Do they really think we are that ignorant? Do they really think that they can gaslight us that we are safer under Biden’s policies? Do they really think that we are deaf and blind to the horrid scenes that we watch with our morning coffee and again with our evening cocktail? Since Joe Biden has been our President, one cocktail is insufficient to get through the evening news.

Joe Biden addressed the press this week about the Biden initiative to continue to make our cities safer. He painfully stumbled through a list of crime categories that he claims are all showing the lowest rates in decades. One thing that is quite clear after three years of Joe Biden is stats mean nothing because you can play with the numbers to get your desired result. You need to look no further than inflation and employment numbers to see how useless they are. When you have put the cuffs on police, do not allow arrests, and put blindfolds on your District Attorneys so that criminals who do get arrested do not get prosecuted, the crime numbers. If you ignore crime, then, of course, the crime numbers will improve. The question then becomes, if you ignore crime, are there no victims? Of course not. Remember, we are watching the news and living in this crime-riddled world of Joe Biden.

We know the explosion of crime since 2020 and the death of George Floyd. It is incredible how ironic it is that the unfortunate death of a career criminal marks the start of the movement by the Left to declassify crime. Floyd is still celebrated to this day as a bill named in his honor passes through Congress. The bill is not to make the country safer for its citizens but to make handling criminals more humane. Ignore the elderly woman who just had her handbag snatched by a gang member riding a scooter. Look away from the shop owner who had to shut down his store because his insurance was canceled after so many ransackings. Shame the young woman who has to live the rest of her life remembering the day she was raped. Please don’t mention the name of the girl in Georgia whose head was disfigured from the beating she took that ended her life. But make sure you harken George Floyd’s name when discussing the need for compassion when dealing with the perpetrators of crime.

I admire Senator John Kennedy’s ability to stick a knife into a person testifying before his committee and still maintain the good old boy demeanor. He torched Federal Prison Director Peters this week when discussing the First Step Act, which puts selected criminals back into society. Director Peters administers the program. Kennedy asked her a series of questions, which the director was unable to answer:

• How many criminals have been released in the four years of the program? (The answer is 30,000)
• Were the victims notified their perpetrator was being released? (The answer I don’t know)
• How many of the 30,000 released have been arrested for other crimes since? (The answer is I don’t know)
• How many people work in your department? (The answer is 40,000)
• How many of those 40,000 have still been working from home since COVID? (The answer is I don’t know)
• So, how do we know the program works without the answers to any of these questions? (No answer)

An exasperated Kennedy closed his questions with the comment, “this is why Americans do not trust the government.”

And Joe Biden is another reason why we don’t trust the government. He and his family make up one of the biggest crime families in the country, and he preaches to us that crime is down. Sorry, Joe, we are not buying what you are pushing.

The post Of Course Crime Rates Are Down When You Don’t Track The Crimes appeared first on Granite Grok.

I am using the nautical term “come about” because Alderman Dowd, the 2023 Secret Keeper of the Year, is a Navy veteran and has repeatedly reminded the voters that he’s a submarine expert.

The mismanagement of millions of dollars of ESSER funds was kept under wraps during his campaign until after he was reelected to a 7th term, securing another two years of his committee chairmanship last November, but that was the past.  Let’s talk about the present and the future.

At the end of Tuesday night’s meeting during public comment, Ward 2’s Mr. Gouthro spoke about transparency at 1:31:20 until he was cut off 3 minutes later and followed by Laurie Ortolano at 1:34:35.  Pay close attention to Laurie’s comments because they involve the future.  She politely requested transparency regarding the Mohawk Tannery, which The Swamp has been hoping stays low on the radar.  In spite of all current, recent, and not-so-recent baggage(assessor’s office, arts center, and litigation), the “L-Team”(Laurie Ortolano and Laura Colquhoun) has been hard at work monitoring its developments as they unfold.

Also currently a work in progress, though in Concord, is the RTK Tax, aka HB 1002, which has a House Judiciary Committee executive session next Wednesday, 3/6, at 10 am.  Consider it serendipity because her comments illustrate why the materialization HB 1002 would be a horrible thing.  Think about the fishing expedition on top of another fishing expedition that could exist at the truth seeker’s expense!  It’s been said more times than I have counted that RTK inquiries are NOT weaponized malice and that the good faith requestor is willing to work with the stewards of the public information being requested.  Laurie Ortolano has made clear that she plans to be monitoring the Mohawk Tannery project and has given ample notice, so it should be considered a fair warning.

In Nashua, it would be in everyone’s best interest that her request from the podium is properly honored, and it would be in the best interest of everyone(in Nashua or elsewhere in NH) that HB 1002 dies in the House.

The post City Hall has an Opportunity to “Come About.” appeared first on Granite Grok.

I wouldn’t expect this to catch on anywhere else soon. A California judge called the federal government for ‘selective prosecution.’ “Charging right-wing rioters but not the far-left agitators they fought against, and who did the exact same thing.”

“No individuals associated with the left, who engaged in anti-far-right speech and violently suppressed the protected speech of Trump supporters, were charged with a federal crime for their part in starting riots at political events. That is textbook viewpoint discrimination,” he wrote. “Most telling in this case is the government’s silence as to why it never pursued a case against a single member of Antifa or related far-left groups with respect to their violent conduct at pro-Trump events.”

“Defendants have established selective prosecution. There is no doubt that the government did not prosecute similarly situated individuals. Antifa and related far-left groups attended the same Trump rallies as Defendants with the expressly stated intent of shutting down, through violence if necessary, protected political speech. At the same Trump rallies that form the basis for Defendants’ prosecution, members of Antifa and related far-left groups engaged in organized violence to stifle protected speech,” he continued.

The judge threw out charges in what might be a first. Right-wing violence, if that’s what it was, has been given the same deference as left-wing violence.

We’re not condoning any violence by anyone. The Second Amendment protects the right to self-defense. If attacked, you know what to do with the understanding that the feds and many a prosecutor will still arrest and charge you for that. So, don’t think that since one judge let two guys off for doing what Antifa does justifies that behavior or that anyone is going to start regularly charging Antifa thugs as the criminals they are.

And a quick note to Antifa and any other direct-action progressives. Remember what Mao did to the Red Guard.

You’ve been warned (again).

The post Judge Calls Out Feds for Arresting “Right-Wing” Agitators While Ignoring Antifa Violence appeared first on Granite Grok.

Late in the fall of 2023, the Supreme Court issued mandates that ordered the City of Nashua to follow the trial court’s order in two Right-to-Know (RTK) Petitions and produce emails stored on backup tape. The email records requested were for two months of specific records within Nashua’s assessing office.

Nashua lacks written policies for handling record requests and is uncooperative in reducing the burden. Until eighteen months ago, emails were provided without attachments, and requesters were only informed of email volume, not including attachments.

The City hired Attorney Russ Hilliard 18 months ago for Right to Know (RTK) legal challenges. At this time, the City decided to review each page, page number, redact as needed, and insert all attachments into records before providing them to requesters. Requesters were not informed of this new process. An email request with 1000 emails could have 20,000 pages of attachments. Citizens may not want staff to review voluminous attachments that are already public records. For instance, Nashua’s assessing office has a data disk with 3400 pages of numbers which is already a public record on their website.

The City began producing the Court ordered email records in December of 2023. The city was being evasive and uncooperative in specifying the number of pages of documents involved. The City began providing all the attachments, primarily public records, without communicating with the requester. Of course, the requester informed the City that she did not want the attachments.

The city informed her that they would continue to review, number, insert, and redact all those records regardless of her request not to receive the attachments. It turns out that this is causing a long delay in the delivery of the records. It appears the city will need about 15 months to deliver the records. However, the city is unwilling to provide a timeframe for completion. The City refuses to provide the attachment page volume even though they have this answer. This City operates with malicious compliance.

The requester reopened both lawsuits, filed a protective order, a contempt order and an RTK lawsuit. The hearing is on April 22, 2024 at Nashua Superior Court.

The City hypocritically advocates for the State to amend the RTK law to charge fees for voluminous requests while working to increase the volume of the documents by adding unwanted attachments thereby increasing fees to be charged to citizens. All this while complaining of burdensome citizens making unreasonable demands. In reality, the burden and inflated costs are created by hostile City leaders to discourage and delay documents. Nashua City leaders work tirelessly to marginalize citizens who do not echo their message.

A Win is never a Win in Nashua.

The post Nashua’s Malicious Email Game appeared first on Granite Grok.

Polling on the problem of too much free speech is a scary enough prospect as the Government that lies to us works to convince Americans that it not only has no obligation to protect their First Amendment rights but that citizens should rally to demand it take them.

According to a new poll from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment organization, nearly a third of Americans, including similar numbers of Republicans and Democrats, say that the First Amendment goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. More than half agreed that their local community should not allow a public speech that espouses a belief they find particularly offensive.

When I saw the headline, I thought one-third could be Democrats, but as the pull quote reveals, an equal number of Republicans make up that number. Would it be brash to suggest they should not be registered as Republicans? Certainly not “conservative, as this would run contrary to the notion of conserving the natural rights our Government allegedly exists to protect.

That’s what Conservative means, by the way. The uniparty has been working on all cylinders to dilute that notion and succeeding. Many think there is such a thing as hate speech. That misinformation and disinformation are things a government (even through proxies) should be allowed to manage.

Half of the respondents said that their community “definitely” or “probably” should not permit a public speech expressing the opinion they found most offensive. A whopping 69 percent said a local college should “definitely” or “probably” not allow a professor who holds such an opinion to teach there. Over a quarter of respondents said that someone who previously said the offensive opinion should be fired from their job.

It is a sad day and not just for speech. Too many people have been lulled into complacency. They have no idea why the Bill of Rights and Constitutions exists. Once you let the Government take something away, it will not give it back, nor will it stop until it has taken it all.

This needs to change, and while Independent media has made significant inroads in recent years, it is clear that more work needs to be done. As we like to remind you, liberty is more precious, rare, even than life, and tyranny never rests, so neither can we.

Here is the survey from FIRE.

The post The First Amendment is a Problem for at Least One Third of Americans appeared first on Granite Grok.

It was only a few years ago that Vermont lawmakers were bragging that thanks to them, Vermont had adopted the lowest acceptable threshold for PCBs (a potential carcinogen found in certain pre-1980s building materials) in schools – a level significantly lower than what the federal EPA deems safe (4000% lower!).

Levels significantly lower than what European governments deem to be safe. Some critics worried it was an impossible standard, but Vermont being Vermont, we had to be the lowest.

In 2021, Vermont lawmakers took things a step further by slipping language into that year’s budget bill mandating that every school in our state built before 1980 be tested for PCBs along with Vermont’s new regulatory guidelines. We were the first state in the nation to demand such a program. Vermont being Vermont, we also had to be first!

Heady stuff, saving the children and all. Makes for wonderful press conferences and a bullet point for your next round of campaign materials.

VPIRG boasted in its 2021 legislative wrap-up at the close of session, “This year, we supported further protections for Vermont’s children by backing new requirements in H.426 requiring schools to be tested for radon and PCBs. This will help to identify toxic threats and keep children safe.” Great!

According to the state website on toxic substances,

PCBs can cause serious health effects. The potential for health effects from PCBs, as with other chemicals, depends on how much, how often, and how long someone is exposed to them.

Numerous studies in both humans and animals have shown that exposure to PCBs can affect the nervous, immune, reproductive and endocrine systems. PCBs are also classified as human carcinogens. This means that exposure to PCBs can cause cancer in humans.

Additionally, the different health effects of PCBs may be interconnected. This means that if one system of the body is affected by PCBs, it may have significant effects on the other systems of the body, which can lead to many serious health problems.

But now, in the midst of a devastating property tax crisis brought about by a combination of a tax-and-spend-like-drunken-sailors ideology wrapped in general legislative incompetence, it looks like that mandatory PCB testing program is going to be put on hold. Not because the tests aren’t turning up PCBs but because they are. And fixing said problem is expensive. And potentially expensive on the property tax.

It’s one thing to stand on a soap box and proclaim your love for the children. It’s another to actually pay a price – political and financial — for doing it. So, faced with the prospect of the latter, our courageous legislators say never mind. What are a few carcinogens here and there? Kids are tough!

The ostensible logic behind a testing pause put forward by Peter Conlon (D-Cornwall), chair of the House Education Committee, is that because the state doesn’t have the money to fix the problems if found, there’s no point in looking for problems in the first place. Like with that Spinal Tap drummer who died in a bizarre gardening accident, the authorities in Montpelier have decided PCBs in our schools are crimes “best left unsolved.”

Thankfully, my own kids have aged out of the hot mess of Vermont government-run public education in all of its aspects has devolved into, but if I were still a parent of school-aged children and there was a possibility of a poisonous substance lingering throughout the building, I’m forced by law to send my little tykes to 180 days a year, I’D WANT TO KNOW!

In a recent interview with VT Digger, Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore estimated the cost of finishing the testing program would is between $30 million and $70 million over the next two years. That’s a lot of money, for sure. But it’s about the same amount allocated for the newly passed universal free meals program. It’s far less than the amount newly allocated to expand government-run pre-k. If PCBs are really the dire problem we were led to believe, wouldn’t it make more sense to prioritize ensuring classrooms are not a health hazard before shoveling more younger children into them? I guess not!

And if the resources aren’t available to fix the problem once detected – a legitimate reality – no parent should be forced to send their kid into that space. Ever. Other options should be made available. Immediately.

And this, I suspect, is why the Democrats in the legislature are now so hell-bent on a testing pause (they tried last year as well with H.486): The VTNEA does not want parents in a legal/moral position to demand other educational options.

If a school has to close because it’s unsafe (or for any other reason) and there are no other public options within the district, the families in that district get school choice. Not every community has an abandoned mall they can convert into a school as Burlington did when PCBs led to the demolition of their high school or the nearly quarter of a billion dollars to build a new one.  The teachers’ union, public school special interests, and their political bedfellows would, it appears, much rather see kids get cancer than allow an opening for expanded school choice to emerge.

Either that or the PCB issue was always just a phony baloney scare tactic used by politicians to virtue signal their “anything for the children” persona and to give their activist allies like VPIRG a lucrative opportunity to fundraise for a cause by spreading unnecessary panic. But, as with the Act 127 ‘equity’ pupil weighting debacle, it’s blown up in their faces.

The post So, It’s Okay to Poison the Children Now? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Members of the Apple cult who were hoping to one day drive their iteration of an Electric Vehicle will be disappointed. After dropping billions into an effort to one day compete with Tesla Motors, The Tech Giant has cut the plug-in cord.

Apple wanted to develop new battery technology that would dramatically cut the cost of electric vehicles and wanted to develop software that would make their cars fully self driving. …

The news comes after Apple said last month that it was pushing back its timetable for debuting its electric car from 2026 to 2028, which comes as the electric vehicle market has fallen off significantly in recent years due to a wide range of consumer concerns.

What no one ever seems to say is Apple, despite its braintrust, easy access to China, and billions of dollars, couldn’t make it work. There was no path to a more affordable battery pack technology. They also didn’t say why, at least not in the reporting I found: inflation and the price hikes created by false demand.

Government policy has driven the development and manufacture of Electric Vehicles for which the general public has no use, even if they could afford one. The recent glut of inventory and an almost institutional retreat by car makers is back in the driver’s seat, with Apple not being alone in wasting billions. Domestic EV makers have reported similar losses from making EVs. Unions have expressed anger at the changing dynamic EVs bring to autoworkers who have lost jobs, pay, and opportunity. It’s gotten so bad that one government, Joe Biden’s, has decided the impending and inescapable planetary doom that precipitated their EV demands can wait until after the next election.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that the Biden administration was preparing to ease its push to force EVs onto American consumers as consumer demand for the vehicles remains low, dealerships have expressed serious concerns, and automakers have had to cut production and revamp production of gas vehicles.

The report said the move was a “concession to automakers and labor unions” from the administration, as it was forcing “limits on tailpipe emissions” to force Americans to switch from gas-powered cars to more expensive electric vehicles

It might be a useful bit of political art to remind voters that we were told we couldn’t wait until we could and that should you fall for this sleight of hand and vote for Democrats despite their crimes against common sense and the economy, they put the screws to you the minute they get back into office.

Their preferred priorities are a dead end that is voting them trillions.

The post No iCar In Your Future – Apple Cuts Plug-In Cord After Wasting Billions on Titan EV Project appeared first on Granite Grok.

There are many things a local, state, and federal government can do for its people, from ensuring clean, drinkable water and road maintenance to police and fire protection to border security. But there are some elements of life that the government should avoid, and Portland, Maine, is considering crossing the line on two of them. The city of Portland is considering a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all residents and an ordinance to increase the minimum wage in the city to $20 per hour. Both are terrible ideas that will harm local businesses and stifle the work ethic of an already stagnant workforce.

The problem with these suggestions begins with the premise. The Portland, Maine City Council’s Housing and Economic Development Committee is modeling its 2024 Plan on the implementations of Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon, is one of the most progressive cities in the country, and its policies are so toxic that there is an active movement for the more conservative eastern region of the state to secede from Oregon and join neighboring Idaho. This effort to secede includes portions of Northern California that do not align with the more progressive Southern California.

The Portland, Maine Council points to a pilot program of the Quality Housing Coalition that gave a UBI of $1,000 a month to a group of 20 mothers for one year. The site outlines the program, which started in 2023 but does not detail its results. The program includes training for those receiving the benefit, but not whether this is designed to be a bridge program or a renewable subsidy.

Setting up a UBI program, which was initially the idea of Democrat Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, is rife with potential opportunities for fraud and, as stated earlier, inhibits a person’s need to work. Though $1,000 a month is not a living wage, it might keep someone out of the full-time workforce at a time when workers are needed in every sector of the economy.

The minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage for a family, but that is what Democrats are trying to create. Recently, a California Senate seat candidate suggested a statewide minimum wage of $50, which would be a yearly total of $104,000. The thinking is that this is needed to support a small family in California. Can you imagine the cost of a Happy Meal or a pizza if the person making it was paid $50/hour? Wages should be set by the free market and not by the government. Arbitrarily setting a high minimum rate to give the appearance you are working for the people is destroying small businesses, which actually are helping people.

This trend toward a Socialist government, which involves itself in every aspect of life, has to be shut down. Pro-government must be replaced with pro-people and pro-business. We must get Americans back to work instead of their mailbox to get their paycheck. Since COVID, the new jobs created nationally have been filled predominantly by non-American-born workers. This trend is contradictory to what the government is attempting to control. The immigrants are filling the jobs at lower wages than Americans. At the same time, the government wants to regulate minimum wages. It is a vicious cycle that the government should pull out of.

One more quick example of a government idea gone wrong is the plan by Brunswick to house illegal aliens relocating to Maine. Maine allocated nearly $3.5 million to provide apartments in five new buildings in Brunswick to 60 illegal immigrant families. This amount breaks down to $58,333 per family that is in our country illegally. There are over 200 homeless veterans living in shelters or on the streets of Maine. Most efforts to eradicate veteran homelessness are donation-based. It appears our priorities are very messed up.

The post Bear Pond Conservative Chronicles: Two Bad Decisions By Portland Leaders appeared first on Granite Grok.