In March of 2023, I was part of a group of Republicans in Nashua Ward 7 that organized to hand out fliers promoting Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) to our local public elementary schools, Dr. Crisp and Sunset Heights. Dr. Crisp has been recognized as one of the lowest-performing five percent of all schools in the state for the second year in a row. At Dr. Crisp, the vast majority of the parents are poor immigrants, and we wanted to provide these families an opportunity for their kids to escape from their failing school.

The Children’s Scholarship Fund organized a parent information night about EFAs in Nashua. We printed fliers for the event and handed them to the parents as they picked their kids up from school. We were delighted to help the NH Department of Education and the Children’s Scholarship Fund get this information to parents.

In December 2023, our Ward 7 state rep Catherine Sofikitis filed CACR18, a constitutional amendment to remove the tax-exempt status of churches and religious organizations. When she presented the bill to the NH House Ways and Means Committee on January 9, 2024, she testified that she was upset that churches were promoting EFAs, which she believes are harmful to public schools.

There were no churches involved in our promotion of EFAs, but she has fallen victim to the Democrats’ reliance on stereotyping their political enemies with the Alinsky rule: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it” to win political victories without having to do the hard work of understanding those on the other side. She is so immersed in a political bubble that she doesn’t understand who the political opposition is.

She assumed churches are behind all the conservative politics in New Hampshire and wants to strike at the heart of that. She doesn’t realize that conservatives are diverse in New Hampshire. They are Christians, blue-collar workers, small business owners,  immigrants from communist countries and other totalitarian countries, former Democrats fed up with the extremism of that party, and many other categories. We come from all walks of life. It would be impossible to shut us all down. But she is so frustrated that she feels she has to do something.

In her testimony, she said that Christians should not be in the public square.

the churches shouldn’t be meddling in the government’s stuff. It’s just you know you stay in your church. You pray and you do what you do, you do you, and the government will do the government

 Not because I don’t understand and respect what faith-based groups do in the state of New Hampshire but I just want people to stay in their own sandbox and stay in their lane

She accused us of telling parents that their children attend a “nasty school, a failing school.”

And at the polls and at other times when we have meetings up at that school people who are of the homeschool crowd and the ones who want the public school vouchers tell all the parents this is a nasty school, it’s a failing school, and I want you to know where you can get free money and you can take your children out of this failing school.

We don’t tell parents that. The parents know well the problems at their children’s school and the test results prove that Dr. Crisp is a failing school.

She complains several times in her testimony about people in her ward who aren’t being represented.

And I’m not here to disrespect anything and I know that my knowledge of these things is not deep but it’s just my feeling that since I’ve got to Concord seven years ago that it seems to me that my people in my district are not being represented here. And so this is just an ask that we all consider that people who have words that divide us are very hurtful to people who don’t have the political power to speak for themselves.

But her Democrat voters have her as representation. Republicans in Ward 7 are the ones lacking representation. Nashua Republicans don’t have any political power in the NH House. All of our 27 state reps are Democrats. Ward 7 has a Democrat state senator as well.

The irony of the following statement caught my eye in regards to the time she called Moms for Liberty “Assholes with casseroles, Taliban in a minivan.”

I made an obscure comment about Moms for Liberty. I had hate mail from Florida. And I just want people to stop. You know if your first reaction is something from your stomach out through your mouth then this is not a policy thing. It’s an emotional thing.

She is the one who is not controlling her emotions.

In her testimony, she states, “Stop dividing us up, and let’s all get along for the people that we were elected to represent,” but she is one of the reps who kneeled for the national anthem during a House session. That is extreme divisiveness. 

At a previous committee hearing, she said, “I want to be brutally frank. There is not one person of color on this committee — not one. Racism matters,” but she fails to acknowledge that she and her fellow Democrats were successful at keeping Avalon Lewis, a black immigrant from Barbados, from being elected as a state rep from Ward 7. He could been the person of color on that committee that she complained was missing.

Related: That Racist You Are Looking For Might Be In Your Mirror

CACR18 was voted 20-0 by the Ways and Means Committee as inexpedient to legislate, put on the consent calendar, and killed by the NH House. Good riddance to her attack on churches and religious organizations.

There is a whole lot more in Rep. Sofikitis’ testimony that is troubling. Read her testimony here and watch it below.

The post New Hampshire State Rep Wants Christians To Shut Up and Stay out of Politics appeared first on Granite Grok.

A WaPo media machine stenographer has decided to float this trial balloon. All that shoplifting that’s been going on shouldn’t be upsetting middle-class, white-bread supremacists. After all, their descendants stole all this land from someone else.

And if theft is a moral and historical tradition…

Do you know what the problem with capitalism is? It doesn’t want to sell stuff to people. Calling it “a late-capitalism horror story,” the Washington Post’s Maura Judkis might have just written the stupidest possible piece about Blue America’s state-sponsored shoplifting craze.

“Besides, there’s a Robin Hood mentality,” Judkis wrote, that allows thieves (and politicians and well-to-do white progressives) to “assume that a massive corporation can absorb the losses of petty thefts. Some shoplifters view it as a form of anti-capitalist social activism.”

Of course, Robin Hood stole from the government, so there is that (which WaPo’s scribblers would never condone). Still, a better point would be that this behavior, legalized by Democrat DAs, is doing as much or more harm to minority neighborhoods and the community than the Left’s white supremacy narratives. They squeak with pride about social justice, but in practice, the policy creates more crime and leaves the people they claim to protect with less of everything, including access and opportunity.

Democrats robbed them of an education and blamed white people. They defunded their police forces, and when crime rose, they blamed white people. They legalized theft, and when it drives businesses out of minority neighborhoods, they blame white people in cities with hives of oppressive, racist police officers whose leaders have been Democrats for so long that few, if any, living can recall it ever being any different.

Blame white Democrats for that, but not just. Many urban plantations have significant blocks of minority voters (mostly Democrats) and minority elected officials (also Democrats), and things have not improved. Some might say they’ve gotten worse with more drugs and violence.

Sure, you can steal stuff, skip bail, and not go directly to jail. You can get a job working for a gang or other organized crime, lifting sums just large enough to keep you under this soft-on-crime reparations radar, but there’s still a price.

Unlike most who live there, the local pharmacy can leave when unprosecuted crime becomes untenable. That business lost a lot of merchandise, but the community lost jobs and convenient access to everyday needs.

The only tradition anyone needs to consider is that, alongside all the other troubles, Democrats are responsible for that, too.

The post Shoplifters Are Stealing More Than Merchandise appeared first on Granite Grok.

It seems like this should be a concise article. Obviously, a Chinese Cartel is far more dangerous, and every effort should be made to eradicate it. Well, you would be wrong. Why would I write an article comparing the real threat of Chinese Cartels and the myth of parents who protest school boards as terrorists? I am using this space to shine a light on Merrick Garland and the Justice Department for the priority they placed on the parents and their alliance with the Chinese.

I have written numerous articles about the Chinese Pot Farming Cartel that have quickly spread throughout Maine and many other states. We have also pointed out the efforts of local and state law enforcement teams. We have also reported on the pleas of the Maine federal delegation, and then the letter from 50 Senators and Representatives sent to Attorney General Garland asking for help.

These calls for help have been made since August of 2023 and remain unanswered. I have a letter from Senator Susan Collins and one I just received today from Representative Jared Golden telling of the frustration experienced as they wait for a response from Garland. So, how does this antipathy by the AG compare to his response to the call for help with the parents or domestic terrorists?

The pandemic introduced many challenges to our lives, and the decision to shut down our schools may have a more significant impact than masks, shelter in place, or vaccines in the future. Parents were frustrated and became active and vocal about protecting their children. Their presence at school board meetings was an opportunity to voice their concerns. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, saw these parents as a threat to teachers and administrators. She reached out to Garland and Biden for help. Weingarten must have pushed the right button because Garland and Biden jumped and had the FBI jump in unison.

Randi Weingarten not only got the attention of the Administration with one letter but was invited to assist in how the FBI would proceed at targeting parents who would be labeled as Domestic Terrorists. The threat of vocal parents was deemed an immediate threat requiring a quick response, yet the Chinese Cartels have yet to get the attention of the President and AG in eight months.

When I first wrote about the illegal Chinese pot farmers, we thought it was just a Maine situation. We now know that the issue is far more severe than pot, and the problem is national. In addition to the 270 farms identified in Maine, there are thousands in California, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Nevada. These pot farms are causing an environmental problem as they illegally grow and distribute pot. Still, these Chinese nationals, many identified as illegal aliens, are also involved in human and sex trafficking, money laundering, and drug distribution and, in many cases, are funded by cash from federal migrant programs. That fact means that many of these illegal farms were set up with your tax dollars.

This article is not about the specifics of the Chinese Cartel but about the confused priorities of the Administration and Justice Department. It is about letters from 50 members of Congress asking for help but screaming into a void. The longer they ignore requests for help, the more they need to explain why they are complicit with these Chinese operators. We do nothing about spy balloons, Fentanyl, the buying of land around our military installations, TikTok, illegal pot farming, human trafficking, and stealing intellectual property. The inaction indicates the Chinese have this president and Administration in their pocket. I told the story, you decide.

The post Bear Pond Conservative Chronicles: What Is The Bigger Threat: Parents Or A Chinese Cartel appeared first on Granite Grok.