knocked them over and proceeded to carve off their heads before the eyes of their co-religionists, whom Arabic sources describe as looking on in “utter bewilderment.”
And another terror tactic used now as in the past:
Cannibalism: ISIS Revives Islam’s Original Terror Tactic (raymondibrahim.com)
Closing out, they make it clear that their hatred of us is simply because we are unbelievers (italics replaced by bolding for emphasis, link in the original):
What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary, hence the reason we addressed it at the end of the above list. […] The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you [emphasis added].
Related – understand the Arab / Muslim mentality. They do not think like Westerners:
Why Israel must wage all-out war ~ Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News
—
In the last post, I brought up Hijra, or conquest by migration and demographics. The great Islamic push into Europe was stopped at Vienna in 1683.
The Other September 11th | Gates of Vienna
As an aside, Muslims are renowned for doing attacks on the anniversaries of great battles. Either to reprise the date as another victory… or to reclaim the date of a loss with a subsequent victory. But what do we make of this? This was in Vienna.
Muslim Girl Beaten Up For Not Wearing Hijab | Frontpage Mag
It was in 1683 that the Muslim Turks, in their invasion of south and central Europe, lay siege to Vienna for the second and last time. They did not obtain their objective; the Viennese withstood the attack. That unsuccessful siege was the high water mark of the Ottoman entry into Europe. Now, in 2023, there are more Muslims in Vienna (236,000) than there were besieging the city (170,000) in 1683. In all of Austria, there are now 840,000 Muslims. They have no need to lay siege with massive cannons as they did in 1683. They have been slowly conquering the country through a demographic jihad. Muslims have managed to arrive, legally and illegally, in Austria, by the hundreds of thousands, economic migrants posing as asylum seekers who came to the country prepared to batten on all the benefits that a generous welfare state can provide: free or greatly subsidized housing, free medical care, free education, family allowances, unemployment benefits without needing to have any work history in Austria, and more. In this story, we see the result of that.
And in other places:
Welcome to Hamasburg | Gates of Vienna
And coming to the US through The Potato’s open borders.
Iranian Terrorists Are Coming Across Biden’s Open Southern Border – Geller Report
659 known or suspected terrorists caught at the border in 2023, the most ever (jihadwatch.org)
And worse, potentially, to our schools.
Three suspected Hamas supporters arrested after alleged threats to Toronto Jewish school; police deployed inside classroom – Rebel News
Look up the Beslan attack. Now imagine that happening at your kid’s school. Or the school of a child of a friend or family member. How could this happen? Imagine a bunch of Jihadists dressed as police, showing up at a school (nothing new – they’ve used IDF uniforms before). They’re heeeeeere:
Iranian Sleeper Cells In Texas, Training and Recruiting in ‘Islamic Education’ Centers Raising – Geller Report
And they’re global:
‘Pro-Palestinian’ rally in Melbourne turns ugly with anti-Semitic chants – Rebel News
Anti-Israel sentiment leads to Berlin official to reluctantly ask Jews to hide their faith | Fox News
And here:
UK: Muslim demonstrators scream ‘Khaybar’ jihad chant vowing new genocide of Jews (jihadwatch.org)
Khaybar? That’s the town where Mohammed raped that dead chieftain’s wife. Remember what I said about them having a long memory?
We dare not let them in here. Let in a million people who view America as the power behind the agent that displaced them from their homes? And then think they’ll assimilate without any drive to take revenge?
Republicans ready bill to bar Palestinian refugees on national security grounds | World Israel News
And a critical lesson on Palestinian refugees comes through Brigitte Gabriel’s book BECAUSE THEY HATE, wherein she recounts how Lebanon – formerly a majority-Catholic country – was taken over by the Muslim migrants that were taken in because of western sentimentality and empathy. Only to have those self-same advocates held down and killed even as they pleaded “But we helped you; we were on your side”! The reply? Stupid Infidel. Here she is speaking from knowledge:
Islam: principi di guerra – Islam: principles of war.
Cut them off too:
Conservative Leaders Urge Defunding Palestinians of Foreign Aid (dailysignal.com)
—
Under pressure from Biden administration, Israel resumes supplying water to the Gaza Strip | World Israel News
Some are critical of this. I think it’s a wise move – not militarily, but rather from a public relations standpoint. Israel’s already getting hammered in the “court of public opinion”. How hammered?
Students for Justice in Palestine Cheers Hamas Crimes at Colleges Across U.S. – Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish articles
Here’s a sampling of videos.
Florida:
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/palis-in-florida.mp4
Michigan (Dearborn of course):
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/dearborn.mp4
Around the country… around the world, Islamists are now deeply embedded. And many governments are becoming increasingly critical too. Israel is having to juggle eggs while on a bouncy-house floor.
MORE ON INTERSECTIONALITY / LEFTIST SUPPORT
When considering the support of the Left for Hamas, understanding their mentality is necessary. This seminal transcribed speech by comedian Evan Sayet is critical:
Regurgitating the Apple: How Modern Liberals “Think” | The Heritage Foundation
Here he is speaking. I’ve skipped the intro.
Evan Sayet – Regurgitating the Apple how Modern Liberals “Think”
PALLYWOOD
Gaza Strip’s Arabs enjoy spin classes, fine dining, private beaches, theme parks, luxury hotels | JTF
Just on a lark… go to Tripadvisor and search for hotels in Gaza, Palestine. This one looks nice. Or restaurants.
And a tidbit about Gaza when it was controlled by Egypt:
For some strange reason, Palestinians didn’t behead Egyptian babies between 1949 and 1967 ~ Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News
—
One of the recurring comments that I’ve seen over the years is how – under Ottoman Rule, for example – the land saw Muslims, Christians (the Armenians, as one group, might differ), and Jews peacefully coexisting… until, of course, the dread wave of Zionists started coming in. On the incoming Zionists “displacing” Arabs… on the contrary Arabs flocked to the land after Jews started arriving (bolding added):
1934 Survey of Palestine Showed How Jews Helped Arabs; Arabs Flocked to Live Near Jewish Areas – Algemeiner.com
It shows that Arabs flocked to Palestine because of Jewish economic success, and that there was essentially no negative effects of Jewish immigration.
More:
Were the Arabs Indigenous to Mandatory Palestine? :: Middle East Quarterly (meforum.org)
Read the whole thing. It’s eye-opening that many of the current Arabs were descended from labor-migration Arabs coming in because of the Jews.
More on the claim that, over centuries, Jews and Muslims lived in peace side by side. A specific example of this is the rule of the Moors in Spain. About that:
The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain
The reality is not quite as presented. Non-Muslims were dhimmis (link to a book), under the thumb of Muslim rule under the Pact of Umar (links in original, bolding added):
After the rapid expansion of the Muslim dominion in the 7th century, Muslims leaders were required to work out a way of dealing with non-Muslims, who remained in the majority in many areas for centuries. The solution was to develop the notion of the “dhimma,” or “protected person” which applied to the “People of the Book” – Christians and Jews. Though not forced to convert or treated as harshly as other non-believers, the dhimmi were, in the best of times, second-class citizens and, at certain times and places severely persecuted and murdered.
So as you hear people or videos discussing this purported “Golden Age” of relationship between Muslims and Jews (and Christians)… understand there’s some missing background.
—
Another piece of background is on the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries.
Why Jews Fled the Arab Countries :: Middle East Quarterly (meforum.org)
And again I refer you to the excellent book Uprooted: How 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight
—
What reporters aren’t telling you about Shifa Hospital: It is Hamas HQ ~ Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News
As I understand it, hiding military functions in a hospital is a war crime. More on international law:
No, Israel isn’t engaging in “collective punishment” under international law ~ Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News
TERROR COMING HERE?
Spain:
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/spain.mp4
It’s flags now. And it will be Synagogues soon. Wait, now:
Molotov cocktails thrown at Berlin synagogue, no damage: police – Insider Paper
And people soon after that. And if the US shows support militarily, not just supplying arms & money but actual troops? Watch out – not just Synagogues. Malls. Schools. Downtowns. Churches. Individual people. Total terror… but then, that’s what Islam does.
‘Top Secret’ Hamas Documents Show Palestinian Terrorists Intentionally Targeted Children: Report | The Daily Wire
SHOCKER! Islamic extremism apologist, MSNBC, actually is reporting the truth about documents found on dead terrorists’ bodies that shows Hamas targeted the most innocent of victims – children (barenakedislam.com)
TREADING ON THE POLITICAL
Nothing specific seen as noteworthy.
GIVING SUPPORT TO ISRAEL
You can’t go wrong with a donation here:
Connections Israel
I’ve contributed to them for almost 20 years. And please share this post – and the following ones – far and wide. There’s a lot of info here, that many people don’t know.
A CONCLUDING THOUGHT FOR THIS POST
Let me clear on something. I do not relish the idea of razing Gaza. I do not relish the prospect of all the dead civilians – and there are civilians – among that community. I am aghast at the blast at the hospital, for example, though there are conflicting data on the cause. I will say this, repeating something I’ve said earlier:
Cui bono?
Who benefits?
Israel’s reputation is now in a free-fall, just as it was setting up for an enormous crushing of Hamas. Furthermore, one must take into account the fact that Hamas is known for putting its own people into harm’s way as CAMERA FODDER.
The post Israel: More Memes, Links, and Commentary appeared first on Granite Grok.
Who doesn’t like to watch nuns battling climate protesters? I know you’ve likely never even considered it until now, and how should that make you feel? Nuns fighting (I’m a fan of Warrior Nun – Netflix and IMDB – if you care). But that’s fiction. This is the real world.
Defending the faith has become increasingly contentious, so when a climate protester tried to stop construction by trespassing on the property, sister bulldozer hopped to it, so to speak, and tackled him.
“I didn’t expect that,” protestor Sylvain Herenguel told France 3.
“I expected the nuns to be a little reasonable for the public order. The problem is that the religious decided to resort to violence. I was attacked 3 times by five people, who snatched me, who wanted to throw me out. There, they decided to protect the site with their actions and their bodies,” he added.
Just ask your average Catholic School survivor – not sure they are as strict as they used to be – and you’ll get an earful about discipline. So he should have seen it coming.
And it looks like he is absconding pipe of some sort, which one of his fellow protesters can be seen crushing. So, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of trespass or destruction of property, but trying to prevent it?
Énorme ! La bonne sœur qui plaque un écologiste… du grand spectacle en Ardèche où des religieuses défendent le chantier d’un futur centre religieux face aux militants qui bloquent à cause de l’impact sur l’environnement.
@ferro_nicolas
plaquage non réglementaire pic.twitter.com/3wSyO7s3LO— Léo Chapuis (@leo_chapuis) October 16, 2023
HT | TGP
The post Nun vs. Climate Protester – FIGHT! appeared first on Granite Grok.
The discussion is premature, but the Radical Left Wing group, The Squad, is unified that America should swing open its doors for Palestinian refugees who may need a new homeland after Israel destroys Hamas and Gaza.
These few irrational individuals may find themselves alone on their side as anyone with a modicum of common sense and love of this country knows it will be a bad idea to let any Palestinians into America, and there are many reasons to defend our argument.
As reported in Rightvsleft.news:
In a recent development, a member of the progressive “Squad,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), has urged the United States to open its doors to Palestinian refugees.
This call comes in the wake of an estimated displacement of 1 million people in Gaza within a week, as reported by Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. However, this proposition has been met with staunch opposition from several Republicans.
Over the weekend, Pro-Palestinian and even Pro-Hamas demonstrations were held worldwide, especially in larger U.S. cities and universities. These demonstrators may be the only defenders of the Squad’s stance, but many Republican politicians quickly attacked the Squad and protestors. This debate is heated, but the temperature will rise when Israel begins retaliating against Hamas, and innocent bystanders are hurt or killed.
First, it must be understood that not all Palestinians align themselves with Hamas. Still, it is also known that all Palestinians despise Israel and want to see the obliteration of Jews and also have no love of America. So why would they want to come here in the first place? Letting them all relocate to Iran would be a better fit for them and Americans.
By the time Biden ends his stay in Washington in 2025, he will have allowed 8-10 million people to cross our Southern Border. We are not paying too much attention to our Northern Border, but illegals are crossing into America from Canada. We also have an untold number of refugees coming to a town near you from Ukraine. With the sheer magnitude of the number of people, vetting is not feasible. Biden will tell you these people are all given an appearance date to rule on their asylum claim, but that is years away, and virtually nobody shows up for these hearings.
With the people from Gaza looking to relocate to America, it is not the number of migrants. It is their core beliefs. All people in Gaza are indoctrinated from childhood and reinforced daily to hate Jews and Americans. Bringing these people into our world is tantamount to letting the wolf into the henhouse. That combination never works out well for the hens and will not work well for Americans.
Currently, Jordan and Egypt have closed their borders to Palestinian refugees. Yes, some countries can secure their borders for the safety of their sovereignty and people. We can learn about border security from these Middle Eastern countries. This whole region is getting complicated. Jordan and Egypt have called off their scheduled meeting with Biden on Wednesday. The Biden trip has no upside. He will come off as weak, and now the principles leave him hanging. His visit may also be delaying Israel’s insurgence in Gaza. Biden should have stayed home and left it with him pledging support. He has no place on the frontline. Remember his history. He has never been on the right side of an international decision, and this one will be no different.
Get Biden back to Delaware, and keep the Palestinians in the Middle East.
The post If Arab Countries Can Secure Their Borders for the Safety and Sovereignty of Their People … appeared first on Granite Grok.
As the Biden administration gets closer to finalizing its proposed rule banning the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars nationwide, a well-known aphorism comes to mind: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
The administration’s logic behind the federal ban is that doing so will reduce smoking and correspondingly improve public health. This is the same logic used to justify increasing tobacco taxes or banning tobacco and vaping products at the state level.
When a state bans flavored tobacco or increases excise taxes on cigarettes, legal cigarette sales in the state tend to fall as a result. But what about illegal and out-of-state sales?
High cigarette taxes and bans on flavored tobacco products create black and gray markets through which smugglers become the new suppliers of these products.
Tax rates and smuggling
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy tracks cigarette smuggling in the United States. Its 2021 report showed how cigarette smuggling increases as excise tax rates on tobacco products increase.
New York, which taxes cigarettes $4.35 a pack, saw the highest rate of inbound smuggling—54.48%. The total number of smuggled packs, more than 254 million, was second in the country behind California’s more than 465 million. California also had the second-highest inbound smuggling rate (44.02%) and a tax rate of $2.87 per pack.
When taxes get high enough to encourage large-scale smuggling, tax revenue falls as people stop buying from legal vendors and start buying on the street, and as some vendors switch to out-of-state suppliers and simply don’t report or pay taxes on those purchases. As a result of their high taxes, California and New York saw the two largest revenue losses—more than $1.3 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively.
With a tax rate of $3.51 per pack, Massachusetts had the fourth-highest inbound smuggling rate (37.59%) and the ninth-highest number of smuggled packs (more than 63 million), resulting in the sixth-largest revenue loss (nearly $224 million) in 2021.
Where were these Massachusetts and New York smugglers purchasing these products? Mostly in New Hampshire.
With by far the lowest state tax on cigarette products in the Northeast ($1.78 per pack), the Granite State saw one of the highest outbound smuggling rates in 2021 (-34.13%, which translates to more than 32 million packs).
As smugglers crossed into New Hampshire to purchase cigarettes, the State of New Hampshire collected an additional $58 million in revenue.
High cigarette taxes incentivize illicit market activity, encouraging smugglers to purchase products in low-tax states, cross state lines with them, and consume or resell the products in high-tax states.
A similar dynamic takes place when a state bans tobacco products.
Bans and black markets
After Massachusetts banned flavored tobacco in 2019, JAMA Internal Medicine found that flavored tobacco sales dropped in the state. Successful policy, right?
Not so fast. “In fact, the flavor ban has been far from successful, as sales in both New Hampshire and Rhode Island experienced double-digit growth—almost making up for the entire decrease in Massachusetts,” according to the Tax Foundation.
After Massachusetts’ ban, total sales of flavored tobacco in New England fell by only about 1% from June 2019–May 2020 to June 2020–May 2021.
While sales of flavored tobacco decreased by 24% in Massachusetts between the year before the ban to the year after the ban, they increased by 22% in New Hampshire, 18% in Rhode Island, and 6% in Vermont.
In Fiscal Year 2021, Massachusetts lost out on $125 million in tobacco excise tax revenue as sales shifted to other states.
It’s a mistake to equate falling cigarette sales at licensed, regulated shops with an equivalent decline in smoking. The evidence shows that high taxes and bans on tobacco products shift a lot of activity to the black market.
A University of California at San Diego study of Massachusetts licensed tobacco retailers in the two years before and the two years after the flavored cigarette ban found that the number of new tobacco retail licenses fell by 53% after the ban, with the total number of retail licenses falling by 5.8%. This finding, combined with the documented increases in out-of-state sales and cross-border smuggling, underscores the point that the ban has not ended menthol cigarette smoking in Massachusetts but rather has moved these products onto the black market.
Responding to incentives
Massachusetts created strong incentives for people to buy tobacco products elsewhere and bring them into the state for personal use and/or sales. People responded just as expected.
It’s important to recognize that criminals respond to incentives, too. Gangs and drug smugglers can increase their revenues by adding cigarette smuggling to their repertoire of illicit activities. In the name of public health, states can find themselves strengthening existing organized crime networks and even creating new ones by imposing bans or high tax rates.
Bans and punitive tax rates also induce evasive behaviors among otherwise law-abiding citizens.
The Massachusetts Department of Revenue’s Illegal Tobacco Task Force issues press releases boasting of its enforcement of the state’s tobacco laws. Those press releases list people charged with running large-scale smuggling operations that include flavored tobacco, vapes, and marijuana. But they also include store owners arrested, convicted, and jailed for purchasing tobacco products out of state to avoid Massachusetts’ high taxes.
It’s worth noting that the task force is part of the Department of Revenue. It was created “to address the problem of illegal tobacco distribution in the Commonwealth and the loss of millions of dollars of legitimate tax revenues to the state every year [emphasis added].” Massachusetts’ tax policy stimulated so much tax evasion that the state created a separate team just to find and punish tax evaders.
The solution to this interstate smuggling, some advocates argue, is a nationwide ban. Such policies used to be called “prohibition.” But as that term has fallen out of political favor, advocates instead use the term “ban” now.
There is a large overlap between the people who want to ban tobacco and vaping products and the people who want to maximize government revenue for social welfare programs. Those two goals are in conflict. A Tax Foundation analysis of a proposed menthol cigarette ban shows how.
“A nationwide ban would result in a federal revenue decline of $1.9 billion in the first full year after prohibition,” according to the Tax Foundation. “In the states, the decline in excise tax revenue would be $2.6 billion, the decline in sales tax revenue would be $892 million, and the decline in MSA payments would be $1.2 billion, for a total state revenue loss of $4.7 billion.”
In New Hampshire, where menthol cigarettes make up 34% of the state’s market, a federal ban would mean more than $49 million in lost revenue, of which 71% would be a decline in excise tax revenue.
And just like Massachusetts’ ban resulted in 90% of its lost sales merely moving to neighboring states, a federal ban would increase sales and consumption of other tobacco products like non-flavored cigarettes, and it would move sales and consumption of menthol cigarettes underground.
For example, according to Reason Foundation, “approximately 22 million additional packs of nonmenthol cigarettes were sold in those states in the year after [Massachusetts’] flavor ban, leading to a net increase in cigarette sales.”
Where will illicit menthol cigarettes come from after a nationwide ban is enacted? The same place so many other banned products do: China.
In 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned flavored vaping products. It boasts that since the ban, it has rejected 99% of requests to sell new e-cigarettes, implying that the ban has reduced access to undesired products.
But CBS News reported in June that the “number of different electronic cigarette devices sold in the U.S. has nearly tripled to over 9,000 since 2020.”
The FDA’s ban excludes disposable vape products. So, predictably, consumers migrated to disposables. But closing that “loophole” isn’t the solution advocates think it is. The surge in different vape products sold has been “driven almost entirely by a wave of unauthorized [emphasis added] disposable vapes from China.”
Consumers and suppliers always find ways to circumvent federal bans.
The primary achievement of such bans will be to replace legal, regulated products with illegal, unregulated ones, often from unscrupulous manufacturers. In a legal market, manufacturers and sellers have strong incentives to build market share by building trust with consumers. Legal markets promote accountability. Black markets do the opposite. Manufacturers and sellers have strong incentives to conceal their identities, which weakens accountability and reduces consumer safety.
Any federal ban would bolster illicit trade, flooding the market with less safe products from unaccountable manufacturers.
The goal of high cigarette taxes and flavored tobacco bans may be an altruistic one, namely, to reduce smoking and improve public health. But the actual outcome of such policies is what’s important. Creating black markets, reducing accountability, shifting money from legitimate businesses to criminal networks, and reducing overall economic and personal freedom create a net negative for the economy and society.
Reducing teen smoking is a worthy goal, which is why it’s already illegal for teens to smoke. Rather than using policy levers that distort market incentives and infringe on the personal freedom of adults, activists should focus on improving their efforts to educate young people about the risks of smoking.
Mitchell Scacchi | Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy
The post Bans and High Taxes Fuel Black Markets for Tobacco & Vape Products appeared first on Granite Grok.
New Hampshire residents & lawmakers, please wake up fast and recognize what is going on, and start to ponder the level of corruption and how to address it.
We want to thank Claire Best for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
The Andy Sanborn PPP loan case should be the trigger:
Senator Jeanne Shaheen lobbied for the PPP loans.
The City of Concord Planning Committee approved the Sunburn proposed Casino on Loudon Road.
The members of the City of Concord accept bribes – Jim Bouley and Amanda Grady Sexton are among those who got paid to promote Marsy’s Law but didn’t report the earnings from Marsy’s Law as required by RSA 15.
Debra Douglas is the Chair of the NH State Lottery. She is married to Chuck Douglas III, who is Chair of the Judicial Selection Committee. He also got paid to promote Marsy’s Law by Henry T Nicholas III – a drug trafficker who goes to Las Vegas with local DAs who also don’t report their earnings and who kept an underground lair for his sex and drug fantasies.
Andrew H. Crews of Autofair is/was the President of the NH Lottery.
Andrew H. Crews is also based in Bedford, and he is on the board of Children’s Advocacy Centers and Granite One Health.
Children’s Advocacy Centers is tied to the AG’s office, DA’s offices, Police, AND Boston Billiards (Casino/Gambling).
Autofair is listed in the Pandora Papers and Paradise Papers. Autofair got hundreds of thousands in PPP loans given by Primary Bank, on whose board Andrew H. Crews is a director.
Autofair and Andrew H. Crews were sued in Mass. for failure to pay employees even though Autofair was getting PPP loans from Primary Bank where Autofair’s CEO was on the board of directors.
Shaheen & Gordon is the law firm that represents the directors of Primary Bank, which is based in Bedford, just like Andy Sanborn.
Shaheen & Gordon also represent the NHCADSV and Amanda Grady Sexton and threatened me with a defamation suit for calling out the NHCADSV for being involved in a Kids for Cash enterprise.
Remind me again why Amanda Grady Sexton has no issue dealing with Henry T. Nicholas III, a drug trafficker. Remind me again why the Children’s Advocacy Center is tied to Boston Billiards Gaming and to Andrew H. Crews of Autofair and why NHCADSV is tied to CAC and DCYF, which covered up and deleted files of child sex abuse.
$932.5 billion in Pandora Papers accounts is the highest amount for any State in the US, and it is in New Hampshire, where there was just one secretary of state for 42 years.
It is apparently the 2nd highest amount in the world. How does that happen? Money laundering, drug trafficking, sex, and human trafficking are how.
Could you recognize sex and child trafficking in your own agencies?
YDC
Could you recognize money laundering in your own agencies?
Pandora Papers
Could you recognize drug trafficking in your own agencies?
Jeff Hatch, Granite Recovery & Fentanyl drug bust.
Could you recognize Medicaid fraud in your own agencies?
Lori Schibinette’s resignation six days after the US DHHS OIG audit fined NH $7.9 million for Medicaid fraud
Could you recognize PPP fraud supported by your own agencies?
Could you recognize blackmail, bribery, and extortion involving your own agencies?
St. Paul’s School, Dartmouth College
Could you recognize a Ponzi scheme in your own agencies?
FRM Ponzi Scheme
Could you recognize the corruption of the court?
NH v Father Gordon MacRae, NH v Owen Labrie, NH v Griffin Furlotte, to name a few of many
Could you recognize the corruption of the news media in cahoots with the police, attorneys, agencies, and courts?
WMUR, NHPR, Concord Monitor, Union Leader, AP, Seacoast Online, Boston Globe, NH Press?
My conclusion from my years of research is that you cannot, or you don’t want to.
Who pays?
The public.
Is this the world you want future generations to inherit? This kind of corruption from the top to the bottom? It is from the top because it goes all the way from the NH Supreme Court and US Attorneys down to the bottom.
The post PPP Loans are Just a Fraction of the Fraud in New Hampshire appeared first on Granite Grok.
If it is noble to die for your cause, what do we say about this? Minnesotan Cindy Flash, a long-time resident of Kfar Aza (living in a home abutting the Gaza security fence) was murdered by Islamic militants. Hamas killed her and her husband.
What makes Cindy’s story particularly poignant is the irony that she, an advocate for Palestinian rights, became a victim of the very group she sought to help.
Cindy was known for her advocacy for Palestinian rights. She would often protest against Israeli military operations in Gaza, standing up for the dignity and humanity of Palestinians, according to CNN.
After skimming a few of these stories, I could not find where Cindy was protesting for Hamas, but Hamas runs Gaza. Hamas is the reason Israel gives for military action in Gaza that Cindy opposed. Is it possible for her to have advocated for one and not the other?
She clearly had a blind spot. She chose to live next to the security fence in a region with a long, bloody history of conflict.
Whatever you think of Israel, Hamas has sworn to destroy it and everyone in it. They are not shy about this. It is why they exist. It is how they get weapons and funding. Their goal is to kill the Jews. Exterminate them.
Whatever your opinion about the arbitrary nature of Palestine or people claiming to be indigenous to the area, the people in Gaza either elected or allowed Hamas to take control, which begs the question: why wasn’t Cindy protesting that? Hamas is sworn to holy was by all means. Peace isn’t even an option for them – unless it delays reprisals and gives them time to prepare for their next sortie.
If military action by Israel, justified or not, was something she was committed to protesting, where was she when Hamas retaliated, which it has done often?
Perhaps she did, but the stories that include her activism fail to mention it, and that may be editorial bias. The Press is overwhelmingly on board with the approved narratives about Palestinians and Israel. If she is killed as retaliation for taking Israel’s side in some instance or other, she’s a martyr for the wrong side instead of a casualty of her own pursuit for peace in a place and with people (Hamas) who have no interest in it.
Cindy Flash is dead, as is Igal Flash, her Israeli husband, and while Hamas killed her, the Palestinians in Gaza enabled the violence that was her undoing.
HT | Truth Press – USA Today, …
The post American Pro-“Palestinian” Protester Murdered by Hamas appeared first on Granite Grok.
When I was growing up and attending Catholic schools, I was taught that the pope is infallible.
But then I read Pope Francis’ updated encyclical letter last week, and now I can only conclude that at least this pope is fallible. In fact, the declaration is so filled with anti-Christian fallacies that one has to wonder whether we have a pope that is actually Catholic.
Pope Francis was full of doom and gloom as he warned that the Earth is “collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point” because of climate change. He takes a metaphorical ruler and whacks the knuckles of climate “skeptics” who are preventing the draconian/statist actions that are apparently necessary to cool the planet off. What comes next for the “deniers”? A knock on the door from the Spanish Inquisition.
The pope has given a new voice to the “blame America first” globalists and denounces Americans’ “irresponsible lifestyles” for the ruination of the planet. (RELATED: ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Publish The Names Of Campus Cowards Who Support Hamas Atrocities)
What about China? Amazingly, the pope pointedly gives the world’s greatest polluter a free pass. He declares that “emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries.” This is naked appeasement to a country with some of the worst human rights violations on the planet. President Xi Jinping is loving life right now.
It’s also intentionally lying with twisted statistics. Yes, the U.S. has more emissions and uses more energy than many other nations, but that is because we produce far more output per capita than all other nations except China. It’s the reason the United States is the breadbasket of the world. Africa doesn’t use much energy. And that’s why it is a desperately poor continent. The solution isn’t for the U.S. to consume less energy, but for poor nations to have access to much more energy.
As Catholics, we are taught to help the least among us to help end poverty, hunger and deprivation, but the primary victims of the environmentalists’ crusade against fossil fuels will be those in the poorest nations of Africa and Asia — deprived of cheap and reliable power from coal and natural gas.
China, meanwhile, emits two times more greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere than America — but we are the problem, not them.
Worst of all, we now have a Vatican that has aligned itself with the radical “limits to growth” theology of leftist environmentalists. The radical greens view human beings as the problem, not the solution, which is contrary to Catholic dogma that there is dignity in every human life.
Has the Vatican forgotten that the more radical voices of climate change hysteria have come right out of the sinister population control movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when we were told that the world was running out of everything and that the only solution was fewer people? This movement led to some of the most barbaric government actions of modern times: forced abortions, mandatory sterilizations of women, and brutal one-child policies.
The theology in the Pope Francis letter called “Laudate Deum,” which means “Praise God,” is a direct contradiction of the teachings of our greatest pope in modern times, John Paul II, who magnificently declared that economic freedom and human ingenuity have always been the solutions to our planetary problems and the sometimes winds of change that Mother Nature throws at us. People, he reminded all Catholics, are the greatest resource.
Another way of saying this is that the Western world’s economic affluence and our advanced “lifestyles” haven’t held back the poor countries or jeopardized civilization. We have made life on Earth profoundly better for everyone. The pope’s call for energy poverty is a call for everyone to get poorer. That hardly seems to be a very Christian solution. (RELATED: STEPHEN MOORE: Washington’s Nanny-State Credit Card Rules Will Only Hurt Consumers)
If climate change really is the existential threat that the pope sermonizes that it is, we will confront this challenge the way humans have combated every problem since the days when human life on Earth was nasty, brutish and short: We will harness human know-how and new-age technologies that will tame Mother Nature’s savage outbursts.
Thanks to the freedom agenda and scientific advances, deaths from natural disasters have fallen by 90% over the past 100 years. Has anyone in the Vatican told the pope that?
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. He has also served as a senior economic advisor to Donald Trump.
Stephen Moore | Daily Caller News Service
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The post Pope Francis Joins The Climate Cult appeared first on Granite Grok.
We want to congratulate ‘Grok author Laurie Ortolano. The Nackey Loeb School has chosen to honor her with its First Amendment Award on October 26th at the NH Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
Laurie has been writing for us for several years, documenting her travails with the City of Nashua and its obsession with claiming to be above the law.
A Gate City resident who has been fighting city hall for public records for nearly a decade will be celebrated later this month in Manchester.
Laurie Ortolano of Nashua will receive the Nackey S. Loeb School’s 2023 First Amendment Award at an event on Oct. 26 at the NH Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. The guest speaker is Maggie Haberman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from the New York Times and CNN.
And I can assure you that the Mayor (Donchess), his legal Igor (Bolton), and the rest down there at City Hall are steaming, stewing, and pissed off that she’s earned this recognition. But they should have seen it coming. Another sometime contributor who also got a lot of coverage on GraniteGrok, Donna Greene, also won the award after years of struggling to get the Timberlane School District to follow the same law.
More from Tony Schinella at Patch.
Ortolano was awarded this year due to her unwavering commitment to open government since her first encounter with right-to-know requests as a member of the Litchfield School Board more than two decades ago. The org said her move to Nashua in 2014 began a different journey.
“City officials in Nashua have met Ortolano’s numerous right-to-know requests for tax assessment, finance, and development information with denials, court battles, and even an arrest for criminal trespassing when she visited city hall during the pandemic without an appointment (the arrest was later annulled),” the org said. “Undeterred by these challenges, she has consistently taken her fight to court, accumulating legal fees and costs totaling $270,000.”
And after all of this, I bet you the current Democrat rouges gallery at Nashua City Hall hasn’t learned a damn thing. Despite the mandatory 91a training and all the trouble they themselves caused, they are likely spending more time and energy looking for a new way to keep public documents away from the public.
There is a cure: a New Mayor, new leadership, and new management in the Cty of Nashua.
And look at that: you’ve got an election coming up in a few weeks.
Note: The Embedded form will not appear if you are using ad blocking. Use the QR code or go to the Event Page to get tickets!
Support Independent MediaDonorboxEventWidget.embed({container: 'donorboxEmbed',embedFormSlug: 'https://donorbox.org/embed_event/504084'});
You can also give here – no transaction fees!
The post GraniteGrok Author To Be Honored With Loeb School First Amendment Award appeared first on Granite Grok.
“Safe and Effective” already needed a public relations makeover. Hackneyed and threadbare, the mantra rang from every street corner for months on end as COVID town criers peddled what amounted to a bottle of piss. Almost no one wants them now, but could the pro-jab news get any worse?
Yes. Yes, it could!
New data covering June 1, 2022, to May 31, 2023, from the UK Office of National Statistics shows 95% of all covid deaths in that time were among the vaccinated.
The unvaccinated population barely broke into four figures throughout the entire year, hitting a total of 1,161 Covid-19 deaths, whereas the vaccinated population hit five figures with 20,336 Covid-19 deaths, 19,143 of which were among the triple and quadruple vaccinated.
This means, as is shown in the following chart, that the vaccinated population in England accounted for 95% of COVID-19 deaths between 1st June 2022 and 31st May 2023. Whereas the unvaccinated population accounted for just 5%.
Being unvaccinated provided the best odds of surviving infection or reinfection, which is terrible news for the COVIDiots and the jabornaughts. But their natural reaction, when confronted with contrary science, is to ignore it. Pretend it never existed. Like homelessness or foreign-war body counts under Democrat Presidents. It’s not something you need to know. You could even go so far as to call it fake news, disinformation, misinformation, or a vast right-wing conspiracy.
Sadly, the UK Office of National Statistics is, like any bureaucracy, about as far from right-wing as one can get without calling everyone comrade. But unlike many of its comparable, like-minded pencil-pushing American counterparts, it does what is asked. The UK may be a multi-cultural wasteland teetering on an inescapable cultural revolution, but when it comes to public health data, they put it out there, even if quietly.
Blame the media, who would be singing from every hilltop if the results showed 95% of COVID deaths were unvaccinated. It’s the opposite, so the truth is suddenly something that can wait … indefinitely, certainly on this side of the pond, with good reason. The bad news gets worse. Ninety-four percent of that ninety-five percent were recipients of three or four shots. If you got scared into getting the COVID one-two punch and one or more boosters, catching covid wasn’t a death sentence, but statistically, the odds were not in your favor.
No shots at all were best, followed by fewer (one or two), assuming you suffered no vaccine side-effects like heart injuries, blood clotting, other organ failure, or death (here’s a longer list). Oh, and let’s not forget how the “vaccine” could help COVID kill you. And they knew that before it hit the streets.
After launch, CDC scientists were too busy cashing checks from Pfizer to clinically review the AE’s of special interest. Instead, they sidled up with Pfizer and advertised the crap out of how safe and effective they were. Whether there was political pressure and from how high up may never be litigated, but having lived through it, there was a lot of pressure to take the money they were tossing around if you just smiled, rolled up a sleeve, and said, “Safe and effective.”
We’ve known the truth for a long time, but I’d like to thank the UK for sharing this current events update, not just because it will aggravate COVID-19 bots. As we have pointed out often, aside from the systemic failure to achieve fully informed consent – because they lied – there is also the ongoing matter of meaning. What did the CDC, FDA, Pfizer, and everyone else who approved the tagline mean by safe or effective?
Is it safe to say that these will effectively kill many people? That it doesn’t protect you from COVID; it increases the odds of hospitalization or death. That the passports were red flags identifying people more likely to get infected and spread COVID or drop dead at dinner or during a live event?
Yes. Yes. And Yes. And while we’re at it, Operation Warp Speed meant how quickly they could launder vast sums of fiat money into the medical fraud mill at the expense of millions of lives, using a vehicle that did more harm than good.
HT | Dr. Paul Alexander
The post UK Office of Statistics: From 2022 to 2023 The Vaccinated Accounted for 95% of All COVID Deaths appeared first on Granite Grok.
Why, oh why, is the media still suffering us to watch the likes of Asa Hutchinson in New Hampshire when we face our own local elections in mere weeks?
While it’s true that NH possesses the hard-fought power to elevate previously unknown presidential candidates to national importance, the regional media is focusing their attention on obvious losers like Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum at the expense of local election coverage. As Foster’s Daily Democrat—Dover’s hometown paper, now a servile subsidiary of USA Today—hosts dismally empty town hall events featuring these two goons, the local candidates for the November election are wholly absent from coverage.
For the first time in years, Dover has brought forward conservative candidates for a City Council, which has hitherto remained the uncontested territory of liberal Democrats (as the tax bill well proves). Like other seacoast cities, Dover has experienced a rapid explosion in urban crime, prompting the outcry of many residents who are increasingly eager to vote against the trend.
What do we hear from the media in these communities facing the steady erosion of their way of life at the hands of drugs and homelessness? A meaningless mélange of GOP primary pleas and the rhetoric of USA Today’s corporate editorial policy.
By reading the coverage in USA Today/Foster’s, one might even be so fooled as to believe that gun violence is the cardinal problem of our New Hampshire cities. If the candidates they platform are to be believed, the war in Ukraine is the second greatest.
While there is clearly a measurable interest in breaking local news, the USA Today papers run stories on condo developments, public sculptures, racism, and Asa Hutchinson. Despite the nearly nonexistent rate of gun crime on the seacoast, Foster’s has nonetheless published no fewer than eighteen stories on the subject since the beginning of April (many within the space of a month), while the word “fentanyl” never appeared in a single headline over the same period. The word “overdose” did occur once, but only in connection to a laudatory story about a van that provides free needle exchange.
In many cases, this dullness results from local reporters deriving their content from press releases rather than actual investigation. But the problem is more inveterate than mere negligence or mercenary drive can so easily excuse.
Indeed, it seems that Foster’s editorial policy proceeds along two tracks: pro-development stories which generate advertising revenue and overt political hackery. The surplus firearm opinions and desolate Hutchinson town halls are intermixed with a heady brew of stories on infrastructure investment and the welcoming progressive ideals of the seacoast, evincing their constant attention to attracting sponsors with upbeat pseudo-newsworthy pablum.
But their pieces on the many virtues of the Dover Children’s Museum neglect the ubiquity of human excreta and castaway heroin needles in the park immediately adjacent to it.
As we are living in the ‘20s and thus brazen to blatant media collusion, it’s no surprise that progressive city governments and local news are naturally acting in ideological concert. That the Dover City Council happens to have instituted a ‘stolen land pledge’ for their meetings at the same time as their adoption of $20+ million waterfront development budget is a mirror image of the press’ bizarre mix of shameless greed and performative progressivism. The USA Today papers seem to be engaging with the leftist government in an act of mutual self-anointing to the detriment of both effective law enforcement and public information.
New Hampshire communities will have the opportunity to throttle back the actual criminal justice, tax, and zoning policies that are harming them in November, but on this, the papers remain mum.
If you wish to see another reason why mainstream media may be turning a blind eye to local politics, look no further than the Northwood special election, where out-of-state Democrat organizations spent over $5,000 to flip the district’s State House seat. Conservative control of the lower house now hangs dangerously in the balance.
It’s clear that the media policy is to dismiss local elections, ignore invidious outside influences, conceal crime, and distract from any pesky national candidates (like Trump and even Kennedy) who threaten the delicate status quo.
While one can’t blame them for preserving their domain of comfort, one can surely detest them for it.
Wary voters ought to continue voicing their protest against this trend by ignoring artful distractions, attending important local events, and rejecting media outlets that seek to sow unending complacency.
The post Presidential Zeros Over Local Heroes: New Hampshire Media’s Priorities Askew appeared first on Granite Grok.
As promised in Monday Memes, I have an overflow. My meme cup runneth over. And yes there will be a Friday edition too.
Also please do check out my memes / links / commentary on the situation in Israel. A lot of info, but I’m confident a lot most will not know.
Let the mayhem, mockery, and ridicule resume:
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
>>>>>=====<<<<<
I personally would have gone for leech or tapeworm…
I’ve been used car shopping as we need a replacement. Holy… I saw one used minivan on the lot for over $40K. Used. How the heck much was it new????
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Pick of the Post:
A tie IMHO:
IMHO the sooner this POS takes a dirt nap, the better.
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Palate cleansers:
—
—
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Come back on Friday for more memes. Same meme time. Same meme channel.
The post Meme Overflow appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Israel-Hamas war wagon is quite popular on our pages, so my apologies – I have another related article later today, but both were too good to pass up. As you’ve likely heard, a hospital in Gaza was bombed. Hamas blamed the IDF. The IDF says it was Hamas, and which is it?
You get to decide, and we won’t even approach the well-known fact that Hamas launches rockets from hospitals, schools, and mosques becasue they know Israel is less likely to strike them from the sky.
So, here we go.
Lots of talk in recent hours of a failed rocket launch striking the grounds of a hospital in Gaza. I think it’s timely to remind viewers that rockets produced by terrorists aren’t always effective. pic.twitter.com/7UxVZMqlDI
— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 17, 2023
The timing is also suspicious. The rocket attack on the hospital occurred right after Hamas announced that it was launching rocket attacks on Israel.
The blast occurred just minutes after a large barrage of Hamas rockets were fired toward Tel Aviv, and Hamas reportedly announced that they were in the process of launching their “most robust weapons” at Haifa just before the hospital explosion — but no such weapon reached Haifa.
Townhall.com has several tweets with video claiming proof it was a Hamas misfire, but this one from Al Jazeera is alleged to have accidentally recorded the misfire, impact, and a secondary explosion.
An Al Jazeera broadcast documented the moment that the Islamic Jihad launched a rocket which misfired and hit a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds. pic.twitter.com/O5Lx1BtOtJ
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) October 17, 2023
Oops.
Hardcore partisans on either side will likely not be dissuaded from their approved positions, leaving us to interpret what we see (was that really the hospital, etc) and what we are being told.
Another day in paradise.
Have at it, then.
The post Did Hamas “Bomb” Gaza Hospital? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Former MLB pitcher Trevor Bauer seems to be the victim of an old fashion succubus after text messages appear to show he never raped accuser Lindsey Hill.
Their sexual relationship appeared to be not only consensual but likely predatory on the part of Hill.
In a video posted to Twitter, Bauer claims Hill sent messages to her friends devising a plan to take advantage of the former L.A. Dodger. He had no idea what was coming for him when he invited her to come over, but he should have. A woman who understands her worth doesn’t accept invitations for meaningless sex.
2 years later and I can finally talk about this pic.twitter.com/o6jFqMzY05
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) October 2, 2023
Bauer lived up to every stereotype for professional athletes. He made himself an easy mark by allowing his selfish desires to cloud his better judgment. It’s like if a woman decided to travel to a country known for imprisoning women only to be shocked she’s sitting in a foreign jail. Of course, men will be victims of manipulative women if they don’t see the value in sex other than to serve their impulses.
Living in the aftermath of the “MeToo” movement is surreal. Men can’t come back from the stain of rape allegations. They are forced to wear scarlet letters until they can sway public opinion. Our society doesn’t abide by the “innocent until proven guilty” rule for men anymore. They are guilty, without mercy or consideration. If they can gain definitive proof of their innocence, as Bauer seems to have done, they are timidly allowed back into polite society.
Men shouldn’t be in fear of losing their lives to false allegations. Still, it is reckless to live like consequence-free sex is a real thing. Evil women are going to use your weakness for cheap sex against you. Complain about it, think it’s morally reprehensible but do not for a second become complacent.
“You can’t treat bodies as sex toys and then complain when you wake up in bed with an abusive pimp or a crazy whore,” Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan wrote on Twitter. “Pimps and whores are vicious people – what did you expect?”
https://t.co/5qlxpOIJ9L pic.twitter.com/Yv8MmccMAv
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) October 4, 2023
To put it plainly — men, avoid women who believe their sexuality is all they have to offer this world. They’ll lie, cheat, and steal to fill the emptiness they feel selling themselves for clout. It’s easy for them to pretend it is empowering to use men — acting like it’s their chance as an independent woman to enact revenge against the predatory men in their past. (ROOKE: Women Aren’t That Complex)
The pain of being their own pimp affects their ability to see human dignity in others. They walk around broken. It’s obvious they aren’t loyal women looking to build a legacy. What is the point of risking your future on anything less?
I confronted Trevor Bauer’s (@BauerOutage) accuser, Lindsey Hill, one-on-one today about the inconsistencies in her story.
Do you believe her? pic.twitter.com/MvDlGeV3Rx
— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) October 4, 2023
It cost him millions of dollars in lost contracts and legal fees to prove his innocence. Bauer was forced to leave a top career in the MLB to play in Japan. His life was effectively ruined over what appear to be false allegations. Still, all of it could have been avoided if Bauer had been looking for a wife instead of a one-night stand.
A good wife will be loyal and loving. She will comfort and take care of her husband even if the world abandons him. It will always be fun hanging out with the party girl, but kingdoms are not built on infertile ground. Bauer’s ordeal should be a cautionary tale to all men — if you are going to waste your passion on immoral women, don’t be shocked when evil things happen to you.
Mary Rooke is a reporter at the Daily Caller.
Mary Rooke | Daily Caller News Service
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline, and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.The post Dear Men, Sluts Lead To Ruin appeared first on Granite Grok.
How about a Silicon Valley Big Tech guy opening up about how “Democrats” must stop shooting the messenger and listen to the message? He’s referring to Donald Trump, but it is a general call for sanity. From the border to the economy to Israel and Peace in the Middle East.
It is an admission and lesson, not just for folks with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). Judge the message, not the messenger. Feel free to look for loopholes, provisions, and traps. These are politicians. But you also have to ask who best can deliver the message in a way that translates to action, and it is fair to say that TDS may have created an environment where Trump can’t be that guy.
You’ll have a hard time convincing his supporters or – if polls are any indication – Republican primary voters who should, in my opinion, give the rest of the field a fair shake with three months before the voting starts. I made the case countless times at the NHGOP FITN summit. While the 20-50-point lead is stunning, would we be better served if things were closer? If Donald Trump had to get on the debate stage and wrestle in the mud with the other piglets.
Even a few Trump supporters agreed.
Good debate leads to better policy, and sometimes, the other side has a good idea or the inkling of one, assuming it’s not another blatant attempt to hide another assault on your liberty.
Not that what passes for a modern presidential debate will accomplish any of that. You’d need neutral non-media moderators, smaller groups, and a process that didn’t reduce every opportunity to speak into a 30-second commercial for candidate x.
And as it turns out, Trump had some good ideas, and now we can see just how good they were. It’s so good that this increasingly less Democrat guy is concerned enough to say it publicly.
Here’s the conversation.
View on Rumble
The post Democrat Billionaire: Is Trump Derangement Syndrome Doing More Damage Than Anything Trump Could Have Done? appeared first on Granite Grok.
At the time of the mayoral primary, I was approached by an older gentleman outside Charlotte School while I was holding a Mike Soucy sign. He approached to encourage me to stand near “the runway” because he wanted maximum visibility for the sign.
I acknowledged the merits of what he said and cited my reasons for the location I chose. To shore up that anti-Donchess connection, I offered to give him the sign I was holding on a wood post while I fetched an ordinary yard sign for myself from my car. He declined my offer, saying he had to be somewhere, but I took advantage of an opportunity to introduce myself as Alderman Dowd’s opponent. Suddenly, he had an extra 59 seconds to spare!
He said he was from the Kessler Farm condos, which is a huge community, and Dowd was kicked off the condo association. According to this resident, he was playing hooky way too much, perhaps like the likenesses of former Reps Cote and Gidge. I made a mental note of that to save for a rainy day.
I later received a hot tip that there are squadrons of resentful residents in Kessler Farm and that Dowd is NOT a popular guy there. I’ve been doing lit drops for myself, Mike Soucy, Alderman Comeau, and private citizen Sean Rogers, all rolled into one packet at targeted addresses throughout Ward 2. I won’t bore readers with all the details involved in how much time, attention, and resources are divided up, but a vote is a vote. What I learned from this hot tip was that I should be focusing on the condos as they are a gold mine of Dowd critics.
Kessler Farm, being the big community that it is, has hundreds, if not thousands, of voters. I ran out of literature and had to resupply. It took three separate trips to cover the territory. I first started with the northwesternmost part of the area, as that’s where Dowd lives. My plan was to lit-drop but knock if it was obvious that someone was home. An example of evidence of that would be an open front door with a closed screen door. A barking dog is sure to get its owner’s attention, sometimes making the doorbell unnecessary. One such situation opened the door for some very helpful discussion.
Related: Alderman Dowd Is Out of Touch With His Constituents and the City of Nashua
“Good afternoon,” I said in the light rain as a little dog barked at me through a screen door. I greeted the resident, introducing myself as Alderman Dowd’s opponent and handing her a packet. She was quite happy to talk. For her privacy, her identity or address will not be shared, but she was most helpful in telling an oral history of the Kessler “Enron scandal.”
What I heard was that Dowd was the president of the board of directors, the very elected body charged with oversight of the management company and its affairs, as any intelligent person would suppose. When you’re the captain of the ship, YOU are ultimately responsible for what happens. Remember what I said about him playing hookey? This management company was hemorrhaging money, the lost money being the association’s treasury funded by unit owners’ monthly maintenance fees. Think of it like the city losing(spending money) on a new school and arts center and YOUR resulting property tax bill.
Exterior maintenance was being neglected, and it turns out that the contractor for such handyman services was allegedly the spouse or in-law of the property manager! No conflict of interest there, mind you. This resident cited several examples of unit owners taking little exterior odd job matters into their own hands(at their own expense) out of frustration with their maintenance requests being delayed or ignored. There were even some large projects with lousy workmanship that later needed expensive corrective action. This makes one want to ponder.
Dowd’s homepage comment about being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
What I noted above was what I heard on day one of three days of canvassing. Day two was rather uneventful, and I ran out of literature. Once resupplied, I set out on day three to complete the project, saving one particular subset of the Kessler Farm community for last. I saved it for last because a certain sibling and fiscal agent of a certain former elected official that I never voted for lives there. Let’s just say it’s a relative of someone who doesn’t like me broadcasting her voting record if you know what I mean. (wink, wink, nod, nod) Anyway, while completing that part of the area, I ran into another resident who happened to be outside. Having seen her earlier from down the road, I thought I recognized the unit number(which I will not share) where she resided.
I greeted her with a “Hi, are you from unit #__?” When she answered in the affirmative, I smiled and introduced myself as Alderman Dowd’s opponent and handed her a packet, which had my business card paper clipped on top. I haven’t felt so much love in a really long time, but this resident was amazingly glad to meet me! Time stood still as I didn’t have to be in any hurry. We must have talked for a good 20 minutes or so. I listened to all kinds of dirt on Dowd’s condo association presidency and learned that there’s still pending litigation against the management company. This resident went door to door with a petition to remove the at-the-time board of directors and collected signatures from almost all of the community. Again, canvassing this large territory is a big task, especially when it involves required in-person contact. And I found it extremely amusing that this “certain relative/fiscal agent of a certain former elected official” did indeed sign the petition to remove Dowd! How sweet was that to hear!
Alderman Dowd is not only bad for Ward 2, but he has absolutely no business being on any sort of committee that handles money, let alone serving in leadership! Think of him as a “fiscal cancer” in city hall. Once he’s gone, he will have more time to play golf with that “certain neighbor,” and Nashua can begin picking up the pieces from the flotsam he helped create. If you or someone you know has ties to Kessler Farm, please boost and share this message. Saving Nashua is an all-hands-on-deck effort.
The post The “Scandal” That Alderman Dowd Doesn’t Want You To Know About appeared first on Granite Grok.
Gordon G. Chang is the pre-eminent authority on the Communist China Party (CCP) in the world. Mr. Chang opines that the CCP is at WAR with the USA, currently economically but preparing for a tactical war. Let’s see why he thinks this:
We want to thank Charles Bradley for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
you would like us to consider, please submit it to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
Gordon G. Chang concludes Americans should know that the CCP is executing a plan to exterminate America.
The post The Communist China Party appeared first on Granite Grok.
Former Representative Dave Sharpe (D-Bristol) recently penned a truly execrable op-ed blaming private schools, lack of funding for public schools, and 60s era “white-flight” for the persistent and growing performance gap between higher income students and those living in poverty. He opened his piece exclaiming, “It’s no surprise….”
Well, it’s no surprise to anyone who witnessed Sharpe’s four years as chair of the House Education Committee, 2015-2018!
Sharpe’s biggest “accomplishment” in the role was to shepherd through Act 46, the disastrous school consolidation bill that has since done nothing its supporters said it would (lower education costs, increase student opportunities, and boost outcomes), and many things its supporters promised it wouldn’t, such as force the closings of many small schools.
The law was/is so bad that Sharpe himself tried to cover his own butt with an op-ed in January 2020 claiming that he and his fellow lawmakers were “hoodwinked into permitting a power grab” by the Principal’s Association, School Boards Association, Superintendents Association, and other public school special interests.
As one who was in the room for a lot of that debate, I can tell you that Sharpe wasn’t hoodwinked, he was aiding and abetting the power grab by hoodwinking the public every step of the way. And he’s at it again aiding and abetting the same special interest group’s current attempt at a power grab with this latest piece of propaganda.
First Sharpe argues,
This trend [in outcome disparities] started in the late ’60s when communities were required to integrate their public schools. Relatively quickly, white flight from public schools began in the racially divided southern states.
A couple points. First, this has nothing to do with Vermont which was in the ’60 even more homogeneously White than it is even today. So, White flight from public schools just wasn’t a thing here; there was no one to flee from. Second, the percentage of students attending private schools nationwide has been pretty steady at around ten percent since the 60s. (Statistica) So, no, parents fleeing public schools to private schools was not a trend. He goes on…
As more and more white parents found ways to circumvent the rules by placing their students in private schools, there was less and less interest in properly funding public schools. The underfunded public schools found it more and more difficult to provide quality education to their students.
This is just absurd. Fist, how is placing your child in a private school “circumventing the rules”? As noted above, roughly 10 percent of total parents put their kids in private schools, but 22% of public school teachers make that choice for their own kids. That should tell you something!
But as to Sharpe’s funding assertion, according to National Center for Educational Statistics, average per pupil spending has increased in constant 2018-19 dollars every year from 1960 ($4060) to 2009-10 ($15,232). After that, spending leveled off, bumping up and down to $15,424 by 2016-17, the final year they provide data. But Vermont defied this leveling off trend and shot to where we are today as the state with the second highest per-pupil spending in the country at $23,423. So, no, despite Sharpe’s crocodile tears, spending isn’t the problem underlying the increasing failure of Vermont’s public schools to provide quality education to our kids.
Then Sharpe attempts to blame Vermont’s oldest in the nation school choice system and the independent schools that actually are doing a good job of educating Vermont’s students.
This inequality existed in Vermont as well, particularly in the roughly 90 school districts that provided vouchers for their secondary students…. Parents want the best for their children and many have used the private school subsidies when they can afford it. The once racially motivated separation of white children and black children has developed in Vermont as a separation between children who live in families of means and those living in poverty.
In a polite word, baloney.
All parents in Vermont’s 90 tuitioning towns, from the richest to the poorest, use their tuitioning voucher to send their kids to school that best suits their needs. It’s not just the rich kids in tuitioning towns who get to attend top performing schools like St. Johnsbury Academy or Burr & Burton – all of them do. Fully at taxpayer expense, and at a cost significantly lower than we spend on the average public school student. And if those schools aren’t the best fit for their kid, parents can choose from a menu of other independent and public schools to choose from – again entirely at (almost always lower) taxpayer expense. To imply that a family can only utilize this benefit if they can afford it is a flat out lie. It is arguably the most equitable education system in the nation. Every family should have access to it.
Sharpe trots out…
In addition, the rules under which schools provide education for Vermont children are different for public and private schools. One example is, private schools only need to admit students that they deem “fit” into their culture. If a child is more costly to educate, or perhaps is disruptive in the school, that child may be sent back to the local town for the educational services they need.
First of all, every Vermont school, public or independent, that accepts taxpayer dollars is subject to state and federal anti-discrimination laws. So, no school in our tuitioning system is turning kids away for race, sexual orientation, religion, disability, etc. It is true that unlike public schools, independent schools are “mission driven,” meaning they adhere to a certain educational philosophy. And, no, not every family or kid is the right fit for, say, a Waldorf or Montessori approach to learning. It is a good thing that kids who don’t learn well in a specific educational environment aren’t forced to attend there and are free – and encouraged and enabled — to find a school that better fits their needs. It is truly sociopathic to insist that a school retain a child for whom they know they aren’t structured to provide a constructive learning experience.
In fact, the real problem with our public school system is that it forces kids who do not learn well in the environment they are mandated by zip code to attend every day regardless of their inability to learn in that environment – or be mentally healthy — to stay there year after year and fail.
In severe cases where, as Sharpe notes, students are “disruptive” these students inhibit the ability of other children in the classroom to learn. This isn’t a glitch, it is a design feature of a dysfunctional system that is unfair to everyone in the building – the kids who aren’t getting the kind of services they need, the kids who can’t learn (and in some cases experiencing trauma) because of the disruption, and the teachers who aren’t trained or capable of properly dealing with such a wide spectrum of needs in their classrooms. This is our public school model, and it’s a recipe for large-scale failure. So, it’s failing.
Sharpe lies again when he says,
A recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court requires states that pay tax dollars to private schools for educating the children in their state, must also remit those tax dollars to religious schools. This decision exacerbates the lack of tax dollars to fund public schools and contributes to the crippling of our public school students.
No. Students who go to now available religious schools with tuitioning vouchers by definition already live in tuitioning towns and have the option of attending non-religious independent schools anyway. Their voucher amount doesn’t change. It doesn’t impact public school funding at all. In fact, there are only 53 Vermont students out of 80,000 in K-12 who currently use tuitioning to attend religious schools. This is not an issue.
Sharpe lastly takes aim at Vermont’s efforts to expand publicly funded Pre-K as a “system that favors families of means.” And here he has a point. Vermont’s government-run Pre-K efforts have been a disaster in terms of equity, cost to taxpayers, and negative impacts on kids, both emotionally and educationally. But the solution Sharpe is lobbying for is a public school takeover of the birth to five childcare – a power grab (and a massive money grab) by all those same special interests that got Sharpe to giftwrap them Act 46. This will be a horrible outcome for kids and taxpayers. Don’t be hoodwinked again.
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.
The post Former Rep Tries to Hoodwink Vermonters appeared first on Granite Grok.
I am aghast at the number and size of protests or demonstrations supporting Palestine and Hamas. There are so many layers to this conflict between Israel and Hamas terrorists, and nobody wants to see innocent residents of Israel or Gaza injured or killed as the collateral damage of a vicious war.
But one needs to look objectively at who and how this battle started and which side you should support. This battle is not between Israel and Palestine but between Israel and the radical group Hamas, which calls Gaza its home. You can stand with the Palestinian people, but if you also support Hamas, you are on the wrong side of this duel.
Bill Maher, who has always leaned Left, has become one of the more moderate voices and calls out the Left for their protests. He points out that the protestors are the minority but says forcefully that “their moral compass is broken.” He goes on to say this movement emanates from the country’s elite schools. They are the mouth of the river through which this vile speech flows.
These protestors march through the streets, waving the Palestine flag and screaming “Intifada,” which simply means shaking off or uprising. It sounds ominous but falls short, and I guarantee most yelling the word have no idea of its meaning. They are sheep happy to be part of a movement. Unfortunately, it is a movement that chooses to ignore the atrocities committed against the innocent people of Israel by the Hamas terrorists. Beheadings of children, rape of women, burning of the elderly, and the taking of hostages to use as human shields.
The protestors deny these things happened, claiming they are fabrications of a corrupt Israeli government. These are the same people who deny the holocaust. They are indoctrinated fools. Thousands of Israelis died or were traumatized for life, and these pampered, ignorant protestors called out Israel for shutting off water and electricity to Gaza until the hostages are released.
These protestors take to our streets to protest what they call are human rights violations committed by Israel, but they ignore the humanitarian disaster created at our Southern Border by the Biden Administration. Babies are dying, women are raped, children are taken for the sex trade and illegal labor market, and these people ignore it all. They only see what they are told to see. I’ll say it again. These people are sheep, easily led by people willing to feed them a fake narrative.
The media is just as guilty as these protestors. They refuse to call out Hamas as terrorists, instead glorifying them as militants. CNN and MSNBC are showing their true colors with their coverage of the conflict. Jonathan Greenblatt, the National Director and CEO of the Anti-Defamation League called out CNN for its reckless, biased coverage of the conflict and the damage they were doing to the news industry. He did this on the air while being interviewed live on CNN.
Biden gave time for a softball interview with 60 Minutes on CBS, where he goes for any favorable air time. He refused to claim Iran was behind the Hamas terror attack, which is nothing short of ignorant. Scott Pelley also asked the President about Israel occupying Gaza, to which the President said he thought it would be a mistake. Israel has gone on the record numerous times, and they have no intention of occupying Gaza.
Finally, the Right is not in favor of canceling anyone, but when a nightclub in New York City hosts a pro-Hamas Rave, they have gone past any First Amendment rights and deserve to be boycotted and forced out of business. Businesses and people alike need to think twice before they sign a petition or go on the record in support of Hamas or Hezbollah needs to think their actions through before they act.
The post Palestinian Protestors Need To Stop And Rethink Their Cause appeared first on Granite Grok.
An investigation by the State Attorney General has led to a settlement in lieu of criminal charges, against a former Notary Public for the town of
Londonderry. For well over a year now, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office has been conducting an investigation into Notary practices within the Town of Londonderry. Specifically in question was the use of official work time and the following of proper procedure regarding the notarization of a “cease and desist” order by the parents of former Town Manager Kevin Smith. The cease and desist letter was addressed to Brian and Jessica Smith, residents of Mill Valley, CA, and was titled “Re: Defamation of Character – For Libel and/or Slander,” dated April 20, 2022.
The document cited several N.H. laws, as well as California Penal Code, threatening legal action against the recipient’s if they continued what the letter claimed were unlawful public statements. The letter purported to be on file with the Londonderry Police Department, as well as the Mill Valley, CA Police Department. However, a California public records request to the Mill Valley Police Department produced no such record.
The document, signed by Bruce and Denise Smith, was also sent to Kevin and Brian Smith’s cousin, Mary Friedel, a current resident of Massachusetts, who was an alleged victim of sexual assault by a Smith family member when she was a young girl.
The letter, delivered by local law enforcement in both states, was notarized by Kirby E. Brown, who recently left her position at the Town of Londonderry, just shy of her 10-year anniversary.
The “order” was spurred by comments made on social media by Friedel during the former Town Manager’s campaign in the N.H. primary for a U.S. Senate seat.
Upon receiving the letter, Brian Smith and Friedel contacted both the town of Londonderry and the N.H. Attorney General, alleging notarial misconduct due to the discovery that Bruce Smith did not sign the document in Brown’s presence, despite the Notary Seal by Brown attesting that he was present. The formal complaint was made on July 25, 2022.
Friedel also noted in her complaints to the town and state that she was contacted by Londonderry Police officer, Marvin Alfaro, on April 20, 2022, instructing her to stop communications with Bruce and Denise.
On Sept. 21, 2023, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released their findings on the allegations.
In a letter addressed to Kirby Brown, it read: “Ms. Brown: On July 25, 2022, this Office received a complaint alleging your potential notarial misconduct under New Hampshire law. Following an investigation, the Attorney General orders you to cease and desist from conducting any further action as a notary public and to resign your commission in the State of New Hampshire. This Office further fines you $250 pursuant to its statutory authority under RSA 455:16.”
The letter to Kirby goes on to describe the facts of the case, in that the State found that Bruce Smith was not present when Brown, as a Town Official, notarized the order. In a statement to investigators, Brown reportedly told Denise Smith, “I know Bruce, just have him sign when you see him.”
The DOJ determined that Brown’s actions violated RSA 456-B:2.II and also RSA 456-B:2-a (*IF a notarial act relates to … a signature executed on a record, the individual … executing the signature shall appear personally before the notarial officer.”).
This violated RSA 455:16, I(d) by making a notarial act in which she purported to witness a signature that she never actually witnessed. The Attorney General provided notice of its intent to seek a civil penalty, to negotiate, and to settle with such suspected violators without court action, provided any civil penalty paid as settlement shall be paid to the Secretary of State. A settlement offer of a civil penalty for Brown’s violation of this state’s notary laws in the amount of $250, resignation of her New Hampshire notary Commission, and ceasing any further notarial activity in New Hampshire was accepted in verbal conversation with the Attorney General’s office.
According to an Affidavit in Support of an Arrest Warrant, Town office staff conducted an internal investigation on the matter and concluded that what was done “wasn’t a notarial act” contrary to the outcome of the State investigation.
Town Manager Mike Maliguti was asked a number of questions related to the State’s findings. Maliguti responded, “Public servants are rightly subject to heightened scrutiny and accountability. That goes with the territory. It is unfortunate, however, that in the ongoing efforts of some people and publications to discredit the Town Council and administration, human decency towards an employee who gave her heart and soul to the Town of Londonderry is nowhere to be found. “In publishing a hit piece about the one-off mistake of a dedicated public servant who gave the residents of Londonderry a decade of her life, the Londonderry Times scrapes from the gutter. Because this publication certainly cannot be expected to do so, let me address this story’s collateral damage directly: Kirby, I am sorry for what you are going through. Nothing, including this episode, can tarnish your contributions to the Town of Londonderry.”
Malaguti declined to answer other questions regarding attorney costs related to the investigation, the close timing of Brown’s departure, and the procedure that led to the call to Mary Friedel by Londonderry Police.
Reaching out to Kirby Brown on the state’s findings, she said, “I was a respected notary for the Town of Londonderry for six years. On April 18, 2022, Denise Smith came into my office needing a notary. The facts are Denise was the only one present and the only one I notarized for. Had there been any additional signatures on the document, I would not have notarized the document in any way, as no other party was present when the document was presented to me. My practice is to stamp any and all signatures based on common notary practices.
I have never made any exceptions to the notary practices, regardless of the circumstances or my familiarity with the party present. There is only one stamp on the form, as I saw and notarized only one signature. As any notary knows, whatever happens with any form once it leaves your presence is out of your control.
Concerns regarding this document were raised to the Town Manager, and in a letter I received from Town Manager Malaguti, dated May 4, 2022, the Town Attorney at the time, after an internal investigation was done, concluded there was no wrongdoing.
I was completely unaware of any investigation related to this instance with the AG office up until two weeks ago when I received notification that I am to resign my notary privileges.
She added, “I am the victim of someone else’s dishonesty. I was simply doing my job that day.” When asked if she’ll be paying the fine set by the state, Brown said, “I’ll be paying the fine and resigning, even though I know I’m innocent because I don’t want the drama and stress in my life, and I just want to be done with this. As mentioned in my statement, I just found out from the AG’s office about this two weeks ago, and they didn’t give me much time to react. And I just want to move on with my life.”
Brown also stated, “I was never given the chance to tell my account of the event to the AG’s office as I was not made aware of any continued investigation by the AG until they had already concluded it.”
Friedel felt the initial letter delivered to her, Brian and Jessica, was a farce, and she was relieved to finally see some resolution to the yearlong ordeal, saying, “I am grateful to the AG for investigating the people who conspired to intimidate me. No victim of sexual assault should ever be re-victimized.”
Jessica and Brian Smith were also pleased to see the matter come to an end, saying, “We thank the AG for their thorough investigation into those who tried to intimidate our family. By bringing these dark actions to light, we hope the use of Londonderry resources to satisfy a personal agenda & silence victims is something that never happens again.”
Note: The Londonderry Times was contacted over a year ago by Smith family members urging us to look into this matter. After the state released their findings, we felt those findings should be shared with the residents.
Chris Paul | Londonderry Times
The post Ex-Town Notary Settles in Lieu of Criminal Charges appeared first on Granite Grok.
It’s been two weeks since our gripping first tick of ‘Autumn” report. And that was the only tick we’d picked off the dogo since spring and until…this weekend. The ticks are back, baby, and the season is on us. Full blown, practically overnight. And yes, this is weird, but it brought two songs to mind.
I listen to just about everything, by the way. I grew up with Top 40 and rock (post-roll). My dad listened to swing and Big Bands. And I grew into Jazz, blues, classical, and even some hip-hop and that crap music that’s all the rage with the younger folks (eh, sonny!).
Since the pandemic, I’ve been top-heavy into country music. I love the storytelling, which has dominated my listening for several years, but I still love the classics. I’ll tune in to pop, techno, dance, top 30, Jazz, Classical, Blues, rock (with or without the roll), grunge, rap, and thrash metal. I don’t love all of it; some of it is utter rubbish, but I have learned to find talent, inspiration, meaning, and value in every genre.
Ticks, however, are useless bloodsucking parasites. I know the wild turkeys eat them, but they’ll eat any bug, and having been bit by more ticks than I can count (the dog has preventatives, I do not), I grow weary of the critters – except for the blog material.
And here I am, trying to write engaging content about disease-carrying arachnids. How to begin. With a song in my heart and an official White Lab Research Report update. As noted above, it has been a tick-less Summer until and Fall last weekend. We’re picking two to three tiny buggers off the white labrador every time he’s outside, which is at least two to three times a day (minimum), so welcome to tick season. I’ve seen deer and dog ticks on every outing, so if you or your pet wanders in the woods or weeds, keep your eye on that – though your circumstances may vary. Just remember. Global Warming could mean fewer ticks during the summer. Write that down.
And about the music? Two songs. Both classics, in my mind, but we encourage you to have your own mind; it’ll serve you well in a wide range of circumstances.
Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back in Town has nothing to do with bloodsucking arachnids. But the ticks are back in town, and it reminded me of the song. If that’s weird, great, and isn’t that why you’re here?
The second song to pop has the word click, which rhymes with tick, which equals bloodsucking parasites. There is also this pleasing image of Looney-Tunes-like tick-removal overkill along the lines of the Monty Python skit, where they hunt mosquitoes with a bazooka.
Click, Click, Boom. I swear it’s all connected.
Note: *The Embedded form will not appear if you are using ad blocking. Go to the event page instead, please or turn off your ad blocker and refresh.
Support Independent Media – Please Scan the QR Code or Use the embedded form*DonorboxEventWidget.embed({container: 'donorboxEmbed',embedFormSlug: 'https://donorbox.org/embed_event/504084'});
The post What Ticks, Thin Lizzy, and Saliva have in Common appeared first on Granite Grok.