Wednesday • April 30 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.XVIII
Manchester, N.H.
Maine’s got a marijuana crisis, as in too much of it. The price has collapsed. Combined with the rising cost of electricity, growers can’t afford to operate. The result is a mass exodus of “individuals registered with the state to supply medical-use marijuana for patients.”
Rather than just letting folks find the weed they need, weed needs some guardrails; at least, that’s what some folks are saying.
“This survey makes clear that the biggest issue facing the medical program is oversupply,” said John Hudak, director of the Office of Cannabis Policy, in a statement. “That oversupply has led to massive drops in wholesale price, making it difficult for registrants to endure mounting energy costs and other market conditions.” …
The report also identifies high utility and business costs, competition with the adult-use market, and banking regulations and fees as drivers of the drop-off. Banking is difficult for many cannabis businesses because the drug is still illegal at the federal level.
But it’s not just the Feds.
“Every single year we deal with some existential threat to our ability to operate from our own state government,” he said, adding that people are “discouraged and disenchanted.”
The Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP) blames the legislature. Some growers/Caregivers oppose some the OCP says is needs doing to correct a supply problem that is also infecting the adult cannabis market. Between competition and supply, the price has gotten so low that growers can’t afford to grow (or so some say).
But it seems to me that deregulation is the fix to everyone’s problem. Less interference, not more. Marijuana entrepreneurs will find ways to profit in a legal market without any state interference, but here comes Maine to do some interfering.
The Legislature is considering two bills that could prevent more small businesses from leaving the market. One would give the state the authority to temporarily stop issuing new adult-use cultivation licenses or allowing expansions if the average price falls 20% below the previous year’s average, or if the volume grown over three months is three times greater than the previous year’s. The second piece of legislation would effectively reduce the maximum size of a newly licensed medical- or adult-use grow operation to 7,000 square feet.
More regulations will likely lead to lobbyists protecting a government-managed cartel. Small business caregivers or growers will get wiped out. Private growing will be prohibited, or if it’s not legal, never get there from here. Instead of cheap heaps of inventory, you’ll get supply chain controls to keep prices high and, for some who may genuinely need it, out of reach.
But Maine has no incentive to support low prices. It collects a 5.5% tax on medical marijuana, a 10% tax on recreational (adult use), while,
Cultivators will pay a $335 per pound excise tax on flowers and mature plants and a $94 per pound tax on trim. Immature plants and seedlings will also be taxed at the rate of $1.50. Seeds will incur a 30 cent per seed excise tax. All must be paid monthly.
The State takes in a respectable haul. $12M – $14M per year in medical and recreational marijuana tax revenue. And while 12% of all Maine Marijuana tax revenue goes to the “Adult Use Marijuana Public Health and Safety Fund,” the other 88% goes to the General Fund.
I love that. We’ll permit you to do something you might do better without our consent, we’ll call it legal at the state level, regulate it, tax it, and then use a percentage of that to tell you about the health and safety risks of the thing we’re taxing.
How about an educational program regarding the health and safety risks of government meddling and taxation? Anyone?
And we’ve arrived at my primary objection to state regulation and taxation. The state has a financial interest, as do the large growers who will hire lobbyists to help manage everyone else out of business and then build a cartel with the state. This will drive up prices but also drive away competition with increasingly burdensome licensing and other rules that add costs.
Marijuana has issues we should not ignore that I have address elsewher, but the progressive state’s addiction to revenue can’t be ignored, and Maine is getting bluer by the minute.
HT | Portland Press Herald
The post Is Maine Building a ‘Budding’ Weed Cartel? appeared first on Granite Grok.
(white) goldstandard-05-11-23-S.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-05-11-23-S-y.pdf
The post Senate Gold Standard – May 11, 2023 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.
Jason Osborne still does NOT understand why the NHGOP in particular … and the GOP generally … performed so abysmally in 2022. His thinking is STUCK in the 90s, or maybe the 80s or 70s. He believes that voters only think about the “top-of-the-ticket” and then fill in the same Party as their top-of-the-ticket choice all the way down the ballot:
The Communists … aka NH-Democrats … kicked your butt in 2022 because they work smarter and harder than you, Jason. They identify likely voters … an obvious example is college students … and they work their asses off to get those voters to vote.
The NHGOP, in contrast, indiscriminately mails out a cookie-cutter glossy flyer of the State rep candidate next to a smiling Sun-King Sununu. And a bunch of annoying texts and robot phone calls that likely reduce turnout. Jason, dear, you are helpless because you are clueless about how to win elections.
In the interest of fairness, I am going to allow Jason to respond. This is NOT Peter Tosh … and to claim that it is and that I am trolling Jason’s obsession with legalizing weed is simply the worst kind of sexist misinformation.
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(white) goldstandard-05-11-23-S.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-05-11-23-S-y.pdf
The post Senate Gold Standard – May 11, 2023 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.
Your Congress created a provision in federal law (2022) for a ministry of truth and then funded it without knowing or caring what that would look like. Now we know. Introducing the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC).
From its perch atop the intelligence community, the FMIC has been designated the U.S. government’s primary authority for analyzing and integrating intelligence on foreign influence, according to a brief entry on ODNI’s website. The FMIC’s acting director, Jeffrey K. Wichman, is a former CIA executive who previously served as chief of analysis for the agency’s Counterintelligence Mission Center.
“Exposing deception in defense of liberty” is the center’s motto, ODNI’s website says. It enjoys access to “all intelligence possessed or created pertaining to FMI [foreign malign information], including election security.”
Exposing deception in defense of the approved narratives would be more accurate, but after the collusion with pre-Musk Twitter was exposed, they needed a new safe house. Nestled in the “National Security” bosom. Suckling on partisan progressive narratives as they engage in anti-free-speech domestic counterintelligence.
Not against things like the Steele Dossier, a domestic intelligence scheme blamed on foreigners but fabricated by the Clinton Campaign. Or the Hunter Laptop scheme (Biden campaign), which “intelligence officials” swore was more Russian disinformation. They won’t stand up against that stuff in the name of liberty, but if you post peer-reviewed research questioning vaccine safety or efficacy, you might find yourself on their radar.
Ministry of Truth.
Thanks, Congress. Nice work.
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Frank “Footloose” Staples was wrongfully arrested on charges of “disorderly conduct” for sitting quietly at an executive council meeting in 2021. Last week his nearly two-month trial wrapped up, with Frank found not guilty of the initial “disorderly”, but guilty of the subsequent charge he received after he announced to the audience that he was being arrested in the back of the room. He intends to appeal.
In five days of court spread out over weeks, the state police’s prosecutors alleged Frank was disrupting the meeting and that’s why he was targeted. Frank’s multiple witnesses said he was never disruptive and that the state police were clearly looking to make arrests, as the chairs were zip tied together, multiple paddy wagons were on hand, and dozens of uniformed officers were present.
Ultimately the robed man decided the state had not met its burden of proof on the initial charge, but claimed, confusingly, that the police had probable cause to make the arrest. How can the police have probable cause to make an arrest for which the person is then found not guilty? They can’t. The judge is obviously covering for the police and trying to justify the second “disorderly” count that Frank received when he was taken behind the curtain and arrested, which is when he yelled that he was being arrested and to “shut it down!”.
The trial was very entertaining with Frank blowing up and yelling at the judge and the prosecutors many times. If you’ve seen him in court videos before, you know what to expect. I hope you enjoy this 13-hour trial video:
From single massive mainframe computers (e.g., IBM 360/370, Multics) to networks of “minicomputers” (e.g., Digital Equipment, Wang Labs, Honeywell) to hordes of standalone Personal Computers, and now tablets, smartphones, and “the Cloud,” compute power has gone from expensive and centralized to cheaper and distributed. No one that I know of has said that this has been a bad thing. Sure, the “compute marketplaces” underwent tremendous upheaval both on an economic scale, death for many companies, and careers impacted (mine certainly was), but compute power went from the “High Priesthoods” to “common man” (or child) availability.
Power distributed is better – not a monoculture but a diverse landscape that caters to all kinds of niches, needs, and applications.
But there are those that, having SEEN all this over the last 70 years, refuse to see the analogy for economics in general from centralized control by Monarchies to the rise of capitalism to the masses. “Spontaneous Order” is the ordering of the economy not by a very few but by millions upon millions of people simply making economic decisions for their singular self-interest. For themselves and not at the behest of “those at the top” that think they know everything needed to make those decisions for others. That’s a mainframe-centric 1950s thinking in the age of smartphones that have more power than back then, but it still exists. So what got me started on this rant, where the Socialists/Communists Totalitarians in the Biden Administration are taking more and more economic control over us?
Markets enable people to coordinate their activities so that individuals can make use of the knowledge of others without having that knowledge themselves. -Randy Holcombe
Unlike the power-hungry bureaucrats (who yearn for such control mainly because they have realized that the Executive Branch has become so expansive they only have to reach down and pick up that Power), Normal people don’t coordinate. They don’t gather in homes, in bars, or at clubs and decide how they will instruct how things will run. Instead, the coordination of a Free Market comes down to one datum: Price Point. While economic totalitarians hate the idea that people can and should choose for themselves, it is the vehicle by which many decisions can be made, the chief of which is “Can I afford it?”. “DO I want to ‘stretch’ to afford it?”, what is the ‘quality’ of that item at that price?” and “Will it perform (product specifications, quality-wise) as I need it to?”.
And each of us can play that role for ourselves as we also are immersed in our “scarcity” atmosphere – what is the tradeoff that I will pay if I purchase this over purchasing this other thing (as few of us can almost totally disregard that issue like Elon Musk can)?
Prof. Don Boudreaux speaks more to this on the famous example of “I, Pencil” – we can’t know enough individually to make all those things that make our standard of living what it is today BECAUSE of Capitalism, its underlying philosophy – and its “distributed knowledge that no top-down committee(s) could ever know:
This truth, alas, is ignored, or insufficiently appreciated, by nearly everyone outside of a tiny band of economists and classical liberals. Yet one glance at everyday reality in modernity makes this truth impossible to deny.
Consider, for example, the device on which you’re now reading my words. Even if you’re a renowned computer scientist or a genius software engineer, you have no idea how to make any of the vast majority of the components of your device. You don’t know how to make the glass that is the screen, the plastic or metal that forms the casing, the tiny lens of the tiny camera that’s in that device, the electricity-generating and transmitting processes without which that device would be useless. Yet each of these myriad different things exist. Each exists because a few individuals have the specific knowledge necessary to produce it, without any of these individuals – or you – having anything close to the knowledge necessary to produce the entire device.
The millions of different individuals each with his or her own specific knowledge must have their productive efforts coordinated with each other if the final results are to be useful – are to have value. This coordination is achieved by each person being guided by market signals – that is, by prices of outputs, prices of inputs, asset values, and profits and losses.
Simply, Price Points. Everything needed to design, market, sell, and support “a widget” can be summed up in a single data point.
Advocates of industrial policy wish either to censor or to ignore the knowledge conveyed in markets. But the only ‘knowledge’ that they have to replace that which they censor or ignore comes from their hunches and personal preferences. Industrial-policy advocates simply assume that, if they can imagine some economic outcome, then the government can directly allocate resources to achieve that outcome and do so in ways that improve the well-being of ordinary people. The particular imagined outcomes, depending on what they are, might be achievable. What is not achievable, save by pure and highly unlikely chance, is the attainment of these outcomes in ways that are not excessively costly – that is, in ways that improve the well-being of ordinary people.
I bring up the apocryphal story of the Soviet Russian store that only had left shoes without the right shoe pair. Oops – the story of incomplete knowledge in a command and control economy.
Virgil Storr and Ginny Choi:
The least advantaged in market societies are better off than the least advantaged in nonmarket societies and may be better off than the most well-off in some nonmarket societies. This material fact, we argue, is of moral significance
Oh, that Thomas Sowell quote? Yes, capitalism is concerned with serving others with goods and services that people ACTUALLY WANT.
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
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This is from someone calling himself Rev. Tony Pierce, an activist for reparations in California:
You know that the numbers should be equivocal to what an acre was back then. We were given 40, OK? We were given 40 acres. You know what that number is. You keep trying to talk about now, yet you research back to slavery and you say nothing about slavery, nothing. So, the equivocal number from the 1860s for 40 acres to today is $200 million for each and every African-American.
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“There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.”
-Thomas Jefferson, 1789
What does it say about the state of our freedoms that there are now more pencil-pushing, bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with weapons than U.S. Marines?
Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the IRS, Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities.
Add in the Biden Administration’s plans to swell the ranks of the IRS by 87,000 new employees (some of whom will be authorized to use deadly force) and grow the nation’s police forces by 100,000 more cops, and you’ve got a nation in the throes of martial law.
We’re being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun.
Make that hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of federal agents armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorized to make arrests, and trained in military tactics has nearly tripled over the past several decades.
As Adam Andrzejewski writes for Forbes, “the federal government has become one never-ending gun show.”
While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, federal agencies have been placing orders for hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow point bullets and military gear.
For example, the IRS has stockpiled 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition in recent years, including 621 shotguns, 539 long-barrel rifles and 15 submachine guns.
The Veterans Administration purchased 11 million rounds of ammunition (equivalent to 2,800 rounds for each of their officers), along with camouflage uniforms, riot helmets and shields, specialized image enhancement devices and tactical lighting.
The Department of Health and Human Services acquired 4 million rounds of ammunition, in addition to 1,300 guns, including five submachine guns and 189 automatic firearms for its Office of Inspector General.
According to an in-depth report on “The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies,” the Social Security Administration secured 800,000 rounds of ammunition for their special agents, as well as armor and guns.
The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. The Smithsonian now employs 620-armed “special agents.”
Even agencies such as Amtrak and NASA have their own SWAT teams.
Ask yourselves: why are government agencies being turned into military outposts?
What’s with the buildup of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies? Even the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department have their own SWAT teams. Most of those officers are under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice.
Why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic submachine guns and hollow point bullets? For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?
For that matter, why do IRS agents need AR-15 rifles?
Why do local police need armored personnel carriers with gun ports, compact submachine guns with 30-round magazines, precision battlefield sniper rifles, and military-grade assault-style rifles and carbines?
Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country?
Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country? And what exactly are they training for? The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of these realistic urban training drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed.
We should be alarmed.
As James Madison warned, “We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”
Unfortunately, we’re long past the first experiment on our freedoms, and merely taking alarm over this build-up of military might will no longer suffice.
Nothing about this de facto army of bureaucratic, administrative, non-military, paper-pushing, non-traditional law enforcement agencies is necessary for national security.
Moreover, while these weaponized, militarized, civilian forces which are armed with military-style guns, ammunition and equipment; trained in military tactics; and authorized to make arrests and use deadly force—may look and act like the military, they are not the military.
Rather, they are foot soldiers of the police state’s standing army, and they are growing in number at an alarming rate.
This standing army—a.k.a. a national police force—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution and rule by force is exactly what America’s founders feared, and its danger cannot be overstated or ignored.
This is exactly what martial law looks like—when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force, only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it: Battlefield tactics. Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Intimidation tactics. Brute force. Laws conveniently discarded when it suits the government’s purpose.
The militarization of America’s police forces in recent decades, which has gone hand in hand with the militarization of America’s bureaucratic agencies, has merely sped up the timeline by which the nation is transformed into an authoritarian regime.
Now we find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of administrative, police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military with little to no regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.
This quasi-state of martial law has been helped along by government policies and court rulings that have made it easier for the police to shoot unarmed citizens, for law enforcement agencies to seize cash and other valuable private property under the guise of asset forfeiture, for military weapons and tactics to be deployed on American soil, for government agencies to carry out round-the-clock surveillance, for legislatures to render otherwise lawful activities as extremist if they appear to be anti-government, for profit-driven private prisons to lock up greater numbers of Americans, for homes to be raided and searched under the pretext of national security, for American citizens to be labeled terrorists and stripped of their rights merely on the say-so of a government bureaucrat, and for pre-crime tactics to be adopted nationwide that strip Americans of the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty and creates a suspect society in which we are all guilty until proven otherwise.
Don’t delude yourself into believing that this thinly-veiled exercise in martial law is anything other than an attempt to bulldoze what remains of the Constitution and reinforce the iron-fisted rule of the police state.
This is no longer about partisan politics or civil unrest or even authoritarian impulses.
This is a turning point.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.
If we are to have any hope of salvaging what’s left of our battered freedoms, we’d do well to start by disarming the IRS and the rest of the federal and state bureaucratic agencies, de-militarizing domestic police forces, and dismantling the police state’s standing army.
John Whitehead | The Tenth Amendment Center
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Parents and taxpayers are fighting with local school districts to remove sexually explicit, age-inappropriate material from public schools. Why? Because some kids might get the idea that it is okay to force a 6-year-old girl to perform a sex act under a school desk while someone records it.
The progressive push to sexualize young kids with no concept of sexuality is weird enough. They are literally putting ideas into their heads they’d never otherwise have considered.
When you realize the same people are trying to normalize pedophilia, it makes more sense. And it is a hill they are prepared to die on, complete with sexually explicit books (some with cartoon pictures).
And they could care less about the downsides.
Heather Gonzales, an older cousin of the 6-year-old girl, told KCBD that the girl’s family noticed a sudden change in her behavior amid indications of distress and complaints of a stomach ache.
The girl reportedly revealed that a boy had exposed himself to her in the school lunch line and that she had also been pulled under a desk and pressured to perform a sex act while another student recorded with a district-issued iPad.
The boy or boys are alleged to have assaulted the girl to make her perform the sex act.
“My daughter comes home with bruises and rashes if she doesn’t participate in these little boys’ sick games,” another parent at the protest said. “They will punch her, give her Indian burns, they’ll call her names and cuss at her.”
But wait, there’s more!
Parents who spoke to the Herald during the Monday protest outside the school district’s administrative office claimed the incident with the 6-year-old is not an isolated one.
“There have been multiple moms coming out about stuff that has been happening all year and nothing is being done about it,” one parent said. “It’s hit its peak and that’s why we’re here today, to get answers.”
Let’s pretend there is no LGBT influence or grooming at this institution. WTF is going on in these public schools that first or second-graders are not just doing this but getting away with it during class?
When the teacher collected the students’ iPads the next day, she noticed one of them had been locked with a password and took the device to the campus administrator. “Inappropriate content was discovered” on the iPad after a tech from the technology department unlocked it, according to the district.
The teacher involved has since been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, the district said.
Parents continue to protest and demand answers, but might it be too late? At least one 6-six-year-old girl has been physically and sexually assaulted in an incident involving multiple assailants – in her public school during class. That place where they say the students belong to the schools and teachers, not the parents.
Excellent “parenting” skills you got there.
HT | Fox News
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I commend Rep. Kelley Potenza on her statement regarding Ann Edwards’ judicial nomination. It’s time to rip the bandaid off New Hampshire’s Court Corruption and reveal the extremely ugly truth about what is going on.
Racketeering is a felony. Witness tampering is a felony. Obstruction of Justice and influencing justice are crimes as well. They are not victimless crimes.
Follow this link for just a small portion of what has been uncovered. I have copied in Robert Hansen, a reporter for Davis Vanguard in California, who has recently reported on a similar enterprise in Santa Clara County Court which also involves collusion between judges, attorneys, victims’ rights non-profits, police, media, prosecutors, and political activists.
Editor: View all the individual testimonies here:
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Kamala Harris has failed every task assigned to her as Vice President. Border policy, voting rights, abortion, and even water policy have all been placed in her in-basket, and she has yet to respond. Harris was an unpopular AG in California. Her Senate career was a “whatever is popular” approach, often contradicting her AG decisions. Her Presidential run was a failure. She was polarizing in debates, sparring with Gabbard and even calling Biden a racist and sex offender. Harsh words for her future running mate. She dropped out of the race before the first primary vote was cast. With her record, you know the only reason she is VP is color and gender. Her performance has been consistent in the second chair-consistently inadequate.
There have been two problems with her approach to any of her assignments – incompetence and laziness. When she has shown a weakness in grasping the task, she has done little to get up to speed. Instead, she disappears and, at times, complains about her role.
“What can be, unburdened by what has been” is a line she has used in over eight speaking engagements, and still, nobody, including Harris, understands what she is talking about. This is the story of Kamala’s speaking record. She delivers a word salad every opportunity she has to speak and show the world that she is on her game. Her incoherent ramblings only serve to embarrass the VP and supply fodder for late-night shows.
That brings us to the latest assignment for Kamala Harris as the AI czar and will oversee an effort to ensure the technology is developed responsibly. This job will require a knowledge of what AI is, its capabilities, and how it impacts society and security. Sorry, but this is doomed from the start. She is in over her head and best disappear immediately.
AI is not a new technology; many of us have experienced its impact, even if unaware. One of the most common AI functions is a grammar/writing application like Grammarly. As you type, the app is sitting in the background, not only catching spelling and punctuation errors but suggesting better sentence and paragraph structure. It is like having an assistant sitting next to you-an AI assistant. Each day, we hear of new capabilities, and the speed at which AI is progressing has caught the attention of some of the smartest among us. Even Elon Musk has suggested that research and development of AI take a six-month hiatus. The experts fear that AI is taking on a life of its own and man will lose control of the tool. They know there is a potential dark side to the technology that can harm the public at the hands of someone nefarious.
Of course, a technology break would never happen, and there is no way you could get the world to agree to a cease-fire. AI is a speeding train, and there is no stopping it and, quite possibly, no controlling it. So what can our hapless Vice President do to regulate it? Nothing. This assignment appears to be the government putting itself in the way of the free market. The only thing the government should do is protect us from a foreign adversary using AI against America or Americans. She is not the person for this job. Even if there were a miracle and she understood AI, there is no way she could intervene in an adversarial interaction. She is an insignificant speed bump when the country may need a strong firewall.
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California, The Golden State, symbolized the spirit and curiosity of America for decades. California was the American dream. California now exemplifies much of what is wrong with America, and how it is declining could be a harbinger of America’s future.
In new data published by the Census Bureau this week, California’s population shrunk by approximately 113,649 people from July 2021 to July 2022. There was a net gain across the state in “Natural Change,” the number of births (420,000) and deaths (318,000) during that time frame. That only tells part of the story. California’s population shrank by 508,903 people during the first two years of the pandemic, second behind only New York. A half-million people leaving California, which has a population of more than 39 million, isn’t exactly a large-scale departure — but it does have some policymakers concerned about the state’s future.
The final piece of this equation is difficult to quantify. Businesses and tax-paying residents are leaving and replaced by illegal immigrants pouring over the Border from Mexico. These new residents are placing a burden on housing, social services, and education. The other intangible is the impact on crime as these immigrants flow into California’s many sanctuary cities. Those that stay are looking at paying more of their “fair” share in a state that already has one of the highest tax burdens in the country. This exchange of residents is not a good deal for the people of California.
California is on the precipice of initiating a reparations program to exacerbate the tax situation further. The statewide reparations committee has concluded its work, and its recommendations will create a new class of millionaires in California. They recommend a cash payout of up to $1.2 million for every Black Californian resident. This plan would cost an estimated $800 Billion.
The panel’s recommendation breaks payments down by types of historical discrimination. For instance, Black residents affected by redlining by banks would receive $3,366 for each year they lived in California from the early 1930s to the late 1970s, amounting to up to $148,099. Similarly, Black residents could receive roughly $2,352 in compensation for over-policing and mass incarceration for each year they lived in California between 1970 and 2020. Those payments could amount to $115,260.
In total, from these and other payments included in the plan, a Black Californian who is 71 years old and has lived in California his entire life could receive up to $1.2 million, according to an analysis from the New York Times.
The timing could not be worse timing for California. Sacramento has decided to default on a Federal COVID loan of $18.5 Billion in debt, leaving state businesses holding the bag. Little did California businesses know that they were cosigners on the state’s nearly $20 billion loan from the federal government used to cover California’s unemployment fund shortfall during the COVID pandemic. Newsom and the State Legislature have thrown the people under the tax bus rather than owning up to their responsibilities—an example of bad policies by a state government intent on ruining the future of California.
I have written about reparations in the past, and my negative feelings have not changed. There is no link between the people of today and what happened over 150 years ago. Every feeling human being will condemn slavery, but that does not mean we all have to dip into our pockets to assuage Blacks for what happened to their ancestors six or seven generations ago. I also have to chuckle when someone says this will be a huge step toward solving our crime problems. That statement intimates the crime issue is caused by Blacks, and writing them a check will change their mindset. I am not a psychologist, but I have enough common sense to know it is a lie. Unfortunately, if reparations happen in California, the Left will push to adopt it as a national initiative. That will be a national mistake.
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Today America is under attack from within. Among the battles being fought is equity versus meritocracy. This battle is ravaging American institutions. Wherever we look, from the arts to higher education, corporate America, and the sciences, the battle is exacting a high cost.
We want to thank Marc Abear for this Op-Ed. Please submit yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
Hopefully, the battle burns itself out before it destroys America.
The juxtaposition of the issues of race and merit is ignored. We are treading a path back to racism. This is morally wrong, ethically challenged, and economically damaging to our future. It will take some serious backbone on the part of the nation’s political leadership to change the outcome. But we must try.
There is great value in telling the truth. We all know something is wrong. Most of us struggle to articulate exactly what. Let’s try to organize the truth so there is a framework for galvanizing our political leadership in the effort.
Our institutional leadership is turning against meritocracy. Their argument is we have a problem; Blacks are falling behind. They have chosen the answer, reverse racism. The truth is “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
The destruction of meritocracy today does not remedy the past ills of slavery. Neither does it make anything but privilege for the ignorant. Divide the world by identity all you want, but that breaking down of society into smaller and smaller parts makes America weaker and poorer.
The united whole is more than the sum of its parts. That is what the American dream has shown us. When we aspire together, we will work together and we can achieve whatever we can dream.
America can be controlled by diversity or meritocracy. We cannot have both. Meritocratic standards have a disparate impact on Blacks. Blacks as a group do poorly on standardized tests. That’s not because the tests do not measure correctly. Rather, the tests are objective and colorblind. It’s a statement; Blacks’ academic skills are generally lower. This is not a value judgment, it is a statement of fact.
That is a separate issue from diversity. The issue of academic underperformance by Blacks can and should be dealt with. Destroying meritocracy is not the way to do that. Destroying meritocracy makes everyone poorer without helping those most in need of the assistance.
The point is; if Blacks were not the lowest performing group, we would not be tearing down meritocracy. Some people succeed at each of the various areas of life more than others. That is because of effort and/or innate talent. Racism and racial disparity are increasingly driving the troublesome areas of decision making in our society.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act penalized intentional discrimination. It ended the use of race based standards in hiring and employment. In the 1970s the game changed and the next step became the disparate impact doctrine.
The disparate impact doctrine began as a court case. The important tenant of it is the showing of a difference became the establishment of racial intent. This is and always has been a non sequitur. Yet, it has settled in and become a corrosive cultural construct.
Perhaps the clearest example is civil service exams. At the time Blacks were doing poorly on these exams. That fact kept them from getting civil service positions, police, firefighters, etc. But the tests were not racist. They measured the skill level of the test taker in job specific areas. The tests were both relevant and merit based.
Disparate impact threw out the tests because those passing them did not represent racial groups proportionally. From there disparate impact spread into regulation and statute. That is how reverse racism metastasized.
After 30 years of institutionalized reverse racism the Supreme Court erred again. With Grutter v. Bollinger they further extended the reverse racism doctrine. The case said affirmative action in college admissions is justifiable.
It included a caveat “but not in perpetuity” which today is dropped from the application of the ruling. It has become the way we approach decision making. It has become codification of racism…which was never the intent. Perverse, don’t you think?
Today to take down any individual, organization or institution all that has to happen is to label it “White”. That is racist. There’s no other way to say it. It is racist. We are returning to a racist society. Blacks are leading the charge.
It used to be the burden of proof was on the government to prove discrimination. Today, it is enough to simply show a difference in results. And individuals, the academy, corporate America and government are abandoning objective truth in decision making.
We are adopting a reverse racist position. The burden of proof has been shifted. The accused must now prove a negative… It is a nearly impossible case to make. It should be unconstitutional. It is unfair and un-American. Just think about it. There is a way out of this.
The post Equity Kills Excellence appeared first on Granite Grok.
Vermont majority legislatures have been picking away at your right to self-defense for years. Successive years, actually. The 2023 assault on your rights includes a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases, expanded Red Flag seizures, and new gun storage rules.
The dress on this old whore is not a new one. Legislators claim these changes are necessary to reduce suicides and community violence (in a state that invites both?). Before we get much further, can anyone show me an example where such infringements made a Democrat-run political entity less violent?
Supporters say it’s time to take action against gun violence and the rate of suicide in Vermont, which is higher than the national rate.
As if the rise in left-leaning policies from drugs and trafficking to sanctuary for illegals, to human trafficking (in Burlington), to COVID lockdowns could not possibly be vectors for an increase in violence or suicide.
We can add progressive anti-police rhetoric and policies and the Democrat legislature’s civilian disarmament culture.
Related: Democrat Rule Will Do That: Vermont Has Its Highest Homicide Rate in Three Decades
Back in 2018, Vermont raised the age to purchase a firearm and began dancing with protective orders. In early 2022 we reported on a bill in Vermont that banned firearms from hospitals. Why did they do that? COVID policy separated families and stressed public health workers and citizens unnecessarily. Parents and grandparents across the US died alone while loved ones were refused any contact. The death by hospital kickback protocol claimed a fair share of lives.
The same legislation included a 30-day waiting period to address the made-up Charleston Loophole. The Bill Gov. Scott eventually signed reduced the waiting period to seven days with the Hospital ban intact.
Nibbling, nibbling.
At the end of 2022, a movement began to repeal Vermont’s Sportsman Bill of Rights. If successful, cities like Burlington would be freed to pass their own local anti-gun ordinances without approval from the state. The result would be a patchwork of local mismatched rules Dems would use as leverage to make them statewide.
Nibbling, nibbling.
The [new] legislation also creates a crime of negligent firearms storage and expands the state’s extreme risk protection orders so that a state’s attorney, the Attorney General’s Office or a family or household member may ask a court to prohibit a person from purchasing, possessing or receiving a dangerous weapon.
So-Called Republican Gov. Phil Scott has concerns that it is unconstitutional, but that doesn’t concern Democrats. If he vetoed it they could override because they are more than happy to waste taxpayer money in protracted court cases on the chance that they can get future generations used to a state in which only the government is allowed to have guns. And it’s working.
Vermont went from no waiting period to thirty days, to seven, to three, all while their crime and homicide rates went up. Gov. Scott could veto it, but the Dems have veto-proof majorities.
So, how long before the once great state of Vermont needs its own version of Hey Jackass – which tracks violent crime in gun-grabbin’ Chicago?
The post Slippery Meet Slope: Vermont Dems Pass Yet Another Gun-Grabbin’ Bill appeared first on Granite Grok.
Court Settlements in Nashua are done in bad faith and are unreasonable. They are a ploy to ring up legal bills and produce no records. A settlement is not an admission of guilt, so settling results in no real improvement in the process. (In Nashua, winning in Court has resulted in no real improvement, either.)
My first mediation, designed to settle, started with an abatement appeal. The mediation, ordered by the State Tribunal, is based on State Tax Codes and Statutes. The City failed to comply, offered no review of the valuations, provided no documentation, and provided no expert to justify the value. My attorney stated it was the worst mediation he had ever been involved in. Of course, we left the door open to continue negotiating with the city; the City never responded.
In the second year of the appeal process, I represented myself by filing a second separate appeal. The city refused to come to the table for the ordered mediation. Attorney Bolton claimed the two appeals were inextricably linked and that I could not represent myself, stating an attorney must be present. The tribunal disagreed and ruled that each appeal is treated as a separate case. The City refused to mediate.
During my Right-to-Know lawsuit for assessing records months prior to the Trial, the City offered a settlement permitting me to inspect the property record cards I sought. The offer was poorly written and required clarification. What did the City want in return for inspecting the records? The City did not respond.
In a pro se case, the City disclosed to the Court that a settlement with requested records was offered. The City’s offer was delivered five minutes before the Trial began. I refused the settlement. This was an ambush with nothing in writing, and I was looking for answers as to why Nashua’s records are so scrambled. I won the case, and the City has now appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court. The City had no intention of providing the records.
In another Right-to-Know case, a court hearing was scheduled that my attorney was certain we would win. My attorney encouraged me to let him write a stipulation to settle this outside of Court. Of course, the Court was pleased with this solution. I spent $22,000 working with the Attorney on this case and never received the records. Attorney Bolton refused to provide clear answers to the request and employed his typical “ring up the legal bill and stall” strategy.
In a recent hearing on a Right-to-Know lawsuit involving the Nashua Performing Arts Center, an attorney representing the Corporations formed by the City to accept money from a Federal New Markets Tax Credit program to pay for the construction disclosed in Court that he had tried to settle the case, acknowledged that the bylaws for the company were not written in compliance with the Right-to-Know law and offered to rewrite the bylaws. He claimed that my failure to settle was unreasonable.
In Nashua, settlements appear to be public matters, not confidential matters. Court rules dictate as Attorneys are out to look like negotiators working for the greater good. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nashua is a game of dirty tricks. Mayor Donchess has no interest in fairness, transparency, or equity. History speaks. All Nashua Right-to-Know cases belong before the Court.
A Lack of Transparency is a symptom of Dishonesty.
The post “No” to Settlements in Nashua RTK Cases appeared first on Granite Grok.
This week’s (May 3) show topics included: Hunter Biden being forced to show up in court in person and reveal his financials. 1500 troops sent to the border—to do something real or to help facilitate more migrants? The government punishing home buyers for having good credit; Bernie Sanders wanting to confiscate anything more than 999 million dollars from the wealthy...
The post The Conservatarian Exchange Podcast #152 appeared first on The Liberty Block.
Recently after purchasing bananas at the DW Highway Shaw’s in Merrimack, NH, I noticed a Disney label attached to the Dole sticker. The sticker sparked a curiosity to do some research. Business enterprises offering good prices, quality, and service cannot overcome the harm that joining “woke corporate America” will do.
We want to thank Russ Payne for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
Giving the credibility of your marketing expertise to a woke, degenerative anti-family cause joins the name of “Shaw’s” to a perverted mindset that targets the minds and hearts of innocent children for profit.
Good public relations will not be gained by Shaw’s joining hands with the same satanic roots of moral decline that dominate our nation’s capitol that only owe their immunity from law to the illegal power they possess. There is not a large enough blanket of deception, even with Mickey Mouse’s picture on it, to contain the morally degenerate nature that Disney has become. This is a sample of the moral pollution aimed at the minds of your children:
“Little Demon” is a recent Disney cartoon show that openly MOCKS Jesus Christ while EXALTING two main characters: Satan and the Antichrist. Absolutely sick. But it gets worse.
The Antichrist is a 13-year-old middle schooler, Chrissy (a profane wordplay on Christ). This is designed to draw young viewers. Chrissy is the child of a sexual union between Satan and Chrissy’s mother.
When Satan wants to claim her, all kinds of dark but supposedly “humorous” plot twists occur to pull in impressionable young viewers.
These include demons loudly demanding to have sex with corpses (chanting four letter words) and desiring to eat the brains of babies.” Does Shaw’s advocate such a cruel attack on our children’s minds?
Even with Mickey Mouse on your side, a large majority of your customers will not appreciate the potential harm to their children. Americans still believe the key pillar of Western Civilization is the God-ordained family and place the protection of their children as first priority. Please consider this quote from The American Family Associations, STAND magazine, how the “woke culture” is losing in the Corporate world: “Corporations such as Disney, Yahoo and Google announced company-wide layoffs in late 2022 and early 2023.” Check out afa.net.
The post Little Demon appeared first on Granite Grok.
Well, I almost lost all the weight I had gained last week. Helpful but I’m still “less there” than what I was two weeks ago. All I can say is that it’s now a new week so time to improve.
Tom is telling me that while he’s moderated his intake, he’s also weight lifting on a regular basis. Good on him (and I’m going to try to keep on his good side) but by building up his musculature, he’s losing inches but trading in for heavier muscles.
asdf
And the tale of the tape:
The post The Skip & Tom Weight Challenge – Week 9 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-Overflow.
Remember, ridicule and mockery are effective weapons:
Now, let the mockery and mayhem begin.
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
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She’s so Woke
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PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA
‘Horrible Idea’: First Vaccine for Birth Control Now in Clinical Trials • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)
Turning the immune system against the reproductive organs. Related:
So… becoming infertile is not sterilization? Who knew?
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Time for another My Tree in Israel recipe.
Incredible – albeit not cheap – olive oil. I also got one grape vine through them and have already had one bottle of wine. Good stuff.
In full disclosure, one of the founders is a friend of mine, but I receive no compensation for these posts. It’s just helping a friend’s business…
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Pick of the post:
Reminds me of this (italics replaced by underlining, bolding added):
If Palpatine and Jar Jar won, the Leftards should welcome honest audits and recounts, the better to take another victory lap, while rubbing the Right’s noses in the Left’s inevitable march to the throne room of power. People who’ve actually scored a touchdown don’t bitch about re-watching the video that proves it. It’s that simple. You can run the tape back and forth, and if the feet are inbounds, and the ball is in control, it’s a touchdown time after time after time. So when one team’s coaches, and half the fans in the stadium, boo and catcall the replay, and start agitating loudly to ignore it and just call the touchdown without looking at that pesky video replay, you know they didn’t score, and you know they know they didn’t score, so all their histrionics and hissyfits beforehand and afterwards is just them being pissed that they lost, refusing to admit it, even to themselves, and terror at having their noses rubbed in you seeing it with your own lying eyes, on a 50′ tall jumbotron, in front of millions of eyewitnesses.
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Palate Cleansers:
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The post MONDAY MEMES appeared first on Granite Grok.