This week, I was very busy. First, I presented my HB 147, which addresses the way sexual harassment policies are adopted. It was a request of the staff from the ethics committee, who were concerned that these policies were imposed by the joint facilities committee.

We want to thank Rep. Carol McGuire for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.

It is a well-established principle that a committee cannot impose its policies on the entire body, and this bill eliminates that conflict. The committee was interested but took no definite action that day.

My committee heard my HB 655, which recodifies the statutes governing the Office of Professional Licensing and Certification (OPLC) and many of the boards it supports. This was a request by the study committee I was on this summer, and the bill attempts to clarify the duties and responsibilities of the office and the boards. There was over two hours of testimony on the bill, much of it from boards who objected to the deletions of their current board statutes. Some of this was confusion that the broader scope of OPLC responsibilities actually included the deleted policies, but some others – the psychology board in particular – wanted the more specific procedures in their current statute included in the revised law. The bill went to subcommittee, with a particular emphasis on the investigations and discipline sections.

We then debated and voted on most of the bills we had previously heard. HB 337, requiring licensing boards to provide information in advance of meetings, was amended to correct an erroneous reference (that caused it to cost quite a bit!) and protect private information, and passed unanimously. HB 449, on pension calculations for Group II (police, fire and corrections) was retained in committee since the similar HB 436 was in subcommittee. HB 571, creating a cost of living adjustment for GII retirees, was a split decision: all the Democrats voted to pass, the Republicans to kill it. The full House will have to make a decision! My position on this is that a defined benefit pension is defined, that is set, and cost of living increases are not included. I was also opposed to this one as it was only for Group II, and explicitly excluded most retirees.

HB 341, licensing massage establishments, was not quite a partisan vote: one Democrat joined all the Republicans in voting to kill it. Our position is that using a licensing organization to enforce the laws against human trafficking is inappropriate and dangerous to the licensing agents; charging the legitimate establishments to help law enforcement “get” the illicit ones was also seen as problematic. We have laws against human trafficking and prostitution; it’s not the duty of massage therapists to pay to help law enforcement investigate or prosecute these crimes.

HB 620, creating the department of early childhood education to run a 3-year pilot program (with one-time money!) was debated before failing in a partisan split. Besides the folly of creating a new department for a pilot program (the supporters did have an amendment to have the department of education run the pilot), the opponents were convinced that the state should stay out of early childhood education. Preschool programs have a mixed record; in fact, academic preschool has been shown to harm children. We feel this is the parents’ job!

HB 183, exempting instructors at the fire academy (and probably the police standards and training academy) from the limitation on hours worked for retired fire (police), was unanimously voted to retain. While it seemed like a good idea at first, we were unable to get actual numbers of people or hours worked and were unwilling to give a blanket exemption to a few people. HB 193, technical corrections to the retirement statute, had a clarifying amendment before it was passed unanimously. HB 391, data sharing between the departments of health & human services and environmental services (to support commissions on environmentally caused diseases), also had a clarifying amendment before passing unanimously.

HB 409, allowing licensed barbers, cosmetologists, and estheticians from other states to get a New Hampshire license, was amended to ensure the out-of-state license was “in good standing” (that is, not under disciplinary action) and voted unanimously to pass. HB 109, my bill on occupational therapists, had an amendment to add exclusions for other professions whose scope of practice might overlap that of occupational therapists, and passed, again, unanimously. HB 266, my bill specifying how remote or hybrid meetings needed to meet the right-to-know law, passed unanimously without even an amendment!

CACR1, creating the position of lieutenant governor, was unanimously voted to be killed. We didn’t want to create an elected position without defined duties or responsibilities, and didn’t see the need for a standby when the governor hasn’t been able to complete his term only two or three times this century – and those were very short periods (the last was a week when Governor Hassan resigned to be sworn in as US senator a week before the newly-elected governor was sworn in.)

HB 250, increasing the accidental line-of-duty death benefit from 50% to 100% of salary, was debated at some length. We argued about how this compared to what survivors would get shortly after retirement, but really, the benefit is most needed for younger workers. One member brought up that this imposes an unfunded mandate on towns, who would pay for this benefit increase. It’s fairly rare – there are currently only 25 or so survivors collecting it. Finally, we voted to pass it, 15-5; I was on the losing side.

Finally, we dealt with HB 180, renaming Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. One member brought in an amendment to rename the holiday “Italian Heritage Day,” which is how it is usually celebrated. That amendment passed 14-6; the bill as amended passed 13-7. The opposition, including me, mostly believed that this was not going to satisfy the sponsors of the bill, who would most likely be back next year. I was also concerned that it diminished the accomplishments of Columbus, who, regardless of any moral failings he may have had, managed to bring the Americas into the larger world community. He changed world history in many ways. I don’t plan to debate this bill on the floor – I made these same points when we killed the same bill a few years ago.

We heard HB 518, asking for a commission to study the regulation of pharmacists and pharmacies. The intent is to see if separately the profession and the business make sense since very few pharmacists these days own the business. We didn’t take action on it, but I didn’t see any support from the committee. We think that there’s no reason the interested parties can’t study that without a bill.

HB 532, licensing music therapists, is a repeat of a bill we’ve seen twice already. Their primary concern seems to be that without a license, they can’t bill insurance (either private or Medicaid) for their services, so the clients have to pay out of pocket. There are 30-odd music therapists working in New Hampshire, so the more skeptical of us tend to think this isn’t much of a problem.

HB 507 would allow unlicensed individuals to practice legally as long as they made it clear that they were not licensed or certified by the state. An interesting idea and I tend to support it, but I can’t see it passing the legislature.

HB 594 specified that the OPLC director, in consultation with the boards, would determine if other states’ licensing requirements were essentially similar to ours so that licenses could be exchanged without too much hassle (just the criminal background check, if needed, and of course the payment…) The only opposition was from the real estate agents, who were concerned because we had given them explicit reciprocity criteria last session; they were relieved when several of us pointed out that no other state has our colonial-era land laws, and therefore anyone coming into the state would need to show familiarity with them. We voted unanimously to approve the bill; I was glad to see that the director promised to post equivalency data as it was developed (say, Florida is similar, but Alabama isn’t) since I tried to get the boards to do it five or six years ago, and none has!

HB 644 exempts some specific, safe procedures from the cosmetology license: washing and styling hair, applying makeup, and threading eyebrows. This is to encourage “blow dry bars” and other non-licensed beauty businesses, which will not need to hire licensed cosmetologists to perform these procedures. It generated many questions from the committee about the safety of these procedures and was sent to subcommittee for further analysis. HB 644 also eliminated the “booth license” for independent contractors who worked in salons, but that didn’t raise questions.

Friday, two subcommittees met on some of our more important bills. I substituted for a member who had to work on the GII pension bill, HB 436. We went through an amendment that had been agreed in principle at the last meeting (which I hadn’t attended.) The amendment still has some minor fixes needed, so the subcommittee will meet again to actually vote on it, but the intent was agreed and fleshed out in detail.

HB 436, as amended, takes five policy positions. First, it defines “vested” for the retirement system as “10 years of service.” This has been assumed for decades but never previously defined. Second, it limits any future changes in benefit calculations to those affecting employees with less than three years of service. This is because future increases in benefits increase costs to everyone, while future decreases are perceived by employees as a violation of their employment contract and so an unconstitutional retroactive law. The three-year window, explicitly stated, establishes a time frame for future changes, if necessary – sort of a probationary period. Third, it revises the maximum retirement benefit for employees who were in service but not vested, in 2011, from 85% to 100% of the final salary. This is only possible for long-service employees (35 years and up) and is the same as the limit for employees vested in 2011. The limit of $120,000 for all employees, set in 2011, is changed to $125,000 and increased 1.25% per year, effective in 2025. This is a minimal increase to account for inflation. Fourth, it deletes the transition for Group II members in service but not vested in 2011, over ten years. This transition affected years of service needed to retire, lowest age at retirement, and the multiplication factor for years of service in calculating the pension. Fifth, it fully funds this change by allocating $25 million from the general fund each year for ten years. This pays for the expected cost of this benefit improvement without downshifting anything to the cities and towns that employ most GII personnel.

The intent of this change is to eliminate the tiered pension benefits for Group II, which have caused resentment and a feeling of betrayal (since many believe that they had a contract with their employer guaranteeing their pension benefits). With the current problems of recruitment and retention among police, fire, and corrections officers, it is believed that by gradually eliminating these tiers will encourage officers to stay employed until they qualify for the higher pension and reassure them that future changes will be prospective only. I hope so, as we’re paying a great deal to improve benefits for a relatively small number of employees.

The other subcommittee worked on my HB 655, OPLC recodification, scoping out an amendment that will, among other things, more explicitly include privacy protections in investigations.

 

Representative Carol McGuire
carol@mcguire4house.com
782-4918

The post Your State House 02/10/23: Sexual Harrassment, Licensing, Early Childhood Education, and … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Newmarket, NH, School District Officials have been engaged in unethical, immoral, and criminal acts over the past seven years. These harmful acts include perjury, fraud, obstruction of justice, extortion, and theft. This is no way for public officials and educators to conduct themselves.

We want to thank Jeffrey Clay for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.

Chief among these deplorable public officials is Newmarket School District Attorney Barbara Loughman. Loughman has knowingly, willingly, and repeatedly lied to NH Courts on behalf of the school district.

Former Newmarket School Superintendents Merideth Nadeau and Susan Givens both acted very badly during their tenures in Newmarket, covering up and violating laws. These women now deservedly bear the moniker of unethical and immoral public employees.

The most deplorable individuals involved in all of the School District’s Corruption are, of course, the members of the Newmarket School Board, past and present.
Kim Shelton, Gary Swanson, Mike Kenison, Al Zink, Nathan Lunney, and many others. When it came time to take a stand for honesty and integrity, these public officials chose the low road. And in doing so, violated the public trust. This is true because these public officials swore an oath to serve with honor and integrity and to obey NH Laws and Constitution. Instead, these public official bums spat on their oaths and, in doing so, disgraced themselves and Newmarket.

Today the Newmarket School District is led by Superintendent Todd Allen. Unfortunately, Todd is just another bum. When presented with evidence of corruption, including criminal acts committed by his predecessors, school board members, and school district attorney Barbara Loughman, Allen chose the low road.

Apparently, an employment contract for 140K with great benefits buys a lot of loyalty.

With the Newmarket School District being a corrupt criminal organization, no teacher should work for this organization, and every parent of a Newmarket student should demand the removal of the current school board, superintendent, and attorney.

Newmarket taxpayers have been paying legal fees over these past many years. These fees must be returned to the taxpayers as they were misappropriated by school district officials to cover up their own personal bad acts.

I strongly encourage the NH Attorney General’s Office to pursue criminal prosecutions against all of Newmarket’s bad actors and to recoup the misappropriated public funds paid to Attorney Loughman’s Law Firm to lie to NH Courts.

 

 

Reminder: The opinions expressed in op-eds are those of the authors and not GraniteGrok.com, its authors, advertisers, or affiliates. By sharing them, we are not embracing them, endorsing them, or advocating them, the authors, or the content.

The post The Newmarket, NH School District is a Corrupt Criminal Organization appeared first on Granite Grok.

Representative Marjorie Smith (D) Durham takes to the pages of the Portsmouth Herald to advocate for House Bill 59 “Requiring a background check prior to any commercial firearm sale.” Representative Smith is not educating the reader. She is gaslight the reader.

Smith first claims,

House Bill 59, pending before the New Hampshire House, addresses not the gun, but the person who chooses to purchase the gun. And that is probably why 93% of the American public favors background checks for gun purchases. That includes just under 90% of gun owners, and just under 90% of Republicans.

-Portsmouth Herald

All fifty states participate in the National Instant Background Check System. When a person chooses to purchase a firearm, that person must complete an ATF Form 4473 provided by the dealer, and provide a government-issued identification, such as a drivers license to the dealer. The “Commercial Seller.” In New Hampshire, if one is purchasing a handgun, the dealer must call the N.H. Department of Safety Gunline for the background check.

If a person is purchasing a long gun, the ATF Gunline is contacted. The background check is completed and the individual purchases the firearm. The Dealer must be licensed by the ATF and possess a Federal Firearms License of the appropriate classification to see the particular guns he or she is selling.

Representative Smith would have the reader believe that background checks do not exist. In using the words, “commercial firearms sales,” There is an implication that New Hampshire, nor the Federal Government adequately regulate or control firearms sales. This is gaslighting at its finest.

The American public supports background checks because we already have background checks. The National Instant Background Check System or NICS is what governs the sale of firearms as explained above.

We have a current system in place. Albeit it is not without its flaws from time to time, but largely the NICS does what it intends to do. Yet, more gaslighting from Representative Smith…

“Never having purchased a gun, I was interested to learn how easy it would be to purchase a gun legally.  There are nearly 59,000 unique gun dealers across the country, four times as many as there are McDonald’s and nearly twice as many as U.S. post offices.”  

What a nebulous statement. Representative Smith was interested to learn how easy it would be to purchase a gun, she claims. Do you think she went to various gun dealers? Or shops? A gun dealer is any person who lawfully possesses a Federal Firearms License and may lawfully and commercially engage in the sale and purchase of firearms.

That 59,000 number she cites represents a whole slew of individuals who deal in firearms out of their homes. These are small “Mom and Pop” gun dealers, many of which deal with a known set of clientele. Many only sell a few guns per year! By citing that number, however, with a comparison to the ubiquitous number of McDonald’s and Post Offices is rank charlatanry at its best. Gaslighting with a capital G. She would have us believe there are 59,000 Gun Walmart-type box stores blanketing our nation. Oh! the humanity!

Representative Smith has this gaslighting down pat. She states,

“This bill requires “commercial” firearms sales in New Hampshire to be processed through a “licensed firearms dealer,” who will conduct a background check and create a record of each sale.  Its purpose is to protect public safety by helping to keep firearms out of the hands of felons, domestic abusers, and those adjudicated to be mentally ill.”

All of this already exists as stated above. Licensed Firearms Dealers already conduct NICS checks. Most people understand this to be the case. But the real goal of the bill is to create a registry where she states, “create a record of each sale.” That is the object goal of this bill. Representative Smith wants guns registered, as do all the Democrats.

We need only look to the State of California, our neighbors to the south, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Illinois to fully understand what Gun Control looks like. Despite having the most restrictive, draconian gun laws of all fifty states, Those legislatures are still passing gun control laws! This is not a gun control issue. This is a progressive issue.

This article is little more than apparatchik propaganda. Representative Smith further writes,

“This bill closes what is referred to as the Charleston loophole. Under federal law, a licensed dealer may proceed with the sale of a firearm after three business days even if the mandated background check has not yet been completed and there’s been no confirmation that the purchaser is legally permitted to have guns. The perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting.”

There is no Charleston Loophole. If such a loophole exists, then why have there not been more like or similar examples of this taking place. The Charleston shooter was indeed a prohibited person. The State Background system contacted the wrong agency for follow-up, a major snafu with dreadful consequences, but hardly a loophole.

This whole bill is white noise and deception at an epic level. With sleight of hand they create the perception that this is a much-needed bill, while all of it is in place…except of course, the gun registry. That is the real goal here.

Finally, she shows her true gaslighting when she shockingly includes,

“HB 59 as amended excludes private, noncommercial sales or transfers between individuals, provided neither individual is prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm under state or federal law. In a recent conversation I had with one of my colleagues, he talked about wanting to give his son a gun, knowing he had trained his child about gun safety including responsible use and storage. This bill would not interfere with that in any way. And it is not only relatives. As long as the gun owner knows that the potential recipient is not prohibited under federal or state law to own a gun, the exchange is legal.”

The passage of this bill will change absolutely nothing. Nothing, except to establish a gun registry. The goal of this bill is just that one morsel: “and create a record of each sale.” If this bill passes, everything current remains status quo…Except that the State now gets to maintain a gun registry database.

I would implore legislators to kill this bill. The bill is frivolous, deceptive, and not pressed forward in good faith. Representative Marjorie Smith is a gas lighter.

The post Durham Rep Marjorie Smith Gaslights HB59 In Op Ed appeared first on Granite Grok.

Valentine’s Day hasn’t been banned yet, but not all that long ago, modern feminists crafted their own interpretation of it. It is a self-contradicting alternate holiday called V-Day, combining awareness about sexual abuse alongside paraphernalia that encourages it.

Related: NH House Rep Timothy Horrigan – ‘Men Have Vaginas’

Every year V-Day celebrations flood college campuses with an array of offensive material that appears to have little connection with the prevention of violent crimes against women. For example, Roger Williams University was flooded with signs that read, “My Vagina is Huggable,” “My Vagina is Flirty,” and “My Vagina is Regal,” while students at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill went around in “I My Vagina” T-shirts. V-Day participants at Boise State University distributed vagina-shaped lollipops, and at Arizona State University they constructed a 40-foot inflatable vagina.

The logic behind V-Day seems strange. If you were really concerned about preventing sexual abuse against women, wouldn’t it be more effective to offer women lessons in self-defense rather than encourage them to participate in pornographic readings? And what possible connection can there be between empowering women to resist violence and encouraging them to distribute vagina-shaped lollipops?

 

Centuries spent trying to get the world to look at women as more than their sex parts are out the window. Women are, according to V-Day advocates, all about their vaginas. I’m not complaining; I’m just curious. Contradictions aside, is this supposed to help you achieve happiness, and if so, for whom?

I’m not defining what that means for you, by the way. That’s all on you. But given the tendency of feminists to favor totalitarian political schemes where choice vanishes for all but the ruling elite, there may not be many paths left to find it. Is this truly how you want to live your life? And are you the sort whose mission is to make others miserable about their choices when they differ from yours?

 

Lukas cites one women’s studies textbook that defines “heterosexual bribery” as “the dangerous fantasy that if you are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right man, then you will be allowed to co-exist with patriarchy in relative peace.”

 

As a reminder, women graduate with more college degrees than men. They are competing well on salary despite claims to the contrary and, as noted by Dr. Peterson, tend not to suffer the slings and arrows of misfortune to which men’s flesh are heir. They can even choose to be men and keep their vaginas!

But are they happy? Is it Happy V-Day, or just V-Day, a celebration to end gender violence that encourages it?

On that last point, is anyone planning to do anything about the parallel gender culture that allows men to pretend to be women to gain access to women to commit gender violence? And is it okay if they wear a “My Vagina is Huggable,” “My Vagina is Flirty,” or “My Vagina is Regal shirt? After all, according to NH State Rep Timmy Horrigan, men can have vaginas.

And if anyone can have a vagina, what does that mean for V-Day?

 

 

 

The post V-Day: Modern Feminism’s Valentines Day Contradiction appeared first on Granite Grok.

Last week we reported on accusations that Verra, a business that takes money and then claims to protect South American Rain Forrest so Big Everything can claim to offset their carbon footprint, was a scam. What are the odds there would be a second carbon credit scam?

The odds would be excellent (it’s all a scam), and yes, another s0 called carbon offsetter has been linked to bad behavior.

 

In the race to curb catastrophic climate change, prominent Australian businesses have been enthusiastic customers of carbon credits. They’ve been offsetting their emissions by buying credits from companies promising to stop exploitative timber harvesting, whilst lifting locals out of poverty.

But reporter Stephen Long has found that there is a vast chasm between what is marketed and what is really happening on the ground.

In a month-long trip, the team travelled to some of the most isolated villages in Papua New Guinea. They uncovered environmental devastation in the very areas one company claimed to be protecting and indigenous landowners angry at unfulfilled promises.

Long asks, who will really benefit from the carbon trade?

 

NIHT was there to cut down the forests for logging, and they are still logging, but to get there from wherever they started, they got local villages (landowners) to sign contracts. NIHT said they would pay them a percentage of the carbon offset profits, but the language in the agreement allows NIHT to deduct almost any cost before arriving at the number, of which only a percentage goes to the tribesman.

And then, according to the reporting, they log portions of the forest anyway while paying a pittance to the locals.

 

A month on the ground investigating the carbon traders, where we unearth shocking claims and revelations.

So, the figures were fudged, made up?

IVY KIELE, FORESTER: Yes, he did.

STEPHEN LONG, REPORTER: There is rainforest here, but there’s also utter devastation from logging within the carbon credits project area.

POLLY HEMMING: The risk is the overall result is more emissions and a worsening of climate change.

GARY JUFFA, GOVERNOR ORO PROVINCE: It is a form of neo-colonialism. That is my opinion.

 

Virtue-signaling corporations, with the help of virtue-signaling politicians (most but not all Democrats), are offshoring everything. First and foremost, emissions. The entire net-zero fantasy is impossible to reach, but they are content to let nations with no interest in reducing pollution, let alone anything else, violate the blessed sacrament of the Climate Cult as long as you and I can’t see their hypocrisy.

We can see the hypocrisy they claim to offset by handing buckets of cash to groups like Verra and New Ireland Hardwood Timber (NIHT is an American company registered in Mississippi), so they can continue living the lavish western lifestyle guilt-free, at least on paper. But that’s not what’s happening.

Another organization appears to be laundering carbon credits from unsuspecting businesses while screwing over the local populations in third-world countries.

It looks like carbon colonialism on both sides, the emissions, and the credits.

So, where’s the liberal outrage?

 

 

HT | WUWT

The post Would You Be Surprised to Learn About Another Carbon Offset Scam – This Time In New Guniea? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Hill has an Op-Ed advising all universities and colleges in the US to close Confucius Institutes. In light of the current concern over China’s activities in the US, the University of New Hampshire’s partnership with the Confucius Institute is worthy of another review.

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.

And so is the University of New Hampshire’s influence on New Hampshire’s policies on sexual assault and domestic violence investigations and prosecutions. Are they influenced by the university’s relationship with China, where due process and free speech are denied?

Consider that in 2009 Amy Gutmann of UPenn visited President Xi in China to discuss ways in which to build between China and America.

Consider payments to UPenn for Joe Biden’s Think Tank.

Consider the Department of Justice’s payments to the University of New Hampshire from February 2009 onwards for “Know Your Power” and “Bystander” training and consider that these led not only to unfair criminal trials, undue influence, denial of due process but also the debacle outlined in “Mr. Weber’s Confession” at Phillips Exeter Academy — the framing of a retired teacher for a sexual assault crime his “victim” states he didn’t commit.

The framing of Mr. Weber was directly a result of the Memorandum Of Understanding between Exeter Police/HAVEN (NHCADSV) and the school. That MOU was hailed by Amanda Grady Sexton of the NHCADSV at the time in Seacoast Online. But, as censorship goes, the article quoting her was removed after “Mr. Weber’s Confession” was published.

Howard Altschiller of Seacoast Online no doubt had something to do with conveniently removing it for his wife, Debra Altschiller’s (HAVEN) benefit — to avoid scrutiny of a failure of a program. Altschiller and the NHCADSV had lobbied Attorney General Gordon MacDonald for a Grand Jury Criminal Investigation into St Paul’s School, which yielded no prosecutions, a secret report, and a contract that ended up with six-monthly reports from a police/compliance officer.

We have to ask whose interests are any of these serving — a spy foreign governments or the “Live Free or Die” state of New Hampshire. If the former, then who is influencing it? Soft-peddled influence via the UNH Confucius partnership is the only explanation for the amount of infiltration, control, and censorship we see from these groups.

More at | Medium.com

The post Is there a Chinese Spy State Inside our Schools? appeared first on Granite Grok.

We’re not happy about it, but the jury has spoken. I was found guilty of all eight non-violent, victimless charges I faced at trial in December. Though we are going to appeal all eight counts, I have to be sentenced before the appeal can be filed. The prosecution is asking for upwards of 20 years, however no charge has a minimum sentence, so in theory I could receive time served for the 69 days I’ve already done and then some amount of probation or home confinement in lieu of prison. It’s all up to the judge.

If I have had a positive effect on your life, perhaps you’d consider writing a letter to judge Laplante to explain why you think I should remain out of prison. What kind of benefit have I brought you and the community as a whole? Why does putting me behind bars cause more harm than leaving me out in productive society? These are some of the things you may want to focus on in your letter.

While you likely have strong feelings about the FBI, the prosecution, or the jury in this case, none of that will be relevant to the sentencing hearing, so leave out your opinions on the process, please. While I have my critiques of the prosecutors, I’ve said along the way that I was surprised at how fair Joseph Laplante was, so I’m optimistic. He’s been thoughtful, is capable of changing his mind, and played things fairly evenly during the process.

Please address your letter to “The Honorable Joseph Laplante” or “Judge Laplante”. You may want to talk a little about yourself and what you do for a living and what you have done, especially with regard to any military or government work.

You are welcome to send a draft to me via email at ian at freetalklive.com or if you are confident in what you’ve written, send a signed original via snail mail – include your contact info – to:
Ian Freeman
63 Emerald St. #610
Keene, NH 03431

Please don’t delay as we need these well in advance of the April 14th sentencing date. Thank you.

Yep, something slipped by me/us yesterday. While there is no dearth of “possibilities” showing up in the media & blogosphere for those that are thinking of declaring to be an actual candidate (e.g., Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Mike Pompeo, Kristi Noem, Larry Hogan, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mittens Romney, Glenn Abbott, Liz Cheney, Vivek Ramaswamy – and one place said Tucker Carlson???), there’s still only two in the race

Yes, two. Nikki Haley, former South Carolina Governor and Ambassador to the UN, made it official yesterday:

Nikki Haley Makes Major Announcement About 2024

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) has officially launched her campaign for president. Haley posted the video announcement on Twitter Thursday morning.

“Get excited! Time for a new generation. Let’s do this!” Haley captioned the video. She says in the video, “I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants — not Black, not white. I was different.”

Well, that just cut the knees out from under our present Veep, Kamala, doesn’t it?

Regardless of how you may feel about her, she’s now made it a two-man band (Trump being the only other official candidate in the race). And Trump decided to continue his history of going after rivals:

“Nikki suffers from something that’s a very tough thing to suffer from: She’s overly ambitious,” Trump said

Er, isn’t that a character flaw of EVERYONE running for President, the highest elected office in our Republic AND (with the exception of Biden) the most powerful man in the Free World (historically)?

I’m quite sure that we’ll be writing a lot more about her and any other of the wannabees later on.

Does that mean we HAVE to include Baby Huey (aka, Chris Sununu) as well?  Talk about being overly ambitious…

(H/T: IJR)

The post So, #2 Is in the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary: Nikki Haley appeared first on Granite Grok.

It’s not 1980 anymore. Today our nation faces two existential threats different from anything we have encountered in our history. The first is the rise of a Chinese Communist Party who, unlike the USSR, supplies the shoes on our feet, the phones in our pockets, and the apps that addict our kids.

A Preview of a Conversation at Murphy’s Taproom in Manchester: Feb 22, 6-9 pm

The second is a new hybrid of state and corporate power that is far more dangerous than big government alone. Reciting slogans memorized in 1980 will not solve these problems and may well exacerbate them.

Politics is only part of the solution. Market actors can do their part. Just over a year ago, I founded a new financial firm called Strive that uses shareholder power to guide U.S. companies to focus on value maximization instead of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. My firm refused to do business in China because we could not be loyal fiduciaries to U.S. clients with the Chinese Communist Party’s boot on our necks. Behemoths like BlackRock and Vanguard have already changed behaviors in response, and we have engaged with U.S. energy companies to deliver our shareholder mandate.

But market solutions alone cannot spawn the national revival that we need. My generation is hungry for a cause; for meaning; for identity. We lurch from one secular religion to another as part of our hunt for deeper purpose. In place of God, we worship “climate.” In place of America, we pledge allegiance to “Diversity.” In place of family, we embrace an alphabet soup of gender identities. We wrongly embrace the idea that hardship is the same thing as victimhood. If you ask people my age or younger what it means to be an American in the year 2023, you will most likely get a blank stare in response.

The Republican Party’s top priority should be to fill that generational void with an inspiring national identity that dilutes woke ideology to irrelevance. Instead of obsessing over the question of “who,” we should start answering the question of what we stand for – and why. My two recent books – Woke, Inc. and Nation of Victims – articulate that vision, and I believe deep in my bones that we can create a new movement to turn this vision into reality by focusing on the most important objectives:

Defeat Communist China. The Chinese Communist Party represents the single greatest threat to our nation. The events of recent weeks remind us of this reality. We must defeat China economically to avoid having to do so militarily. Xi Jinping’s recent missteps create an opportunity to act decisively.

Dismantle the managerial class in government. Democratic self-governance only works if the people whom we elect to run the government are the people who actually run the government. The GOP needs to prioritize repealing civil service protections and replacing managerial protections with sunset clauses instead: if the President cannot serve our country for more than 8 years, neither should most federal bureaucrats. Elon Musk recently exposed managerial corruption at Twitter, and the next U.S. President should do the same for our own federal government. This includes exposing each instance in the last five years when a government employee attempted to influence private behavior. This practice is now rampant: Climate Czar John Kerry applied pressure on America’s largest banks to enter a so-called “U.S. net-zero banking alliance.” This is wrong and must be exposed before it is fixed. The solution will likely require shutting down countless government agencies that cannot be reformed.

Restore free speech. Free speech is a foundational cornerstone of the American experiment. It is a precondition for the pursuit of truth. It is a precondition for peace: if you tell people they cannot speak, they scream. If you tell people they cannot scream, they tear things down. Today the U.S. government regularly pressures the largest and most influential technology companies to censor disfavored political speech. This subverts the classical mantra that private companies are free to decide how they operate their websites. If it’s state action in disguise, the Constitution still applies: internet companies must abide by the First Amendment if they are acting at behest of government.

Political censorship goes beyond the internet. Employers have fired countless American workers for voicing the “wrong” political views. As I have argued on the pages of The Wall Street Journal, Congress should enshrine political expression as an American civil right: if you cannot fire or deplatform someone for their race, sex, sexual orientation, or religion, then you should not be able to fire someone for their political speech either. As I have argued in Newsweek, existing civil rights laws should already protect American workers from viewpoint discrimination. The federal prohibition on religious discrimination forbids employers from forcing employees to bow down to any religion, including secular ones as defined by the Supreme Court. The modern woke agenda in much of corporate America meets the Court’s test to a tee.

Embrace merit over identity politics. After the Supreme Court (hopefully) overturns affirmative action later this year, we must eliminate the national cancer of race-based preferences in every sphere of our lives. The U.S. federal government is directly responsible for the spread of affirmative action in America by requiring government contractors and other private parties to adopt race-based quota systems. This has unleashed hell on our national spirit by creating systematic racial discrimination, and we must eliminate it.

This is just the beginning of how we can revive our missing national identity. America’s future depends on whether we succeed, and I look forward to discussing this with citizens in the Granite State on February 22. We will start with an event in Rochester that morning and finish with an event in Manchester that evening. I look forward to hearing from all of you directly!

The post 1776 Moment: What Does it Mean to Be American Today? appeared first on Granite Grok.

So the School Board in Milford recently banned urinals in the pursuit of WOKE, or if you prefer a euphemism, equity and inclusion. Is the Republican National Committee paying any attention to what is actually going on in New Hampshire? The State is becoming more and more and more WOKE at an increasing speed. Is this the State you want to showcase in the 2024 Presidential Primary, RNC?

The school board in Milford, New Hampshire recently banned urinals in school bathrooms in the name of gender identity.

Students responded by walking out of class with signs that said "we want urinals." pic.twitter.com/soOvtRgRwP

— 1776 Project PAC (@1776ProjectPac) February 13, 2023

New Hampshire is TOTALLY out of step with RED States AND with PURPLE States. New Hampshire is a BLUE State. The last time the GOP Presidential candidate got over 50 percent of the vote was 1988. New Hampshire should be LAST on the primary schedule. NOT first, LAST.

The post Hey RNC … Have You Seen What’s Going On In Milford … This is the State You Want Picking The Next GOP Presidential Nominee?!?!?! appeared first on Granite Grok.

Should have put this up as the -19 degree F weather happened two weeks ago, but life marches on. So does the weather. In fact, it has marched on well before me and will after me as well.

The Climatistas, however, only have a history that barely goes back a coupla/few years because they FAIL to acknowledge their past pronouncements of our now-way-overdue-doom. Yes, weather and climate change all the time. However, it seems that these folks always want to conflate the two simply for political and

ideological reasons.



Anyways, two weeks ago on that Artic Saturday here in the Northeast, the trusty wood stove kept cranking out the BTUs from my sustainable tree wood cut on my land and we stayed warm and snuggly! It was just “weather” and not climate change.

And no, you’re not taking that stove nor the gas one in the kitchen anytime soon.

The post Skip’s Sauntering Snippets – #25 – A General Rant about the Current State of Our Climate Apocalypse appeared first on Granite Grok.

I preface this article with a comment. I do not enjoy writing negative posts daily, but this President and his Administration leave little choice. There is little done in the nearly 800 days I have been opining, which I feel benefits most Americans.

I yearn for days when I can relate positive actions and programs pushing us in the right direction.

These last two weeks have been incredibly frustrating. We are under attack. Our sovereignty has been violated four times, and many more questions than reasonable explanations exist. In the last few days, three airships have been shot down over the United States and Canadian air space, and our President is moot. Not a word, no address, no statement, nothing. It is like he is on vacation, and the Do Not Disturb sign is on the doorknob.

John Kirby and Karine Jean-Pierre are scheduled to handle the press briefing today, but we know from the first balloon that we can not trust the information they relay to the media. The President must address the country, take questions from all media outlets, and accept accountability for what is being done to solve this air assault on North America.

The word coming out of the Pentagon is sketchy at best. The spokespeople will not acknowledge what has been shot down, who the airships belong to, and how many more are en route to our airspace. We have proven that all the information regarding the first balloon was false. How can our faith be restored as this crisis unfolds in real-time? Joe Biden claims the transparency of his Administration as he continues to avoid contact and questions from the media.

He shunned FOXNews yesterday and refused to have a sit-down interview with the broadcast host of the Super Bowl. This interview has been a Super Bowl Sunday tradition for years, and Biden did sit the last two years with CBS and NBC. Biden told FOX he would sit with FOX Soul but no news person from the FOXNews team. Biden would have addressed over 100 million Americans yesterday but was not up to the task. What is he afraid of?

The White House Press Office has been in flux for two years. Jen Psaki was qualified but could not be trusted. She was the victim of many fact-checks. When she left the Administration to join MSNBC, she was replaced by Karine Jean-Pierre. KJP has been a train wreck proving incapable of answering a question unless it was in her briefing book. Karine is not qualified for the job but checked off three boxes on the diversity checklist. She is black, female, and gay, which makes her perfect for this Administration.

White House communications director Bedingfield Is stepping down after two years, and her replacement is Ben LeBolt. LeBolt comes from the Obama Administration. When KJP talks about LeBolt, there is no mention of his capabilities but only about him being the first openly-gay director of White House communications.

“I also knew — I also know that Ben is making history — as you know, we believe, here in the Biden-Haris White House, that representation matters. He will be the first openly gay communications director, which is very, very important indeed” said Jean-Pierre when announcing LeBolt.

Again, diversity over qualifications. It is pathetic and does not serve the American people. We need the truth, we deserve the truth and hearing from anyone but Biden is unsatisfactory.

The post Joe, This is Not the Macy’s Parade appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Bidenistas are at it again. Obstructing Justice. A conclusion based on actions that meet the requirements of the “would Dems lose their mind if this were Donald Trump measuring” measuring stick.

Related: More Boxes of Biden Docs in Boston

 

The US Treasury Department refused Wednesday to provide House Republicans any suspicious activity reports it may have on foreign banking and other business transactions by Hunter Biden and other members of President Joe Biden’s family. …

[House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James] Comer wrote on Jan. 11 to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for any so-called suspicious activity reports — used by banks to flag what they deem dubiously large transactions — as part of his panel’s probes into overseas business and other dealings by the president’s son.

 

Treasury, an executive branch office, would like to know why, and could we have more detail, please, and no outrage from the watchdog media? They are sleeping peacefully with whatever bone the Dems have given them.

 

In his letter to Yellen, Comer wrote, “The Committee is investigating President Biden’s knowledge of and role in these schemes to assess whether he has compromised our national security at the expense of the American people.”

Comer added the committee also “will examine drafting legislation to strengthen federal ethics laws regarding employees and their families.”

 

Legislation that will never survive the Democrat Senate to save the most transparent administration from having to explain why they told Joe to veto it or why they refuse to release records when that same administration has a keen interest in your bank transactions if they are $600.00 or more.

 

HT | Steadfast Clash

The post Biden White House Obstructs Another Investigation appeared first on Granite Grok.

Not necessary, not safe, and not effective. Lockdowns caused more harm than good. Vaccine harms are real and can lead to death. Money was a motivator at every level, the tests were lousy, only a fraction of the positives were actual cases, and the asymptomatic were punished for no reason.

Masks don’t work against a virus. Distancing is pointless virtue signaling. None of it was the better course if public health and saving lives were the goals. A few people made a lot of money or leveraged money for power and influence, and many died unnecessarily in that pursuit.

None of this is news to our readers, who have the sense not just to read what we share but to follow the links, do their own research, and arrive at their own conclusions. We’re not monolithic, value contrarian opinion, and could care less whose “side,” said what. Our woodshed takes everyone, including our authors.

Plain and simple truth.

The COVID Pandemic was a fraud. There is no shortage of rubes who peddled it or continue to pander to it, so we must revisit details in the hope that those on the fence may see the light and follow it.

To that end, I’m revisiting a report we shared back in early 2021 from Dr. David Martin. Interested parties in the US Government invented SARS and own the patents for the genome, the test to detect it, and the treatment.

This is inspired by Jim Jensen, writing on Substack, who has a two-part piece from December 2022 reviewing the full interview with Dr. Martin for those who would rather read than watch.

At the end of his review, Jensen asks,

 

Is it too far to conclude that a group of people are evil and mad enough to wreck the world in a bid to sell billions of dollars worth of a treatment that we are instructed to take repeatedly forever?

 

It is not, and as noted above, we’ve covered this ground, but it is too important not to revisit, so I’ve included a few highlights from Jensen’s more recent review below. You can watch the whole thing here if that’s more your speed.

Consider it your Factccination Booster. A fresh injection of reality.

Side effects include frustration, exasperation, increased use of adult language, dismay, disbelief, and a healthy (and growing) distrust of the motivations of politicians, government, bureaucrats, the media, bureaucrats, and the so-called public health infrastructure. Just what the Founders intended.

Here we go.

 

In 1999 Anthony Fauci funded research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specifically to help the NIAID build “an infectious, replication-defective coronavirus” that was specifically targeted for the human lung epithelium.

“In other words,” Dr. Martin asserts in another incendiary observation, “we made SARS.”

…

First, beyond the obvious concern of our government designing pathogens that can be used as bioweapons, US Patent 7220852 is a violation of 35 USC § 101: Inventions patentable. You cannot patent a naturally occurring substance.

Second, these patents not only covered the gene sequence of SARS coronavirus, but also covered the means of detecting it using RT-PCR (real time polymerase chain reaction).

The reason that’s a problem is if you own both the patent on the gene itself, and you own the patent on its detection, you are the only entity that can say whether the virus exists or can be found.

…

Three days after the CDC filed the patent on the SARS coronavirus in 2003, Sequoia Pharmaceuticals filed a patent on antiviral agents or treatment and control of infections by coronavirus. How can you get a patent on a treatment for a thing that had only been invented three days earlier?

US Patent 7151163, issued to Sequoia Pharmaceuticals, has another problem. The problem is it was issued and published before the CDC patent on coronavirus was allowed.

Dr. Martin summarizes, “it is not physically possible for you to patent a thing that treats a thing that had not been published because CDC had paid to keep it secret. This, my friends, is the definition of criminal conspiracy, racketeering, and collusion. This is not a theory. This is evidence.”

…

There was no “novel” coronavirus. There are countless very subtle modifications of coronavirus sequences that have been uploaded. But there was no single identified novel coronavirus at all. Some of the sequences were found in patent records as early as 1999.

According to Dr. Martin, if you take what was reported to be “novel,” you find 73 patents issued between 2008 and 2019, which have the elements that were allegedly novel in the SARS-COV-2, specifically as it relates to the polybasic cleavage site, the H3 receptor binding domain, and the spike protein.

“There was no outbreak of SARS.” Dr. Martin asserts, “because we had engineered all of the elements of that. And by 2016, the paper that was funded during the gain of function moratorium, that said that the SARS Coronavirus was poised for human emergence, written by none other than Ralph Baric, it was not only poised for human emergence, but it was patented for commercial exploitation. Seventy-three times. There is nothing new in this. Nothing. Zero. Seventy-three patents on everything clinically novel. Seventy-three. All issued before 2019.”

…

In other words, in March 2019 Moderna amended four failed patent applications to begin the process of coronavirus vaccine development 9 months before SARS-COV-2 began to allegedly be detected in the population.

In November, Moderna entered into a cooperative research and development agreement with UNC Chapel Hill with respect to getting the spike protein put inside a lipid nanoparticle. So, they actually had a candidate vaccine before we had a pathogen.

..

“There has not been a single paper published by anyone that has actually established that anything novel since November of 2019 has clinical distinction from anything that predates November of 2019.”

…

Remember: the people who patented the SARS coronavirus also patented the RT-PCR test which “detects” it. The world was flooded with PCR tests that were designed to look for fragments of gene sequences (if that.) Testing was mandated. … We’ve known since at least 6 months into the COVID scare that the “gold standard” RT-PCR tests can produce wildly inaccurate results, especially when the cycle threshold is jacked up so high.

The hated Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the RT-PCR test and enemy of Anthony Fauci who conveniently died just before the COVID scare, Kary Mullis, publicly insisted that the tests should never be used for diagnosing viral illness.

 

One last point. The patent info is all public. Any investigative reporter can watch the interview and follow the breadcrumbs. And if they thought it led to Donald Trump’s door, they’d be blowing this thing wide open 24/7/365.

There’s still time to do that before it happens again if public health is an actual concern.

 

 

The post Have You Been Factccinated? appeared first on Granite Grok.

On January 23, 2023, I filed a new lawsuit against the Newmarket School District, Superintendent of Schools Todd Allen, and School Board Chairman Gary Swanson, alleging numerous violations of NH Right-to-Know.

We want to thank Rep. Jeffrey Clay for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.

This lawsuit is necessary to compel the school district to provide public documents for inspection, which they have refused to do.

Since 2016, the Newmarket School District has been engaged, at taxpayer expense, in the most reprehensible acts of unethical, immoral, and criminal behavior, including lying to both the Rockingham and NH Supreme Courts.

From the beginning, Newmarket taxpayer dollars have been paid to Attorney Barbara Loughman, a most reprehensible and unethical person and attorney, to lie to the courts to protect the district from violations of Right-to-Know.

Today, despite being fully aware of the lies told to the courts by attorney Loughman in previous lawsuits, the Newmarket School Board, comprised of Gary Swanson, Amy Tilton, Phil Nazzaro, Andrew Haemker, and Dan Smith, has once again retained attorney Loughman to defend the district in this new lawsuit.

With Loughman being retained to defend Newmarket in this present case, I fully expect more unethical, immoral, and criminal acts will be employed to keep public records from being inspected. I am ready for this to happen, and I will call out and report every occurrence of these bad acts to law enforcement, the courts, and the public.

Newmarket’s current school board members, Gary Swanson, Amy Tilton, Phil Nazzaro, Andrew Haemker, and Dan Smith, swore oaths to support the NH Constitution and to adhere to NH Laws; they did not swear to protect the school district, which is exactly what they have been doing.

The School Board and Superintendent have violated their oaths of office and failed the people of Newmarket. Instead of filing a lawsuit against attorney Loughman and her law firm to recoup taxpayer monies paid in legal fees to lie to the courts, they are now paying Loughman more taxpayer money to defend bad acts committed by prior school board members and superintendents.

 

 

| Newmarket, NH School District Corruption

The post School District Violates Right-to-Know, Again! appeared first on Granite Grok.

Sun-King Chris Sununu brought his LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! EVERYBODY LOOK AT ME! pretend Presidential campaign to Face the Nation yesterday. His message for Republicans … LET THE GROOMERS GROOM. I kid you not:

Hey dummy … yeah you Sun-King … the Left, and that includes Democrat Governors, ALREADY is … and has been for some time … attacking conservative businesses. Is Sun-King that insulated from reality? Or is he just that damn dishonest.

More importantly, protecting children from grooming should be one of the top priorities of government at all levels, NOT the “worst precedent.” And Florida’s actions in stripping Disney of the corporate welfare and corporate perks that state government has given it over the years is absolutely the right thing to do, the conservative thing to do, the limited government thing to do.

Sun-King Sununu … one of the worst lockdown-Governors, who supports abortion up to birth, biological boys competing against girls in school sports, mask and “vaccine” mandates … is NOT a small-government Republican. He is a woke corporatist/globalist authoritarian and the sooner he exits the Governor’s office for his contributor’s gig on MSNBC the better.

 

The post Face The Nation … Sun-King Sununu Tells Republicans: LET THE GROOMERS GROOM appeared first on Granite Grok.

It’s one thing to be popular in a single role. It’s quite the other for a different role for which there are far more qualified candidates competing against you. He’ll have to remember these lines that Chris Sununu gave to the Washington Times (emphasis mine):

Mr. Sununu also warned minor candidates not to carve up the field.

“I think there’s a lot of hope and opportunity for good candidates to get in, drive the message where it needs to be,” he said. “But the discipline is getting out, too. The discipline and saying, ‘Look, you’re only polling at 5%, you got to get out.’ We don’t want a crowded field here.”

We should ALL hold you to your words – it’s called accountability and living up to your word. I’m betting that this result, like all online polls of a pre-selected audience at NH Journal (and yes, we “suffer” from the same issue when we do ours). Did ANYONE expect that, in his home State and among New Hampshire Journals readership, Sununu WOULDN’T be at least #3?  After all, he’s been Guv for the last half-decade. Yet, the guy he’s bashing the most, Trump, is still beating him, while Ron DeSantis holds a 2-1 lead over Sununu:

(click to embiggen)

I had a link to a recent poll that had Sununu at only 4%, but I think it’s on my main laptop that’s in the shop, and I can’t find it.  Even still, Emerson College polling has “Someone Else” at only 4% – below his own pre-set limit:

 

(click to embiggen)

 

And it will be clear that Sununu will NOT be The Guy appealing to the national GOP base that generally skews Conservative.  Remember, he isn’t a “social moderate” – Sununu is quite Left of Center when it comes to Social Issues to the point that he’s really part of the Democrat Party. After all, he helped ignite the Culture War in NH’s Education battlefield by signing SB263, that created yet ANOTHER protected class of “gender identity”. What Conservative Republican would do that??? None – yet, he’s calling himself a Conservative to the national electorate and cloaking himself in “Live Free or Die.”

He’s Pro-Choice and fought against the bill that created a 24-week limitation.  And someone else has picked up on this (H/T: Instapundit):

 

 

I guess, for as many times as GraniteGrok has put up Andrew Breitbart’s warning of “Politics is downstream for Culture”, Sununu doesn’t get that unless the Right FIGHTS the Culture Wars started by the Left, there will be nothing left to have Republican politics on. And we’re back to that he IS involved in the Culture War – on the Left’s side.

 

 

While he’s decent when it comes to taxation, spending, and Second Amendment, he’s looking the other way in that Government has been weaponsized and is participating in the Culture War on the side of the Left. And he just doesn’t care a whit. And DCE over at Weekend Pundit, while a bit less blunt, agrees:

 

When I heard the governor of my state is considering a run for president in 2024, my first thought was “Oh no!”

My second thought was “Oh HELL no!!”

Mind you, I have no dislike for Chris Sununu. He’s been a decent governor, but there are a lot of things he should have been addressing in New Hampshire that he’s been wishy-washy about, particularly things like CRT/DEI ‘indoctrination’, or refusing to tell the “Abortion No Matter What” pro-choice extremists to step off (though he did sign legislation banning on-demand third trimester abortions despite being pro-choice himself).

 

Another person seeing that the “Conservative” has not earned the title.

So now folks are jumping into the 2024 Presidential Campaign.

Oh, and another thing: His Excellency Sununu also decided a couple of years ago to bring NY Housing Development (stemming from Obama’s Federal takeover of local zoning) to NH by rigging the law (and a “Developers Court”!) to favor developers over the locals in the small NH communities that are the bulwark of the State. NY Gov Hochul is now doing the same thing in advancing Obama’s zoning takeover:

 

Hochul wants to give the state bold new authority to override local zoning laws in cases where municipalities resist the measure, which she hopes will help address a housing shortage that’s made New York one of the least affordable places in the country. Her push, while favored by housing advocates, is not likely to make her many friends in the areas that proved to be challenging territory for Democrats last November and will likely be again in 2024.

“You would see a suburban uprising, the likes of which you’ve never seen before, if the state tried to impose land-use regulations on communities that have had local control for over a 100 years,” Bruce Blakeman, the Republican county executive in Nassau County, said in an interview.

 

And Sununu is doing it from the Republican side – WHY does he think that Republicans are for this (other than those supported by the Developers and his sycophants)?  She alienated her Democrat base – will he do the same against the Republican ones?

 

Voters on Long Island and in much of the Hudson Valley went overwhelmingly for Republicans in the midterms, putting Rep. Lee Zeldin within striking distance of the Democratic governor and losing her party multiple seats in the House.

Her plan would compel every municipality to grow their housing stock and require those downstate to allow more housing near rail stations, contributing to her goal of reaching 800,000 new homes over the next decade. Similar efforts have been tried in other states, including Massachusetts and California, to varying results, while pitting bucolic suburbs against the needs of pricey metro areas.

…“There’s a lot of resentment when the state or a regional entity tries to come in and tell people how they should make their communities. It’s not a winning strategy,” said Laura Curran, the former Democratic Nassau County executive who was defeated by Blakeman in 2021.

 

Let him lose.

With this, he’s fostered the idea that people aren’t Free Citizens but simply cogs in the machine that is NH’s economy.  Do you want another “Obama Housing King”?

 

The post So, Chris Sununu Thinks He Can be “President I’m Going To…Not Fight For Your Priorities”? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Who watches the watchmen? Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it the Pfizer empire striking back against James O’Keefe? Why the sudden news last week of board belligerence and staff strife within Project Veritas, coming hot on the heels of the most explosive reporting about Big Pharma malfeasance we have ever seen?!?

Let me be clear and upfront that GraniteGrok and myself consider that James O’Keefe is a friend, and that his investigative work is second to none. Ourselves, friends, and family members, have been involved in some of his work. But there’s always a back story, and our readers deserve to know what is going on.

Facts:

• Project Veritas has exposed some big fish and serious malfeasance in government, schools, media, social media, and now the biggest of the big – Pfizer effectively front-running its vaccines by forcing new Covid variants.
• YouTube and other outlets have taken down these videos as misinformation – money DOES buy power.
• The Board has NOT voted to remove O’Keefe, but to suspend him during the investigation.
• As the chief ideas man and spokesman for Veritas, O’Keefe does not handle constraints well and chafes at attempts by company officers to run a tighter ship. When he has an idea, everything is about action NOW and damn the cost.
• James is a tough and demanding boss to work for, but 200% staff turnover in two years suggests more is going on.
• James O’Keefe, his personality, ideas and techniques ARE Project Veritas, and it is nothing without him.

Much speculation about the goings on at Veritas is splattered all across the Web, so your staff made some calls and did a bit of reading between the lines to try to discern the truth. Sites on the left can barely contain their glee that somebody they dislike may be having a hard time – they misunderestimate the man, and overplay the current situation. Sites on the right are convinced that leftists, Pfizer stooges, DeSantis supporters(!), or other factions have infiltrated the board as Project Veritas (PV) has grown. Sites on the center right have published both a credible description of the problems at PV and of the comments suggesting donations will dry up or follow O’Keefe if he is ousted.

So what’s really going on? We (Grok staff and myself personally) have watched James O’Keefe grow and mature into a smooth and polished presenter and spokesman for the cause. We constantly admire the audacity of his work, and have never been given cause to doubt the veracity of his results.

But that’s not the whole story. It has reached my ears by several paths that James is more than just demanding, and that staff turnover is a good gauge of the morale of the troops, regardless of how good the cause may be. A turnover of 140 out of 65 staff (more than 200%) in two years is worse than anything I have seen with mercurial bosses in places like Silicon Valley. This sounds like a hostile work environment, and I don’t mean in the snowflake/PC manner of describing such.
Letting urgency override common sense in business expenses gives company officers severe heartburn, especially when merely being involved with PV can put a target on your back.

One former staffer who departed a few years ago told me that the employee grievance list could have been written by themself a few years earlier, and it caused flashbacks.

I’m not trying to be sensational here, in fact, I heard far more than I can report with good conscience. In the end, it comes down to this: James IS Project Veritas – it is nothing without him. There is nobody better at picking plump, bloated, juicy, complacent targets and exposing them – all emperors are naked before his gaze.

BUT, there is a big difference between being the front man and chief investigator, and being a people manager. The one thread which ran through all my conversations is that James is not well suited to managing people, especially a lot of people.
Conversely, no matter how good the board is at running PV as a 501c3, they cannot run the kind of stings and investigations for which James is famous. There needs to be compromise, not conflict because America, heck, the World, NEEDS PV and James O’Keefe as a going concern, picking off those bloated, complacent, and yes, evil targets for We The People.

To summarize, there is no sign that Pfizer, RINOs, Commies, or any other miscreants are trying to bring down James O’Keefe. A conflict of operating style has come to a head, with a most unfortunate proximity in time to something which could be his greatest achievement so far. The board needs to facilitate O’Keefe doing what he does best, and O’keefe needs to take a deep breath and separate leadership and mentoring of the investigative teams from direct personnel management. Anything else, IE complete separation, will lead to disaster.

References:
TownHall: Project Veritas Issues Statement Amid Reports of James O’Keefe Being Ousted.
Old Row Swig on Twitter points out that the money will follow O’Keefe, not the PV corporation.
Rolling Stone: James O’Keefe Put Project Veritas Staff Through ‘Public Crucifixions,’ Leaked Memo Says.
PJ Media: James O’Keefe Put on Leave at Project Veritas. Has There Been a Coup?
Conservative Treehouse says hostile coup; blames RINOs and DeSantis (huh?).
TimCast article includes employee memo to PV board

The post Qui Custodiet Custodiens: What’s Happening at Veritas? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Before he got banned for turning into a troll, Bruce Currie (a Bernie-Bro)  used to be part of the ‘Grok commenters. I gave him credit for constantly standing up for his Progressive replies but it was clear that he wasn’t going to go that “last step” and answer one of my principle questions when confronting Progressives on spending and taxation:

Whose money is is FIRST?

I rarely get answers to that because that gives up the game – and Bruce understood that he couldn’t be honest because:

• It means that we are not Free People – that we are subjects rather than Citizens
• Government is now “allocating” our money” and subverting the philosophical underpinning of our country – from the Declaration of Independance: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  That Happiness was originally Property of which our wealth is private property.  If Government is now allocating our wealth, then we have no personal property and that EVERYTHING belongs to the State (which Communist Bernie Sanders (don’t believe that “Democratic Socialist” crappola) really wants (for one example).

So in reading Pravda on the Merrimack (Concord Monitor), I spotted a recent Letter to the Editor that referenced “columnist Bruce Currie” so I went looking and found this:  Bruce Currie: How can America pay for things the people want? With ease“.  I dryly ALSO note that:

• Currie believes that Government is responsible for paying for what people want vs what its Proper Purpose is: protecting our Liberties
• That “With ease” was a signal that Government is in charge of all money – and he proved my supposition further down in his piece.

It’s long – 1,200 words so I’m just going to abstract from it. Please note that it’s from 2019 – and he was still around the ‘Grok but never mentioned this. I do suggest that you read the entire piece. Emphasis mine, reformatted:

A Green New Deal and single-payer health care are finally getting the attention they deserve, thanks in part to the efforts of newly elected members of Congress like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who’ve pushed these issues front and center. They want the nation to get serious about global warming – which more accurately should now be called climate catastrophe. But, as with single-payer health care, a rejoinder is often: “How will we pay for it?”

The short, snarky answer for both is: “The same way we’ve paid for our $6 trillion forever wars in Syraqistan, because taxes didn’t pay for them.” So bear with me – a longer answer follows.

Fiat currency
When Dick Cheney famously said that Ronald Reagan proved that “deficits don’t matter,” he was right – though for the wrong reason. Deficits don’t matter because the United States is a sovereign nation with a fiat currency – one not backed by gold or silver but declared as legal tender by “fiat,” and backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government.

The federal government does not run like a household. It can never go broke – contrary to the claims of deficit hawks – from whom we hear most often when Democrats are in charge. Congress can authorize spending as much money as it wants or needs – effectively creating money from thin air. Skeptical? As Alan Greenspan told Paul Ryan in a congressional hearing back in 2005: “There’s nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody.”

The problem is that countries CAN go broke and it generally happens very slowly – and then all at once. Ask the Weimar Republic and Venezuela for just two examples. Countries can go broke when those buying the debt no longer believe that the “full faith and credit” is no longer a valid supposition. In other words, that FFaC phrase fails to instill any faith at all. After all, with the Federal Reserve now cranking up interest rates, just Interest PAYMENTS on the National Debt will be the third largest item in our national budget – almost more than what we spend on our national defense.

And continuing to just print money is one thing, others accepting is another, but at what real value? We know the answer to that – skyrocketing inflation rates as people actively start to realize that so many dollars being printed aren’t worth as much as they were before the presses started rolling. But he keeps digging and FINALLY ANSWERS MY QUESTION!

But wait, there’s more. A corollary to the fact that all money first comes from the government…

Being a Progressive/Socialist, of COURSE he is pleased as punch to say that Government is the font of EVERYTHING – including the labor that you expend to get your paycheck. Which he just made clear, comes from Government.  You aren’t “you” – you simply have already been bought and paid for by Government.

What a dismal way to live one’s life that our Founding Principle, that we are sovereign individuals, has been turned on its head.

is that taxes do not, and cannot, pay for government spending. The spending comes first. Just as a quarterback must first throw the ball before a receiver can catch it, the government must first “spend” money into the economy before taxpayers, like receivers, can throw it back, i.e., pay their taxes.

Pay our taxes?  Or rebating it back? He has no idea what real wealth creation is all about, does he?  But again, he never would acknowledge that capitalism is where true wealth is created – not allocated.

…The tax equation

Federal taxes have two main functions: 1) they serve to maintain the currency’s value, since taxes can only be paid in dollars and, 2) taxes (and tax cuts) can be used to control the money supply, or to redistribute money within the economy.

No, taxes do not “control” the money supply. Yes, the Federal Government as a role by the money it spends (authorized by politicians that generally have NO idea what basic economics hold). It is the Federal Reserve’s job to “manage” the money supply – something that even with all their “expertise” still give us cycles of recession, depression, and booms.

We’ve had over four decades of tax cuts that effectively redistributed income upward to the 1 percent, and we know how that has worked out for most Americans. A proposal to implement higher marginal taxes on the rich now has broad support.

And he’s ignorant of our Progressive tax schedule. Right now, the bottom half pays about 2.5% of all income taxes – the top 1% pays about 45%.  That’s redistributing?

<snip>
The Founders did not think entrenched, hereditary wealth and a growing rentier class of landed gentry was a good thing. Our own history shows that the republic survived and thrived with far more progressive tax rates in the 1950s and ’60s, when the top marginal rate was over 90 percent.
<snip>

Which no one paid. However, he never did like it when I said “Sure – just give us the same sized and intrusive Fed Government at the same time in the 50s and 60s.

Modern Monetary Theory
The understanding outlined above of how a sovereign nation with a fiat currency works isn’t too good to be true. Instead, it’s how money works in the real world and is the gist of Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT. While MMT is currently “hot” and has a growing number of adherents from within the economics profession, it’s not really new. MMT’s understanding of money, credit and debt can be traced back at least to Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 “Report on Manufactures” and to the writings of John Stuart Mill. Today, one of MMT’s best known proponents is Stephanie Kelton, who served as economic adviser to the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016.

Higher taxes on the rich by themselves won’t “pay for” single-payer health care, or a Green New Deal, or cover the $6 trillion we’ve spent so far on wars in the Middle East since 9/11. But it isn’t necessary to “pay for” this spending. We can debate the wisdom of having spent $6 trillion on permanent war. Just as we can (and should) debate the need for a single-payer health care system or the need to address global warming with a Green New Deal.

With a sovereign currency, what this nation chooses to spend money on should be removed from any discussion of how a program should be paid for. Congress can authorize such spending at any time. Inflation is never a concern, so long as sufficient goods and services are available to purchase with the money spent into the economy.

Translation: spend like drunken sailors all the time because there will NEVER be any bad outcomes to bad politics, bad policies, and bad legislation that “their” money really isn’t there and that others “get a financial vote” on this behavior later all. That is Currie’s always undiscussed philosophy of Progressivism – that actual outcomes are irrelevant both in achieving the purpose/outcome for legislation and that those putting them into action are to be held blameless.

In other words, there can never be any responsibility or accountability. And we are expected to believe this 2+2=5 nonsense as it refutes reality and human nature.

In fact, government spending that invests in new infrastructure, more efficient buildings and transportation, and in better health care for all, has a multiplier effect that spending on war does not. The benefits of such spending are concrete and tangible to all of us, because they ripple through the economy in ways that spending on wars cannot.

Much of this spending is on things that the private sector will not or cannot do, because it’s on things that aren’t profitable – like roads and mass transit, or retrofitting buildings for greater energy efficiency. The return on investment may be too risky, or too many years away.

And thanks to “shareholder value theory” popularized by Milton Friedman, U.S. corporations have become risk-averse – more interested in stock market manipulations than in long-term investment.

But finally, after years of knowing but with no proof, we have the answer: “the fact that all money first comes from the government…”

Gosh, what did we EVAH do before the Federal Government existed?

 

The post So Now We Have Bruce Currie’s Answer to My Question: Whose Money Is It FIRST? appeared first on Granite Grok.

They’re flying so thick and fast it is amazing.  Take heart – there will be a Meme Overflow and almost certainly a Friday Meme Overflow-Overflow.  Last week’s Overflow.

Remember, ridicule and mockery are effective weapons:

1. Ridicule cannot easily be fought
2. Ridicule makes the enemy angry, and angry people make mistakes
3. For those in the “squishy middle” a Thought Splinter (and Part II and Part III and Part IV) can often be hidden inside humor.

Now, let the mockery and mayhem begin.

 

*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***

 

A hat-trick of past essays:

Church of the Covidian – Liberty’s Torch (libertystorch.info)

The Fly on the Urinal – Urban Scoop

From Divine to Disgusting – Granite Grok

 

Why I tend to be awkward at social events lately:

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

What is ‘C40 Cities’ about and how does it link ULEZ Expansion with The Clinton Foundation?

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

But first, a random sampling of three of my cartoons.  Please note these are my concepts but I pay a professional to do them.

 

 

—

 

 

—

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

There’s a danger here.  When the SHTF, where will they go first?

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

  

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

Crowder has a good video on this too:

 

The 2nd Amendment : For Muskets Only?!

 

 

Arguments to the contrary – should someone care to make one to me – should be put onto hand-crafted parchment with a quill pen and conveyed to me by a man on horseback.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

There are a LOT of people whose bridges to them I’d love-love-love to burn.  With matches, gasoline, and thermite too.  The only thing that prevents me are my kids, and the potential threat of my wife Jabbing the kids if I do go full nuclear mode.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/covidian-chris-witty-not-blinking.mp4

 

This, I find interesting.

I’ve seen other videos of Covidians also devoid of blinking – and some generic (Left) pols as well.  Weird, considering the average blinking frequency is 15-20 blinks per minute.  So that’s once every 3-4 seconds.  Interestingly, according to this search result (bing) people’s blinking becomes “off” when lying.  Generally by blinking less.

This guy doesn’t blink for over 30 seconds.  From the above search:

12 Subtle Signs To Know If Someone Is Lying To You | Thought Catalog

Body Language Lying Eyes Seeing Through The Eyes Of Deceit (bodylanguagematters.com)

The above two, and others, all point to a lack of blinking as one sign of lying – or being medicated on something.  And no, I’m not ready to go down the lizard people road.  At least, not yet.

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

The Noxious Spread of Anti-White Racism

 

 

Divide and conquer in full swing.  Watch your backs, non-blacks.

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/blacks-saying-get-the-whites.mp4

 

Am I saying that all blacks are like this?  No.  But… I listen to what people SAY, I watch what people DO, and I definitely notice PATTERNS.  And when WORDS match ACTIONS and those words and actions create defined PATTERNS across significant numbers of people… I don’t think I’m out of line to be on my guard as a “race realist”.

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/larry-elder-on-black-on-white-crimes.mp4

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Pick of the post:

 

Some strong contenders, but this one really hit me on an emotional level – because, while I know humans are merely emotional animals capable of reason… some people are so devoid of reason I want to tear what little hair I have left out.

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Adderall and Me

 

 

It’s a profound shortage of medicines.  I’ve now had to have some of my – and my family’s – scripts ORDERED ahead of time to make sure they’re there when I go to pick them up.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Palate Cleansers:

 

—

—

 

Not beer.  A good 18 year old scotch, on the other hand…

 

 

The post MONDAY MEMES appeared first on Granite Grok.