Monday • May 29 • 2023
Vol.XV • No.XXII
Manchester, N.H.
Each year, thousands of people in the US are diagnosed with dysphagia. While most of the people diagnosed are elderly, this condition can occur at any age. If you want to learn about dysphagia and what to do if you’ve recently been diagnosed, check out the simple guide below.
What is Dysphagia?It is a medical condition. A person with dysphagia finds it difficult to swallow some foods or liquids, which can result in them going down the windpipe. Dysphagia is not a disease. It is a condition that occurs due to a disorder, illness, or disease. It can be caused by several things, including Motor Neurone Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s Disease, Dementia, mouth or throat cancer, or a stroke.
Signs of DysphagiaHere are some of the most common signs of dysphagia:
Not everyone who is diagnosed with dysphagia will have it for life. Some people only have this condition briefly before it clears up. However, the majority of people with a swallowing disorder have it long-term. This means that they have to learn to live with the condition.
Treating DysphagiaTreatment for dysphagia will usually depend on the cause. Most instances of dysphagia can be improved with treatment; however, a cure isn’t always possible. Some of the treatments for dysphagia include:
If dysphagia is left untreated, you may experience further problems. One of the most common problems is choking or coughing when food gets into your windpipe. If this happens often, you may avoid eating, which can lead to malnutrition and dehydration.
Many people struggle to come to terms with a diagnosis of dysphagia. They worry that it will prevent them from doing things such as going out for meals with friends. However, while dysphagia isn’t a pleasant condition to live with, it can be managed, meaning people with this condition can live a long, happy, and healthy life.
The post A Simple Guide to Living with Dysphagia appeared first on Granite Grok.
After looking through the extensively documented and verified communications, pictures and overt commissions on the Hunter Biden laptop, as presented in the Marco Polo report, the magnitude of the Biden crime family is as global as it is unnerving. The amount of criminal activity in the United States alone is enough for Hunter, his dad and uncles to all serve lengthy prison sentences from which they should emerge penniless. Instead they remain free to continue to live above the law with almost no serious scrutiny of their activities, with Joe sitting in power over the very Department of Justice sworn to keep people like he and his family from fleecing the American public.
Several storylines emerge from this report that raise questions we as a nation need to ask ourselves. How has a family like this been able to fly under the radar for so long and with so little accountability? Why haven’t the applicable agencies done their jobs when given the evidence of crimes? Why does it seem like there is a separate set of laws for the American elite versus the average citizen? What does it say about us as a nation that we allow a family like this to rule over us with impunity? When will we have had enough of being intimidated and embarrassed by our fellow countrymen?
The answer to the first question comes back to both the establishment in D.C. and the establishment in the media. Thankfully the internet and social media have caused the rapid spread of news that, for years, was being suppressed. This new connectivity is why we know about Jeffrey Epstein and the menagerie of elite who benefited from his services, including another president who repeatedly lies to us, Bill Clinton. Epstein was also in tight enough at Harvard and M.I.T. that he had an office and was on a first name basis with law professor Alan Dershowitz, already accused by one Epstein victim, and the otherwise avuncular socialist and linguistic expert Noam Chomsky. Included in Epstein’s flight log was Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a banker, who can be seen pictured with Hillary Clinton whom she supported as a political candidate. Oddly we don’t find the Biden’s in Epstien’s black book despite their obvious proclivity to enjoy the same lifestyle. However both groups were protected by a media either lax in its duties or suppressed by those off camera quietly running the show. Were we to name names this article would be prohibitively long, however these people are indicative of the establishment. If you have to ask who is in the establishment that simply means you aren’t in it. The Biden’s are.
The establishment includes the carefully selected power players who ascend to the high positions in the agencies sworn to uphold the laws. Having double-minded men and women administering two-standards of justices is nothing new in American politics. There is more than enough evidence that J. Edgar Hoover operated in similar fashion thanks to the exhaustive research done by Whitney Webb in her two-part series titled One Nation Under Blackmail. In it she chronicles the apparent beginnings of utilitarian relationship between federal law enforcement and the mafia. Again, Webb names too many players to attempt to list them here however the mechanics of the establishment are well worn even as early as the 1960s, a decade made famous by the assassination of those who would push back against those in power. That one decade saw courageous men like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy and his brother and sitting president John F. Kennedy, who we believed to be the most powerful man in the world, all taken down with relative ease and with little public outcry about the guns that brought them down. Such cryptic synonyms as Donald Trump’s “Deep State”, Thomas Sowell’s “the anointed” or the legendary “Illuminati” imply the hidden hand of global control. However they are more than happy to work right out in the open, especially if the goal is to intimidate those who would push back against them. The Biden’s clearly are built to benefit by playing along. Joe Biden is a career politician who is loyal to the system for which he now serves as a figurehead, replete with cue cards and instructions. His brothers, sons, daughter and other family members have all participated willfully to enjoy the corrupt largesse.
The slow take-over of America’s institution by the unscrupulous elite is the work of over a century. Originally a nation built on Judeo-Christian values we have slowly moved in the direction of a secular hedonistic culture, right to the top. Epstein and the Biden’s epitomize this fact. Not surprisingly we find the Biden’s connected to Hollywood, were American hedonism has been virtually perfected. The now openly satanic rituals paraded in front of the cameras and crowds belie the ignorance of the celebrated class.
Whether they believe in the literal Satan or not, they are apparently unaware of the historic fate of people and cultures who give themselves over to the satanic values of wanton sexual gratification, tasteless debauchery, narcissism and greed. As this class of people fills the halls of power the gears of government become sclerotic and slow. Why? Because narcissistic pleasure seekers can’t be bothered with doing their jobs competently. They arrived on entitlement and excuses and will use them as they prove they are incompetent or criminal, which we’ve seen repeatedly with this administration. Diversity hire Pete Buttigeig (Harvard) is laughably bad at running the transportation department where he is unqualified; deputy admin assistant for the office of nuclear energy, Sam Brinton (M.I.T.), wears his criminal evidence after stealing other people’s luggage; assistant health secretary Rachel Levine, formerly Richard (Harvard), doesn’t appear to be healthy by any physical or medical metric including psychological; Demetri Daskalakis (Harvard) seems more interested in worshiping satan via BDSM gear than solving the monkey pox problem unique to his diverse G-group.
What awful people these appear to be, but I’m reminded of Romans 2 where, after describing the same crowd of his time, Paul tells the reader:
“You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, far at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” (Romans 2:1)
Really? Yes, really. Which is why we are being ruled by these reprobates. We deserve the very leadership we have, no different than in the time of Judges when the Israelites lived among one another where “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.” (Judges 21:25)
We too have no king. We have abandoned the one who offered to protect us and keep us from harm while blessing our faithfulness. His title is on our money, yet we worship the dollar more than the deity.
Hunter Biden flat out rejects God. In his own words he says to his fixer George Mesires:
“[God is]…just a fictional character from the imagination of the collective frightened.” (1/1/2019)
When you believe there is no God, suddenly the laws that bind us to respect one another have far less meaning and authority. We “do as we see fit”. In Hunter Biden’s case that means sleep with your dead brother’s wife, girls your daughter’s age, do crack with hookers in penthouses around the world and broker deals with international deep pockets using your dad’s last name, all the while lying about it to a public looking to trust you and your father.
The truth is I was just like Hunter Biden at one point in my life. Just as debauched and godless and empty. Like him I partied myself into a corner, only I didn’t have the inexhaustible funds of a politically connected dad to bail me out. In fact it was my lack of father that likely catapulted me down that road.
Even after all of this the American people are forgiving. I think we can even see a future where we forgive the Biden’s, but they have to come clean, and we have to hold them to account.
With this trust broken, the only recourse for the public is to speak to the power elite by dint of the laws that protect us from them, starting with the first amendment. Otherwise the swamp will continue to produce more reptiles like the ones we suffer now.
The post Biden Laptop part 3: The Reckoning appeared first on Granite Grok.
Even as Joe Biden proclaims, a la 1984 and Animal House, “Keep calm! All is well!” most of us need only look at the difference between what goes into the grocery bag and what comes out of our wallets and know that things are not well.
And if we want to make things better, we dang well better not stay calm at all!
Look at the difference between Trump and Biden!
It is stark, the difference, yes? Bideninflation has stolen any kind of overall wage increases from the American people. As Powerline points out:
This is the chart that ought to terrify Democrats, as the question “are you better off than you were four years ago?” will be the killer question for the 2024 election.
Are you better off? I’m not.
And it should be terrifying for Dems – just look at all of their policies and point to me, just ten that are making our lives better. Heck, try five!
It shouldn’t have to be the Republicans that point this out all the time – we KNOW this every time we yank out our wallets and have to pay for something. And then the Government is taking more and more from us as it seems that every month and quarter, Government revenues rise. Yet they just can’t stop spending our money to make themselves feel as if they are doing something wonderful.
(H/T: Powerline)
The post “This Is the Chart That Ought To Terrify Democrats” – Real Average Weekly Earnings 2007-2023 appeared first on Granite Grok.
I touched on this topic recently, but it deserves a designated post because it was such an egregious act by the Great Unifier, Joe Biden. Biden is showing he does not understand American society.
He professed to be the gentleman in the White House. He claimed to be the one person who could heal the divide created by Donald Trump. Joe promised to be the President of all the people, not just the Democrats. Like everything else in the last 28 months, he has fallen short on all. Biden wants America to give him four more years to finish the job. We say no thanks, Joe. You have done enough damage for a lifetime.
With all those claims and promises in his history, Joe Biden went to Howard University, an all-Black university in Washington, D.C., and told the graduating class that the greatest terrorist threat to American Society is the scourge of White Supremacy. Ordinarily, President Biden points to Climate Change as the number one threat. Still, when standing in front of thousands of Black graduates, he patronizes and insults them with a tainted message. His message is an affront to every American.
Biden, and His fellow Democrat, Hank Johnson (D-GA), need a history refresher. Johnson insulted Republicans last week with disgusting rhetoric. He claimed that Republicans love seeing illegals lined up on the Border, identifying them as cheap labor, and Republicans would return to slavery if they had their way. This repugnant individual does not deserve a seat in the People’s House. He and Biden need to get their facts straight on which side of Slavery the Democrats stood.
It was the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, who took steps to abolish slavery in America. It is Republicans who see the damage this influx of illegal migrants from around the world will impart on the Black and Brown citizens of America. It is the Republicans who know the pressure these illegals will put on social services, housing, and schools. It is the Republicans who understand the economics and the impact this mass of humanity will have on wages and the cost of living.
It is Biden and his Democrat colleagues who stoke racism in speeches and on the floor of the House and Senate. It is the Left who supported the KKK, and it was Senator Robert Byrd who was a high-ranking member of the Klan and uttered the following words:
As late as 1946, Byrd wrote to the Klan’s Grand Wizard: “The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation.”
Biden is distorting history and truth, but what is working for him is the beauty of gaslighting. If you keep saying something, right or wrong, frequently and get the support of the media to repeat it for you, eventually, it is perceived as the truth. That is what Biden has created. He has the Left believing that the Radical MAGA Republicans, which in his world is everyone on the Right, are White Supremacists and a threat to people of color and all of America.
The only way we can shut down Biden and the Left in 2024 is by getting our word out to the public, who are being indoctrinated by the Left’s creed and protected by censorship of the words of the Right. We have to turn off the gas on Biden and offset his word with ours. We need to keep repeating the truth as often as feasible and use the infinite power of the internet to negate the mainstream media.
The post Biden Uses Smokescreen of Racism appeared first on Granite Grok.
I would have thought, given my background, that I would have taken much more interest in AI tech – which has sprung out onto the scene with ChatGPT, Bard, PaLM2, and updated Bing (Forbes has a lot of others listed here). Thus far, however, it has been a yawning “meh?”
Sunday night, on a whim, I wanted to see what they knew about GraniteGrok, and then about Rights, and then about Transgenderism and Rights.
There will be more on the latter in another set of posts about how both Google’s and Microsoft’s offerings are biased. Both said they weren’t “debating,” but either they haven’t been fed enough data for a 360-degree look at things, or they have but have been steered toward sticking their virtual thumbs on the virtual Culture scales.
As you all know, I’ve been writing about “Normals vs. Transgenders” for a while. You see, the Left decided to weaponize our children and decided that their battlefield was going to be in our taxpayer-funded Government schools. They saw that there were plenty of shock troops ready to take orders from those guiding the battlefield tactics as well as the ammo to use against unsuspecting parents who normally would be against what was being surreptitiously taught (Critical Race Theory, gender dysphoria).
Anyways, it was getting late, and I was starting to wind up my time at the keyboard when this email came in with a really good insight that I couldn’t ignore (emphasis mine):
—– Original Message ——
From <redacted>
To “Editor@granitegrok.com” <Editor@granitegrok.com>
Date 5/14/2023 11:17:44 PM
Subject OpinionToday, young adults talk about rights and privileges but forty years ago, young adults talked about obligations and responsibilities.
NEWSFLASH KIDS: Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They are privileges and the “Bill of Privileges” gets shorter and shorter every year.
The writer is correct, you know. We hear all the time about a right to this and a right to that an a right to some other thing which tells you that they know nothing about what a real Right is all about. They probably can barely pronounce “entitlement” and most certainly can’t spell it without a spell-checker but it’s clear they confuse that with a Right. Their version of a Right is “you need to GIVE me something (generally for free)” versus “it is something that is innately part of me at birth”.
It’s also true that with Rights come responsibilities – your Freedom of Speech is inherent and Government can’t stop you from your expression of ideas. There used to be respect for that in the general population that it applied in the Public Square as well. However, a lack thereof has been growing in that the Left believes in their Free Speech but not for yours – while they decry a “Power Imbalance” on our part, they depend on it to do what they do (‘YOU do as I say and I’ll ignore what I say to you for myself”).
My response:
Nailed it!
For whatever reason, I have stayed up too long debating Google’s AI product, Bard. I will have to post my conversation with it over Rights (speech, transgender, preferred pronouns, being told I need to be respectful to transgenders. A quick example:
So I took the bolded part of our emailer’s concern, and just for grins and giggles, I put it in:
Me: Today, young adults talk about rights and privileges but forty years ago, young adults talked about obligations and responsibilities.Why is that?
I was surprised by the answer (emphasis mine and NOT Bard’s):
Bard: There are a number of reasons why young adults today talk about rights and privileges more than obligations and responsibilities.
- The rise of individualism. In recent decades, there has been a growing emphasis on individualism in Western society. This has led to a focus on the rights and needs of the individual, rather than the group. This is reflected in the way that young adults talk about their lives.
- The decline of traditional values. Traditional values, such as hard work, self-reliance, and community service, have declined in recent decades. This has led to a sense of entitlement among young adults, who believe that they deserve certain things without having to work for them.
- The influence of the internet. The internet has made it easier for young adults to connect with others who share their values and beliefs. This has created a sense of community and support, which can lead to a focus on rights and privileges.
- The changing economy. The economy has changed significantly in recent decades. The job market is more competitive, and it is harder for young adults to find good jobs. This has led to a sense of frustration and anger, which can manifest itself in a focus on rights and privileges.
It is important to note that not all young adults talk about rights and privileges more than obligations and responsibilities. There are still many young adults who are committed to their communities and who are willing to work hard to achieve their goals. However, the trends that I have mentioned are real, and they are having a significant impact on the way that young adults think about their lives.
The above emphasis is mine. It’s also not wrong. However, I did note that it didn’t bring up the start of it all (to a point) of the “self-esteem / participation trophy” craziness in schools that led to overblown “sense of myself” attitudes and “snowflakes”.
I do have to admit that the three issues Bard focused on are dead nuts on ESPECIALLY the second one. By denigrating traditional American values, the Left set the stage for most of the shift in emphasis of what is important. Unfortunately, that shift was to what I consider “hollow” values – they serve well as talking or screaming points but there’s little substance behind them as when you question the young’uns (and not so young either), they end up regurgitating the same points as they have no depth or breadth of knowledge. It’s surface level stuff without the deep philosophical underpinnings that traditional values have (or is that now “had”?).
There is a bit of sad amusement in that while these mostly young Leftists concentrate on “Rights”, they are all about abusing those Founders that did the deep study, writing, debating, and discussing “Rights” that made them manifest in our Founding documents. Which the Left hates as well.
Talk about cognitive dissonance!
Note: the image above is an unofficial logo created by a Reddit commenter. I asked Bard, and it said that there is no official sponsored logo for it yet.
The post So I Was Tinkering Around with Microsoft’s New A.I., Bard, Sunday Night appeared first on Granite Grok.
On Saturday, June 3rd, author Elliot "Alu" Axelman will be meeting local readers in Manchester, discussing his book Presumed Guilty, and signing copies of his books. The event will be hosted by The Bookery, located at 844 Elm street in Manchester and will run from 4-6pm. The bookstore has been a staple of the community since 2018. The latter part of the event will feature a sneak-peek preview of his ninth book.
The post Alu Axelman Holding Book-Signing Event In Manchester! appeared first on The Liberty Block.
The triggering spark of evil is everywhere, while the victims remain in peril. Recently after purchasing bananas at a local supermarket in Merrimack, NH, I noticed a Disney label attached to the Dole sticker on the bananas.
Knowing that Mickey Mouse is not a friend of the family anymore, 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.
By giving the credibility of their marketing expertise to a woke, degenerative anti-family cause, these woke enterprises contaminate all who partner with them with a perverted mindset that targets the minds and hearts of innocent children for profit. Good public relations will not be gained by joining hands with the same satanic roots of moral decline that dominate our nation’s capitol that 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, that will cover the morally degenerate nature that Disney has become.
Below is a sample of their moral pollution aimed at the minds of your children: (i apologize for the obscene and blasphemous nature of this “tip of the iceberg” of moral pollution by Disney that follows)
“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.” Do we as a civilized nation want to tolerate this moral degenerative pollution that just several decades ago violated laws and all moral decency to be passed on to our children as normal and acceptable?
Please consider this quote from The American Family Associations (afa.net), 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. Woke business is not good for business; even with Mickey Mouse on the side of this moral indecency, customers will not overlook the potential harm to their children. For Americans still believe the key pillar of Western Civilization is the Godly-ordained family and place the protection of their children as first priority.
Check out the woke status of corporations at the 1792 Exchange. The future your children will inherit tomorrow depends on what we do today.
The post Bananagate And Little Demon Revisited appeared first on Granite Grok.
I want to bring your attention to some recent tweets from Jesse Kelly because it should help you understand why the NHGOP are such LOSERS. In my words, not his … it’s because they either don’t know what we, the GOP voters, are up against or they do know, but they either (i) don’t care, (ii) don’t have the stomach for the fight or (iii) don’t know how to fight.
Whether it is because they believe it is a winning strategy or they have some pathetic, insatiable need for a pat on the head and an “attaboy” / “he’s one of the good ones,” they are always trying to make nice-nice with EVIL. And evil is NOT too strong a word for it … people who want to abort eight and nine month old unborn babies are evil; people who want to chemically-castrate pre-teens are evil; people who believe skin-color is everything are evil.
If you consider … or even don’t believe it, but just say it … that people like Matt Wilhelm and Rosemarie Rung are your “friends,” “colleagues,” blah, blah, blah, the you are taking a piss on GOP voters. Wilhelm, Rung and their ilk … i.e., the vast majority of NH-Democrat State Reps and State Senators … are COMMUNISTS. Unless and until the NHGOP understands that, accepts that, AND embraces that, the NHGOP is going to continue to lose.
The right fails to fight back correctly because it fails to get the right mindset and it fails to get the right mindset because it fails on language.
I still see a lot of “soft on crime DA” talk when I see them talk about Soros DAs.
1/— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) May 12, 2023
The post Why The NHGOP Are Such Losers appeared first on Granite Grok.
Amazing how Joe Biden takes credit for the decrease in Border crossings as he claims White Supremacy was America’s biggest threat when he addressed graduates at Howard University on Saturday. Usually, the number one threat is climate change, but when addressing an all-Black graduating class, you have to patronize them using the White Supremacy card. Biden has nothing to do with the decrease as he worked to end Title 42 and open our Border to the world. The reduction results from the work done by the State of Texas and its National Guard to fortify the Border and force illegal crossers to pass through a formal checkpoint.
It is amazing how Secretary Mayorkas, one of the most inept secretaries in Biden’s cabinet, was also taking credit for the same results. Sorry, Mr. Secretary, everything you have done has been to erase our Border and destroy our sovereignty. Mayorkas should be impeached and charged with treason for allowing drugs, gangs, and terrorists to enter our country without vetting. He should send a thank-you note to Governor Abbott for doing his job for him.
The videos do not lie. Yes, there are definitely families crossing the Border, but the shelters in Texas are filling up with single males. One shelter designed to hold 1,000 people currently houses over 6,000 single men. As the camera scans the scene, you see middle-aged men with no women or children in sight.
People in northern and western states are starting to fight back against the government’s policies for handling illegals. A hotel in Newburg, New York, is expelling homeless veterans to make room for illegal migrants. Black groups in Chicago are livid that the city is moving illegals ahead of homeless blacks for shelter space. New York and Chicago have declared a state of emergency with the increased number of illegals entering their cities, putting a massive burden on states and taxpayers. California has erased a $10 Billion surplus and now has a $30 Billion deficit partly due to a stream of taxpayers leaving the state while the benefits given to the illegals grow. This problem is basic math with more dollars spent versus fewer dollars collected.
People allowed into America receive notice-to-appear orders with dates for their hearings in 2026. That is three years of limbo for these people, far from the humanitarian way that the Biden Administration claims they are treating these new illegal residents. These people arrive here with no money, most owe money to the coyotes, and they only have the clothes on their backs. These people immediately become a burden to the social safety net in whatever city they land in.
This Border Crisis exposes Biden and his feckless team for mismanaging the Border and having no specific plan for the millions who will be granted access. In the meantime, the gangs are swelling, and the amount of Fentanyl confiscated at the Border \grows. The amount gathered is not a good story, as it also means an increased amount making it into the drug underworld. Biden may be taking a victory lap on his bicycle in Delaware, but cities and towns all over the country are preparing for the culture-changing impact this wave of migrants bring with them. This story has no chance of a happy ending for Biden or America, and it will battle with the economy for the top spot in the 2024 campaigns.
The post Border Not As Bad As Predicted, No Thanks to Joe appeared first on Granite Grok.
Special Prosecutor John Durham has finally delivered the goods, and there’s not much there we did not already know. No knockout blows, but Democrats will need to decide how to spin another investigation exposing the FBI’s systemic confirmation bias.
And not in any way favorable to their long-standing narratives about Trump.
The Mueller Report fell flat. The Michael Horowitz report made the Mueller Report even less helpful. And now John Durham has arrived to tell us what Democrats still refused to believe. There was some there-there; the FBI broke the law, lied, coerced, and used its resources to attack a sitting president(and anyone close to him) because that’s what Democrats wanted. He doesn’t say that, but it’s obvious.
“We conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law.”
There is no smoking gun unless the confirmation of the politically partisan nature of investigations can be called one. The locus of the inquiry was Clinton oppo sold as fact while facts about Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified material (that we know was stolen by the Chinese) were overblown. A trend continued with the Hunter Biden Laptop story, among others.
I guess Hillary never pissed off “The Clintons” or “The Obamas” enough to warrant a proper public pillorying; I suspect Biden’s about to get his, but only enough to get him to drop out of his reelection race. No one needs to dig too deep. There are other Party Leaders who have much to lose if implicated.
As for the Durham Report, I wonder if anyone will go back and fisk James Comey’s book now that it’s out?
“…based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither the U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation,”
Has the FBI become the single biggest threat to Democracy in America? We all know how vital The Democracy is to Democrats. Does this put a little hitch in their step?
Is that why Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten has suggested that teachers future-proof their social media feeds? “@AFTunion has partnered w/LifeBrand for a 25% discount off the cost of this powerful tool that scans your social media to catch forgotten posts that may not reflect who you are today,”
Weingarten probably thinks that there are a few woke grooming turds littering the virtual lawns of AFT dues-paying harpies, and as 2024 rolls up, it would be great if those were, you know, gone. But this latest embarrassment can’t be dismissed. While you are removing anything about genderizing other people’s kids, get rid of the Trump-Russia Collusion outrage too.
Is the DNC offering a discount to elected Dems? Will your state or local Democrat Party do something similar? There are millions of examples of Demcorats being wrong about many things (crime, cops, the climate, Trump), and the Durham report just made scrubbing those imperative.
Will Big Media use Winston Smith-like censors to correct the history and their part in the lie? Does anyone need to return any journalism awards?
I expect a purge, so get to screengrabbing as soon as possible, but if you miss out, no worries. And not just the social media feeds of your local Democrat scold. Do some searching in the local media as well for the sake of posterity. We can share them alongside all those failed predictions of climate doom.
And don’t worry about the Never-Trumpers. They won’t even think of it. Besides, removing lies about the former president could put their anti-Trump bona fides at risk and cost them an invite to a Georgetown mixer.
We wouldn’t want that to happen, now, would we?
As for the FBI, they are pretending to take this latest blow seriously. “This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect,” it added.”
And this new FBI is expected to begin work when the seas rise and swallow up Obama’s gas-powered beachfront mansion?
The post The Durham Report Confirms The FBI is a Partisan Threat to Democracy appeared first on Granite Grok.
Here is one very disturbing report coming from Mat Staver, chairman of The Liberty Counsel ever America needs to be aware of. The United Nations’ World Health Organization (“WHO”) will shortly be meeting to discuss a new treaty they want Biden to force America to sign up for. This is far more than something relating to just health issues it’s something that puts the U.N. in charge of everything.
Everything, you think? It would mean:
On top of everything on that list, they want America to pay for the whole thing!
Now if this sounds to you, as it does to me, like the back door entrance to make the United Nations the defacto one-world government, we are right. This is of course exactly the American Left’s biggest wish and Biden’s puppet masters’ goal. All he has to do is sign on the dotted line and every American will be reduced from Citizen to subject of a proven corrupt and incompetent U.N. with the privilege of paying for it, too. What a deal!
You can also guess all the countries who will get a pass on signing this: China, N.Korea, India, and all the Muslim countries. Sadly, those other countries who sign on but fail to comply will never be sanctioned (e.g. Putin’s Russia, Cuba, as well as any totalitarian dictatorship) but will never fear they won’t still get all the benefits and support the great and benevolent U.N.WHO can dole out.
This is nothing but a trap for America, liberals or conservatives. All will suffer together.
[Editor’s Note: A true treaty must be voted on by the US Senate before becoming legalized. However, Presidential Executive Orders might get most of this done anyways – that’s how Democrat Presidents roll as they say they don’t have the authority to do something….and then do it anyways. DACA, anyone?]
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Competency-Based Education (CBE) is a fundamental shift away from a knowledge-based education to a workforce training model. It was said during the Obama administration that he was going to redesign public education. Most people had no idea what he meant, but education researchers knew exactly what he intended to do to public schools across America.
CBE has been tried by individual states before. During the ’90s, they called it Outcome Based Education. Prior to OBE, they called it Mastery Learning. As parents eventually realized that the model shifted time away from learning the core academic subjects, they would demand an end to experimenting on their children.
CBE, coupled with the dumbed-down Common Core and Next Generation Science standards, are a big setup for failure in our public schools. Private schools wouldn’t touch this because they have to answer to parents who pay the tuition.
Schools across New Hampshire have been implementing changes inside the classroom for several years now. CBE officially started in New Hampshire in 2003. The move away from teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning has been sold as new and innovative, but anyone who researches education policies knows this is not new or innovative. Since CBE is workforce training, it starts in Kindergarten. Requiring teachers in every class to develop workforce skills now requires teachers to implement “skills” training into the day. But what does C.S. Lewis have to say about an education focused on training instead of knowledge?
Such training, he writes, “aims at making not a good man but a good banker, a good electrician, . . . or a good surgeon.” Lewis does admit the importance of such training–for we cannot do without bankers and electricians and surgeons–but the danger, as he sees it, is the pursuit of training at the expense of education. “If education is beaten by training, civilization dies,” he writes, for “the lesson of history” is that “civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost.” It is the liberal arts, not vocational training, that preserves civilization by producing reasonable men and responsible citizens.
Lewis goes on to note that this paradigm shift will result in a significant cost to the students and civilization. Why do children need knowledge? To avoid the errors of our time. Liberal Arts is a knowledge based model, CBE is a workforce skills-based model.
In “Why ‘Competency-Based Education’ Will Deepen America’s Education Crisis” published in The Federalist, Jane Robbin describes the problem with this shift away from a focus on knowledge to a focus on dumbed-down workforce training.
CBE: it aims not for excellent, but for good enough.
Since CBE is useless in academic disciplines that don’t lend themselves to digitally measurable outcomes, we’ll inevitably see further narrowing of curricula, so that the “measurable” disciplines crowd out the humanities. This fits well with the workforce-development philosophy of Common Core, which aims to convert all of K-12 education into utilitarian job-training.
This narrowing of curricula is more apparent than ever. Students in public schools are lucky to learn history, geography, or even the sciences during the school week. Gates and his cohorts of education reformers made it clear that the focus is on learning the minimum in math, reading, and writing. That’s why legislators had to pass a state law that schools must now teach cursive writing and multiplication facts. While some cheered for the passage of this law (for good reason), I kept pointing out that this law is a direct reflection of the failure of our public schools to teach academic content. No longer are they teaching basic academic content to children because they are focusing on training workers.
During the testimony before the House and Senate Education Committee, a few teachers testified that their students no longer understand the basics when it comes to Civics. Civics skills have been elevated instead. Your children may learn to become the best protesters and community organizers, but they may never know how a bill becomes a law, why we say the pledge of allegiance, and never read some of the most important founding documents.
A parent Litchfield recently contacted me about her child’s class stepping outside during the school day to protest getting people to stop at stop signs. What does that teach New Hampshire students? That’s a good question.
Take a look here at what 8th graders learned in 1954. See the difference between training and educating children?
Dumb down the core subjects with Common Core and Next Generation Science, then add the workforce training model that further dilutes quality academic content, and you end up with poor-quality instruction for children in our public schools.
Legislators try to add back what’s been eliminated, but what are our Governor and State Department of Education doing to improve public education? Why did Governor DeSantis prioritize improving academic standards in Florida, and students in New Hampshire are still subjected to dumbed-down standards, curricula, and tests? Why are our kids subjected to this failed model promoted by CBE gurus like Fred Bramante, who has no track record of improving public education in New Hampshire or anywhere else?
Jane Robbins ties CBE to digital tracking and data collection on students in public schools while, marginalizing or reducing teachers. Is this something parents asked for? During the school shutdowns, parents were clamoring to get their kids back into schools because they understood the value of the relationship between students and teachers.
If the goal is to force every American student into the data-collection system, this scheme works nicely.
Even worse, there’s little assurance that this enormously personal data—which should never have been collected in the first place—is secure from hacking. Federal investigations have uncovered the shocking lack of data security at USED, and stories of compromised student data are all too commonplace.
Bush and other CBE proponents don’t mention any of these considerations when touting competency-based training. Nor do they mention the effect on teachers, who would be marginalized if not ultimately replaced under CBE. If a teacher is reduced to merely unlocking the next computer screen when a student achieves a “competency,” why hire a professional when a less-expensive clerk will do?
There are problems in public education that certainly need to be addressed. We need teacher training to be focused on making sure the teacher knows the academic content, and has the best training to deliver it. We need better-quality academic standards and tests. We need to stop expecting public schools to address every social problem, and instead rely on social services outside the school system to address those needs.
Schools are now expected to address the mental and medical health of children. They are supposed to train them for the workforce and educate them on drugs, alcohol, gender, and radical race ideology.
The traditional liberal arts model would return public schools back to their mission which is to educate children. This would give them the ability to at least graduate with a base of knowledge to move into a career or attend college. Instead, the classroom has been watered down, and has become chaotic. This is innovative? It’s not only NOT innovative, it has been proven to be a failure. It makes you wonder if those in charge of education reform have some kind of intent to bring public schools to their knees in order to usher in more of their disastrous reforms.
If this listening tour comes to your town, ask Fred Bramante for the results. Show us all PEER REVIEWED and INDEPENDENT studies on New Hampshire students under the CBE model. He sells this model like a used-car salesman, he should show everyone how it’s working or NOT working!
Why is Fred Bramante re-writing the rules and now charged with selling them to the public? He’s been plugging for CBE in New Hampshire for years with no evidence that this scheme helps children or public schools.
Here are some sobering facts that will not be presented during this listening tour. Competency Based Ed was introduced in 2003. New Hampshire abolished the Carnegie Unit in 2005. New Hampshire districts were required to create competencies and begin measuring credit in these terms by the start of the 2008–09 school year.
Remember that radical 2Revolutions organization that pushes Critical Race Theory in public schools? They were involved in ushering in Competency Based Education in New Hampshire:
New Hampshire educators as well as the appropriate content area state associations working with the National Center for Assessment and the Center for Collaborative Education. In addition, the NHDOE hired 2Revolutions, an education design and consulting firm, to run the New Hampshire Network Strategy, an initiative to connect educators throughout the state so that they can share and build resources in areas such as data collection, performance assessment, and professional development in support of new competency-based models.
Before moving ahead with this model, the Commissioner should have commissioned an independent and peer reviewed study to determine what is working, and what is not working. There may be some components to this model that are worth noting, and promoting in our schools. However, as the students in Sanborn revealed, under Brian Stack’s tenure as Principal, Competency Based Education was a big problem. Brian Stack is now a CBE consultant and was part of the team who drafted new education rules for The New Hampshire Department of Education. Fred Bramante’s non-profit was tasked with developing the Education Rules for New Hampshire’s public schools.
The new rules reflect another big step towards the Competency Based Education model that will be forced on public schools, and teachers across the state. After two decades of this snake oil called Competency Based Education, New Hampshire is full steam ahead. Make sure you read what the students in Sanborn reported, then start demanding real answers from these players. One thing’s for sure, you will not get that kind of critical analysis from the people selling CBE in New Hampshire.
The post Dumbing Down Public Ed in NH: FULL STEAM AHEAD with Competency Based Education appeared first on Granite Grok.
A few days after Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in 2019, a non-profit he shared with Ghislaine Maxwell called TerraMar shut down. Ostensibly TerraMar was supposed to be a saving-the-oceans type non-profit. But it turns out that it was most likely a fake organization that didn’t really accomplish much of anything.
We want to thank Claire Best for this uncharacteristically brief contribution.
Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com
Nevertheless, it had on its board Amir Dosal of UN Women. Also on the board was Hunter Biden’s associate Patrick Ho of China’s Energy Company CEFC, and Brian Yurasits, who appears to live in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
A few months after Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest, Ghislaine Maxwell purchased “Tucked Away” in Bradford New Hampshire, via Granite Reality LLC, registered at 2 1/2 Beacon Street, Concord, New Hampshire.
When Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested she allegedly claimed to have citizenship of TerraMar. In it’s lifespan from 2012–2019, TerraMar apparently issued passports for the high seas. Scott Borgerson, her secret husband, was a former US Coastguard who founded Cargo Metric in 2010 (to track shipping container contents worldwide). He was also on the board of TerraMar and a friend of Senator John Kerry, who’d written an endorsement to a 2009 book by Borgerson on the oceans — “The National Interest and the Law of the Sea” (published by the Council on Foreign Relations). Epstein was also a friend of John Kerry’s and reportedly had 7 phone numbers for him.
In 2017, an executive at a maritime firm made multiple requests for project funding to TerraMar’s development director Brian Yuratsis that were ultimately denied despite Yuratsis professing interest in having TerraMar sponsor the project.[9][12][13] The maritime executive who made the requests stated that “My impression was that TerraMar as a whole was pretty hollow”, and that “It seemed like Brian was the entire organization.”[9]
What is disturbing about the TerraMar Project is not so much that it’s a shell non-profit but its ties to the United Nations and UN Women, especially in light of some other recent articles about Jeffrey Epstein and his social calendar from 2014.
William Burns, Director of the CIA, had three meetings with Epstein in 2014.
Epstein also worked closely with the International Peace Institute, which is tied to the International Rescue Committee, whose Director is Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights (2014–2018).
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein is IPI’s President and Chief Executive Officer.
Previously, Zeid served as the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2014 to 2018 after a long career as a Jordanian diplomat, including as his country’s Permanent Representative to the UN (2000–2007 & 2010–2014) and Ambassador to the United States (2007–2010). He served on the UN Security Council, was a configuration chair for the UN Peace-Building Commission, and began his career as a UN Peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein is on the registration papers for the International Rescue Committee listed in the Concord Building, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, New Hampshire.
The Concord address is the same as that for Virtus LLC (founded by disgraced Catholic Priest Edward Arsenault), Maximus Inc, Children’s Trust Fund, Dataminr and Dyncorp.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein seems to have somewhat of a controversial past himself. He was accused of retaliating against whistleblowers.
Coincidentally, Mary Boies, married to David Boies of Boies Schiller ( connected to Jeffrey Epstein, the Clintons, Hunter Biden, Patrick Ho, Harvey Weinstein and Elizabeth Holmes), is also on the board of the International Rescue Committee. KPMG did an audit of the International Peace Institute after Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest.
KPMG did an audit of the International Peace Institute after Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest.
KPMG is a strategic partner for the World Economic Forum, whose Young Global Leader section was initiated by Jeffrey Eptein’s alleged financier Leslie Wexner of Victoria’s Secret and The Limited fame.
KPMG is the auditor for three recently failed banks, including Silicon Valley Bank tied to Boston Private Bank whose New Hampshire registered address is at 2 1/2 Beacon Street, Concord, where, coincidentally, Ghislaine Maxwell’s “Granite Reality” is also registered.
Granite Realty LLC was set up by Jeffrey Roberts, an attorney in Boston who is tied to Thomas Curry. Thomas Curry was appointed as Comptroller of Currencies in 2012 by President Obama.
Recently released records show that Jeffrey Epstein stayed close to the De Rothschild family even in 2014.
(Lyn Forester de Rothschild had recommended Jeffrey Epstein to Bill Clinton for “Currency Stabilization” in 1995. She stepped down from Rothschild Holdings right after Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested. She is a close friend of the Clintons, and she solicited Jeffrey Epstein as a client for Deutsche Bank in 2013 when she was on the board.)
Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly had dinner with Bill Clinton in 2014.
The Clintons are close friends of Bill and Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Given the proximity of the Shaheens to the Clintons; the Clintons to Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein; the Maxwell & Epstein businesses in New Hampshire, it is bizarre that the Shaheens are not yet facing a grilling. Why did Shaheen & Gordon represent Ghislaine Maxwell? What is really going on at 10 Ferry Street, Concord, New Hampshire, and 2 1/2 Beacon Street, Concord, New Hampshire?
The US Virgin Islands have been intent on tracking down the money laundering network of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. New Hampshire would be the most obvious place to start with its $932.5 billion in Pandora Papers and the New Hampshire links to both via the Shaheens and Brian Yurasits/TerraMar.
Claire Best | Medium.com
The post Jeffrey Epstein’s New Hampshire Connections appeared first on Granite Grok.
You do not have to watch the news for long to realize we have lost control of our government, and some may say we have lost our way. We have a former President who has a significant lead in the polls against all challengers and head-to-head against Biden.
Trump wants to return to the White House, but he seems to be in court weekly defending himself from criminal and civil charges. We have a sitting President who is no longer in control of his faculties and would be 82 on day one of a second term. President Joe Biden is also the most corrupt President of all time, and Congress has released evidence of the Biden Crime Family receiving over $10 Million from Romania and China. The committee is yet to divulge the money the Biden’s have taken from Ukraine and Russia. There is something the people can do to take back some control from our overreaching government. That process was written into our Constitution by brilliant men who foresaw our government becoming unresponsive to the people. They gave us the Convention of States detailed in Article 5.
Mention the Convention of States (COS) to most people, especially Liberals, and they see a radical attempt at overthrowing our government. They would be wrong; the difficulty in achieving a COS is educating people on the goals and the process. A grassroots movement has been working hard for nearly a decade to bring the necessary petitions to Congress to force them under the Constitution to call for a Convention of States. The goals of COS are threefold and limited. The petition would call for Term Limits for Congress, a Balanced Budget Amendment, and restraint on Government Power, detailed explicitly in the Constitution. Is there anyone with a modicum of common sense and an understanding of the Constitution that doesn’t see the logic in these three proposed amendments.
Article V allows for the people to impact their government. We cannot wait for either party to suggest term limits. Congress is a country club where you get in and stay for life. With our interest payments on our debt greater than our defense budget, we need a harsh spending policy, and a balanced budget is the harshest. And which member of Congress will put a bill on the floor to limit power? It will not happen.
The Convention of States (COS) needs your help. No matter what state you live in, COS needs volunteers to fill roles. There are leadership, communications, social media, or people to solicit signatures on petitions-COS has a place for you. This is not a radical movement but a movement of the people. If you want to make a significant difference in your government, then COS is the movement for you.
Don’t take my word for it. Go to https://conventionofstates.com/ and get the facts. With 19 states already on board, there are only 16 more to accept the COS petitions, and then it is time to change the DC reach forever.
Click on and sign up and contact your state leadership for open positions you can fill. This is time for “We the People” to mean something.
The post Now, More Than Ever, We The People And COS appeared first on Granite Grok.
California Governor Gavin Newsom is a nuisance to his constituents, the state, and now to himself. That dog and pony show of a reparations committee he created has arrived at a number, and Newsom can’t afford it if he ever intended to go through with it.
There is some doubt.
“Creating this committee was yet another half-baked ploy for votes & accolades that has landed him in dangerous waters with no path to safety,” said Elizabeth Kolstad, Chairwoman of the Fresno County Republican Party. “What is clear, is if Gavin’s committee’s recommendations are implemented, CA is going to financially sink faster than the Titanic; only the Titanic’s lights were on when it went down.”
Gov Nuisance keeps talking up a good game, but creating a task force to reimburse people who were never slaves with money from people who never owned slaves feels like a Potemkin village. And the state is a fiscal train wreck with a 31.5 billion dollar deficit. People are fleeing east if they are able.
Promising to fiscally rape your residents for reparations in his tax-crazy regulatory nightmare of a state won’t slow that flow.
Adding a few million “migrants” is not likely to help ease either burden. But it’s typical Leftism at work. We have a housing shortage, resource issues, rising crime, homelessness, and poverty – how about a few million more impoverished mouths, and hey, let’s do reparations. If I were Mexican or Native American, I’d be pissed.
Hands out, don’t shoot?
We realize none of the people we’re paying off had “their land stolen,” but the Progressive White Guilt Reparations Fund is already a little light, and California can’t print its own money. What a blessing.
Maybe that whole notion about California slipping into the sea is better as a metaphor. Not physically be in every other way you can imagine. In which case, that’s already happened. Much of it is lost, and Gavin Newsom is just rearranging line items on a spreadsheet until the final judgment comes, part of which looks like, thank you for the reparations recommendation, but we may have to tie this to Net Zero. As in, that’s how much we can afford to pay out now or by 2035,
Not that this has ever stopped Democrats from making promises they never intend to keep.
HT | Legal Insurrection
The post California Gov. Gavin ‘Nuisance’ Snaps the Reparations Trap He Set for Himself appeared first on Granite Grok.
If nothing else, leftist propaganda can be fiendishly clever. Using selected facts and distorting them to suit their needs, those on the left are working hard to brand loving and courageous parents as radical enemies of free speech. Their disgusting claim that parents, and conservatives in general, are out to ban books is a transparent attempt to equate them to the fascists of 1933 Germany and the burning of all books they designated as anti-government. Those books included works by Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, and Helen Keller. Today, the left would have us believe that there’s no difference between those works and the pornographic material being thrust on young students across the country.
Putting aside that repugnant lie, their hypocrisy is staggering. In fact, they are the enemies of free speech. We see examples of it on college campuses, where conservative speakers are shouted down and run off one campus after another. We see it on social media, where conservative opinions are routinely blocked. And we see it in their leftist ideology, which allows no opposing opinions on issues ranging from race relations, to the LGBTQIA agenda, to climate change.
Those on the left, the woke warriors, have determined that only they can decide what speech can be allowed and what must be shut down. These self-appointed arbiters of social justice have infiltrated our private sector, our government, and our education system. Under the flag of diversity, equity, and inclusion, they’re dedicated to creating their own vision of a just society. In schools, they begin by dividing students by race, shaming one group, and exalting another. We used to call that segregation and discrimination.
And after inventing various euphemisms for what used to be called aberrant behavior, they’ve developed a bizarre plan to benefit the minute number of students troubled by those various behavior traits. Instead of helping them deal with their issues, they’ve chosen to accommodate them, to bring the rest of the student body into their world. Their misguided logic is simple: If everyone learns to embrace abnormal behavior, eventually it’s no longer considered abnormal, or even unusual. So young children, even toddlers, are now being exposed to material that would make a sailor blush. While parents struggle to shield their young children from salacious and inappropriate material, classrooms are handing out what can only be described as pornography. We used to call that pedophilia.
That is what parents are trying to keep away from their young children, and that’s why the left are accusing them of banning books. Those parents only want what’s best for their young children. They want them to have a quality education, while enjoying the precious innocence that’s supposed to come with childhood. They expect an education system that imparts knowledge without tampering with developing young psyches. And they don’t want their children to become obsessed with ideas that would never even occur to them, were it not for the twisted priorities of these woke warriors and the corrosive reading material they’re providing.
Unlike socialist, Communist, and totalitarian countries, America recognizes the God-given right of free speech and of conscientious parents to raise their children as they see fit. Here, parents can teach their children that racial discrimination in all forms is wrong. They have the right to keep sexually graphic material away from their young children until they feel the time is right. And they bear the primary responsibility for helping their children align their moral compass.
They entrust teachers with an awesome responsibility – to educate future generations, and help them compete in an increasingly competitive environment. Too many are failing that responsibility. A few, for whatever reason, seem more interested in robbing young students of their innocence. They have no business being around children. Others have been either seduced or intimidated by the woke agenda. They’ve come to believe they’re doing what’s right. Regardless of their motivation, their obsession with indoctrination, rather than education is clearly reflected in students’ abysmal math and reading scores. Various studies show that U.S. students rank significantly lower in math and reading skills compared to students of other industrialized countries.
Liberals and progressives have given us a strange new world. It’s a place where concerned parents are now labeled as fascists and enemies of free speech. It shows how dangerous government propaganda can be, especially when it’s abetted by collusive news and social media outlets. Fortunately, when the welfare of their children is at stake, courageous and determined parents won’t be deterred.
The post We’re Not Banning Books We Are Protecting Our Kids appeared first on Granite Grok.
Let’s see if we can break down the debt ceiling issue. So once upon a time, well, back in 1917, America bought the Virgin Islands for about $25 million in gold, Babe Ruth, at 22, was pitching for Boston, and the United States entered WWI. There were also some significant changes going on in D.C.
One of those changes concerned the issuance of federal debt.
Coming into 1917 the U.S. Treasury could only borrow money and/or issue debt only with very specific instructions from Congress. For example, to build the Panama Canal, funding was required. Congress would pass a law or resolution authorizing a specific debt device for a specific amount for a specific period of time. Up to this point, Congress had the power of the purse and took its responsibility very seriously.
We want to thank Marc Abear for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
you would like us to consider, please submit it to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
With America’s entry into WWI, Congress determined the Treasury needed more flexibility in order to best fund the war effort. They passed the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917. This act authorized the Treasury to issue debt in whatever length or form it saw fit so long as the total debt does not exceed the authorized amount. The debt ceiling was born.
This set up a new system for funding the operation of the Government. Congress spent far less time dealing with the specifics of financing the spending it authorized. It no longer involved itself with the mechanics of debt issuance. Congress shifted its focus to spending rather than debt. This is important in understanding how we got here, now. Instead, under the new process, if Congress spent too much, it simply had to raise the debt ceiling. This was where our current debt mess really got started.
A side note: The Biden administration is asserting that it does not need Congressional action to raise the debt ceiling. Biden says he will do it himself. The administration’s argument for taking action unilaterally is; under the 14 th Amendment, specifically section 4 which says in part:
, “…The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
But if this part of the 14th Amendment, “…public debt… shall not be questioned…”, somehow conveys authority over spending and the budget to the Executive Branch, then how is removing control of spending, deficit and debt from the purview of Congress not a violation of separation of powers? Why has it not been done in over a hundred years? There have been a lot of confrontations about the debt ceiling before. Can you say posturing? Or do we now have an elected dictator? Just asking…
Now, let’s move forward in time to last year. Our Democrat controlled 117th Congress authorized a massive amount of deficit spending. They authorized spending on all sorts of things. The issue now is the spending authorized last year takes us past the debt ceiling already in place.
The 117th Congress year exceeded the debt limit. They knew they exceeded the debt limit. They knew it before authorizing the spending. But they authorized the spending anyway. They also went home knowing they had done nothing to remedy the issue they created. They left the mess for the next Congress, the 118 th, to clean up. The question is what are you as a voter going to do about this act of irresponsibility?
Let’s be clear. If we were budgeting, which we really aren’t, we would have known and debated whether to raise taxes to cover the shortfall, raise the debt ceiling ($31.4 trillion), or perhaps we might have even spent less… but we didn’t.
The process currently in use is called budgeting but it does not follow budgetary constraints. It simply authorizes spending. There is no corresponding requirement to actually pay for it in the same period the spending occurs. But we did none of those budgetary type things. Instead, the 117 th simply passed the buck to the next Congress, the 118th. You can decide if this is the responsible thing to do but it is how we got here.
If the debt ceiling does not get raised by Congress by about June 1st, or if there aren’t budget cuts which prevent us from hitting the debt, ceiling the Federal Government will default on some of its debt. So what? What is its significance? Why should you care?
Well, the consensus is this would be bad but how bad and more importantly, how bad for whom? Let’s look at the history of what has happened when other countries have defaulted. What we see are things like spikes in interest rates, dips and crashes in the stock markets and thing like recessions or recessions’ big brother, depressions.
There are two basic arguments about what to do to resolve the situation America finds itself in. Mr. Biden et al are arguing Congress has already authorized these expenses. So all of you Republicans need to knock off the male bovine excrement and just cover our a$$es: Raise the debt ceiling.
The Republican leadership is going to decline. Their position is essentially there was an election which we won and we won because the American people want us to stop with the crazy spending. They told us to stop the insane deficits and bring down the national debt. It does not matter that the old Congress authorized the spending. They could have been responsible and paid for the spending they authorized… But they didn’t. It is time to renegotiate the spending or to make a deal we can live with about future spending.
America has a $31.4 national debt. That insult is compounded with each additional follow on deficit spending. This same kabuki dance has been going on for decades. When exactly do we pay down the debt? Why are we spending upwards of $1.0 trillion in interest to service the debt? Wouldn’t the money be better spent on buying more goods and services for the people of the country?
America has not had a budget surplus in 22 years according to the U.S. Treasury. When are we going to balance the budget? You cannot pay down the debt if you don’t balance the debt first. No more deficits. Stop overspending.
There are people who think we don’t need to pay down the debt. When you have a lot of debt and interest rates go up you have a harder time paying for what you borrowed. You are left with no choice but to cut spending in non-debt service areas.
Do a little thought experiment with me: Let’s assume you owe $300,000 on a variable rate mortgage. You borrowed the $300,000 when the interest rate was 0% for a period of 30 years. That means, when you borrowed it you would have been responsible for making amortized principal only monthly payments of $833.33. So, as long as you could afford the monthly payments you were sitting pretty.
Now let’s say the interest rates go up to 2%. That would cause your payments to rise to $1,108.86 . So, to make the increased payments you have to come up with an additional $275.53 monthly, an increase of about 33%. Maybe you give up that vacation or maybe it means eating out less. There is some pain there but you still get by.
Then interest rates go up to 5%. What happens then? The monthly payment goes up to $1,610.46. So to make the increased monthly payment, now you have to come up with an extra $777.13, an increase of 93.25% over your original payment.
Then the interest rate goes up to 9%. Now your monthly payment goes to $2,413.87. Now to make the increased monthly payment, you must come up with an extra $1,580.54 monthly, an increase of about 190% over your original payment.
Then interest rates go to 15%, the monthly payment goes to $3,793.33. Now to make the increased monthly payment, you have to come up with an extra $2,690 monthly, an increase of about 355% over your original payment. What happens then?
You will get a second job. Maybe you will turn down the thermostat. You will be eating rice and beans and for variety you’ll eat beans and rice. You are going to go broke. You probably lose the house. Somehow you must get out from under the debt.
The higher the interest rates go the harder time you will have paying the interest on the debt. At some point the interest on the debt breaks you.
This same thing that happens to you holds true for a country with a lot of debt. Debt is not a problem. The problem is seldom the repayment of the principal. The struggle is the payments required to service the interest. Unlike you and me, America cannot simply declare bankruptcy. As our interest rates are going up, our debt is becoming more expensive to hold. America is playing with fire.
Sure, there is a point to be made that Congress authorized the spending. But when it did so, it authorized the Executive Branch to break the law that Congress made and has been on the books since 1917. That’s what they did when Congress authorized spending money we did not have and could not borrow. The Treasury then could not spend in excess of the debt ceiling and it cannot do so now… unless it changes the law… which it writes… but the last Congress did not do that… and it is gone.
There is not now and there never has been an expectation that one Congress could bind the hands of any future Congress. That authority does not exist. Any law a Congress of men can make a Congress of men can repeal. That is the standard.
America’s debt is now riskier in the eyes of everyone around the world. This is because of what we did to Russia last year. The problem coming is, our debt is seen as riskier. Interest rates are rising. Fewer countries are willing to buy our debt offerings. And in a time when there are fewer buyers with rising interest rates we are borrowing more. These things will mean rates will be higher than they might otherwise have been.
Up until now we’ve always just continued with business as usual, raised the debt ceiling and it was no big deal. But things are different this time. With debt already as high as we can afford to pay for and interest rates continuing to rise we may find the breaking point.
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(white) goldstandard-05-18-23-H.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-05-18-23-H-y.pdf
The post House Gold Standard – May 18, 2023 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.
(white) goldstandard-05-18-23-S.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-05-18-23-S-y.pdf
The post Senate Gold Standard – May 18, 2023 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.
I’ve said that unless the Federal Govt finally got its act together and kept spending down to the level we could afford, this was going to happen:
U.S. Interest payment is now equal to Defense spending
And 30% of the debt has to be refinanced in the next 12 months at todays higher rates!!
Hang on! pic.twitter.com/stDRMEkpSm
— Mark Moss (@1MarkMoss) May 11, 2023
With interest rates going up, it won’t be long until it exceeds it.
Our national “credit card” is all but maxed out. Sure, they can up the level of the national debt, but like your credit card (or all of them combined), that amount keeps soaring.
And for grins and giggles (or is that frowns and tears?), read this: So Why Aren’t We Paying Down the National Debt?
The post I Was Only 10 Years Ahead of Time On This: Interest Payment on Nation Debt Now > Defense Spending appeared first on Granite Grok.