Saturday • February 21 • 2026
Vol.XVIII • No.VIII
Manchester, N.H.
We are reaching out to you with an urgent appeal. As a leader in local independent media, we are dedicated to providing you with unfiltered news and opinions you can only get at GraniteGrok.com. Every day, we strive to make a meaningful impact on cultural and political debate in defense of free speech and free people.
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The post In Defense of Free Markets, Free Speech and Free People appeared first on Granite Grok.
So here is a little secret … “Red States” are not really that “red.” More specifically, Wyoming, a State that is thought of as a Red State among Red States, just refused to protect girls sports.
TWENTY Republicans in the Wyoming legislature helped kill a bill that would have prevented biological males from playing girls sports.
Riley Gaines is absolutely right … HAVING AN R BY YOUR NAME DOESN’T MAKE YOU A REPUBLICAN. We see the truth of this statement all the time in New Hampshire. The NHGOP is not really that GOP. The mantra of “economic prosperity” is a smokescreen to hide that the NHGOP, despite controlling State Government for most of the last eight years, has FAILED to remove DEI in public schools to prevent biological males from competing in girl’s sports or to prevent radical-ideologues masquerading as educators from withholding information from and lying to parents.
TWENTY house republicans voted to kill a bill that would define & codify words like "woman" in state statute this week. No this isn't California, it's Wyoming.
Having an R by your name doesn't make you a Republican. A bunch of squishy cowards even in the reddest of states. https://t.co/bnxTDklvZj
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) February 19, 2024
The post So Many Cowards And Losers appeared first on Granite Grok.
The government injecting itself into the health care system or getting between doctors, insurers, and patients has been driving up the cost of care for decades. The knee-jerk response to complaints about the cost of health care is to meddle some more, resulting in more expensive health care.
Democrats in Vermont have been pretending to know better for years, but more recent veto-proof majorities have a way of inspiring. They are health Care’s worst enemy, but that’s not how they see it. Instead of tearing down barriers and opening markets, their solution is predictable progressive pablum.
Allow more people on Medicaid.
New legislation would expand Medicaid services to more people without telling taxpayers how much this will cost them.
One idea, which would require coverage for obesity drugs (where it is bravely inferred that the body positivity movement is detrimental to public health), has an estimated cost of 100 million. Government watchers will know this is likely a gross underestimate but not nearly as blatant a disregard for other people’s money as expanding eligibility to age 26 or anyone in a 4-person household with income up to 7,925.00 a month. That’s 87,540 a year.
Median household income in America (2022) is $67,521.00. The average salary in Vermont is just over 59K a year. Are we admitting that the state has so bolloxed up health care with its meddling that the average Vermonter should be on Medicaid, or are we saying we want everyone on Medicaid because cradle-to-grave government-run care was always the plan?
That was the goal of Obamacare, which is still around, but it never managed to do anything to make care more affordable (if it had, we wouldn’t be having this discussion).
New Hampshire’s problems began when legislators led by Democrats made it impossible for insurance companies to compete. We went from more than a dozen insurers to fewer than five. We may have fewer today.
The hospital cartel has used the legislature to ensure its good health by promoting rules and laws that make it harder for private non-affiliated medical practice to thrive, which would create competition and drive prices down.
Legislators, pockets filled with donations from the medical Industrial complex, aid and abet the monopolies instead of going out of their way to get government out from between patients and providers, including health insurers and nothing Vermont (or New Hampshire, as far as I can tell) wants to change the trajectory.
The only thing legislators can do to help healthcare costs go down is to open up markets that allow for competition. Permit any insurer to do business with anyone (patient, practice, whomever) and watch them compete like Geico, Progressive, and State Farm on plans and pricing. Let private practice negotiate with insurers and patients for the cost of care and coverage and watch access improve..
Drugs? The US does pay too much, more than most other nations, but the internet (as with telehealth’s potential) is waiting to solve that problem if licensed healthcare professionals and pharmacists are freed up to help consumers find the drugs they need at the lowest cost instead of at the inflated cost insurers won’t cover.
That’s a very loose 30,000-foot analysis, but in almost every case, the problems were created by legislators, and stakeholders leverage influence to create monopolies, and these solutions are nowhere on their radar.
So, Vermont Legislators are looking busy but not for ways to bring down costs. They are hoping to provide the appearance of doing something even when everyone should know it will only make matters worse so they can keep looking busy, and so on.
The post After Years of Making Medical Care Cost More VT Legislators Pretend More Meddling Will Lower Costs appeared first on Granite Grok.
I was thinking some more about HB 1308, Arlene’s bill for parental access to library records, and thought about an old Ian Underwood article that should be in the Grok archives and found in a search.
He discussed the difference between a beneficiary and a customer, using an example of giving money to a (grand) kid to purchase a bike. He explained how the future owner of the bike is the beneficiary, but the donor of the money to pay for the bike is the customer. Without rewriting his article, the take-home talking points were about who gets to decide certain things, like the bells and whistles and price tag.
When I read that, three situations came to mind. One of them is when a landlord hires a handyman or contractor to make repairs or improvements to the rental unit. The tenant is the beneficiary, and the landlord is the customer. As a tenant, I remember complaining to the management office about a contractor making a mess and not cleaning up after himself and another one doing low-quality work. If I complained to that contractor myself, I would be told to go pound sand because I wasn’t the one paying him. If I was a property owner, my recourse could be refusing to pay my balance until the problem is rectified.
Another example is when you order something online and free shipping is included, for whatever reason. You, the customer(of the goods being purchased), are NOT the customer of FedEx, UPS, USPS, or whatever 3rd party carrier is used. You are its beneficiary. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has spent countless moments (or whatever other embarrassing units of time) furious about lies and broken promises when the merchandise fails to arrive when it’s supposed to. Again, you, the consumer, can’t sanction that delivery company for doing a bad job, but Amazon, Chewy, or whoever the sender is can!
The 3rd example is you, the patient, and Blue Cross (or other 3rd party insurance). A cash patient is a customer and s/he can see any provider in any zip code that’s accepting new patients. As an insured patient, it’s the insurance company that is the customer, and you are the beneficiary. You don’t get to choose treatments, drugs, procedures, schedules, etc., that are outside its clinical policy bulletin. If you do, guess what? You either get a big bill from the provider or are refused by that provider up front (in an approval-required situation).
So this brings me to a 4th example, which is the library. It could be a school library or your local Anytown USA public library. Your kid (or someone else’s) is the beneficiary, and you are the customer. Your kid might want to check out a Nancy Friday book, but you disapprove, just like the kid with the cash gift might want the bike with the $1000 price tag, but you only gifted $200.
As it stands now, my guess is that parents can refuse to sign off on a library card for their kids, but that could be complicated and inconvenient for a variety of reasons that we all can think of. But with HB1308, parents would have an extra tool in their toolbox to keep a watchful eye on their kids’ library records. Of course, there are still other issues to be dealt with, such as what materials are available to kids, but remember that YOU, parent, taxpayer, or both, are the customer, and the customer is always right.
If you, unlike Nashua and Hollis, happen to have decent reps, you might consider telling them to vote against the committee recommendation and support HB1308 next time the House meets, which appears to be tomorrow! (Thursday, 2/22). Remember that you are their boss, and this is an election year. Contrary to what Nashua’s former BoE member Ray Guarino wants you to think, they work for you.
The post YOU, Property Taxpayer, are the (Library’s) CUSTOMER appeared first on Granite Grok.
Despite prompting from House Rs, the leadership refused to reconsider HB1212, which Republicans won and had ITL’d. That was the first of a waterfall of mistakes that cost big losses in the House for conservatives, solely due to inadequate House leadership.
That bill was later reconsidered by the Dems and passed. How many more times do we have to lose before we get competent republican leadership?
Don’t even get me going on the whipping. When you send out a whipping sheet and then don’t even take a minute to have a conversation with those telling you they don’t know how they’re voting or that they’re voting against you on your PRIORITY bills… You’re not a whip. You’re self-demoted to a flag waiver, especially when leadership admits to two freshman reps single-handedly flipping the EFA votes at lunch last week.
It’s pretty bad when freshmen are more effective than “leadership.”
I couldn’t say it better than Rep True –
The post Op-Ed: House Leadership? appeared first on Granite Grok.
