I have been writing about the illegal Chinese Pot Farms in Central Maine for months. I have been trying to raise awareness of this dangerous situation in our backyard. These Chinese Cartel operations not only involve drugs but possibly human and sex trafficking.

I commend The Maine Wire, which has been at the forefront of this assault by Chinese nationals buying Maine properties to operate illegal drug operations not only to grow but also to export marijuana to Canada and other parts of the United States. They have been ringing the bell loudly and forcing other media outlets in the Pine Tree State to get on board. The problem has gotten worse, and maybe this will be the element that will get Mainers angry enough to demand action. The Maine Wire discovered and first reported that many properties owned by the Chinese Cartel were bought with money from a U.S. government program to assist foreign nationals to purchase property or start a business in America. To bottom line that statement, our tax dollars are funding the Chinese Pot Growers.

This Chinese operation is not unique to Maine. It is known that over 3,000 Chinese owned marijuana farms exist in California, Washington, Oklahoma, and Maine. Other states may be involved, but these are the hot spots today. Over 300 sites have been identified in Maine. Maine has liberal marijuana laws that allow the sale and use of marijuana for adult recreational purposes. This blurs the line on what is and isn’t legal, takes the attention of law enforcement away from marijuana, and places it more on Fentanyl and other narcotics. The four members of Maine’s federal delegation have been pleading for help from Merrick Garland and the Justice Department, but their pleas remain unanswered.

The Maine Wire has discovered a source for some of the funds used to purchase these Maine properties, and nobody should be pleased with their findings. Many property records indicated the funding originated from the Quontic Bank, a New York-based CDFI. Two Quontic loan officers, Steven Ho and Yang-Chan Weng, handled many of the Maine and Oklahoma transactions. These two targeted the Chinese immigrant community. CDFI was initially created by Congress in 1994 to help low-income immigrants access financing to purchase homes. COVID-19 saw the CDFI program enhanced with additional funds, and that money was used to finance homes in Maine that have become pot farms. That is U.S. taxpayer funds used to finance foreign-owned and operated illegal drug operations. Seventy of the Maine properties identified were financed using CDFI funding.

This is a very complex issue that many levels of government and agencies have facilitated. Maine made recreational use of marijuana legal, which changed the focus of law enforcement on pot usage. The Treasury Department made money available for banks to finance a substantial percentage of these illegal properties, and the Justice Department, Merrick Garland, and DHS have turned a blind eye to Maine’s issue. This complex issue will require Mainers to rise and demand the eradication of these illegal operations and the accountability they deserve from those involved.

The post Bear Pond Conservative Chronicles: Our Tax Dollars Are Funding Chinese Pot Farms appeared first on Granite Grok.

In 2023, HB 44 was a defeated bill that threatened to turn certain single-family-zoned neighborhoods into rental nightmares. However, this year comes an even worse bill, HB 1291, to be heard by a House ‘Special’ Committee on Housing on February 16.

What is the reason this bill is not being heard by the normal House Municipal Committee? Doesn’t it seem suspicious that somehow, this newly created House ‘Special’ Committee on Housing’s ten members include seven of the eight sponsors of HB 1291? Would we be wrong to think that 7 of the 10 members are already necessarily biased?

We want to thank Jane Aitkin for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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There is NO way this bill will get a fair hearing. This kind of manipulation (forming special taxpayer-funded lobbying groups and committees) is typical of Sununu and his developer cronies after they fail to pass unsavory bills the normal way.

Please help us stop the the eradication of NHs SF-zoned neighborhoods. It’s not only an attack on the middle class but an attack on the family.

Voters should contact the committee before 2/16 using the House portal expressing OPPOSITION to this bill. If the date of the hearing has passed, email the full committee.

The views and opinions expressed by contributors are those of the author and may not reflect the opinion or position of Grok Media, GraniteGrok.com, its authors, advertisers, donors, or sponsors.

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On Tuesday, Joe Biden went to the podium and blamed the failure of the flawed Senate border bill on Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. The man who erased our border on day one of his Presidency with nearly one hundred executive orders that reversed the policies of Donald Trump that had made the border the most secure in decades claims this bill must be passed for the security of America. He says give me the money and power, and he will close the border.

Biden started his speech by saying the bill will not even get to the floor of the Senate because of one thing: Donald Trump. That shows how weak this President and this bill are if a man who is not even in a government position can bring it to a screeching stop.Here he is using the failure of the bill to attack his 2024 opponent, and then saying that Donald Trump wants the bill to fail so he can use the issue against Biden. What is that about calling the pot black?

Biden could not have it more wrong. He said he would remind the American people every day until Election Day that the border is in crisis because of Trump and his MAGA Pals. He challenged Republicans in Congress to grow a spine and stick up to Trump. He is living in a parallel universe. What we need is for Democrats to get their heads out of their butts and call out Biden on the damage he is doing to America. Millions of unvetted illegal migrants spread throughout America. We know there are terrorists among them who were undetected in the masses as they came out of the swift Rio Grande River.

You have to ask who let him walk, if you call that walking, to the podium armed with that, excuse me, crap. A week ago, Biden and his feckless DHS Secretary, Mayorkas, claimed till they were blue in the face, the border was closed and secure. We knew they were lying. They knew they were lying, but now that he wants to blame Trump, the border is in a crisis.

He says he needs money to secure the flow of humanity, yet he continues to take Abbott and Texas to court for taking care of their sovereignty. They put floats in the Rio Grande, and Biden sued them to remove them. Texas puts up barriers and concertina wire, and Biden sues to have it cut and removed. Arizona put freight boxes along the border to secure it, only to be sued by Biden to remove them. Does that sound like a man who is concerned with border security or a treasonous bastard who is hell-bent on destroying America?

Instead of treating these people as the criminals they are, we have the NY Mayor giving them loaded debit cards. We have these criminals kicking and beating cops in New York City and DA Bragg, who won’t charge them but sets them free without bail. It is easy to say that the Democrats have turned the world upside down, but the truth is this is a planned destruction of America using criminal migrants as a weapon. It is sick, inhumane, and un-American, but it is pure Democrat. Now, which Democrat is going to grow a spine and tell Joe Biden the game is over?

The post We Were A Great Country Before Biden appeared first on Granite Grok.

You might be asking yourself, how exactly might a dead person change their gender, and I have the answer. If they were a boy pretending to be a girl, and their bones got dug up some years from now, they’d be identified as male. We wouldn’t need an act of law for that, of course, just nature – so this headline is about something else.

UK Labour MP Charlotte Nichols is concerned that people who’ve been pretending to be some sex other than the one mom and dad saddled them with at birth might be misremembered if the death certificate says what they were and not what they claimed to be. I know this is from the UK (Ungendered Kingdom?), but most of this crap starts in one place, and the next thing you know, every progressive on the planet has to have it, too, lest their own ideological brethren brand them as bigots.

‘The genesis of the petition was the murder of my constituent Brianna Ghey, whose life was brutally cut short before she was old enough to have formal legal recognition of who she was and how she will be remembered by her family, friends and our community.’

Nichols, who might be remembered as a redhead or a mousy brunette (she is pretending to be one but, based on photos, appears to be the other), seems overly concerned about this non-problem. And it is, as she has articulated it, a non-problem. None of “Brianna’s” family or friends are likely ever to see her death certificate, let alone refer to it before “remembering” who she was. We knew her better than anyone, but what’s Her Majesty’s (Sorry, His Majestys) coroner got to say? Well, call me late for Tea; Brianna was a guy!

No. They will speak of them as they knew them, not as the coroner has scientifically documented. As in real life, you can pretend as much as you like about nearly anything, and if anyone goes along, that’s what they’ll remember. Social media, recollections, written words, pictures, and videos are the things that define the memories of people whose lives were stolen by misguided government health meddling, socialized medicine, neither safe nor effective “vaccine” mandates, or flawed non-pharmaceutical interventions.

When disarmed neighbors are deprived of their belongings by hooligans trapped in the welfare state who then stab them to avoid being identified, what you’ll recall is not a grossly incompetent national policy on the right to self-defense. You’ll remember that time you could see the embarrassing bulge of her man parts through the yoga pants you told her not to wear without some sort of long billowy top.

You’ll remember them however you want, Government be damned. This suggests that Labour MP Charlotte Nichols drew the short (paper) straw to advance another sparkling facet of the transgender agenda, only to be smacked down by Equalities Minister Stuart Andrew – yes, they have one of those – who said the said Government did not have plans to amend the Act in question, or Sir Liam Fox (the MP for North Somerset), who said,

‘It is patently absurd, factually inaccurate and a statistical distortion.

‘We should not be encouraging the idea that people can simply choose to change their biological status nor should we bend truth to accommodate an ever more extreme and dangerous ideology.’

I bet he’s the bigot, yes – talking about biology and science. How dare he. The next thing he’ll be asking people if they know what a woman is, to which his correct answer might be the bird who does your laundry, not the girl with the bulging man parts in her yoga pants, which, by the way, will be long gone when the archeologist discovers the remains before they are moved to make way for another new mosque in the Islamic Republic of England.

As in, you’ve got bigger problems than this.

The post “Dead People Should be Able to Change Their Gender”? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The mass immigration of 3rd world country populations into Western countries currently happening across the world has to stop and must be reversed.
Case in point: Reportedly, the most popular first name in the UK right now for baby boys is Mohamad, and the world is supposed to celebrate this in the name of diversity and all the “advantages” it supposedly brings.

The reality of this situation is far different than what is being presented and supported. Populations of people that have worked to build a country for millennia (as represented by France or the UK) or centuries (like the USA) are supposed to celebrate an invasion of folks from 3rd world countries who now change the entire demographic, take control, and reap the rewards from the progress and accomplishments of generations.

Even worse, the existing citizens, whose ancestors built the country and whose societal mores align with those who built the society, are vilified and labeled as selfish racists, all while crime (fentanyl, sex trafficking, and violence) and disease (measles and leprosy) are imported, and resources are expended on those who hate them but want their advantages. It is ludicrous for populations to accept this, especially while no vetting procedures, no health checks, and no assimilation processes are implemented.

I don’t advocate for the selfish hoarding of the fruits of the progress brought about by Western civilization. I wish to prevent the demise of that progress and offer the sharing of it to societies that want to learn from it and build it themselves. The United States’ geography isn’t the only one in the world to possess advantages in resources. Africa is a powerhouse of agricultural possibilities and mineral resources, including diamonds, copper, gold, oil, and natural gas. In spite of these resources being available, the societies in Africa have not advanced as have Western societies. The advances of modern society consistently originate from Western civilization, where freedom and individualism have flourished. Invention, which leads to improvements in quality of life, is prolific, where individuals are allowed to think and act freely within the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

Advances, not just technological but also societal (including the abolition of slavery and the concept of individual rights), originated from and are allowed to flourish in Western societies. When the populations of these advanced societies are diluted with people from societies that don’t have these values, the advanced society becomes unsustainable. The result won’t be the raising of the entire world to 1st World levels, it will lower the bar so that 1st World becomes 2nd World, and down to 3rd. Just look at the current condition of many US cities as an example of this drastic decline.

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What is the solution? First, to protect humanity from this inevitable decline, persons allowed to immigrate to places like the USA need to go through a process that involves:

1. Vetting to ensure that they are not criminals in their country of origin and/or enemies of their new country.
2. Medical testing to prevent the import of diseases that, for all intents and purposes, had been irradicated.
3. Education regarding the values and practical workings of the culture and government of the destination country so that they can assimilate into THAT COUNTRY’S society.
4. Most importantly, they must be LIMITED IN NUMBER so that the mores of the new society won’t be diluted to the point that that society regresses from all that they have achieved.

This is not a racist or selfish concept. A simple look at history will show that where freedom has been allowed to flourish and where governments have evolved away from totalitarianism and dictatorships, quality of life improves, not in a moment, but over time. Humanity in these areas adjusts, and their way of thinking evolves with societal growth.

This leads to the second way to improve the quality of life of humanity worldwide. Take it to the source. Simply moving populations from one location, where quality-of-life is sub-optimal or even abysmal, to a better one won’t fix the problem. The root cause needs to be addressed. Governments (and the people under them) need to decide to improve the lives of their citizens. Western Societies can’t force this progress. I’m not sure how to accomplish it since so many evil actors exist in this world who do not want to change the status quo, but I do believe that it can’t be done through military domination. Societies have to go willingly.

Still, the destruction of the advances and advantages in Western societies is not the answer. Importing the 3rd World way of thinking into Western societies will only make matters worse here without helping the people there. We need to stop the destruction of our way of life, help those who we can, and be an example as a way to encourage the rest of the world to join us in prosperity. Our resources didn’t get Western civilization to where it is. Our way of thinking did. Once other societies understand this and change, their quality of life will improve the same way it did in Western societies. They can then enjoy the life that they seek where they are. This won’t take them as long as it did the West. We’ve already laid the groundwork. I say, “Come on in, the water’s fine. Just do it for yourselves without demanding, taking, and eventually destroying what we have worked for millennia to build.”

The post We Must Stop the Destruction of Western Progress and Culture appeared first on Granite Grok.