Joe Biden was on a three-city tour of Pennsylvania this week. He started in his hometown of Scranton, though I am not sure many in Scranton want to claim Joe as one of their own. You see, for all Joe says he is doing for his homeys, his lousy policies are costing the good people of Scranton over $800 per month to maintain their lifestyle from 2020. These folks, Joe, are not making $10,000 a year to cover your Bidenomics, but apparently, that has been scrapped. We are not supposed to mention your dynamic economic plan that proves each month that it is not worth the napkin you wrote it on. Tell us that good one about the bottom up and the middle out as those people are driving up their credit card balances to keep up with the rising cost of everything. The busiest person at the local gas station is the one raising the prices each day on the marquis. People in grocery stores take items out of their shopping baskets at the checkout to afford their orders. You are not raising all boats, Joe. You are sinking the middle class. It is painful to watch and experience.

Your green initiative to get us all driving battery-operated cars is a bust. No demand exists for these overpriced vehicles, even with us subsidizing the costs. There are images of vast parking lots of abandoned EVs in China. Tesla and Rivian both announced layoffs, Rivian for the third time in twelve months. The recharging stations you bragged about are not being built, so where did the billions go to fund them?

Your plan to forgive student loans is having a devastating impact on tuition rates. As colleges and universities see you passing tuition costs onto taxpayers, they seize the opportunity to blow the top off tuition rates. Nearly a dozen schools have posted tuition rates over $90,000, and dozens more work toward that number. What income will graduates need to justify a $400,000 student loan package?

Credit card debt is at a record high, and with interest rates over 30%, most people living on plastic will never see a zero balance. Your solution was to attack late fees. That $10 savings will go a long toward paying off the interest! Who is advising you on these weak, ineffective policy decisions? Karina Jean-Pierre?

The fact that you are spending so much time in Pennsylvania, a state you should have a lock on, tells us you know you are in trouble. Working overtime to put Trump in jail and to defame RFK Jr is not working for you. Your media ads focusing on your acuity prove you have lost a step or two mentally, and trotting out the Kennedy clan to back you and throw their cousin under the Biden Train was low. RFK will give Michigan to Trump and, thus, the election.

You are showing age and weakness at a time when America is looking for energy and strength. They are finding what they need in Trump. Seeing him outside the courtroom each day shows how you have weaponized your Justice Department to eliminate your opponent. It didn’t work, Joe. Your Justice Department, like the rest of your administration, is proving to be more WOKE than competent. With the Supreme Court braced to take the wind out of the January 6 sails, it will kill one of your most potent arguments against Trump. Your house of cards is crumbling, and no help from Obama, Clinton, or the Kennedys will keep it from crashing in November. Watching you go down will be fun and satisfying.

The post Night Cap: Hey Joe, Did You Ditch Bidenomics appeared first on Granite Grok.

Quick reminder that tomorrow (Wed @ 10am) is the Senate Committee hearing for HB1283, a bill to legalize assisted suicide. It will be in NH’s Legislative Office Building, room 103 (note room change from earlier).

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

Please share this with friends or family you think would also be against legalizing assisted suicide.

You have several opportunities to stand up for the vulnerable among us by helping to defeat HB1283:

1) Pray that the Senate HHS committee and the NH Senate as a whole would vote down this bill

2) Register your opposition to HB1283 through the Gencourt website by 8am tomorrow morning (select Senate Health and Human Services, select HB1283, tell them “I Oppose this Bill”, and click “Continue”).

3) Email the Senate HHS Committee to tell them that you oppose HB1283. Their email addresses are: Regina.Birdsell@leg.state.nh.us, Kevin.Avard@leg.state.nh.us, Jeb.Bradley@leg.state.nh.us, Becky.Whitley@leg.state.nh.us, Suzanne.Prentiss@leg.state.nh.us, cameron.lapine@leg.state.nh.us

4) Testify in person if you are available tomorrow @ 10am in NH’s Legislative Office Building (33 N State St, Concord, NH), room 103.
If you do come in person, please do not wear yellow, as many of the pro-suicide community uses that to identify themselves.

5) Contact your own Senator: It’s not too early to call or email your own Senator, and let them know that you oppose state-sanctioned suicide. You can find their contact info here.

For Life,
Jason Hennessey
President, NH Right to Life

Key talking points on HB1283:

• Works against our efforts to prevent suicide. The data shows that all suicides go up when states legalize assisted suicide. By about 6.3% for the whole population, and 14.5% among individuals over 65. [full paper]
  • Based on CDC data, this could reverse the several-year trend of declining suicides in the state based on the work of the NH Suicide Prevention Council and others.
• In Oregon, patients like Barbara Wagner & Randy Stroup were denied life-saving treatments and offered suicide instead. Will insurance companies prioritize profit over patients?
• With an increasing percentage of medical expenditures being funneled through government programs, we cannot allow death to be added to the available cost containment menu (from House Majority leader Jason Osborne)
• Having physicians assist in suicide reduces trust in healthcare providers, which is why it is prohibited by the Hippocratic Oath
• Legalizing assisted suicide could lead to a slippery slope, with the potential for expansion to include those with chronic but treatable conditions like diabetes and HIV. Colorado has even had assisted suicides for mental health issues like anorexia, with a law similar to HB1283.
• No residency requirement. NH could become a death tourism destination, creating a profitable industry that then lobbies for expansions.
• All prominent disability organizations (state and national) that have taken a position oppose Assisted Suicide legislation due to disproportional affect they have on those living with disabilities.

Points that may resonate more with Democrats:

• The bill could worsen existing healthcare inequities, making death a more accessible option than life-saving treatment for vulnerable populations such as those with disabilities.
• The National Council on Disability extensively documented the negative effects of Assisted Suicide on disabled individuals in a 70 page paper.

The post Help Stop State-Sanctioned Suicide appeared first on Granite Grok.

It is unusual for a Democrat or uniparty stooge to say the quiet part out loud, but this isn’t new to Massachusetts. David Ismay, Charlie Baker’s undersecretary for Climate change (can’t be much of a ‘republican’ Gov. if you have one of those – and he wasn’t), said openly that they need to put the screws to everyone in the name of climate change.

He didn’t survive the heat (ironically, given his gig). Will this Masshole do the same?

It is Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt.

Using frank language rarely heard on Beacon Hill, Tibbits-Nutt weighed in on a series of major policy issues. She talked about how she would raise more money for transportation, with one option being the installation of toll gantries at the state’s borders with neighboring states. She promised to do more to address traffic fatalities by urging law enforcement to issue more speeding citations. And she said she would not support a layover facility for commuter rail trains as part of the I-90 Allston multimodal project, handing neighborhood activists a major victory.

Toll booths at the border is a great idea. One more reason not to go to Massachusetts. It’ll piss off all the commuters who live in New Hampshire but work in the Bay State, but that could be good for New Hampshire too. Incentivize working here instead. They’ll save on gas, tolls, speed trap tickets, T rate hikes (if you are brave enough to take the T). In other words, they need more money, and there’s nothing they are not willing to do you to get it.

“This [task force] is actually different because we’re not censoring it,” she said. “I’m going to talk about tolling. I’m going to talk about charging TNCs [transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft] more. I’m going to talk about potentially charging more for package deliveries, charging more for payroll tax — basically going after everybody who has money. And when I’m talking tolling, I’m talking at the borders. I’m not talking within Massachusetts.”

She added: “We’re going after all the people who should be giving us money to make our transportation better and our communities better.”

As if the Government could do any such thing. There’s no evidence of it. None. Higher taxes to pad school budgets have produced dumber kids. Milking trillions from Americans in the name of Climate change has only made electricity more expensive and less reliable (and the weather is still the same). The police budget has nothing to do with public safety. Voting for Joe Biden created division (inflation, joblessness, war) and not the promised unity. Nor has any sum of your dollars yet managed to solve transportation infrastructure issues. They spend it all, and things stay the same or get worse.

The only community that benefits is the one that pays her nearly 200k/ year salary. Those in and around ‘The Government get fatter and happier, protecting the politicians who keep adding more parasites to feed on the host (which is you).

Monica Tibbits-Nutt is using the pretension that she’s being brave when she says, “she will not spend any time making decisions with the goal of hanging on to her job”—which is an excuse to hide decades of poor management, which can only ever be resolved with more of your money.

And lucky you, thanks to inflation and the Biden Economy, they are going to need a lot more from you to do so much less.

Update: After this post was written and scheduled, contrary to Tibbits-Nutt’s contention that she had her back, Governor Maura Healy did not. Not exaclty.

(Boston Globe) Governor Maura Healey, appearing on WBUR’s Radio Boston, called state Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt’s recent comments about imposing tolls for drivers crossing into Massachusetts “a very poor choice of words.”

“It’s not how we do things,” Healey told Radio Boston host Tiziana Dearing on Tuesday. “It’s not how we operate.”

I didn’t click through to the full article, but “poor choice of words” isn’t a categorical no to border tolls, as Healey hints at a need for nuance. That’s not how we do things? Okay, so maybe border tolls are at the bottom of the list, but where’d Tibbits-Nutt-job get the idea if they didn’t come up at some point?

It’s on the list.

Be great if someone leaked that to the press.

The post Massachusetts Is “Going After Everybody Who Has Money.” appeared first on Granite Grok.

From the Editor: We’d like to welcome the Conservatarain Exchange and Liberty Block NH to Grok Podcasts!

Disney has won its battle in a proxy way to remain woke against outsiders; liberals keep fighting; conservatives often accept defeat as final; do establishment leaders in D.C. succumb to more than just peer pressure? threats? should republicans engage in issues such as “income equality”—turn the issue against liberal jurisdictions? Attacks on free speech in Scotland, Poland; if Americans don’t fight for free speech the “parchment guarantees” will never suffice; winner take all of electors vs. apportioning them by district (current situation in Nebraska); should we care if blue states ignore SCOTUS?

Trump should join Abbott of Texas in ignoring SCOTUS on the “invasion” issue; does an oath to support the constitution require support of all SCOTUS decisions? Attorneys afraid of taking suits on the right and/or being disbarred like Eastman; why aren’t banks treated legally as common carriers? Biden’s Easter transgender visibility proclamation? Is government our religion nowadays?

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The post The Conservatarian Exchange: Episode 200 appeared first on Granite Grok.

The presidential campaign of 2008 marked a turning point in America.

Millions of voters were electrified by the prospect of the first African-American president. Even one of Barack Obama’s opposing candidates seemed mesmerized by the moment: “I mean, you’ve got the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.

I mean, that’s a story-book, man.” But then, Joe Biden has always viewed everything in terms of race.

Yes, the election of America’s first black president was a watershed moment. Some believe it took too long to get there, but it was an inevitability.

There was another watershed moment, though, that most voters failed to notice. It was the first time that Americans elected a president who, throughout his life, had been steeped in socialist, Communist, and anti-American ideologies – a man whose value system clearly contradicted traditional American values. Voters chose to ignore Obama’s background and the people who helped mold his values – people like Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, and Jeremaih Wright. Those anti-American diatribes by Jeremaih Wright? No matter.

And when that self-proclaimed “citizen of the world” vowed to fundamentally transform the country that most Americans cherished, they didn’t seem to care.

With the country behind him, Barack Obama succeeded in transforming our country in ways no one could have imagined.

Under Obama’s administration, America became more divided, especially along racial lines. And Americans lost some of their national pride. Prominent sports figures began disparaging our flag and our national anthem. Disdain for police agencies started growing. Many in our country began to reject our capitalist system and the idea of American exceptionalism while embracing socialist concepts like redistribution of wealth.

But that’s ancient history.

Now, more than seven years after Obama left office, the man who served as his vice president wants a second term in the White House and an opportunity to finish their disastrous transformation of America.

During his 2019 campaign, Joe Biden was touted as a moderate candidate with traditional American values, an elder statesman committed to unifying the country. He’s proven himself to be anything but.

Who knows why Biden took such a radical left turn after his election? Many believe that he’s doing China’s bidding, thoroughly compromised by the millions of dollars the CCP quietly paid his family. Others suggest that he’s nothing more than a figurehead, a marionette controlled by radical leftist puppeteers – among them, perhaps Barack Obama himself.

Polls confirm that Biden is an unpopular president. He’s widely perceived as weak, addled, incompetent, and corrupt. Surveys consistently show that his policies are taking our country in the wrong direction.

Yet paradoxically, in a head-to-head matchup with Donald Trump, other data suggest that Biden stands a fair chance of reelection in November. That’s mostly because the propaganda machine of the Democrat Party and the liberal news media managed to convince so many Americans that Donald Trump poses a genuine “threat to our Democracy,” a threat to our very survival. Incredibly enough, they’ve come to believe that Trump’s “America first” agenda is somehow un-American.

Consequently, many voters now believe that even Joe Biden is a better alternative.

Biden pontificates about fighting for the “soul of the nation.” But there was nothing wrong with America’s soul before he and Obama began tampering with it. National pride – patriotism – wasn’t derided. It was seen as the glue that holds this nation, any nation, together. It was once an unassailable American value.

Other values that were part of America’s soul included freedom, equality, the right to privacy, individualism, personal responsibility, personal property rights, and a competitive spirit. Topping the list was a fair justice system. The Biden Administration has been systematically extinguishing them all.

America also once had a conscience – an uncompromising sense of right and wrong. Today they’re replacing that conscience with contrived radical concepts like social justice, CRT, DEI, and gender-affirming care. They’re doing it in defiance of our Constitution, using subterfuge and deceit.

In fact, given his many abuses of power, Biden would certainly have been impeached and removed from office by now, were it not for the blind support of congressional Democrats, his loyal apparatchiks.

That leaves it to the voters. Will they continue to blindly follow a path they know leads to self-destruction? Or will they finally say “enough”?

For the greatest threat to the Biden Administration is not Donald Trump. It’s an informed electorate, endowed with common sense and the ability to think independently.

Yes, the economy, immigration, the border, abortion, and national security are all important issues in this election. But in November, voters will have to decide who we are as a nation. They will decide whether to preserve the soul of America or extinguish it forever.

The post Last Chance to Save the Soul of the Nation appeared first on Granite Grok.

Democrats in the State House were parading around this week with a banner insisting, “If you make a mess, you clean it up!” Yeah! Big talk! They think this should apply to oil companies regarding climate change (another story I’ll get to soon), but apply that message to themselves regarding the colossal property tax tsunami of a mess they’ve made for us. Well, not so much.

As far as property tax relief for Vermonters goes, the banner reads, “If you make a mess, create a ‘task force’ of usual suspects to ‘look into it’, keep the money flowing to your political cronies, and hope the voters have short memories and deep pockets.” Hey, it’s worked in the past! But I’m getting the feeling it’s not going to work as well this time. They’ve been successfully boiling the frog (us) for a long time but got greedy, turned up the heat too fast, and the taxpayers are ready to jump out of the pot.

Vermonters worried we are about to be taxed out of our homes come July are now being told not to expect any sort of relief for at least three years while they study the issue. News flash: we can’t afford the bill this year! Fix your mess NOW.

Vermont’s current property tax explosion/crisis is driven by the fact that we spend more money per public school student than almost every other state in the Union by a long shot. After this year’s spending spree, we might just be number one. The official “weighted student average” is $23,299, but if you divide the total $2.5 billion education budget by the 80,000 pre-k to 12 kids in the system, the number is over $30,000.

This latest $200 million budget gap that is the reason for the 20 percent year-over-year average property tax (and/or other taxes) increase is primarily the result of overspending on:

• The $30 million unfunded mandate to expand the free and reduced meals program for low-income students to universally include free food for the wealthiest kids as well. Yeah, that was dumb and unnecessary.
• Poor financial planning that irresponsibly used one-time COVID emergency money for ongoing expenditures. Yeah, that was dumb and avoidable.
• Jacking up per-pupil spending with a new weighing system (Act 127). That was just a power/money play to pay off the teachers’ union at the expense of the taxpayer. Repeal it today.
• Salaries and benefits resulting from the overstaffing of a system (Vermont has the highest staff to student ratio in the country; more than twice the national average) that has lost roughly 25 percent of its students over the past two decades. Simple bureaucratic bloat.
• And general inflation. Thanks, Joe Biden!

What’s the solution? Here’s my proposal:

Short term, cap individuals’ property tax increases to a level no greater than inflation (currently 3.5%). If what that generates plus the other revenue streams to the Education fund (100% of the sales & use tax, 25% of the rooms & meals tax, lottery, etc.) doesn’t cover the cost of school budgets, the delta should be made up through cuts to other programs – unfunded education mandates such as the $30 million free meals programs or cuts to general fund programs with the revenue shifted to education. I’d suggest starting with all those programs that use taxpayer dollars to subsidize EV purchases, solar panel installations, etc. Those are luxury programs, not basic government services.

No new taxes! We are taxed enough already, and taking even more of our money just out of different pockets – as the Democrats are doing — is not tax relief. It’s making the mess that much bigger.

Long term, restructure the system to first establish an education budget amount and a tax rate Vermonters can afford, and then figure out how to spend that amount in the most efficient and cost-effective way to achieve superior student outcomes. Every other state in the Union, bar one, has figured out how to spend less on education than we do, and a lot of them are getting better student outcomes to boot. Every independent school in Vermont operates this way, and they get better results for less money. How about we learn from them instead of trying to shut them down?

A big reason we are in this mess is because our lawmakers created a public education financing system in which we throw everything the special interests say they want into the shopping cart and then tell the taxpayers to pay for whatever the cash register rings up. This dynamic has to end. Unfortunately, it is the dynamic that Democrats in Montpelier, under the influence of the VTNEA, Superintendents Association, and Principals’ Association, are doubling down on.

The multi-year study process they are opting for in lieu of meaningful reform is not being set up to control costs and provide property tax relief. It is going to “figure out the policy, vision and the system of where we are going and then how do we fund it….” That’s no different from what we are doing now. It’s the problem. It’s the reason for the mess. Clean it up.

The post Democrat Supermajority Has No Interest in Solving the Property Tax Mess They Made appeared first on Granite Grok.

I just thought of something: how about testing when starting school? Then Some kids may start in 1st grade and some may start in 2nd grade or even third. Then every year they take their “Proficiency Test” as long as they test to the next grade off they go, if not they get held back. If they test ahead of their class again, they could skip a grade again if the parents agree.

And to be honest, the grade levels do not have to be too difficult, just a wide field for each grade as a general test of that average grade level. I believe a lot of children would end up skipping grades, saving funding for everyone.

We want to thank Ken Goodall for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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If a student starts getting held back, then the school would work with the parents for tutoring, or if the student has medical or mental issues, then they could be set to “Special Needs,” and each county could have one school set as “Special Needs.”

I see a lot of issues with this for sure, but I believe it could work. With the battle going on with public, charter, Religious, and private schools, this could be a viable option.

Every Change Starts With The First Step, and we need to take the first step before it is too late.

The post Food For Thought on Schooling appeared first on Granite Grok.