On January 10th, Rep. Laura Sibilia (I-Dover) introduced H.634 – An act relating to school closures and the designation of a public school to serve as the public school of the district. It is another salvo against Vermont’s 150-year-old school choice system, “tuitioning,” and the independent schools that thrive – along with their students – as a result of this highly popular and effective program.

The bill is not remarkable as the VTNEA and their allies (like Sibilia) are doing all they can while enjoying supermajority, veto-proof power to eliminate any competition for the public school monopoly – and plunder the spoils of the vanquished. What is more remarkable is Sibilia’s explanations for why she is submitting this bill.

At one point in her testimony she says, “I’m very nervous. I have seen within my district, around the state, rural communities that are in stress contemplating, we’re going to shut down [the failing local public school] and just give our kids choice.”

Well, if that’s what the voters in your district want, why wouldn’t you support the wishes of the people who elected you? And why wouldn’t families want the ability to send their kids to the best school around, public or independent, that fits their child’s and their family’s needs? Not only does this practice lead to better student outcomes, parents being more involved in their kids’ education, and generally more satisfaction with a school, it also increases the property values in the communities that have it.

Sibilia should know this because, as she says, “I represent both choice towns and non-choice towns in my district. And my pledge to my choice towns when I ran was, I will defend what you have.” So much for campaign pledges, as this bill intends to do away with that choice by forcing those districts to designate public schools that the kids would be forced to go to, eliminating options such as Burr & Burton Academy, the Long Trail School – not for nothing, two of the top performing schools in the state – as well as other independent schools in the region.

These are schools Sibilia acknowledges her constituents are “really happy to send their students to.” But, she wants to kill that happiness and force the kids to go to schools the parents would not be really happy to send them to. Why?

Sibila calls the independent schools “aggressive,” whatever that means in this context. I think it means not rolling over to do what she is telling them is best for them, their students and the communities they serve. And she is using this bill to punish the Academies because, she is “extremely [emphasis in the original] disappointed that they have not come to the table [and accept designation]… “which I have districts that will not. They refuse.” For good reason. Let’s hope they continue to stand up to this bully.

Now, the spin Sibilia is trying to put on her position is that expanded school choice would “leave rural communities behind. “We simply don’t have the ability to do that with the number of buildings, with the terrain, with the transportation, with the dollars…. So, I will never support it.” Which begs the question, has the woman ever been to the Northeast Kingdom?

The NEK is the most rural region of our state, with some of the most challenging terrain. It also has near universal school choice, in many parts full school choice from K through 12. They have figured out the transportation. They spend on average less money per student and get better than average outcomes. Parents can choose schools like St. Johnsbury Academy – a top school in the state – Lyndon Institute, Thaddeus Stevens, Riverside, as well as public school options in Vermont and New Hampshire. It works! It works great.

Forcing tuitioning districts to designate public schools creates an issue even the House Education Committee Chair, Peter Conlon (D-Cornwall), certainly no friend of school choice, called out. “If the issue is geography, one could foresee a small high school closing, and the nearest high school is one of the four academies, and this would remove that as an option. And, I guess, some might say that doesn’t seem logical. [It’s not.] How would you respond to that?”

She gave a non-answer, but a revealing one. “This is an extraordinarily challenging opportunity, and if we can agree on what the problem is that we want to solve, and we can all come together we can solve it…. Again, I point to where are the academies? The academies are driving toward market-based solutions. And that doesn’t work for me.”

So that’s the problem she wants to solve: Letting her constituents decide what’s best for themselves and their families doesn’t work for her. She opposes a proven effective model that many of her constituents have and more want because under that model she doesn’t get the control – people do. That doesn’t work for her, and sadly it doesn’t work for most of the lawmakers in that building.

Conlon said he looks forward to discussing the bill in his committee further.

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

The post My Constituents Want School Choice and Must Be Stopped! appeared first on Granite Grok.

• These are the most liberty-critical hearings for the week
• Click on the bill number to read the bill.
• Click on the committee name to email the committee your thoughts.

Of the 97 hearings in the House, we are recommending support of 18 and opposition of 9 with 4 being of interest.
Of the 44 hearings in the Senate, we are recommending support of 1 and opposition of 8 with 5 being of interest.

Position	Bill	Title	Committee	Day	Time	Room	State Analysis
Support	HB1652	relative to establishing a local education freedom account program.	Education	Mon 1/22	10:15 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill allows school districts to adopt a program for local education freedom accounts for a parent of an eligible student to receive a grant from a scholarship organization for qualifying educational expenses at a public school, chartered public school, nonpublic school, or program approved by the department of education.
Oppose	HB1572	prohibiting using mRNA technology in food and requiring the labeling of lab grown meat and food containing insects.	Environment and Agriculture	Mon 1/22	10:00 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill prohibits the use of mRNA technology in food sold in New Hampshire and requires the labeling of lab grown meat and food products containing insects.
Support	HB1565	relative to the sale of homestead food to consumers and local food production.	Environment and Agriculture	Mon 1/22	11:00 AM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill makes changes to the regulations regarding the sale of homestead foods to consumers.
Support	HB1685	redefining “homestead foods” as “artisan foods,” creating an artisan food operations exemption, establishing artisan food products sales venues, and allowing the production and sale of artisan food products requiring refrigeration.	Environment and Agriculture	Mon 1/22	1:00 PM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill redefines “homestead foods” as “artisan foods,” creates an artisan food operations exemption, establishes artisan food products sales venues, and allows the production and sale of artisan food products requiring refrigeration.
Of Interest	HB1697	suspending New Hampshire’s participation in emissions reduction credit programs for a period of 2 years.	Science, Technology and Energy	Mon 1/22	10:00 AM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill suspends New Hampshire’s participation in emissions reduction credit programs administered by the department of environmental services for a period of 2 years.
Oppose	HB1472	relative to rebates of energy efficiency funds for electric vehicles.	Science, Technology and Energy	Mon 1/22	2:30 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill dedicates $3,000,000 from proceeds from the energy efficiency fund to be used by the department of energy to develop a pilot program for a “cash on the hood” program for point-of-sale electric vehicle rebates to buyers.
Oppose	SB443	relative to school building aid for eligible projects and the definition of school transportation vehicle.	Education	Tue 1/23	9:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill increases the annual amount to be expended for school building aid construction and renovation projects of school districts. The bill also allocates a portion of funds to be paid for school building projects approved in prior years but which were not funded. This bill also defines school transportation vehicle and implements licensing and inspection requirements for drivers of such vehicles.
Oppose	SB525	relative to administration of the education freedom accounts program.	Education	Tue 1/23	9:15 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill changes income eligibility and reporting requirements for the education freedom account program and modifies the program’s administration and oversight.
Support	SB521	relative to the educational credentials for master teacher.	Education	Tue 1/23	9:30 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill changes the requirements for the granting of the educational credential of master teacher.
Oppose	SB384	relative to a municipal loan and grant program for rental housing and making an appropriation therefor.	Election Law and Municipal Affairs	Tue 1/23	9:00 AM	LOB Room 103	This bill directs the department of business and economic affairs to establish a median income rental housing program and makes an appropriation to the InvestNH fund for this purpose.
Of Interest	SB391	relative to electric grid interconnection for certain customer generators.	Energy and Natural Resources	Tue 1/23	9:15 AM	SH Room 103	This bill requires the public utilities commission to begin rulemaking for the purposes of setting uniform procedures for distributed energy resources that are proposed for interconnection to the electrical infrastructure.
Of Interest	SB451	relative to an expedited track for certain applications to the site evaluation committee.	Energy and Natural Resources	Tue 1/23	9:30 AM	SH Room 103	This bill establishes an alternative procedure and timelines for an expedited track for changes to existing energy facilities meeting certain criteria.
Oppose	SB452	relative to making an appropriation for the hiring and training of small business development counselors in rural areas of New Hampshire.	Finance	Tue 1/23	1:20 PM	SH Room 103	This bill appropriates $250,000 to the department of business and economic affairs to be applied to the hiring and training of small business development counselors for the small business development center in rural areas of New Hampshire.
Oppose	HB279	increasing the penalty for on-premises licensees overserving alcohol.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Wed 1/24	9:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill increases the penalty for on-premises licensees overserving alcohol.
Support	HB1161	relative to use of the public school infrastructure fund for energy efficient school buses.	Education	Wed 1/24	1:45 PM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill prohibits the use of the public school infrastructure fund from funding energy efficient school buses or other student transportation vehicles.
Oppose	HB1452	relative to credentials for the position of superintendent of schools and school business officer.	Education	Wed 1/24	2:00 PM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill establishes required credentials for school superintendents and school business officers.
Of Interest	SB336	relative to misrepresentation by public employees.	Executive Departments and Administration	Wed 1/24	9:45 AM	SH Room 103	This bill establishes that a public officer or employee who knowingly makes a fraudulent statement or material misrepresentation to a member of the public in the course of his or her employment shall be subject to disciplinary action through the disciplinary procedures of his or her employer or licensing board, subject to certain exceptions.
Oppose	SB355	relative to newborn screening for cytomegalovirus.	Health and Human Services	Wed 1/24	10:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill requires newborn screening for cytomegalovirus (CMV). The bill also directs the pregnant woman’s health care provider to perform an amniocentesis to confirm a congenital CMV infection under certain circumstances.
Oppose	SB496	directing the department of health and human services to establish a climate and health protection program.	Health and Human Services	Wed 1/24	10:20 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill directs the department of health and human services to establish a climate and health protection program in response to health threats associated with a changing environment.
Oppose	SB503	relative to requiring a criminal background check when applying for a fish and game guide license.	Judiciary	Wed 1/24	1:00 PM	SH Room 100	This bill requires a criminal background check when applying for a fish and game guide license.
Support	HB1412	relative to court reporters.	Judiciary	Wed 1/24	2:30 PM	LOB Room 206-208	This bill repeals the requirements for licensure and regulation of court reporters.
Support	HB1281	relative to zoning restrictions on residential rental property.	Municipal and County Government	Wed 1/24	1:20 PM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill prohibits a zoning ordinance or regulation from restricting the number of occupants in a residential rental property to less than 2 occupants per bedroom.
Of Interest	HB1297	relative to the authority of municipalities to enforce ordinances related to health and safety.	Municipal and County Government	Wed 1/24	2:10 PM	LOB Room 301-303	This bill requires zoning ordinances to be directly related to the promotion of the residents health and safety.
Support	HB1140	relative to requirements for homeowner installations of septic systems.	Resources, Recreation and Development	Wed 1/24	1:00 PM	LOB Room 305	This bill enables a homeowner to install a replacement waste disposal system in their own domicile without a permit.
Oppose	HB1033	relative to the advertising of nominal dimensions of lumber.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Thu 1/25	10:00 AM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill prohibits the advertising of nominal dimensions of lumber.
Oppose	HB1498	establishing a state short term rental registry.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Thu 1/25	2:15 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill includes short-term rentals in the licensing and registration requirements for taxes on meals and rooms.
Oppose	HB1382	relative to special education support for military-connected students.	Education	Thu 1/25	2:00 PM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill creates special education support for military-connected transfer students and provides for reimbursement of witness fees in certain situations.
Support	HB1469	relative to the retention of individualized education program records.	Education	Thu 1/25	2:30 PM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill requires the department of education to remove student individualized education plan records from the state special education information system on the same schedule as school districts.
Support	HB1695	relative to the release of student personally identifiable information.	Education	Thu 1/25	3:00 PM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill prohibits the transfer of student’s personally identifiable information to third parties without written consent of the parents and student.
Support	HB1233	relative to animal chiropractors.	Executive Departments and Administration	Thu 1/25	10:30 AM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill exempts individuals who have completed a nationally recognized animal chiropractic program, as determined by the executive director of the office of professional licensure and certification, from veterinary licensure requirements.
Support	HB1272	relative to occupational license reciprocity.	Executive Departments and Administration	Thu 1/25	11:00 AM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill removes the statutory requirement that the licensing requirements for the out of state license be substantially similar for purposes of license reciprocity.
Support	HB1676	establishing a sunset commission to evaluate various occupational boards and commissions, and sunsetting various boards and commissions.	Executive Departments and Administration	Thu 1/25	1:30 PM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill establishes a sunset commission to evaluate the need for or any improvements to various occupational boards and commissions within the office of professional licensure and certification, as well as the least restrictive regulation they can adopt. The bill further repeals various occupational boards and commissions each year through 2031.
Support	HB1683	relative to coverage of circumcision under the state Medicaid plan.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 1/25	10:15 AM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill provides that the state Medicaid plan shall not include circumcision unless the child has a specific diagnosis for which the procedure is determined to be medically necessary.
Of Interest	HB1669	relative to restricting data sharing through the state immunization registry.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 1/25	11:15 AM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill prohibits the department of health and human services from sharing data from the state immunization registry with other organizations unless the department can assure withdrawals from the registry will be honored by the organization.
Support	HB1194	relative to the definition of noncommunicable disease.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 1/25	1:00 PM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill removes the word infectious from the definition of noncommunicable disease.
Support	HB1213	relative to immunization requirements for private schools and child care agencies.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 1/25	2:00 PM	LOB Room 210-211	This bill provides that certain immunizations are required for public school children. This bill also removes the requirement for private schools and child care agencies.
Of Interest	SB417	relative to out-of-home placements for children.	Judiciary	Thu 1/25	1:00 PM	SH Room 100	This bill revises criteria for out-of-home placement of children under the child protection act and other juvenile statutes and establishes an order of preference based on placement with the child’s siblings, when possible, and proximity to the child’s community of origin.
Oppose	SB360	relative to extreme risk protection orders.	Judiciary	Thu 1/25	1:30 PM	SH Room 100	This bill establishes a procedure for issuing extreme risk protection orders to protect against persons who pose an immediate risk of harm to themselves or others.
Of Interest	SB573	relative to parental consent for medical care.	Judiciary	Thu 1/25	1:45 PM	SH Room 100	This bill requires any person, private entity, government entity, or any employee or agent of any private or government entity obtain the consent of a parent of a child before performing or asking to perform various medical care interventions on the child.
Support	HB1519	relative to a minor’s available work hours.	Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services	Thu 1/25	2:00 PM	LOB Room 307	This bill permits youths to work during the school year when their attendance at school is not required.
Oppose	HB1000	relative to classifying New Hampshire legislators’ service as public service for certain federal purposes.	Legislative Administration	Thu 1/25	1:15 PM	LOB Room 203	This bill allows for the service of a current or former member of the general court to be deemed by the state to qualify as full-time public service for the purposes of federal public service student loan forgiveness programs.
Oppose	HB1290	relative to protection of employment for members of the general court.	Legislative Administration	Thu 1/25	1:30 PM	LOB Room 203	This bill provides members of the general court with employment protections during voting sessions.
Of Interest	HB1204	relative to government agent entries into secured premises.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Fri 1/26	10:00 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill establishes requirements for when a government agent may enter a secured premises without a warrant.
Support	HB1276	relative to repealing the prohibition on the possession or sale of blackjacks, slung shots, and metallic knuckles except by or to minors.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Fri 1/26	10:30 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill amends the prohibition against carrying or selling a blackjack, slung shot, or metallic knuckles to prohibit sale to or possession of the said items by those under 18 years of age.
Support	HB1539	relative to annulling, resentencing, or discontinuing prosecution of certain cannabis offenses.	Criminal Justice and Public Safety	Fri 1/26	11:00 AM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill allows for additional annulments, resentencings, or discontinuations of prosecutions for certain cannabis offenses.

The post Bill Hearings for Week of January 22, 2024 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

Hello, Friends of Freedom! This week, we will discover exactly where the phrase “Separation of Church and State” came from. So, let’s dig in!

On October 7, 1801, the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, sent a letter to then-President Thomas Jefferson. They expressed to him their concern with the appearance of religious protection they had read about in certain laws and constitutions being formed. They believed that religious freedom was a God-given right and that no government should regulate religious activities.

They feared because of religious freedom appearing in these documents that the government would one day overstep its bounds and feel it had the power to regulate that freedom.

President Jefferson responded to their concerns with a letter of his own on January 1st, 1802. He reassured them that man is accountable only to God in areas of faith and religious practice. Also, as was understood by all the founding fathers, President Jefferson reassured them that all of man’s inalienable rights, including religious practices, would never be able to be controlled by the new American form of government because, as he states in the LETTER, there is a wall of separation between the two. I emphasized the letter because this was a personal correspondence between men of faith and the President. That phrase was meant to show that they need not worry about the government in America creating the kind of church-state Europe had done.

Note, once again this is a letter, that statement is not found in any of the founding documents.

A direct quote from President Jefferson reads as follows, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between and his God, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation of Church and State.

Jefferson was making sure they understood that the new American government could not control the expression of religion and that the Constitution was to provide security AGAINST government interference, private or public.

As time moved on and cases were brought forth to challenge this view, several actually prevailed. This occurred in 1947 with the case of Everson v. Board of Education. Here, the court ruled for the first time that the government could remove religious expression from the public square. The court interpreted the word “separation” as a license for them to take some control over religious expression. They did this by separating the phrase from Jefferson’s letter, which shows the clear intention and meaning of what he wrote.

Other cases begin to occur, and finally, today, we have arrived at a place our founding fathers never intended the country to go.

It is sad, but we must believe that this situation can be turned around. It may take years, but progress in the right direction is being made.

We must continue to pray and get good, God-fearing people elected to office. Proverbs 19:2 When good men rule the people rejoice and prosper, when dishonest men rule the people mourn.

Until Next Week

Allen

The post Don’t Blame the Danbury Baptists appeared first on Granite Grok.

Beginning at 10 am Eastern Time, we will be live from Radio Row in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Today’s guests are NH House Jason Osborne, NH GOP Chairman Chris Ager, Nashua Trump Captain Di Lothrop, Rep. Jeanine Notter, from the Free State Project – Carla Gericke and Mike Brakey, and then from the Government Integrity Project – Tom Murray and Ken Eyring.

To tune in we will be streaming live on the Grok Facebook Page (issues with Twitter, sorry no stream there today).

Take Me To The Live Steam

 

More guests tomorrow and Tuesday, so check back!

 

The post Live From Radio Row in Manchester! appeared first on Granite Grok.

The world will always be full of problems in your state or county, town, neighborhood, and perhaps even your household. They might not all be as onerous as figuring out dinner every night for the rest of your life. Some will, but most won’t.

And most won’t require the government to get involved.

This one, sadly, must. It can’t be avoided. The problem of public records. They are public. You have the right to see them. But towns and cities are often disinclined to hand them over without what, in divorce court, would be defined as mental cruelty. They’ll spend thousands, even hundreds of thousands, in court to fight that right or to argue they aren’t public or simply can’t be provided rather than just pay someone to find and deliver them.

Court challenges are a huge investment in other people’s money, and it would be fair to wonder if that was to hide misfeasance, malfeasance, common, ordinary, incompetence, fraud, and corruption.

Enter HB1002, which “establishes parameters for when a public body may charge a fee for records provided under RSA 91-A.” Fourteen Republicans sponsored this thing.  (Prime) Kuttab (R), Michael Cahill (D), Ball (R), Maggiore (D), Ankarberg (R), DeSimone (R), Dunn (R), Nelson (R), Bill Boyd (R), Edwards (R), Grassie (D), Carson (R), Gannon (R), Watters (D), Lang (R), Avard (R). Its purpose is to assess a tax to access public records, euphemistically referred to as a fee. One that, in the event that the time required to assemble the requested material exceeds ten hours – as if you’d let them figure that out and assume it is both accurate and just – you will be quoted a labor cost for access. Things could, sorry, WILL, get costly and quickly.

Right to know requests as a revenue stream. What could go wrong?

Sadly, I didn’t hear about this bill until after the public hearing, which I do not have time to watch – but I understand that there was a lot of pushback, as there should have been. These are public records. Public employees exist to fetch them when requested. They get paid to do it. If the number of requests seems excessive, too bad. How about paying another staffer instead of lawyers to sue citizens to keep them from accessing … public records? I bet you’d save the taxpayers some money.

Take Nashua, for example. They have wasted hundreds of thousands, losing 91-A records cases in court. It’s gotten so bad that suing seems to be the only way to separate the city from public documents.

One resident informed me that Nashua, to defend its refusal to provide public records, hires outside legal help. For one case, they are paying five lawyers to fight a pro se citizen with a tab that has to be approaching half a million dollars. One case. Public records. How many hours of looking for records, using the 25.00 fee rule in HB1002, does that equal?

For a 25.00 tax “Citizen A” can get ten hours of looking for whatever they requested. In the half-a-million example, you get 200,000 hours. 500,000/25.00 x 10 hours.

There are 8,760 hours in a year, so Nashua has spent the equivalent of 22 years’ worth of Right to Know request “fines” as proposed in HB1002 – to prevent one citizen from accessing some emails or other public documents.

If one city can afford to waste that sort of time and other people’s money to keep public documents private, imagine what the sum would be if we included Rochester, Londonderry, and any of the other cities and towns that are getting to be like or worse than Nashua. Wouldn’t the public interest be better served if that time was used to obtain public records?

The obstruction and lawfare are not about cost or time or labor, but if that is still a sticking point, rather than turn government impedeiment into a revenue stream, why not create RTK donor towns? Nashua has time and cash to burn. Smaller bergs and villages could be reimbursed for the cost of local fulfilling 91-A requests so that residents are not required to pay a tax to see a document they already paid for. It’s a very popular scheme with education funding, and making rich cities pay for poor towns sounds a lot like equity to me. I’m sure the Democrats will find a reason to complain, but this fits nicely in their ideological wheelhouse.

Or, we could trach HB1002 and go back to business as usual, which – in an increasing number of towns – means wasting small fortunes to keep public documents from the public.

If they’ve got that kind of time to waste, and time is money, the problem isn’t burdensome public inquiry. It’s town and city government, and taxing them to access public documents is only going to make that problem worse.

 

The post Fourteen NH Republicans Sponsor Bill to “Tax” Public Records Access appeared first on Granite Grok.

VT Digger recently posted an article lamenting that we Vermonters are not heeling to the mandate to transition our vehicles to electric. Alas, “As of October 2023, there were just under 11,000 plug-in EVs registered in the state, David Roberts, a consultant for the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, told the House Transportation Committee.

But meeting state emissions goals [under the Global Warming Solutions Act] for the transportation sector would require that there be about 27,000 plug-in EVs registered in Vermont by 2025 (including plug-in hybrids) and 126,000 by 2030.” We’re not going to get there. It’s totally unrealistic.

Why? WE CUSTOMERS/VOTERS DON’T WANT THESE FREAKIN’ CARS!

At least not nearly to the extent the climate alarmists in Montpelier demand. Still, they persist in forcing down our throats this technology that is too expensive and far too impractical for the overwhelming majority of drivers. This is bad policy on so many levels inflicted upon us by people who simply don’t care.

The growth in EV ownership in Vermont, what there is of it, is driven in large part by huge taxpayer and electric ratepayer subsidies that are grotesquely regressive. As VT Digger reports, “In an attempt to meet those targets, the state has introduced a slew of incentive programs in recent years on top of existing federal incentives to encourage Vermonters to go electric. The state programs include the Replace Your Ride program, which grants $3,000 to drivers who give in old cars that use fossil fuels, and the MileageSmart program, which offers Vermonters up to $5,000 to buy a used plug-in EV or hybrid.”

This is on top of government subsidy money doled out directly to auto manufacturers. In 2023, for example, the Biden administration offered $12 billion in grants and loans for automakers and suppliers to retrofit their plants to produce electric vehicles – THAT CONSUMERS DON’T WANT.

That’s all money transferred from hard-working Vermonters’ bank accounts to a politically favored class of drivers – who are by and large wealthier than those paying the bills.

Energy reporter Robert Bryce just published a fantastic article on just how regressive and politically motivated the EV push really is, and who is taking advantage of all this taxpayer-funded largess.

Last October, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, released a remarkable study that found “counties with affluent left-leaning cities” like Cambridge, San Francisco, and Seattle [and Burlington?] “play a disproportionately large role in driving the entire national increase in EV adoption….”

87% are white. Last March, Gallup reported, “a substantial majority of Republicans, 71%, say they would not consider owning an electric vehicle.”

So, what’s happening here is that lower-income tax/ratepayers are being forced to subsidize the climate fetishes and virtue signaling of rich, white liberals.

Beyond these more person-to-person wealthfare transfers, Bryce cites statistics showing that the money is overwhelmingly flowing into wealthier, liberal cities and states — another form of wealth transfer.

Despite all this, Automakers are, according to NASDAQ, “already losing money on their EV investments. Ford, for example, lost about $36,000 for every EV it sold last quarter.” Bryce cites bigger numbers:

Ford reported an operating loss of $1.3 billion in its EV division during the third quarter. That translates into a loss of $62,016 for each of the 20,962 EVs it sold during the period. means that FoMoCo has already lost about $3.1 billion on its EV business this year. As I noted in these pages in July, the company said it expected to lose $4.5 billion on its EV business in 2023.

Honda and General Motors “were ending a $5 billion plan to develop lower-cost EVs together just a year after announcing the effort.”

This is not to use a favorite term on the Left, sustainable.

In other news, the rental car company Hertz just announced that they are dumping 20,000 electric vehicles and switching back to gas-powered vehicles. “Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said in a note Hertz’s move was another sign that EV expectations need to be “reset downward”. (Source: Reuters)

Last month, 3900 car dealers sent a letter to President Biden stating, “The reality, however, is that electric vehicle demand today is not keeping up with the large influx of BEVs arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations. BEVs are stacking up on our lots,” and urging the administration to back off unrealistic EV mandates. Further, they state the obvious that such goals “require consumer acceptance to become a reality. With each passing day, it becomes more apparent that this attempted electric vehicle mandate is unrealistic based on current and forecasted customer demand.”

Reality, however, is not a concept the Vermont supermajority in the legislature is familiar with. Nor is any concern for the actual policy preferences of a majority of their constituents. In fact, at the first meeting of the Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee in their discussion of priorities for 2024, Senator Mark MacDonald (D-Orange) expressed his desire to “Stop the practice of selling cars, trucks, and SUVs that burn gas.”

Asked if he thought Vermont joining the California Clean Cars Initiative, which phases out the legal sale of ICE vehicles by 2035 wasn’t enough, MacDonald said no, “I’d like to get ahead of that.” To which his colleague Senator Becca White (D-Windsor) enthusiastically pointed to her own bill to do just that, S.24, An act relating to the Clean Fuels Program.

To which I reply, screw these people and the horses they expect us all to ride in on.

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

The post Stop Forcing EVs Down Our Throats appeared first on Granite Grok.

I hereby offer my services as an expert witness to any proper court on the subject of false flags and, separately, on the subject of the withholding of evidence and the tampering with evidence by investigative agencies that work for the government.

My law degree is from Adelaide University, in 2011. The subject of my Ph.D. dissertation is the application of sociobiology to international law.

It has just occurred to me today to offer my expert witness service in any new alleged case of false flag, as I can claim experience in having dealt with a span of cases. I show how the standard scheme works by cover-up, by media falseness, and — sorry to say — by corrupt judges.

Here are three false-flag cases that I have deeply studied and written about at book length:

1. The Boston Marathon bombing of 2013. My book (recently renamed) “The Scandalously Unjust Trial of Jahar Tsarnaev” contains numerous pieces of solid evidence of the boy’s innocence. Moreover, I mounted a civil RICO case against the FBI and others for creating this criminal “enterprise.”

2. The hostage-taking scene by a so-called Muslim terrorist in a Sydney restaurant in 2014, in which two people died. My book “Inquest: Siege in Sydney” is based on my attendance at the inquest, which, at a superficial glance, was on the up and ups but which, once contradictions were found, turned out to be a great game of words.

3. That thing known as the Sandy Hook school massacre of 2012. My book “The Human Mind and Sandy Hook’s Unreality” dwells on the great difficulty of getting people to believe that a government narrative, or media narrative, is fictional. At least three judges must be aware of the dishonesty involved, but people are too scared to accept that.

We want to thank Mary Maxwell for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page – Opinions are those of the originating author.

I have, in some cases, such as that of Troy Davis and of Nathan Wood, petitioned the court for a Writ of Error Coram Nobis to stop a wrongful execution, but no court has replied to me.

Additionally, my book, “Port Arthur: Enough Is Enough,” co-authored with Dee McLachlan, up-ends a 1996 conviction that had no merit whatsoever and for which the man is still in prison. And my book “Fraud Upon the Court” delves into various other cases.

This does not mean that I could walk into a new case — let’s say the Lewiston, Maine, shootings of November 2023 — and be knowledgeable about the particulars. I do not offer that service. I can only:

*show the general template of false flags (a subject on which James Perloff, Ole Dammegard, and the late Elias Davidsson have turned out great work),

* show that a stand-down by police is diagnostic and should be factored into a case as such.

*show how easy it is for court personnel to get around the law, the precedents, and rules of court procedure. (It’s a snap.),

*identify areas in which the new case is likely to have holes. Typically, where a killer has allegedly “turned the gun on himself,” there is a chance that he operated under hypnosis.

Wait — isn’t hypnosis too iffy a thing, or too “woo-woo,” to be brought up in legal argument? No, it isn’t. The CIA has spent billions of dollars to master a range of mind control techniques.

Wait — isn’t judicial corruption too sensitive a topic to be discussed in court? No, of course it isn’t. What is there to be embarrassed about when the powerful harm the powerless? It’s normal.

Wait — if a lot of falsely accused convicts are now proven to be innocent and will have the right to sue for malicious prosecution, won’t that cost a lot of money? My reply is “Shouldda thought of that before.”

Note: If my services as an expert witness are not usable, I can instead send an amicus curia brief to the court. The court is generally required to accept such a brief but is free to pay no attention to it. This happened with a 3-person amici brief that we sent to Judge George A O’Toole for the Boston Marathon case, and it was similarly overlooked — despite being crucial — by the First Circuit Court of Appeal and all nine justices of the US Supreme Court.

One more thing. I specifically offer my expert-witness services to matters arising from the Maui fires of August 8, 2023, and matters connected to the threat of the release of mosquitos. In regard to the latter, my argument would refer to the false claim that Covid vaccinations are “safe and effective.” The same would probably apply to persons claiming that the mosquito release will be “safe and effective.” Only proper testing, not observation or speculation, can determine that. And the testing would have to measure its broader ecological effect, wouldn’t it?

The pay for my services? I will charge at cost for travel expenses and only $7.25 (the NH minimum wage) an hour for my testimony (unless the falsely accused defendant is filthy rich — but what falsely accused defendant is filthy rich?). My aforementioned books are freely available for your perusal at my campaign website, www.ConstitutionAndTruth.com.

Speaking of “campaign,” if things take a drastic turn at the NH polls next Tuesday, I may not need to pound the pavement after all!

 

The views and opinions expressed by contributors are those of the author and may not reflect the opinion or position of  Grok Media, GraniteGrok.com, its authors, advertisers, donors, or sponsors.

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There was a Kamala Harris sighting this week as she visited The View for a softball session in the henhouse. In addition to the adoration showered upon the Vice President by these faux journalists, Harris seized the opportunity to lay out the campaign strategy for the Biden/Harris reelection bid.

It can be summed up in three words: Fear, Free, and Abortion. Since the Administration is underwater in the polls on every aspect of their job, they cannot point to their results and future plans, so they need to simplify their campaign to emotion and patronizing.

First, an observation. At this point in Kamala Harris’ career, she should not require communication coaching, but her skills have been an embarrassment to her and, worse, to the country. Her presence and presentation were a vast improvement over her past efforts. Unfortunately, the content was still lacking. There was nothing substantive in her talking points describing the Democrat platform. Nothing about the status of the efforts of the first term or what to expect in a possible next.

What she did accomplish was to echo the primary message of the President’s two speeches of a week ago. In the Democrat world, there is only one vote that is pro-American. There is only one vote that will save the Democracy. A vote for any Republican is a nod toward the destruction of America. In her mind, and Biden’s, when he has an infrequent moment of recall, a vote for Donald J. Trump is to put a nail in the coffin of our Democracy.

There is nothing to back up this statement, but there does not need to be. The Democrats et al. are consistently using this talking point, as is the mainstream media. They are all fear-mongering. Because the Left is a feeling-based group, fear works, and to the narrow-minded corps of followers, they can justify it.

The content was disappointing.

Fear is the ace and feature of the platform, but a close second is Free. This is the third time Biden/Harris has gone to the well on Free (as in tuition) as they try to again con the youth vote. Though the Supreme Court continues to say no to Biden’s efforts, Joe ignores the High Court and forgives Student Loans. That is what the Left thinks of our structure of government. They have no respect for the courts or the law. Free is on steroids when it comes to the Border, as these illegals are treated to a plethora of benefits, including housing, education, and healthcare. This is an injustice as they should be given an arrest citation, a court date, and a return ticket to their homeland.

And finally, the golden ticket for Democrat votes. Abortion, incorrectly named Reproductive Rights, is always a guarantee for high voter turnout. This was obvious in last year’s elections. Any ballot with an abortion question or bill on the ballot received incredible Democrat support. Democrats continue to claim their right to abortion was eradicated by the Supreme Court when, in actuality, the decisions on abortion were returned to the states. That is the beauty of a Constitutional Republic versus the Democracy that the Democrats claim. The state we live in can set laws that suit its residents. If you disagree, you can work to make a difference or move to a state that better matches your needs and beliefs.

Harris and Jill Biden will be the face of this campaign, and you can bet on Biden seeing very little daylight outside of the White House or Rehoboth. They will keep him silent and hope they can steal another four years in charge.

The post Fear, Free, And Abortion appeared first on Granite Grok.

The more we learn about Nikki Haley the more obvious it becomes that Nikki is a Democrat. The latest: Nikki’s main man in New Hampshire, some lobbyist named Tyler Clark, lobbied for a DEMOCRAT DARK MONEY GROUP that helped Biden STEAL the 2020 election. From the Washington Examiner:

Tyler Clark, who became Haley’s 2024 state director for the Granite State late last year, is listed on lobbying disclosures filed in New Hampshire as working in 2020 on behalf of Sixteen Thirty Fund, a nonprofit group managed by Arabella Advisors, the largest liberal dark money network in the United States. Sixteen Thirty Fund, which is being investigated by the Washington, D.C., attorney general’s office over financial mismanagement allegations along with the broader Arabella network, doled out more than $410 million in 2020 to boost Democrats and help unseat former President Donald Trump, all thanks to billionaire donors such as George Soros.

It’s also becoming clearer and clearer why Chris “Sun-King” Sununu went all-in for Haley. She belongs to the same club as his daddy and he do … the GOP grifter wing of the UNIPARTY.

 

The post Grifters Are Going To Grift … Nikki Haley’s Main Man In New Hampshire Linked To Democrat Dark Money appeared first on Granite Grok.

Regardless of your thoughts about President Donald Trump, you should find the FBI raid on his home in Mar-a-Lago disturbing. I won’t relitigate all the content we’ve provided to date here, but the effect the act places on the Left’s alleged love affair with democracy is chilling.

Third-world, banana-republic, former Clinton confidant chilling.

The usual suspects, many of them your Democrat representatives in local and state government, applauded the illegal and unconstitutional raid. The evidence of that is still on social media if you have the bandwidth to scrape it before Jack Smith’s case gets tossed. The glee they express online shows the support of fascism they attribute to their political opponents. And fascist it is.

There is strong evidence of collusion between the White House and the prosecution, and the prosecution is deliberately hiding that evidence from the defense.

Any one of those things should rattle the rusty cage of axes grinding for judicial and sentencing reform. Hiding evidence from the defense is sinister enough, but if it is exculpatory, that is not just criminal. It’s evil.

And maybe you don’t care about any of that. This is Trump. He’s [insert your opinion with or without expletives here]. Many Democrats don’t care about the law unless it advances their petty agendas. Still, Republicans ought to be horrified, even those embedded like a tick in the uniparty ass. Their guy or gal is never going to be dear leader, which means they will always be suspect and a few steps closer to being suicided or executed for crimes against the state by a regime that is happy to claim that taking selfies in the US Capitol makes you an insurrectionist. Life in prison without due process might be in your post-America global reset future, and won’t that be ironic?  You can chat with the once-cackling lefties who applauded without considering the side effects.

This gets me to the point I wanted to share, not that those preceding are not equally relevant. As previously reported, whether or not you believe President Trump can declassify material for his personal use (he can), he still had his top-level clearance at the time of Biden’s raid. There was no US government document in existence he was not allowed to see or possess.

That fact is evidence in his trial that the government is still trying to hide.

In other words, how could Trump have illegally possessed classified materials if he held the highest possible security rating at the time? And then the government’s attempt to surreptitiously erase that inconvenient fact suggests consciousness of guilt.

These facts are too inconveninet for our never-Trump “friends.” The ones making excuses for Vice-President Biden’s possession of Obama-Era documents for which he did not have clearance. The story that the Mar-a-Lago raid was meant to defenstrate.

It seems evident to me, and this is not the first time I or anyone else has made the connection, that knowing the Biden-docs problem would find daylight, they coordinated the Mar-a-Lago raid under the pretense of flooding the media with a false moral equivalency at best and a favorable distraction at least. This was never about what Trump did legally – which will play out eventually (the trial is media-muel distraction); it was to bury Biden’s illegal action.

It’s an easy trick to pull when your victim is some work-a-day schlub who took a few days off to visit DC in early January, not so much when the guy has a lot of money to fight back – another problem with which many on the Left have no issue until it’s their turn. And their turn will likely come under a government allowed to do these sorts of things, and having a (D) next to your name won’t protect you; we will never grow weary of telling you that.

You can still hate Trump and love the law meant to protect all of us. Those who don’t are likely to find out the hard way that they are not nearly as clever as they think.

The post ICYMI – Jack Smith’s White House Collusion Problem Meets Trump’s Top Level Security Clearance appeared first on Granite Grok.

How much Haley Mail have you received lately?  If you’re like most people I know, you’ve probably received no less than 25-30 cardboard flyers in one week.  In one week!

How many of those have you actually read, and how many have you dumped into the trash can?

Those brightly colored flyers cost a lot of money, and yet they tell you nothing of the candidate.  They tout Nikki Haley with their media spin:  she’s a “proven” conservative leader.  She is the only candidate who can lead the country.  She’ll be “tough” on China, etc.  She makes a lot of promises, but her record tells a different story.

As governor of South Carolina, she was all-in with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) welcoming and accepting hundreds of millions of dollars of investments from Chinese businesses, giving them free land and tax incentives – all on taxpayer money.  She supported Obama’s refugee program to import Syrian refugees.  She is Pro Amnesty.  She’s against the Border Wall.  And, as a lobbyist to the U.S. Military Industrial Complex she WANTS the war in Ukraine – so she continues to rake in those millions for her own bank account.

She is funded by big Democrat money and never-Trumper RINO’s.  They are pushing her because they want her in their fight against Trump.

She is their pawn.  And they own her.  In the words of former candidate Christie: she’s going to get smoked!

A vote for Haley is a vote for another Biden.

The post Haley Owned by Democrat Donors appeared first on Granite Grok.

House Bill 1419 was presented to the House Education Committee on January 18, 2024. The Bill prohibits materials that are obscene or harmful to minors in school and creates a procedure for removal and cause of action.

Children now have access to school library apps on their iPads and Chromebooks that contain pornographic content. This Bill would not prohibit sexual content but prohibit some of the worst x-rated and pornographic content that should never be available to children.

Included in the testimony, you can watch a former therapist and sex offender counselor at a New Hampshire prison. Listen to how she explains how one book on the school library app. allows children to access hyper-links to sexual predators. That’s considered sex trafficking. Not only are schools providing pornographic books to children through their library app, those children can also follow a hyper-link to websites that will put them in touch with child sexual predators. (3:20:00)

A lobbyist from the New Hampshire School Administrators Association. (NHSAA) OPPOSED prohibiting schools from making pornographic content available to children. Esther Asbell, Superintendent of SAU16 (easbell@sau16.org), is the Executive Director of the NHSAA. Why are they not speaking out against this dangerous content that is now available to children in our schools? Why are they opposing good legislation that will protect our children from pornography and child sex trafficking?

Sydney Leggett, from the NHSAA Equity Committee, essentially says that students have a right to access pornographic materials in the school. This Bill would infringe upon their rights and deny them access to porn and materials that show them how to connect with sexual predators.
(3:44:00)

I also addressed the committee to explain how an autistic child was exposed to pornographic content on his Chromebook. This child was punished because of the behavior he was exhibiting at school after accessing this content. (3:57:00)

Michael Bessett, Assistant Superintendent in the Kearsarge Regional School District (mbessette@kearsarge.org), also spoke in opposition to HB1419. I don’t know if he took a vacation day to testify or if the taxpayers in the district paid for him to oppose HB1419, but you can listen to all of the reasons he had for his opposition to legislation that would prohibit X-rated content in the schools, and a sexual predator’s ability to access young children.

Asst. Superintendent Bessett first describes that educators are protecting children. That is true for many, but we also know that school library apps are making x-rated content available to children and providing a path for children to connect with child sexual predators. He does a lot of talking about who gets to decide what is appropriate content, but it was Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who was asked to describe his test for obscenity in 1964, and he responded: “I know it when I see it..” (4:35:00). If you want to see some of the pornography available to children today, follow this link.  WARNING: It is graphic.

This Bill would not remove much of the sexual content available to children. It only prohibits the most extreme obscene content.

At the beginning, Rep. Glenn Cordelli introduces the Bill and explains why it’s needed.  After listening to those in opposition, you have to wonder if they are willing to put children in a dangerous position. Will anyone in the school communities take responsibility if a child ends up sexually abused because they followed the hyperlink to a sexual predator?

The New Hampshire School Boards Association (NHSBA) took no position on the Bill, but their lobbyist testified to how much they disapproved of the language.( 3:00:00.)

 

Finally, Stopitnow.org is an organization committed to stopping the sexual abuse of children. Here is what they say about making pornographic pictures available to children:

Showing pornographic pictures to a child is considered sexual abuse. https://www.stopitnow.org/advice-column-entry/is-it-considered-child-sexual-abuse-if-someone-shows-a-child-pornographic

See: Nashua Teacher’s Grindr-Sexting Case: Another Charge

When you hear adults object to prohibiting pornographic content to children and putting them in the path of sexual predators, how are parents to trust them? How are parents to trust our public schools. All this does is drive more families to seek education alternatives.

Thank you to the good teachers and administrators working in our schools. Sadly though, we are still finding predators among them. Those who oppose removing pornographic content for children remain suspicious to parents.

Read more here.

The post Did SAU16 (Exeter) and Kearsarge Administrators Inadvertently Approve of Child Sex Trafficking? appeared first on Granite Grok.

On January 28, 2023, at the New Hampshire GOP Annual Meeting, the entire state committee unanimously adopted the following resolution: “RESOLUTION TO SANCTION ANY NH REPUBLICANOFFICIAL FROM ATTENDING OR SUPPORTING THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM.”

We, the undersigned elected members of the NH GOP State Committee and the Republican elected delegates, declare the Candidate for President, Nikki Haley, and Governor Christopher Sununu  to be in violation of the resolution stated previously and posted below:

 

 

So, today, January 18, 2024, per: “RESOLUTION, We, the People of New Hampshire, compel the Chair of the New Hampshire Republican Committee to take the highest and fullest level of sanctions under their control against any New Hampshire Party Member or Candidate for Office who knowingly and will associate with the WEF from this day forward.”

We, the elected members representing the NH GOP State Party, are compelling State Party Chairman Chris Ager to put out a public statement to discuss the highest levels of sanctions against Candidate Haley and Governor Sununu up to and including censure and sanctioning any NH state delegates to be allowed to go to Candidate Haley for their association with the WEF and apparent election interference jeopardizing the integrity of the “First in the Nation Primary.”

 

Please Submit Group communications or Press Releases to steve@granitegrok.com.
Submission is not a guarantee of publication – Publication is not an endorsement.

Editors note: reformatted.

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Climate change activists increasingly target agriculture as a primary source of greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. Too often, this translates into condemnation of gentle cows or the pleasures of meat-eating instead of drawing attention to proper farming practices and land management. This is especially true with respect to water use and the ethanol industry.

Water in Agriculture

American agriculture has continued to be dominated by ever-larger farms and producers, increasing productivity and economic growth and amplifying vital water resources’ drawdowns. This is apparent in water-precious regions such as Arizona and California, but also includes Idaho’s exploding dairy industry and Arkansas’ astoundingly productive poultry economy.

Growing alfalfa for cows (or for export to China), and corn and soy for chickens, requires substantial amounts of water in addition to what is used for the animals themselves. Corn and soy require chemical applications that erode soils and contribute to water pollution. The larger the scale of operations, the more significant the environmental impacts – especially on water resources.

Food Versus Ethanol

Voices calling to curtail carnivorous dining are howling up the wrong cornstalk: Reassessing the impacts of ethanol production and livestock management methodology would leave the American palate intact. These are problems not of animal pollution but of animal husbandry and sensible land management.

The United States leads the world in biofuel production. Of the 92 million American acres planted to corn in 2023, approximately 40% will be processed into ethanol to meet subsidized mandates in Americans’ fuel blends. Ethanol incentives have pushed up corn prices but also encouraged farmers to reduce lands used in (carbon-sequestering) conservation programs and expand corn cropping to less desirable soils and slopes. The combined effect is to make ethanol production a much less attractive environmental alternative than has been presented.

Corn Ethanol Is Environmentally Destructive

Corn is a particularly soil-draining crop. Most corn is now genetically modified for resistance to widely sprayed glyphosate, and the endocrine-disrupting herbicide atrazine is still used in its production. Neonicotinoids reputed to threaten bees and other wildlife are also standard tools in corn farming.

This makes fuels derived from corn dubious environmental saviors. One five-year study concluded in 2022 that corn ethanol led to at least 24% more emissions than gasoline:

“Our analyses show a modest change in the use of US agricultural land for crop production due to the RFS [Renewable Fuel Standards], which led to sizable increases in associated environmental impacts including nitrate leaching, phosphorus runoff, and soil erosion. While improvements in production efficiency have likely reduced the carbon intensity of corn ethanol since inception of the RFS, the previously underestimated emissions from US land conversion attributable to the policy are enough to fully negate or even reverse any GHG advantages of the fuel relative to gasoline. … [O]ur findings confirm that contemporary corn ethanol production is unlikely to contribute to climate change mitigation.”

Instead of forcing Americans to give up hamburgers, the reversal of the boondoggle ethanol program would free up some 36.8 million acres of land from corn cropping, eliminating the application of tons of chemicals and preserving vital water supplies. Liberating cows from confinement feed operations into rotational grazing on some of those formerly corn-sown lands would restore depleted soils, sequester carbon, and convert grasses to milk, cheese, and T-bones.

Biden’s Love of Ethanol
Instead, the Biden administration has favorably expanded ethanol use. In April 2022, the President extended the availability of higher biofuel blends to offset nosebleed gasoline prices. Reuters reported:

“The decision represents a win for the U.S. corn lobby by likely expanding demand for corn-based ethanol and a setback for oil refiners, which view ethanol as competition….

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sanctions and boycotts that followed launched retail gasoline prices to record highs, a vulnerability for Biden’s fellow Democrats in November’s congressional elections.”

Then, in June 2023, the USDA announced “plans to invest up to $500 million from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to increase the availability of domestic biofuels and give Americans additional cleaner fuel options at the pump.” Much of the announced funding is directed to ethanol production and distribution facilities. Notwithstanding the substantial environmental degradation inflicted by 36.8 million acres of industrially grown corn, the USDA claims this is “Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Administration is delivering on its promise to fight climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions across America.”

Inflating gasoline prices through sloppy monetary policy and oil-stifling regulations and then faux-reducing them with ethanol is as useless as subsidizing polluting corn and calling it “clean energy.” This reflects a perversion of policy priorities, quickly remedied by reversing well-intentioned but ultimately counterproductive ethanol production. Taking tens of millions of acres out of corn cropping for ethanol would save a lot of water.

 

John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And Regular Contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.

The post The Corn Ethanol and Water Pollution Boondoggle appeared first on Granite Grok.

Concord, NH: Today, House Speaker Sherman Packard (R-Londonderry) announced the formation of the Special Committee on COVID Response Efficacy:

The bipartisan committee is tasked with investigating and evaluating the State’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The committee will function in a science-based, fact-finding review, specifically acquiring comprehensive, accurate data and all related information pertaining thereto.

Areas of particular focus will include the administration of Federal guidance, acceptance of Federal Funds, and implementation of Emergency Use Authorization vaccination efforts. A report will be issued outlining the committee’s findings and the impact on New Hampshire citizens.

Rep. Barbara Comtois of Barnstead will serve as chair of the Special Committee.

Pursuant to House Rule 29, the committee will be comprised of an equal number of Democratic and Republican members, reflecting the nearly even partisan make-up of the House.

“A large number of House members indicated interest in having the legislature take a look at this subject matter and asked me to form this Special Committee. This process should help us understand more about the state’s response during the pandemic and help us shape public policy to better prepare us for future emergency response efforts,” Packard said.

For Immediate Release
January 19, 2024
Contact: Jennifer Tramp
NHHouse@leg.state.nh.us
603-271-3664

 

The post House Speaker Forms Special Committee on COVID Response Efficacy appeared first on Granite Grok.

The gender-bending trend comes with side effects that might be more troubling than being convinced by your government therapist (school teachers) that you are not your birth sex. Death, for example.

In the study, people with gender dysphoria who had ever used hormone replacements saw nearly seven times the risk of ischemic stroke (a blockage in a vessel supplying blood to the brain), nearly six times the risk of ST elevation myocardial infarction (the most serious type of heart attack) and nearly five times the risk of pulmonary embolism (a blockage in an artery in the lung), compared with people with gender dysphoria who had never used hormone replacements.

There are tens of thousands of reported unintended effects, many severe or permanent, like chemical castration, and now the American Cancer Society – which apparently can’t find any data to sift after 2020, which is not at all suspicious – was able to report that,

Is the fact that women don’t have a prostate a factor in the reduced risk among transmen? I’m no scientist, but I’d have to think it was, but the risk of cancers is still higher.

I’m sure Biden’s Ministry of Fairness is working on a way to blame straight white Christian men, which won’t be difficult. While whitey has higher rates of new cancer, he is (slightly) less likely to die of it than his black brother – though that’s likely to change. Minorities were smart enough to embrace vaccine hesitancy in more significant numbers in recent (COVID) years. While experts are baffled by the sudden rise in turbo cancers that the American Cancer Society can’t seem to report (still not suspicious), they are out there.

The other bit in that pull quote from the not-at-all right-wing American Cancer Institute is the increased risk of breast cancer among lesbian and bisexual women “due to higher prevalence risk factors, including fewer childbirth, higher alcohol use, and excess weight.” That’s their science, not mine. Lifestyle choices matter, and those add to the likelihood of cancer.

Without saying it, this also suggests that abortion may increase the risk of breast cancer among heterosexual women – assuming childbirth leads to breastfeeding, which is also under attack but has been known for years to coincide with reduced breast cancer risk. That’s good to know in case any Transwomen want to reduce their hormone-therapy-increased risk of breast cancer by trying to chest-feed.

Or something.

The post Hormone Replacement Therapy Also Transitions You … To a Higher Risk of Cancer appeared first on Granite Grok.

Nikki “Read My Lips” Haley! Where have we heard this before? And Nikki is financed by the same elitist money that paid Old Man Bush to say that, and, based on Nikki’s prior political history, we will suffer the same result if she is ever given the keys to the White House.

Nikki has always been for something before she is against it, and vice versa. Let’s see why Nikki cannot be trusted:

In the presence of Chris Sununu, Nikki says: “The structure (of the primary) is really amusing. Iowa starts it. YOU CHANGE PERSONALTIES, then you go into New Hampshire.”

In 2021, Nikki vowed not to step in the way if Trump ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Nikki was opposed to President Trump’s building of a border wall in 2016. Nikki also supports amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens who broke the law to enter the U.S.

Apparently, Nikki reneged on her promise not to oppose Trump because of the Wall Street mega-donors, including billionaire investors Stanley Druckenmiller, Eric Levine, Terry Kassel, and Annie Dickerson. Even Democrat Jamie Dimon is reportedly considering Nikki (see Financial Times article by Alex Rogers and Brooke Masters, dated 11/ 16/ 2023). This explains the endless nauseating TV ad attacks New Hampshire has been subjected to.

Nikki promised no new taxes to win the South Carolina governorship and then pulled a George Herbert Walker Bush.

Nikki even made her husband change his name from Bill to Mike

Nikki’s personality is Doctor Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde. We never know which Nikki will show up. Further, her campaign promises to melt like a shooting star entering Earth’s atmosphere or ride away into the universe on the aptly named “ Haley’s Comet.”

Please join Rand Paul in being “ Never Nikki.”

The post Nikki Haley is George Bush in a Dress appeared first on Granite Grok.

This is fun and self-fulfilling if by “self” you mean the government, and by “fulfilling,” you mean creating problems with taxpayer dollars you then claim can be solved with the loose change left on the Cambriole or between the cushions of daddy’s Chesterfield.

That’s the entire Democrat party platform, right there. Use our money to break shit, then take more not to fix it. The finders’ fees are out of this world and perrenial. You could make a career out of this sort of money laundering and live well long before you retire. Wait, that’s Congress!

And look what they did or (maybe) didn’t stop.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is awarding nearly $700,000 taxpayer dollars to back pregnancy prevention programs for young girls who identify as boys, warning that “heteronormative” sexual education is inadequate.

The $698,736 grant, which began in September 2023 and will continue until June 2027, according to government disclosures, will be allocated to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research, a non-profit that seeks to create “an inclusive teen pregnancy program for transgender boys.”

Boys can’t get pregnant, but girls pretending to be boys can – which is sort of a spoiler alert if you take my meaning. It also means that girls pretending to be unicorns, or x-gendered space aliens, conifers, your second cousin’s stuffed Pikachu, or telephone poles can get pregnant, too. It’s quite the list of spoiler alerts. Try as you might, a rose by any other name… The list of possibilities is – and I use this word with care – literally endless. But there’s no recurring revenue stream in admitting as much  – not nearly as much.

So, they created a mental health crisis with the help of the trillions of dollars siphoned through Democrat party recruiting clinics doing business as public schools. No time for math or literacy but plenty of time for mind-f**kery, which might explain the recent fascination with schools asking to be recognized as health clinics – or legislators asking that for them. How about doggie daycares or cat cafes – word has it that some schools have litterboxes, so your little darlings can pretend to be cats. You pay 20,000- a year for that so it must be legit.

Most school systems represent about 70% of a town’s budget, yet you cannot teach children to read something other than porn. It is a wonder why anyone would trust you with their children’s mental and physical health ( they want in school clinics, don’t you know). Who can imagine how much more that will cost with the very reasonable assumption that the results will be the same as with reading and math. And one might guess we’d already done all of that, and if you looked up from your phone for a few minutes, you’d see they have or soon will.

Whatever or whenever these preordained (planned!) failures demand another line item in the ledger of things upon which we’ll be taxing our great-grandchildren’s not-yet-realized earnings. If you were born with a vagina but are convinced that it makes you a boy (you decide who the fools are in that equation), extra precaution is necessary to instruct these “boys” on where to get an abortion.

It is, after all, always about abortion.

If you are a boy with a vagina and you let a boy with a penis use it as a masturbation aid (or a girl with a penis, for that matter), you might get pregnant. If you’d rather not be that, here are some resources to relieve you of the clump of cells – which we’d not have to do if you’d just had the much more expensive surgery that was suggested. But you can’t just say that. They are spending about 700 million dollars to create “Messaging [that] will be gender-affirming” and will “reduce internalized transphobia,” the award description adds.

“Look, you’ve still got a vagina and all the responsibility that comes with it,” but you’re a boy, and we still want to profit off any unwanted pregnancy, but we’ve made your mind so fragile (at the Democrat party recruiting clinics doing business as public schools – and maybe TikTok and Tmblr) that we can’t say it like that, which seems odd to me. If it is a revealed truth that a biological being with a vagina can be a boy and that you are a bigot if you refuse to accept that, then where’s the fire? We’re erasing distinctions. Boy and girl are the new Aloha.

Aloha (/əˈloʊhɑː/ ə-LOH-hah, Hawaiian: [əˈlohə]) is the Hawaiian word for love, affection, peace, compassion, and mercy, which is commonly used as a greeting. It has a deeper cultural and spiritual significance to native Hawaiians, for whom the term is used to define a force that holds together existence.

Hello, goodbye, is that a banana in your pocket, miss?

If the label has many meanings or none at all, then the underlying structure (and if you’ve got a penis, you have a lot of responsibility too, especially in divorce court) the problem isn’t inclusion in the progressive sense. It is inclusion in the biological sense, and we used to have words for that.

Boy. Girl. Man. Woman.

If you’ve stayed with me, you likely have discovered a great way we could save our great-grandchildren trillions of dollars.

 

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I’ve been meaning to thank you for introducing the word “Dotard” into our vernacular. Having never heard the word before, I now find that it has so many applications.

How about our new President Joe-tard? He takes himself off the New Hampshire primary ballot. Next, he sends out instructions on how to write him in, saying our future is on the line with this vote. So why make it hard to vote for him? What a Joe-tard!

You were right about Donald, the original Dotard, too. He and Joetard tag-teamed to spend many trillions of dollars on COVID response – to combat a disease that was not very serious.

Is COVID not that serious? When asked, at Governor Sununu’s 4/29/21 press conference, about who was dying from COVID. Dr. Beth Daly of New Hampshire’s Health and Human Services Department told us:

“I think the first question you wanted to know about who the people are, in terms of age and medical comorbidity. And all of the deaths, except for one or maybe two, have — are either 65-and-older or have underlying medical conditions.”

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There were more than 1300 dead with COVID in New Hampshire when she spoke. Dr. Daly basically told us they were mostly dying from other causes. It is hard to understand why the government, media, and educational institutions were so gung-ho to coerce healthy people and pregnant women to be injected with an experimental vaccine.

President Kim, if you wish to strengthen your own authoritarianism in North Korea, you should study our CIA and its grip on our mainstream media.

There’s a third dotard, the worst of all, Anthony Fauci, Toney Baloney. Totard helped censor reasonably cheap medicines, like protocols with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, that were curing people all during 2020. Instead, Totard and Dotard tag-teamed to inflict more than 70% of us with the COVID experimental vaccine. Later, long after the COVID experimental vaccine was known to do more harm than good, Joetard mandated that healthcare workers and those employed by government contractors be injected with this bioweapon. By the way, Totard spent millions of US tax dollars helping fund a Chinese bio-war lab’s COVID research.

There are two recent independent studies on the results of COVID vaccination. One, based on data from 17 countries, found that one in 800 COVID vaccine recipients died from a COVID shot. The other, based on data from five countries, conservatively found one in 1000 died from COVID shots. Both studies found no compensating benefits. One in 800 means 17 million died worldwide from the shots; 1 in 1000 means more than 13 million died. Neither study accounts for long-term effects and illnesses yet to be discovered nor the costs of the many non-fatal adverse effects of these shots.

Back in the USA, insurance companies that insure employed individuals (one of our healthiest demographics) report a 40% increase in death and disabilities during 2021, the year that many of the employed were coerced into taking the COVID jabs (10% is two-sigma, i.e., very unlikely). About half the increase were COVID-related deaths.

None of the three, Dotard, Totard, and Joetard, have admitted wrongdoing nor apologized. Dotard is right about Nikki Haley, though. She is a throwback to the authoritarianism and militarism of the Bush Crime Family ($6 trillion spent on failing war efforts, the patriot Act, TSA…).

Anyway, have a great year. If you are ever in Keene, NH, please say hello.

Our library has the book Cause Unknown by Ed Dowd, a great 90-minute read. Another great book is Turtles All the Way Down Vaccine Science and Myth (first Chapter is all you need). Our library also has the movie VAXXED, don’t miss it! It explains how government agencies and capitalist corporations cooperate to lie to the public, punish whistleblowers, poison the public, and falsify health-related research.

In case you are interested, I’ll be voting for Robert F Kennedy Jr or Governor DeSantis who both acted heroically and in the interest of the public in their responses to COVID. Unlike the Dotard, Governor DeSantis was competent, reduced Florida’s debt, and wasn’t disloyal to his wife and kids.

P.S. I’ve also summarized three years of New Hampshire COVID death data from NH state records (below).

Please pay particular attention to the bottom line, showing that the proportion of citizens dying with COVID under age 70 tripled when the COVID experimental vaccine was made available to them and coerced. Please feel free to call with questions, there’s much more to share: 603 354 3380 mrzvyp@aol.com

• Canadian Independent Study 
• Kirsch Study
• Employee Group Life Insurance Industry

 

 

The views and opinions expressed by contributors are those of the author and may not reflect the opinion or position of Grok Media, GraniteGrok.com, its authors, advertisers, donors, or sponsors.

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We’ve been saying it for months. Biden will likely have the Democrat party nomination handed to him, but not long after, he will have to drop out. Would that make this the third consecutive DNC primary fraud – where the party lets voters think they are choosing their candidate? It’s probably more than three, but I digress.

I’m still surprised they didn’t kill him in 2020 and claim he died of COVID, replacing him with a younger champion of the Party’s Public Health INdustrial Omplex Laundromat. Talk about earned COVID tyranny media. But that didn’t happen. Instead, they crammed the ballot boxes and pushed his barely functioning carcass into the Oval Office. A meat puppet is always more desirable than someone who might try to do what they want. And you’d be right to wonder why that might not apply in 2024.

Weekend at Bernie’s.

They can’t keep this up much longer. They are likely holding their breath, hoping Biden makes it to the DNC Klan Bake to grab another nomination. I’m sure it’s a huge concern. But he’s done; we’ve been calling it for months, and some analyst at JP Morgan came out last week and said the same thing.

In the financial service company’s lengthy “Eye on the Market: Outlook 2024” report, Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, listed 10 “surprises” for the year.

One of them is that Biden will withdraw from the presidential race for “health reasons sometime between Super Tuesday and the November election.”

Super Tuesday — when 16 states hold their primaries — is March 5 this year, while the general election is eight months later on Nov. 5.

Cembalest suggested the party’s nomination would be passed to a “replacement candidate named by the Democratic National Committee.”

It’s not a difficult prognostication to make. The DNC has been picking its candidates for years. Democrats aren’t excited about Biden. The decline is more evident than ever. He’s incapable of doing any job, let alone pretending to be America’s chief executive. Lucky for him, he just has to show up and read his lines, but this trained chimp has aged out, and they need a new monkey.

Pete Buttigieg isn’t that chimp, nor is Amy Klobuchar or Liz Warren. Most of the 2020 primary field that was not Biden isn’t on anyone’s radar, which is hilarious. That may not stop them from lobbying for the gig or winning the blue ring.

I’d love to see some Vegas odds on Biden’s replacement – everything else about the election does. I couldn’t find any, but the list of possible replacements centers on Democrat Governors like Newsom, Whitmer, Pritzker, Cooper, and Murphy.

Kamala is a no-go; she’s less popular than Biden. And no mention of Michelle Obama, though her name keeps popping up in the dreams of Machine Media stenographers.

I am sticking to my guns on that. Michelle Hates DC. She loves the attention, fame, money, and vacations but not the environment or the work. She has no reason to give up four years of a millionaire’s life for that, and I think it’s because she lacks the convictions that drive someone like Trump. He’s willing to give up a comfortable retirement to help working-class Americans. Michelle will pander to them for an inflated speaking fee.

So, it is anyone’s guess, and I’ll keep looking for the Vegas odds – those folks are good at this sort of thing, but between the convention and November, it has become accepted wisdom that Biden will not be on the Presidential Ticket, which means Harris likely won’t either – ditching Biden is the best way to ditch her and they want to lose her more than him.

Give us your guess as to who will replace them in the chat or why if you disagree.

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