On Monday, James O’Keefe announced a court win for a case started while he was still running Project Veritas. Veritas challenged Oregon’s Laws regarding recording people in public, and the 9th Circuit Court agreed with O’Keefe and Veritas.

Today, on the eve of our Country’s birthday, I received incredible news on the result of a lawsuit that I filed almost 3 years ago: Oregon State recording laws have been overturned! That’s right – I was able to change a state law that disallowed my investigative journalists to covertly record their subjects while doing our reporting.

The opinion notes that,

“We conclude that Oregon’s law is a content-based restriction that violates the First Amendment right to free speech and is therefore invalid on its face.”

“Oregon does not have a compelling interest in protecting individuals’ conversational privacy from other individuals’ protected speech in places open to the public, even if that protected speech consists of creating audio or visual recordings of other people.

New Hampshire law reads like stereo instructions to me, but the gist of it is that you need consent from both parties to record unless it is an obvious public place or recording equipment is visible and there to record others. That means you can’t claim you were recorded without consent if you are caught on a microphone at an event where recording is obviously taking place.

There is a boatload of exemptions for state and law enforcement to surveil you without permission, and there’s no requirement anywhere in public where you have no expectation of privacy. But the dual consent law exists and likely impacts the ability of journalists to get details that might be held back in the presence of a visible recording device.

This may be good or bad, depending on your opinion. It is my practice to speak as if I am always being recorded. This solves two problems. First, no open-mic gaffes because your speech sis yours and it is deliberate, and second, there is no opportunity for inconsistency in your principles.

If I’m being me in all cases instead of pretending to be something I’m not, then there is no oops moment, not that this matters in the context of New Hampshire Law. The statute is indifferent to truth or falsehood; it is the act of recording that is regulated. And in Oregon, they are going to have to revisit it, thanks to James O’Keefe.

The post O’Keefe Gets Oregon’s Recording Laws Overturned – Reminded me of NH, a Bit … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Dear Representatives: After reviewing the House Education Committee discussion on student mental health during a work session on June 28, 2023, I wanted to add some commentary.

First, let me start by saying that I consider the mental health of children to be extremely important. But I think we should all ask ourselves, when did offering mental health assessments and services become a part of public education?

Over the past few years, many of us could see that treating mental health has become more prominent in how public education is delivered in our communities. But we’ve also seen many problems too. When public education shifts to mental health services, what does that mean for students? Does this improve the mental health of those who need services? What about students who do not need these services? Does their quality of education improve or decline? Social and Emotional Learning is directed at all students, not just the children who need mental health treatment.

Many schools have added SEL classes, while we continually hear how time in the core academic subjects has been reduced.

I think we have to be honest with ourselves and admit that this extra challenge to public schools could result in a decline in academic outcomes. You can’t shift focus away from academics, include mental health classes and curriculum, and expect academic outcomes to improve. A student receiving expert mental health care outside the classroom may be a better solution.

For many children, these services are not needed. SEL is offered to all students, and it is embedded in the curriculum. In addition, teachers have reported SEL data collection on students.

If we are talking about children who need mental health services, why has this become a school-wide agenda for all of the students? Why are they not targeting children who need these services?

Children experiencing depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts need expert care. This cannot be provided by a school counselor, or social worker. They do not have the expert training and education that is required. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that these extremely serious mental health conditions can be fixed using an SEL program. Let’s not pretend that an employee without any advanced education, clinical training, or ability to prescribe medication, can handle these serious mental health problems.

We have school counselors in New Hampshire defying basic ethical guidelines, and sharing mental health data without consent from the students or their parents. We have LEA’s changing mental health permission slips to reflect “counseling” so parents will be fooled into signing them. (See attached file 22:00 – 54:00) We have districts with policies that require school staff to lie to parents about their own children. (JBAB) We have a federal student privacy law (FERPA) that was gutted several years ago so that this sensitive data can be shared without informed consent. And now we are going to hand them the responsibility of servicing their mental health?

This has set up a situation that defies ethical codes of conduct. Outside mental health professionals must follow their ethical guidelines if they are to maintain their license to treat patients. And yet we have school officials in New Hampshire ignoring all of this.

I cannot imagine you going forward with any of this in our public schools. School officials are ignoring ethical guidelines, and the privacy laws either go ignored or counselors defy them. We have school policies that are hostile to parents, and you want to now task school personnel with mental health treatment and services?

I’d suggest reading some of the ethical guidelines that have been developed for mental health professionals who treat children. They are extremely supportive of parental involvement, and fully support informed consent when sharing sensitive mental health data. This is not the current practice in our New Hampshire Schools, and we have the evidence to prove it.

You should not task a school district with assessing, and treating the mental health of children without strict ethical boundaries in place. You should not task a school district with treating the mental health of students using personnel who lack the education and clinical training that is needed. Would you ask the school nurse to diagnose and treat a student’s cancer? Of course not. That cancer would be diagnosed and treated by a cancer specialist outside the school system. The school would only be there to follow the doctor’s medical advice.

What is the role of a school counselor when offering direct services to students? What ability do they have to assess or treat a child’s mental health? This is a discussion that one would think would take place in a different committee like Health and Human Services. What are the laws in place that allow parents to hold counselors accountable for poor treatment?

In this example, a student attempted suicide at school after counselors there helped her transition from a girl to a boy. All of this was kept from the parents because the parents were Christian. The school even sent her in a police car to the hospital where she was kept with minimum contact from her parents.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CuI5pRjrQPB/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

A few months ago I received a frantic message from a father whose son was given a mental health evaluation after he scraped his friend with a plastic knife in the lunchroom. I’ve received phone calls from parents whose children were counseled at school without their knowledge or consent; and yet ESSA requires parental consent when assessing or servicing a student for their mental health.

A licensed mental health provider in private practice would risk losing their license if they practiced in the manner we are seeing in our public schools.

This push to turn public schools into mental health clinics was done without any consideration for ethics or privacy protections. If I take my child to a private practice, I do not have to worry about information shared with colleagues in the school or sensitive data that can be shared without my knowledge or consent. The privacy of the patient is a priority.

It is shocking to hear these kinds of discussions in the House or Senate Education Committees. Instead of placing this new burden on public schools, these services can still be provided to children who need them through DHHS. Our public schools are struggling to teach children to read, write, add, and subtract. Now they are going to become experts in mental health treatment?

Did you know that children who are sent to the hospital after attempting suicide must sit with a medical professional while doing their homework on their Chromebook? That’s because some of the instant messages come from bullies telling the child to kill themself. Why don’t you ban Chromebooks? The administrators haven’t removed the digital devices in spite of the cyberbullying that continues.

How about all of the pornographic books that are now available to children through the school library App? That is child sexual abuse, and yet this is now allowed in schools by the administrators that are supposed to administer mental health treatment. You want to trust these people with mental health services for students?

The schools remained closed during COVID in spite of the many mental health professionals that were warning about the emotional toll it was taking on children. I worked with parents all over New Hampshire, literally begging administrators to open the schools. Parents explained the emotional toll this was having on their children. All of this went ignored even though private schools were open.

We’ve already started transforming public schools into mental health clinics, and now we see bad behavior treated as if it’s a mental health condition. This new approach has teachers leaving the profession because there are no consequences for bad behavior. This transformation to mental health services in schools is already having a negative impact on behavior. Representative Ladd touched on some of this during the work session. If leadership in the school is going to fail to administer consequences for behavior, what can you do as legislators? This is a problem that must be addressed at the local level, which is why parents in Keene have been attending meetings and speaking up.

SEL isn’t just a program used in our schools; it’s a mechanism for gathering mental health data on children. Many parents send their children to school to learn the academics, not to become guinea pigs when it comes to their mental health.

We have children sitting in hospitals waiting to get into the one mental health facility that treats children. These kids are desperate for mental health services, but we are going to shift much-needed resources to schools that are proving to be incapable of educating students in the core academic subjects. Not only are many failing at their main task, they are failing to offer these services in an ethical and lawful way.

The post This Extra Challenge to Public Schools Could Result in a Decline in Academic Outcomes appeared first on Granite Grok.

Scottsbluff, Nebraska, approved a 5.2 MW Solar farm meant to “help the city achieve its goal to reduce our carbon footprint and stabilize city costs for the next 25 years.” One hail storm has reduced the life expectancy to four years and revealed another weakness.

Solar is land-intensive, water-intensive, has a large front and rear-end carbon footprint, offshores serious environmental harms (mining and manufacture), isn’t easy to recycle (if at all), underperforms both in output and longevity, and … is subject to imminent failure after a midwest hail storm.

Solar panels destroyed by large hail north of Scottsbluff, Nebraska last night. #newx Photo Courtesy Matt Larsen #hail pic.twitter.com/2ND7BHmYlB

— Daryl Orr (@WxWyDaryl) June 27, 2023

Rumor has it a typical solar panel is made to withstand common weather events like hail, but not baseball-side hail. The result is millions of dollars wasted on an inefficient energy solution that isn’t green and – in this case – effectively useless.

The facility is insured, and everyone is on-site assessing the damage.

[Molly] Brown [executive vice president of corporate strategy for GenPro Energy Solutions] believes it’s important to note that the extreme weather system caused significant damage to clean and fossil energy assets alike. While storms are indiscriminate, Brown said this is the first major damage GenPro has sustained since its first solar farm was installed in Lexington, Nebraska in 2017.

“We do get a lot of hailstorms in the Great Plains region, but typically the roofs get more damage than the solar panels.,” Brown told Renewable Energy World.

Fair enough, but solar has a lot of downsides, and this isn’t going to help matters.

The post Solar Fail – New 5.2 MW Solar Farm Reduced to Ruin by One Hail Storm appeared first on Granite Grok.

A junta is defined as a military or political group that rules a country after taking power by force. This is precisely what the Biden cabal, or as some may call it, ‘administration,’ is.

If we remember correctly, what really happened in 2020, President Trump was bullied and bowed into submission to follow the COVID Project. He was told it would only be two weeks, and then he was personally targeted by a range of sophisticated technology, including signals intelligence warfare, direct military threats from the Democrat Party, and a widespread political revolution by the U.S. Democrat Party intent on destroying the country in order to prevent a second consecutive Trump term.

Next came a summer of widespread race riots led by far-left terror cells and BLM– groups that had for three years been subjected to continued radicalization against the Republican Party and President Trump. These were people who were out of work due to COVID, many of whom, living in socialist Democrat cities (like Chicago, St. Louis, and Los Angeles) relied on the state for subsistence incomes. They had nothing to do besides sit at home and listen to CNN program them for the November elections.

And that 2020 election turned out to be one swung by a sophisticated network of corrupt election managers, Secretaries of States, and poll workers in Nevada, Virginia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. These states saw ridiculous levels of ballot fraud through mail-in and other means, which is still coming to light and which has spurned a long list of books, documentaries, and legal cases.

In fact, it seems that the people who have engaged in covering the spectacle of fraud that was the 2020 election have preferred that the fraud continue because they now make such a solid income off of uncovering the fraud.

If you remember, in December 2020, the Biden junta started broadcasting press conferences with a POTUS elect seal, pretending that the November 3 results were legitimate. This programmed into Americans’ minds that Biden’s victory had been legitimate.

Next was J6, which was when the junta truly took control and locked down. This event was straight out of the totalitarian playbook, mirroring the Nazi Party’s Reichstag Fire in Berlin circa 1933. That event kicked off over a decade of totalitarian rule in Germany that led to the greatest civilizational catastrophes of war in modern history.

The District of Columbia became a military state, basically under martial law. A massive steel fence was erected around the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall. By the time the inauguration came around, the entire country was still locked down, allegedly for COVID. Almost nobody showed up for the party except the most sycophantic DC residents and national political figures.

The Biden junta didn’t wait long to bring the country into open war. They worked hard during 2021 to provoke and poke Russia and successfully encouraged Moscow to open kinetic hostility with an invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, just one year after Biden’s inauguration.

The nature of the Biden junta is built to withstand political pressure. Any push against it is socially difficult since Biden himself is friends with most DC politicians, having served in office for nearly fifty years since 1972. He is a career politician– the kind that shouldn’t exist in a true democracy.

His entire administration has had one purpose– to destroy the United States of America. Political operatives in Beijing bragged in 2020 about installing Biden because he is easy to manipulate. Well, can you see that now? Biden has promoted an agenda that has ripped apart the U.S.– most U.S. citizens have been programmed for the past twenty years to think this is normal. The ones who resist are in a position where they know that organized resistance will be met with martial law and the state has been weaponized against them.

The U.S. Democrat Party’s agenda is twisted and backward– they aim for maximum illness, orienting towards depopulation and forced sterilization of citizens through national policy and a foreign policy based on war and projected weakness. Most U.S. citizens supporting the Democrats have been bullied and terrified into submission. They rely on federal and state aid, and they are victims of cults of personality. Most U.S. Democrat supporters prioritize identity politics over everything else.

This agenda is based on the premise, whether intentional or not, that democracy is best served when it is intentionally subverted at the federal level, which leads to citizens being forced to speak up, stand up, and fight back against a corrupted federal government.

This is totally backward for real progress and prosperity.

The post The Purposeful Backwardness of the Biden Junta appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Public Health Industrial Complex has a problem. Its missionaries denied people their religious rights (among others), pimped various protocols, and mandated treatments and preventions. The Amish didn’t do any of that and fared 90 times better.

The government couldn’t make them do any of the things they wanted the rest of us to do and the result was stunning. “Amish communities completely ignored the guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Amish families did not get vaccinated or wear masks, nor did they engage in lockdowns, social distancing, or any other type of restrictions.”

By all estimates, 90% of the Amish population of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (about 45000 souls) caught COVID, but their COVID Death rates were 90 times lower. Of the few that did shuffle off their mortal coil, it is not clear that COVID was even the cause, so that number might be higher, but 90 times lower is damning enough.

If saving lives was the goal, a vaccine and science-denying population had significantly better outcomes by ignoring every ‘expert’ recommendation.

Either the “experts” were wrong about everything, or the Amish are among God’s protected people.

I’d be open to suggestions that both are true.

The Amish Died of COVID at a Rate 90 Times LOWER Than the Rest of America

“I did the calculation,” testified @stkirsch in front of the Pennsylvania State Senate.

Given five Amish people died in Lancaster Country, PA, “the Amish died at a rate 90 times lower than the infection… pic.twitter.com/qa0EhPfssH

— The Vigilant Fox (@VigilantFox) June 28, 2023

“[Kirsch] added that diseases like ADD, autoimmune disease, PANDAS PANS, or epilepsy basically don’t exist among Amish children.”
 

If its God, the secular humanist Scientism has two problems.

The post Did God Save the Amish from COVID or Was It Just Common Sense? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Conventional wisdom seems to be that affirmative action in the United States began with an executive order issued by JFK in 1961, which (ironically) mandated government contactors to ‘take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin’.

Without regard to.

In the years since then, without regard to came to mean with special attention given to.  But now SCOTUS has brought things full circle.

Crucially, it appears that the reason the Supreme Court can tell Harvard how to conduct its admissions is that Harvard accepts money (via contracts and sub-contracts) from the federal government.

So if Harvard really believes that having a sufficiently racially diverse student body is essential to its mission, there’s a simple — and perfectly legal — way to keep doing what it’s been doing.

All Harvard — with its $53 billion endowment — has to do is stop taking federal money.

The post Reviving Affirmative Action appeared first on Granite Grok.

The State Attorney General has a burning desire to address the negative effects of social media on young people. The Governor signed an executive order. The State Dept of Ed is expected to create a new curriculum to address it. But nothing about puberty blockers.

His office began investigating the link between social media use and physical and mental health harms in 2021. Three months ago, Formella joined 46 other attorneys general in an investigation of negative experiences associated with using TikTok.

Gov. Chris Sununu has joined the effort too. He signed an executive order in June requiring state agencies to help students and parents better understand and protect themselves from the harmful effects of social media use.

He gave the departments of Education and Health and Human Services until September to create guidelines for K-12 curriculum about social media’s effect on health.

Planned Parenthood is padding its pockets by operating as a proxy mental health clinic for the gender mills. Public schools are exposing children to sexually mature material. So-called educators are deliberately confusing kids about their sexuality long before their brains or bodies are even ready to have the discussion. Puberty blockers, dangerous drugs with serious side effects, including death, are pushed to prevent suicide in kids who have been confused (making them exponentially more likely to kill themselves). Dartmouth-Hitchcock is mutilating and sterilizing children for profit.

And Governor Groomer’s priority is to ignore that public health threat and take a serious look at social media.

Social media is a problem. It’s a bigger problem than we know, and I’m not saying it doesn’t deserve some attention.

It seems that having relentless visibility into the lives of others has the alarming effect of compromising the mental health of many adolescent females. It calls to mind the possibility that social media is a 21st century corollary to Tolkien’s palantir, at least to this extent: adolescents who look into the social media orb have an alarming probability of being harmed by doing so. …

What is striking about Haidt’s analysis is the extent to which these young women’s mental health is damaged for reasons unrelated to whether the actual circumstances of their lives have really changed. It is apparently the mere act of marinating in the comparative knowledge of the lives of others that elevates levels of depression and self-loathing.

Women live to overthink things, and that has benefits and pitfalls. Young women tend to embrace the latter until they’ve achieved some level of maturity (or is it wisdom). Social media is, to put it bluntly, bad for them. It is not much better for boys. The government’s response to this has been to use it as an excuse to expose them to things that further confuse them sexually and psychologically and then translate the resulting depression into the opportunity to sterilize them with drugs (puberty blockers) or to mutilate them (sexual reassignment surgery).

The hospitals are happy for the added billing opportunities, and the political left feels comfortable packaging the damaged goods as a victim class (they created) for whom they pretend to advocate.

I doubt Governor Groom or his AG are planning to explore those unpleasant truths in their examination of social media’s impact on the physical and mental health of the kiddies.

I can save you all time, money, and even some lives and remind you that we don’t let kids drive, use drugs, or drink alcohol for a reason. They are even prohibited from viewing movies and TV content without an adult’s consent. Their brains are not likely ready, and social media has proven to be in the same category.

Keeping them away from it can’t be more difficult than the Feds using Big Tech to violate millions of Americans’ First Amendment rights or any of that COVID-Policy crap under which it trapped us with much enthusiasm.

Social media, while bad for kids’ self-esteem, is not nearly as big a threat to them as the government. The public-school transgender agenda is proof enough of that. And you want to be their “parents”? Find a way to ban them from the self-esteem-murdering influence of social media until they are old enough to drink.

Absent that, perhaps messing with their mental health by confusing them about what body they are in will have to do.

The post NH AG Want’s To Know About The Negative Impact of “Puberty Blockers” on Young People … Sorry, I Meant “Social Media” appeared first on Granite Grok.

Joe Biden on July Fourth:

As our nation celebrates Independence Day, we pray for the day when our communities will be free from gun violence.  It is within our power to once again ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to require safe storage of guns, to end gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and to enact universal background checks.

Note that he’s not talking about putting any of those limitations on the police or other government agents.  Just on you.

So, on a day when we celebrate the ability of armed citizens to break free from their oppressive government… the guy who has presided over some of the worst assaults ever on the Bill of Rights, and some of the most egregious expansions ever of illegitimate government power, is saying that we should cede still more of our ultimate check against tyranny to his oppressive government.

As Holly Golightly would say, the mind reels.

The post Senile AND Tone-Deaf appeared first on Granite Grok.

This is getting to be a problem. People dancing proudly across the gender spectrum keep turning up as mass shooters—the latest is Kimbrady Carriker, arrested in the July 3rd mass shooting in Philadelphia.

Mr. Carriker is a male, according to authorities. However, archived images show Mr. Carriker wearing women’s clothing, and officials used they/them pronouns when referring to the suspect. Mr. Carriker has posted on Facebook in support of various groups, including Black Lives Matter, and posted in support of gun ownership.

There are a lot of BLM and Antifa folks who are in favor of gun ownership. They fail to realize that once they’ve misused that right to destabilize the nation – to advance Socialism, their progressive political masters will round them up, disarm them, and pile their rapidly cooling remains in the nearest ditch.

Don’t worry; you’ll be in good company. Academics, lawyers, and an army of activists will likely join you – dead weight as it were after the arrival of the one-party state. I’m not making it up. If they’d taught you any actual history, you’d have seen it coming. You can’t leave disgruntled serial troublemakers around, and they can never be armed.

The truth of the revolution will be as unpleasant for all of them as for the rest of us. Utopia is a community sh!t hole occupied by all but a few. That’s what they meant by diversity, equity, and inclusion.

On a positive note, the elites will rarely, if ever, want for viable organ replacements. There are always plenty of those, and should a specific need arise, the law will find a suitable donor (thanks to socialized medicine and digital medical records) and suicide them with or without a show trial because assisted suicide is always an option.

As for the BLM supporting transvestite mass-shooter, we won’t hear much about that. And don’t you dare suggest that people with this disability should be considered mentally ineligible to own firearms? They are the crucible for the next generation of mass shooters whose efforts will herald the narratives needed to disarm the law-abiding population.

The post Philly Mass-Shooter is a Pro- BLM Transvestite With They/Them Pronouns appeared first on Granite Grok.

As you all know, DCYF decided to reveal my personal information to people I don’t know. Sure, intentions may (giving the benefit of the doubt) be good, but there are two sides to this. Yes, the Granddaughter needs to stay in contact with their families, but what are the costs to the foster families put in the same situation DCYF has created?

Unlike most, I take a different tack with Government, as you all know. I am going to use the greatest tool that Government has given to Citizens in following the demand laid upon us all in Article 8 of the NH Constitution (holding elected officials and bureaucrats accountable), especially in light that my Article 2-B Rights, IMHO, were violated (abuse of my personal information).

So, my latest Right To Know:

Right to Know Request per RSA 91-A: “Family Connections”: contacting out-of-home placement children by non-accused family members and friends

Pursuant to the Right to Know Law (RSA. 91-A), I am demanding access, within 5 business days, to the following governmental records:

For the Division of Children,Youth and Families, define the processes by which it identifies non-immediate family members or family friends that are then given contact information in order to reach an out-of-home child placed with other relatives | foster family | group home.

The Responsive Records are to include:

People:

• Provide the Title/Role of the “project manager” for the following steps.
• Provide the process by which these “contact information people” (or “CIPs”) are selected. This will include immediate, secondary, or tertiary family members and/or close family friends.
• Provide the complete mechanism process by which these CIPs are vetted for safety with respect to the child and the foster family.
• Provide the “scoring mechanism(s)” that “selects in” or “selects out” the CIPs for each of the above two processes.
  • Provide the data items used to set a “score” by which they would be included to set a score for a CIP.
  • Provide the relative importance priority of each of those data elements.
  • Provided the source / origin of each of those data items.

Notification:

• Provide the Title/Role of the “notifier” for the following steps:
• Provide the process used to determine when notifications are triggered to go to the CIPs
• Provide the delivery routings by which notifications are sent out:
  • telephonically
  • email
  • letter/registered letter
  • other
• Provide the processs by which the foster or kinship care providers caring for the out-of-home placement child asked for consent to have their personal information released to the CIPs?
  • Provide the form used to acquire that consent.
  • Provide the delivery mechanisms (see delivery routings, above) to the care providers.
  • Provide the process used if the care givers refuse to give consent but are competent providers by any other DCYF attribute.

Legal Responsibility:

• Provide is DCYF’s legal responsibility in protecting the child from the CIPs that are passed through the vetting process but turn out to be bad actors those caring for removed or place children?
• Ditto the care givers.
• Provide the DCYF protocol(s) that are employed when, as the result of provider contact information being released:
  • the child is attacked or harassed by a CIP?
  • the providers are attacked or harassed by a CIP because they are seen as agents of DCYF?
• Provide the remedies, specified by pertinent DCYF protocols, upplied by DCYF:
  • for the child
  • for the providers

Per RSA 91-A:4 IV(c) If you deny any portion of this request, please cite the specific exemption used to justify the denial to make each record, or part thereof, available for inspection along with a brief explanation of how the exemption applies to the information withheld.

As you are aware, in 2016, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that a governmental body in possession of records is required to produce them in electronic media using standard common file formats: Green v. SAU #55, 168 N.H. 796, 801 (2016). Unless there is a valid reason that it is not reasonably practicable for you to produce these records in the requested format, I ask that you either do so or explain why it is not practicable for you to comply. In this case, .TXT, .DOC, or .PDF files would suffice.

Please also note, per RSA 91-A:4 III, III-a, and III-b, you are required to maintain the safety and accessibility of such responsive records.

Please let me know when these records will be sent to me for inspection. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. You may email the responsive records to me at Skip@GraniteGrok.com. If the volume turns out to be substantial, I have already set up a Dropbox folder for those responsive records to which they can be uploaded.

Thank you for your lawful attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

-Skip
Skip@GraniteGrok.com

DCYF decided to “ramp it up”; two can play that game. With vigor.

The post DCYF – Let’s See What Is Under Your Kimono On This, Shall We? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Bill Schubart, a regular columnist for VT Digger among his many hats, never ceases to amaze me with his writing. He always provides an intriguing, insightful menu of facts and discoveries followed by a totally incongruous, twistedly partisan conclusion that makes absolutely no sense.

Please welcome Robert Roper, who will be joining us as an author/contributor when VermontGrok opens its doors.

His latest effort, There’s a lot more to education than education, doesn’t disappoint in this regard.

Schubart’s general observation throughout the piece is that Vermont’s public education system is crap and has been trending that way for over a decade. It’s a point hard to argue against, especially since the latest NEAP (a.k.a. the National Report Card) scores just came in showing dramatic declines in math and reading throughout the system. Schubart even cites the stats: “a 4-point decline in reading and 9-point decline in mathematics. It also compared these with the 2012-13 school year a decade earlier — well before Covid began in 2020. There’s a decade-long decline of 7 points in reading and 14 in math.”

Schubart then provides some fascinating personal experiences that corroborate the numbers. He and his wife over the past three years hosted two foreign exchange students from Moldavia and Serbia. At the ends of these students’ overall positive experiences in the US, Schubart reports:

“[T]here was one common disappointment. That was our school system, which they both found very disappointing when compared with the education they had had in their home countries.

Other than their American history course — and athletics — they felt they had learned little or nothing. They had already studied much of the math and science….

“Beyond the disappointment in pedagogy and course work, their biggest complaint was about the classroom culture, which they described as chaotic and hostile to learning. Their descriptions were consistent.

“Students who wanted to learn sat in a horseshoe around the teacher’s desk, students in the next rows back might be texting or watching movies on their cellphones with earbuds, while the kids in the back rows carried on open conversations, entirely ignoring the teacher.”

Double-checking his sources, Schubart questioned the school’s principal, who confirmed that this was indeed the dynamic at play in the classrooms of what is supposed to be one of the state’s best public high schools.

Schubart then laments the good old days in the late 1960s when he was a young teacher at Mount Abraham. Back then, the staff understood they were to maintain a culture of respect and learning – and did — and the students, for the most part, understood their role fell in line.

All good, well-thought-out stuff up to this point, but here’s where Schubart’s characteristically left-leaning refusal to see reality, even when it is so glaringly obvious given the clear and overwhelming evidence, takes over and drives the man’s brain off its intellectual rails.  What does he blame this sorry state of affairs on?

“But if the child sits at home and listens to their parents run down the school for whatever reason — demanding removal of certain books from the school library, lobbying to eliminate courses they don’t personally approve of, complaining about property taxes they pay to fund public education, for example — their animus against their child’s school and classroom will likely take root in the child and the child will have implicit permission to come to school laden with a variety of disrespects.”

Seriously, LMAO! SMH! WTAF? as the kids on their phones not paying attention to teacher might type. I’m sure the same kids who are boisterously ignoring Mrs. Wormwood’s algebra lesson are sitting respectfully at the dinner table hanging on their parents’ every word regarding Vermont’s incomprehensibly complex property tax system.

Schubart can’t bring himself to recognize or admit that since he first graced a classroom at the dawn of the age of Aquarius, leftist thinkers and culture warriors have come to dominate our public education system, certainly here in Vermont. It is they who are overwhelmingly responsible for the classroom culture and the curriculum that exists today. Does Schubart really not understand that the respect and discipline that existed during his teaching days was just the product of a racist patriarchy? Expecting all kids to sit quietly and pay attention is just an expression of his own white privilege?

At one point Schubart laments the fact that his European exchange students spoke three or four languages fluently, having taken classes since the first grade. We, he sadly notes, don’t teach foreign languages in elementary or middle school anymore. Yeah! We’ve replaced such courses with politically charged “green” propaganda and curricula influenced by critical race theory (CRT).

Students aren’t paying attention to the teacher? Maybe that has something to do with the fact that the leftist politicians and activists in and outside the classroom have spent all of these kids’ lives telling them that the adults from previous generations – like the one standing in front of the blackboard with the wooden pointer — are all systematically racist, sexist, and homophobic guardians of an oppressive society that has, among its many sins, laid waste to the planet these youngsters will inherit. Why would anyone pay attention to someone with that resume? If you want real authority on a subject, look to a fifteen-year-old (now nineteen-year-old) high school dropout whose major achievement is having collected a few million followers on Instagram.

Schubart notes that we are witnessing a rise in mental health issues with students of all ages. Again, maybe that has something to do with the fact that schools are relentlessly scaring the daylights out of children by bombarding them with a messages of hopelessness over unsolvable climate change, ubiquitous gun violence, incurable racism, and, oh by the way, you’re probably a boy trapped in a girl’s body or vice versa, let’s explore that! Just don’t tell mom and dad because the people you live with and are dependent upon can’t be trusted. But, hey, be well!

No, none of this occurs to Schubart, or if it does he sees his job as deflecting attention away from the real roots of the problems and onto the politically correct scapegoats – conservative parents.

If kids are emotionally damaged and failing to learn, it must be because mom and dad are critically pondering in the presence of their children why their property tax bills have doubled over the past two decades with declining results to show for it. Or it’s because those same bad parents are questioning the school’s decisions to replace Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird with Gender Queer and The 1619 Project in the syllabus.

According to Bill Schubart – and unfortunately a lot of people think like him — the very real problems that exist and are getting worse in our public school system (and, from there impacting our youth as a whole) are not the fault of the left-wing, so-called “experts” running the system. It’s the fault of the ungrateful masses for calling attention to the experts’ failed results, questioning the experts’ demonstrably ineffective methods, and demanding something better for their children. What nerve!

Of course, others might review the same evidence as Mr. Schubart and come to an entirely different conclusion. Let’s certainly hope so.

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank.

The post Who’s Responsible for Failing Schools? … Parents who Notice and Complain, says Columnist. appeared first on Granite Grok.

Who really runs this country? Blackrock.

Nobody capable of independent-thought and even a cursory knowledge of history believes the Putin-is-Hitler-and-we-have-to-stop-him-before-he-conquers-the-whole-world fairy tale that is used to try to justify America’s proxy-war against Russia in the Ukraine. This is Blackrock’s war. This is the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be might, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

This is the Deep-State’s war. Hitler-is-Putin is today’s Tomkin Gulf … today’s Saddam has WMD’s. Fortunately, most GOP voters oppose forever wars. It’s just the donor class that profits from these wars … and GOP “leaders” who represent the donors, not the voters … who support them.

Nothing to see here. Just taxpayers being forced to pay off Ukraine’s debts to Blackrock:

“We found $4.5B worth of payments from the US Agency for International Development to pay off Ukraine’s sovereign debt. Much of which is owned by the global investment firm BlackRock.” @MaxBlumenthal found the receipts. US taxpayers are getting hosed. pic.twitter.com/GN4k4VVzbG

— Marty Bent (@MartyBent) July 2, 2023

The post Your Periodic Reminder That We’re At War With Russia To Profit Blackrock appeared first on Granite Grok.

We’ve written about Lab Grown meat and plant-based products pretending to be meat. Their carbon footprint is larger. It costs more than the real thing. And while plant-based fake meat’s nutritional claims are spurious, with cloned meat, they are a mystery.

Two California companies, Good Meat and Upside Foods, are now approved to sell chicken created from animal cells in the United States. The U.S. is just the second country in the world — after Singapore — to allow the commercial sale of lab-grown meat, which is also referred to as “cultured” and “cell-cultivated” meat.

[Registered dietitian Diana] Rodgers told the Post that she is concerned about a lack of publicly-available nutritional information regarding lab-grown meat. When asked whether lab-grown meat was healthy or not, Rodgers said, “We just don’t know.”

And yes, it is cloned meat. Manufacturers grow it in metal tanks in a lab “from the cells of chickens, salt, and a base of soy and wheat.”

“I’d rather eat my shoe than lab-grown meat,” Rodgers told the Post. “McDonald’s is still better because the meat is a better option for vitamins,” she added later.

It will only be available in commercial applications like restaurants at first but don’t expect the menu to say Cloned Chicken Marsala or Cloned Lemon Chicken. Nor engineered, and not Lab Grown, either. I’d like the boneless (as if there’s any lab variety) chicken wing product, Buffalo sauce, hot. It’s perfect; there’s no wing nor any actual chicken. Dip it in a side of synthetic bleu cheese slurry and take a bite for Gaia, except not really.

“… growing meat in a lab appears to be twenty-five times more dangerous to the planet (emissions-wise) than beef on the hoof if that sort of thing concerns you. Not I, but the hypocrisy of anti-co2 hypocrites replacing essential protein with garbage whose manufacture releases exponentially more carbon than the real thing (since they pretend to care) does.

Much like the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), it will be effective at raising revenues but not at reducing emissions.

According to the reporting, it will sell for about 20.00/pound so the war on real meat must continue for clone meat to compete on price. Bill Gates on team cloned meat, so you can guess how that’s going to go. The lack of details about what’s in it or the actual nutritional value will remain a mystery, so feel free to call it what it is.

Mystery meat.

The post We Should Call Lab Grown Meat, Cloned Meat – Or Better Yet, Mystery Meat. appeared first on Granite Grok.