Wherever you have a majority of Democrats, you will hear lots of words about supporting various demographics: women, minorities, blue-collar workers, and small business owners. Talk, as they say, is cheap, while everything else under Democrat rule is expensive.

The Putney Paper Mill has been around for a good long time. Paper production began in the area in the early 1800s, and the current mill is reported to have been built in 1869. But its parent company has announced that it has to close the mill, not because the cost of energy has gotten so high it is no longer possible to do business.

“Despite our best efforts to sustain operations at this historic paper mill, we had no choice but to shut down operations,” said [Soundview Vermont President Rob] Baron in a prepared statement.

“The high cost of energy in the region has made it unaffordable to keep our doors open. Our top priority moving forward will be supporting our incredible employees and their families throughout this difficult transition.”

There is no shortage of news or opinion on these pages about the cost of electricity in New England, but recent efforts to replace affordable, reliable sources with intermittent wind and solar have driven up costs. Decommissioning Vermont Yankee didn’t help, and the Vermont Dem’s war on coal and gas has only made matters worse. Add to this a myriad of bureaucracy-building carbon and emission schemes that make it cost more to do just about anything, and you can feel Putney Paper’s pain. Their officers are eating out their substance at the dwindling margins with increased fixed costs.

News reports say 127 people will lose their jobs. In a town of 2630, and they may not all live in Putney, that is not a small number of jobs.

The ironic bit is that the so-called party of the working man and woman (Democrats) will gnash their teeth and pound their chest at the injustice or indignity of the dissolution of not just another business but one like Putney Paper, without ever admitting it was their fault. Vermont Democrats and the Biden Presidency have made it too expensive to do business, and Putney isn’t the only casualty.

Every industry in the state except for the government is at risk; according to USA Facts, the government is the biggest business in Vermont and is only likely to get bigger as it offers its gold standard subsistence lifestyle alternative to the former employees at Putney Paper Mill: unemployment checks, welfare, Medicaid, housing assistance (or not), and teaching them to code probably won’t help.

Six score and seven have been let go, and there isn’t much call for what they do around these parts anymore, but I bet the government is hiring. Or, you could run for public office. The legislature is working hard on making that into a more meaningful and profitable career choice, which will only make the Vermont government an even bigger “business” than it already is, and you know what Skip always says. The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.

The post Democrats Drove the Putney Paper Mill Out of Business appeared first on Granite Grok.

In the 1970s, the moral wit of Tom Anderson precisely describes today’s rush toward economic suicide in Washington, DC: “Changing Nelson Rockefeller for Hubert Humphrey is like changing the pins on a soiled diaper without changing the diaper; you continue to get the same mess.”

The first step to changing the soiled diaper is still our citizens voting for the candidate of their choice. But let’s stop right at the choices we make. Unfortunately, too many times, they resemble Einstein’s definition of insanity: we continue to pass judgment on each candidate for office based on what the chief mouthpieces of both parties say and expect different results. Too often, the will of party leadership has become the moral premise that forgets about the Ten Commandments and serves a higher loyalty — you vote the party line to get reelected.

We have a Constitution that was created to limit the ambitions of politicians in seats of power. Our framers knew their history and were obviously familiar with Cicero: “For out of an ungoverned populace, one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property.” Does that not describe the process of the Marxist con game that enables the majority of our leaders today to be reelected? The majority of our people do not know how our Constitution limits “bold and unscrupulous” politicians, so they continue selling their votes for other men’s property. Cicero goes on to describe how the con game motivated by greed repeats today, perpetuating criminal acts of government he opposed: “To such a people, a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.”

This history has been forgotten, or more accurately, never taught, and is screaming at the choices we continue to make at the ballot box that continue to practice “insanity.” Alexis de Tocqueville tells us in the 1830’s that the American people were not always so ignorant of the Constitution and our history “…Every citizen is taught… the history of his country and the leading features of it’s Constitution…. It is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is sort of a phenomenon.” If this were true today, do you think our people would continue to tolerate congressional representation and presidents who have accumulated a 34 trillion dollar debt? If we had an electorate that knew the Constitution, do you think Americans across the nation would insanely continue to employ such irresponsibility?

Our New Hampshire delegation to Congress in Washington proves they are part of the game that depends on constitutional ignorance each term to get reelected. As constituents, we need to address them as honorable representatives. However, as Americans who are anxious about the liberty of our children and children’s children, we need to be concerned about how they continue to vote contrary to their oath of office, against constitutional limits that control government spending, buy votes, and steal our freedom. Go to thenewamerican.com and click on the Freedom Index to view their score and also view state legislators’ fidelity to the constitutional limits.

Americans need to be as informed as our forefathers were about the document that the framers of the Constitution designed to protect our freedom and control politicians who lust for power. Contact Mathew Rhodes, Field Coordinator of The John Birch Society, at mrhodes@jbs.org to ask about our Constitutional Seminar called, The Constitution is the Solution class. The American electorate must become acquainted with the Supreme Law of our land as the American people were in the early decades of the 19th century.

The post Bold and Unscrupulous appeared first on Granite Grok.

The coven of witches doing business as The View took the celebration of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. (this is a bit late, so apologies) as an opportunity to crap on white kids and show the world their ignorance about slavery.

• [Sunny] Hostin herself had a very warped perspective on what oppression actually was. Despite being a multimillionaire who brags about not needing to shop for groceries in years, Hostin insists she’s “oppressed” and demands her reparations.
• Sara Haines proclaimed that it was “important” for white kids like her own to be made to “feel bad” in history class, particularly about slavery.
• Ana Navarro went off about how Republicans had “weaponized” black history and books “for political purposes to drive people to the polls based on outrage” and the perception that “my poor little white kid is feeling bad because he’s learning about slavery.”
• Navarro actually provided pushback, telling Haines: “I don’t think it should make you feel bad. I don’t think a white child that’s had nothing to do with slavery should feel bad about slavery. I think we need to learn so we don’t repeat the same mistakes of history.”

The joke writes itself. What do you call five women who know nothing about the history of slavery? The View.

Last December, on these very pages, I read a piece that shared some history from a black man named Tom Sowell. Has he ever been on the view? Can you imagine what that would look like? I’m imagining it now, and it just made my day without having happened. Sowell has said much on the subject including how universal the practice and later the condemnation. We know that blacks owned black slaves in America and continue to do so elsewhere. That white slaves were common before and after the US Civil War and how no one seems all that wound up about the million or so people still living in slavery.

Maybe we could make some time to feel bad about them, and oh, by the way, none of them are here in America. That’s not to say we don’t have slavery. Everywhere sex work is “protected,” you will likely find young Asian women held as sex slaves of older Asian women and men. Child trafficking or child sex trafficking looks a lot like slavery, and it affects children without regard to race. I have heard catty things like those seated around the table at The View claim it is a horrible thing without considering how our open borders encourage the practice, and they don’t seem to feel bad about that.

And that’s bad for them, their audience, and the people still living in slavery because in some parts of the world it isn’t just their history its their everyday and no knowing that seems like a much bigger mistake to me.

The post Night Cap: If Slavery Should Make White People Feel Bad, Shouldn’t Black People Feel Bad About White Slavery? appeared first on Granite Grok.

In the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary and the double-digit beating suffered by Nikki Haley, we received all sorts of tips and details, one of which was a query. Do you have any idea who is behind the group Independents Moving the Needle?

Their name is at the bottom of all the Independents for Nikki signs you may have seen near polling places. These were out along the NH Seacoast town, I believe – And yes, I figured it out – the headline gives it away. And no, I am not surprised, though I am that it didn’t catch our eye sooner.

I did some digging at the behest of a reader, and while this isn’t always the case, it was easy enough to discover what the group was about. FEC Records identify Jonathon S. Bush as the custodian and treasurer with an address of PO Box 202 North Hampton, New Hampshire 03862. with PrimaryBank 207 Route 101 Bedford, New Hampshire 03110 as the bank of depositories.

The name Bush raised an eyebrow; yes, he is related to George Bush and the Bush Family. I ran down a pic that happened to look like this guy in a Fox Biz report titled Nikki Haley, getting backing from Wall Street Billionaires. We knew that, so it all fit together very nicely. Another Trump-Hating uniparty Bushie (who lives in Massachusetts) meddling in NH Elections.

ABC News reported all that back in November, and think about the precious minutes I could have saved had I landed there first.

Led by five entrepreneurs — including Jonathan Bush, the cousin of former President George W. Bush, and billionaire CEO Frank Laukien — the PAC, called Independents Moving the Needle, says it will focus its efforts on New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary. About 40% of voters in the state are registered as undeclared.

Gov. Chris Sununu, whose dad worked for and is presumably still tight with the family, was kind enough to let slip the deeper goal. Get their Trump-Hating allies in the Democrat party to vote for Haley as well – and some did. Haley’s path to the Republican nomination is paved – as thin as it is .. would be paved with … Democrat votes.

Related: Did Haley-Homer Chris Sununu Just Help Us Close the NH Republican Primary?

More from ABC.

The PAC is chaired by five relative outsiders to the world of dark money politics. Laukein and his wife, Tamra, who lead companies in life sciences, are joined by Bush, CEO of a healthcare data company, and Bonnie Anderson, CEO of PinkDx, a private cancer-testing company. Robert Fisher, a white-collar attorney and a former federal prosecutor, also helped to found and is now leading the group.

Tamara was the first link that led me to Bush family backing, which is one of several RINO spigots used by the uniparty to flush out non-globalist candidates for higher office. We’ve seen that up close at work in New Hampshire. When the state Delegates elected Jack Kimball as party chair, the Sununu Klan – taken entirely by surprise – went to work locking Jack out from any big donors. In other words, they were happy to see the state party and its candidates fail rather than allow someone they could not control to lead the apparatus.

And we see it with Haley and Trump, which should make anyone who thought Haley wasn’t somehow someone they thought they could control accept the likelihood that she has to be.

Or, and this is still a possibility, their Trump derangment syndrome is so advanced she is merely a beneficiary of their uniparty largess. A candidate that could lose and not bitch about how the same people that got her nominated made sure someone more to their liking won the crown, even if it was a Democrat.

Related: Does Haley’s Second Place NH Finish Need an Asterisk*

There’s nothing independent about Independents for Nikki. It is a very partisan operation focused on uni party dominance, and it will do anything to avoid speed bumps, especially named Trump. Luckily for us, the peasants are not so easily bought, and what happened in Iowa and New Hampshire will continue across the country, and the Bushes and Sununus and the rest can’t stop it.

I’m sure it affirms in their minds how incapable we are of self-governance.

And yes, you would be right to wonder what they’d be willing to do next because they don’t care what America wants. When you’ve reached that point – and we are long past it – anything (as we have seen) is possible.

The post “Independents For Nikki” is a Bush Family Anti-Trump Front appeared first on Granite Grok.

From the Women’s Defense League:  On Wednesday January 31st at 3:15 PM there will be a gun control hearing in the House Judiciary Committee.

The bill is House Bill 1037 – AN ACT relative to repealing limited liability for manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition.

This legislation tries to hold firearms and ammunition manufacturers liable for the actions of humans who use their products.

Firearms manufacturers manufacture inanimate objects. The objects themselves can do nothing without human interaction. Somehow, the gun control crowd at the State House feels manufacturers should be held responsible for what a human does with their inanimate product after they purchase it.

Of course, this bill makes zero sense. What’s next, holding automobile manufacturers liable for the actions of drunk drivers? Holding knife manufacturers for the actions of a criminal who stabs someone? Holding match manufacturers responsible for a person who commits arson?

You can email or call the House Judiciary Committee members below:

You can send testimony opposing the bill or just sign in to oppose the bill online here: https://gencourt.state.nh.us/house/committees/remotetestimony/default.aspx

Example of the online sign in:

The post Gun Control Hearing – January 31st appeared first on Granite Grok.

To set the stage: Town meetings are dominated by the people who receive, benefit from or massage taxpayer loot. The “official ballot referendum town meeting” or SB2 procedure took away from town meetings the power to make final budget decisions for the upcoming year.

It became a “deliberative town meeting” and merely decided the wording of budgetary questions. These went onto the secret ballot, along with the selection of municipal officials.

Deliberative town meetings involved fewer voters than the old style had. However, Election Day involved many more voters than town meetings ever did – including the infirm, snowbirds, people with jobs who vote absentee, and deployed members of the military services. Limiting spending finally became feasible – and the big spenders began scheming.

Those managing deliberative town meeting first turned to sabotage. Warrant articles “To see if the town will appropriate $1 million” were amended to read “To see,” but we now have a law against that. Unfortunately, we cannot legislate against every bad-faith tactic. In one notorious Exeter meeting, a motion of No Confidence in the Superintendent was amended to be a “motion of Confidence”? Yawn!

Adopting or rescinding the SB2 procedure required a 60% vote. In 2019, a Democrat legislature finally hit upon the solution, amending RSA 131 so that the vote to switch to a secret ballot was made not by secret ballot but at *town meeting itself*. Advocates said this would produce a more immediate result, but the obvious intent and the result was to break SB2. No town meeting is going to marshal a 60% vote to give up some of its own power! And indeed, it seems no town in New Hampshire has adopted the SB2 procedure since 2019 Chapter 131 became law.

* * * * *

House Bill 1175 would reverse this change and put the decision to adopt the SB2 procedure back on the secret ballot. It will still take a 60% majority to adopt or rescind, but will throw the question open to all the town’s voters, rather than those who can devote an entire evening to town meeting, no matter how you feel about being hissed at by schoolmarms and wondering if they will retaliate against your kids.

House Bill 1175 is the biggest game-changer, in terms of citizen control of government overspending, that has a chance of being passed this year. It was assigned to the Municipal and County Government Committee but does not yet have a hearing date. My town’s library has a message on the marquee that suggests that the insiders understand the threat and are organizing to defeat it. Grok readers ought to understand the promise and contact their representatives.

The post HB-1175: Another Attempt to Repair SB2 appeared first on Granite Grok.