The Manchester Free Press

Thursday • January 15 • 2026

Vol.XVIII • No.III

Manchester, N.H.

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News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
Updated: 19 min 48 sec ago

Don’t You Dare Call Them Isurrectionists

Tue, 2024-01-16 11:00 +0000

A few nights ago, a violent pro-Hamas mob attempted to storm the Whitehouse. But they are not insurrectionists, and let me explain why. The United States of America is now the Apartheid State of America. There are different rules.

If you belong to the Left … pro-Hamas, BLM, Antifa … you get to storm the Whitehouse, and it is a mostly peaceful protest, and you aren’t charged with any crimes. Can’t upset the voting blocs the Left counts on.

But if you do not belong to the Left, you are presumptively an insurrectionist. And you face years of jail time for peacefully walking through the Capitol after the Capitol Police opened the doors to you and let you in.

To cut to the chase, America is an apartheid state based on where you rate on the woke scale. The more woke you are, the more rights and privileges you get. And vice versa.

 

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Digital Marketing Vs. Digital Agency : The Real Difference

Tue, 2024-01-16 10:00 +0000

Digital marketing and digital agency are often used interchangeably in the digital landscape, but they differ significantly when seeking professional services in the digital space.

A digital marketing company or agency gives smart and effective marketing help. This includes boosting online search results, social media campaigns, content making for websites, email advertising, designing web pages look good and branding. It also helps with computer support. They aid companies in the online world to reach their targets, but knowing their special skills and range is very important.

In this blog, we will explore the difference between a digital marketing company and a digital agency. This way you can know which one is better for your needs.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing means the ways and methods used to show off goods or services on the internet. It includes many things such as SEO or search engine optimization, social media marketing, content marketing and email marketing. The purpose of digital marketing is to make your brand known, get people to visit your website, create chances for sales and finally turn those chances into paying customers.

What is a Digital Agency?

A digital agency is a type of business that gives different online marketing services to other companies. These services can involve making and developing websites, marketing on search engines (SEM), controlling social media. It also includes creating content and sending emails. And more too. Basically, a digital agency is like an outside marketing team for businesses. They take care of everything related to a company’s online image.

The Real Difference

In the always changing world of technology and business, it’s really important to know the difference between digital marketing and a digital agency. Although they might look alike, they have different jobs and purposes in the world of online business plans.

Definition and Scope

Digital marketing is about advertising products or services using online tools like websites, social media sites and search engines. It also includes email marketing and mobile apps. It’s about making and using ads, improving your internet presence, and looking at what customers do.

A digital firm is a business that provides various digital services to customers. This can cover things like online ads, making websites, designing pictures, creating content for people to read or see. It also includes how well a website comes up in search results and managing social media pages too. A digital agency offers full support for companies to set up and improve their online presence.

Focus and Expertise

Digital marketing mainly aims to get people aware of a brand, create leads and boost sales using different ways on the internet. Digital marketers are experts in using digital ways and tools to connect with their target people. They make interesting content and measure how good their campaigns are.

A digital agency, by comparison, gives services that go beyond digital marketing. They know a lot about different things like making websites, designing pictures and SEO. Digital companies have different teams with experts in various areas who work together to give full digital answers.

Client Engagement

Digital marketing and a digital agency might seem the same, but there’s an important difference when it comes to interacting with clients. Digital marketing is about the methods and actions used to advertise a brand or product on the internet. It typically includes tasks like using social media, improving search engine results, and sending emails.

But, a digital agency is a kind of business that gives many types of digital services to customers like marketing on the internet. But, the real change comes with how much clients get involved. A digital agency not only does digital marketing campaigns, but also gives a total approach by helping clients all the time. It gives advice and planning services too. This higher level of client involvement makes a digital agency different from just a single digital marketing service.

Collaboration vs. Outsourcing

Digital marketing and digital agencies may seem similar, but there is a real difference between the two. One key distinction is the approach to collaboration versus outsourcing. In digital marketing, businesses typically collaborate with a team or agency to develop and execute their marketing strategies. This involves close communication and involvement in the decision-making process.

On the other hand, digital agencies often provide a more outsourced service, where businesses hand over their marketing efforts entirely to the agency, allowing them to handle everything from strategy to implementation.

Cost and Scalability

When looking at digital marketing and a digital agency, one big difference is cost and how easily they can grow. Digital marketing means the ways and methods used to sell products or services on the internet, which can be done by yourself or given to a digital team. When it comes to price, online marketing lets firms have more power over their money. This is because they can pick and decide how much funds they want to give just for particular ways of advertising.

Digital companies offer access to a diverse group of experts, allowing businesses to adapt their marketing plans to their goals and budget. Digital marketing offers more flexibility, while digital agencies can handle complex campaigns due to their knowledge and tools. The choice between digital marketing or a digital agency ultimately depends on the business’s specific needs and resources.

In the end, even though digital marketing and digital agencies might look alike, there are some important differences between them. Digital marketing is about the ways we use online to tell people about products or services. A digital agency is a business that helps others with their internet advertising efforts.

Digital marketing is a part of the work done by a digital firm. This also includes making websites, managing social media, helping with search engine rankings and more. So, it’s important to know these differences when thinking about how best to use digital tools for business growth.

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Public Hearing’s Are Upon Us

Tue, 2024-01-16 09:00 +0000

This week, the House started public hearings on the new bills. My committee first met to review the performance audit of mental health professional licensing.

There were no surprises; the auditors found conflicting requirements, various laws not enforced, and leisurely activity by the licensing boards. Most of the statutory changes suggested have been submitted already, so this audit was mostly a map of things to be aware of as we proceeded this year.

Then we heard seven pension bills, all of which were sent to subcommittee. HB 1647 was a recommendation from the retirement commission I chaired this fall, restoring the pension multiplier to 2.5 (from a staggered 2.0 to 2.4 currently) for Group II (police, fire, corrections) employees not vested in 2011. It improves the pensions for all GII employees, including new hires. HB 1653, adding overtime back into earnable compensation for only the employed but not vested group, and HB 1673, changing the calculation of final compensation for that group, both had moderate costs that compounded the effects of other changes, so we need to be careful about increasing costs.

We want to thank Carol McGuire for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.

HB 1299 added the fire instructors at the community college to GII if they had at least ten years of service before becoming educators in an attempt to recruit New Hampshire professionals. Teaching is a Group I activity, and going to GI after a career in GII is generally disadvantageous for the person, both because there are some special benefits that are only available if one retires directly from a GII position and because the federal government penalizes Social Security if there is a GII pension (GII does not pay into, nor earn, Social Security benefits.) The committee was skeptical mostly because there are only two instructors in this program, and we hate making exceptions for only a few people.

HB 1211 would increase the maximum hours worked by a retiree for ten years to allow localities to hire them to cover openings. Since very few retirees work anything close to the maximum number of hours, I’m not optimistic we’ll recommend this bill.

HB 1421 requires the retirement system to hire two investment consultants rather than one and only renew the contract of the one with the better results. It’s an interesting idea and might improve the investment results, but the bill puts this competition in the wrong statute.

Finally, HB 1307 grants a $500 stipend to disability retirees who didn’t get last year’s bonus because it was restricted to those who retired after at least 20 years of service. Disability retirees don’t choose to retire early.

The committee will be holding hearings at least two days a week for a while since we have 66 new bills assigned.

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

Night Cap: Who Has Standing to Sue If Not US?

Tue, 2024-01-16 03:00 +0000

Last week, yet another election-process challenge was argued in court: this time, federal U.S. District for New Hampshire. At issue was the sleight-of-hand unauthorized extension of primary voter dates to change party – part of a schema of Trump-haters to empower non-GOP outsiders to vote in the state GOP primary election, then to switch back to their own ‘other party’ affiliation to vote in the general election.

Crafty? Slick? This Machiavellian maneuver by high-level authorities (both government and political party leaders) was yet another scheme to keep the leading contender for U.S. President off the state general election ballot. It has a name – this disruptive practice is called a ‘tactical voting’ practice.

There have been 64 election challenges across the nation since the 2020 election results were announced, each filed by a diverse set of interested parties challenging every kind of conceivable plot and project to illegally gather, create, invent, destroy, and manipulate computer data, voter rolls, and paper ballots in ways that alter true vote outcomes. It occurs at polling offices, virtual data repositories, print shops, using ballot machines, and now by an SOS email to every precinct officer. Whether these ideas of stolen and altered election results are illusory and ill-thought or whether there is merit and true evidentiary substance to these claims is yet to be seen because of manipulation of the third branch to avoid looking and hearing these 64 case challenges.

Standing to Sue is a legal concept that bars the doors to the courthouse to those who have nothing at risk, no losses (actual or potential), and therefore, people who file a claim are deemed to be bringing spurious cases – alleged to be unfit litigants and attorneys without character, fact, or valid right to sue for relief under the law.

We want to thank Caroline Douglas for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.

Last week saw a multitude of New Hampshire supporters show up for a court hearing where state GOP Party Committee member (and past gubernatorial challenger) Karen Testerman appeared–to explain to the judge why she should be allowed to advance her lawsuit to discovery and trial stages – a lawsuit alleging state officials quietly and irreparably altered the GOP primary voting process –causing irreparable harm if not corrected using legal process.

Testerman’s case is #65, although it is hard to keep track.

The NH SOS and GOP chairman challenged Testerman’s right to sue them (she sued along with two other GOP citizen co-parties) over their manipulations of law using the authority of office that quietly (some would say secretly) was planned to alter and corrupt the State GOP primary election outcome.

The primary election is less than two weeks away. If the government officials’ challenge to Testerman’s fundamental right to bring a law case against them is not decided, then de facto, the altered primary process will proceed with thousands of registered Democrats and Independents (now temporarily casting GOP primary votes) deciding if Donald Trump will be listed on the general election ballot this fall.

Americans have been increasingly disappointed for several decades over the collapse of the American Dream in areas of work, economic freedom, and individual reward for their hard work, discipline, risk, and product quality. The crashing American dream also includes widespread loss of faith in the political systems and in many government actors—elected and appointed bureaucrats with power acting against duty and morality–while unfettered courts that can – do or will not allow legal actions by citizens to be heard to correct administrative injuries, errors, and outright abuses of government authority and power.

Here, those who have access to top-level authority over the primary election processes are again being challenged for their failure to follow the rule of law by altering the process and/or by acting unethically to corrupt the election outcome. The question is, are they above review? Above the law? Or is there oversight of the highest offices of state political election power?

The U.S. Supreme Court this summer ruled on two cases that States may not duck or avoid court cases challenging state rights, including voting law. These are Marbury v. Madison caliber cases – finding a basic duty in court judges to allow 2nd Amendment cases (landmark decisions in Heller v. District of Columbia (2008) & NY State Pistol Club v. Bruen (2002), which firmly set the standard of review for judicial review of American fundamental rights (overruling the disingenuous universal pre-2023 court trick of manipulating to shift the state’s burden of proof over to complaining citizens.) This burden-shifting manipulation (of the state burden onto the backs of citizens). This means a citizen’s right to access to court to right a fundamental wrong. The Right-to-Sue-in-court had been shifted into oblivion by standardized modern court practice. Moore v. Harper (2023) also established rules on judicial review (in a redistricting challenge involving independent redistricting theory). Courts are not free to legislate from the bench or act in an inappropriate manner, wrote the U.S. Supremes, so does the present NH process of barring access to justice –by denying a party voter the right to sue for relief meet this new U.S. standard? Does it mean courts can avoid hearing these cases at all, much less to rule in a timely manner? And with the election less than two weeks away?

[See another recent NH Supreme Court case argument on YouTube at Daniel_Richard.com.] 

A voting system is spelled out in the State Constitution with the required process; so the state administrator’s exploitation of his SOS power of office to quietly manipulate to alter what is a detailed Constitutional mandate into something else in practice– is a boldfaced manipulation of official power.

After the Civil War, this country saw an avalanche of exploitation, manipulation, and corruption in office, writes author William Caldwell in his book Cynicism and the Evolution of the American Dream (highly recommended reading). Here, cynicism extends not only to state election officers but to their overseer – the court judiciary/system. Who else can hold them accountable? What other timely recourse is available for oversight of bad government actors under American law?

In 64 election-challenge-cases, judges declined to hear all cases but one. 

In many, the political, occupational, and financial retaliation against attorneys who filed the cases and challenged the government’s political narrative–was beyond harsh. It was designed to ruin and destroy the professional and private lives of those who acted in good faith for Americans who challenged overarching national narratives that the last election was fair and honest. The widespread perception across ‘common’ America is the last election was manipulated and stolen. The power of the state is punishing harshly and unfairly those who DARE to ask for the American open trial process for public exposure of underlying facts, discovery, and for a publicly-monitored trial decision on the fairness and ethics of those election practices. Are they American values? Or are they manipulated by political corruption? Don’t we deserve to hear and decide individually—by public trial process–where facts and evidence are openly presented?

If the lawsuit allegations are political lies, are underlying facts present, waiting to be discovered, processed, and presented in court at trial? The greatest risk of this process is truth to power.

Is truth being suppressed systematically, using legal tools designed to avoid the so-called ‘frivolous lawsuits’ – alleged to be filed in court by mentally incapacitated and unfit lawyers? Those are hard-ball political and bar corporation tactics now routinely being used to systematically suppress (and oppress) American critics, cynics, thinkers, open challengers, and, yes, attorney whistleblowers.

Who but? The moral implications of fitness to sue being herded through the narrow padlocks of preliminary court hearings is one of semantics – whether or not a citizen lacks standing to sue– is an affront to democracy, Americans, and the ideals we espouse for fair elections.  Government actors (as the above cases indicate) have no such pre-requirement to sue us, so the double standard – that citizens have a fundamental right to sue but cannot until they jump through court procedural hoops ad nauseam – is being used nationally by those in power to suppress the fundamental rights of American citizens to question politically altered traditional voting processes.

The lack of transparency and the exponential harmful impact of cutting-edge data processing technology means the capacity to alter electronic processing exists without accountability. Other more mundane alterations of voting dates, registration, verification, even mule-vote processing and other signature or verification anomalies all mean there exist invisible vote-changes and that Americans now are told to address by trusting those in power.

American skepticism is a national trait – from early pioneers, farmers, and cowboys to moon explorers, skepticism kept our ancestors alive in body and spirit – and thriving when bureaucracies and politicians were wrong and failed. Whether flaws in the recent voting changes are intentional or in error, skepticism is still a healthy American process.

The inability to challenge in court and obtain a public trial, to view and challenge the unseen manipulations of data and law, to expose manipulated voting processes, means the high technology voter processes (corrupted by unaccountable political actors) can exist. These processes are designed to invent, harvest, and file absentee ballots, fraudulently manufacture and/or falsify ballots and voter rolls, and other irregularities at the polls. These crimes arguably fall into the same category as this underhanded manipulation of the party primary registration calendar.

All are designed and enacted to alter a fundamental national tradition of voting—and appear to be accompanied by the certainty that courts everywhere will not open the doors (floodgates?) to citizen doubts about the authenticity of voter registration, certification, and the election processes. That’s the preliminary bar of unequal standing to sue protocol. It leaves citizens with no recourse at law.

Why should a state administrator be immune from these irregularities, manipulations, and violations at law? Where does this immunity come from? From the invisible protection of the overseeing branch – judges who slam shut the door to the courthouse?

This is a cynical age. National political strategists and operators planted practices and campaigns leading to this now widespread cynicism of voters. Testerman’s lawsuit is a ray of hope that American rights still exist; and that election law overseers will recognize the basic duty to stop unequally barring access to the courthouse.

Caroline Douglas, J.D. is a former NH attorney, former co-author of the New Hampshire State Law Treatise on Family Law, and author of several law treatises, including The Dark Side, a law treatise on judging (with memoir). She is a national whistleblower and can be reached at nssri@pm.me

Note: as this op-ed opinion was being sent out for publication, a notice of the court’s decision barring the Testerman claim from the court was received – denied by the judge who raised the issue of standing. This proactive protection of a state court actor was based on an alleged lack of standing—by an oral ‘motion’ initiated by the judge. Slam the door shut. Firmly. Yet again.

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Categories: Blogs, New Hampshire

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