As the Biden administration gets closer to finalizing its proposed rule banning the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars nationwide, a well-known aphorism comes to mind: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

The administration’s logic behind the federal ban is that doing so will reduce smoking and correspondingly improve public health. This is the same logic used to justify increasing tobacco taxes or banning tobacco and vaping products at the state level.

When a state bans flavored tobacco or increases excise taxes on cigarettes, legal cigarette sales in the state tend to fall as a result. But what about illegal and out-of-state sales?

High cigarette taxes and bans on flavored tobacco products create black and gray markets through which smugglers become the new suppliers of these products.

Tax rates and smuggling

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy tracks cigarette smuggling in the United States. Its 2021 report showed how cigarette smuggling increases as excise tax rates on tobacco products increase.

New York, which taxes cigarettes $4.35 a pack, saw the highest rate of inbound smuggling—54.48%. The total number of smuggled packs, more than 254 million, was second in the country behind California’s more than 465 million. California also had the second-highest inbound smuggling rate (44.02%) and a tax rate of $2.87 per pack.

When taxes get high enough to encourage large-scale smuggling, tax revenue falls as people stop buying from legal vendors and start buying on the street, and as some vendors switch to out-of-state suppliers and simply don’t report or pay taxes on those purchases. As a result of their high taxes, California and New York saw the two largest revenue losses—more than $1.3 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively.

With a tax rate of $3.51 per pack, Massachusetts had the fourth-highest inbound smuggling rate (37.59%) and the ninth-highest number of smuggled packs (more than 63 million), resulting in the sixth-largest revenue loss (nearly $224 million) in 2021.

Where were these Massachusetts and New York smugglers purchasing these products? Mostly in New Hampshire.

With by far the lowest state tax on cigarette products in the Northeast ($1.78 per pack), the Granite State saw one of the highest outbound smuggling rates in 2021 (-34.13%, which translates to more than 32 million packs).

As smugglers crossed into New Hampshire to purchase cigarettes, the State of New Hampshire collected an additional $58 million in revenue.

High cigarette taxes incentivize illicit market activity, encouraging smugglers to purchase products in low-tax states, cross state lines with them, and consume or resell the products in high-tax states.

A similar dynamic takes place when a state bans tobacco products.

Bans and black markets

After Massachusetts banned flavored tobacco in 2019, JAMA Internal Medicine found that flavored tobacco sales dropped in the state. Successful policy, right?

Not so fast. “In fact, the flavor ban has been far from successful, as sales in both New Hampshire and Rhode Island experienced double-digit growth—almost making up for the entire decrease in Massachusetts,” according to the Tax Foundation.

After Massachusetts’ ban, total sales of flavored tobacco in New England fell by only about 1% from June 2019–May 2020 to June 2020–May 2021.

While sales of flavored tobacco decreased by 24% in Massachusetts between the year before the ban to the year after the ban, they increased by 22% in New Hampshire, 18% in Rhode Island, and 6% in Vermont.

In Fiscal Year 2021, Massachusetts lost out on $125 million in tobacco excise tax revenue as sales shifted to other states.

It’s a mistake to equate falling cigarette sales at licensed, regulated shops with an equivalent decline in smoking. The evidence shows that high taxes and bans on tobacco products shift a lot of activity to the black market.

A University of California at San Diego study of Massachusetts licensed tobacco retailers in the two years before and the two years after the flavored cigarette ban found that the number of new tobacco retail licenses fell by 53% after the ban, with the total number of retail licenses falling by 5.8%. This finding, combined with the documented increases in out-of-state sales and cross-border smuggling, underscores the point that the ban has not ended menthol cigarette smoking in Massachusetts but rather has moved these products onto the black market.

Responding to incentives

Massachusetts created strong incentives for people to buy tobacco products elsewhere and bring them into the state for personal use and/or sales. People responded just as expected.

It’s important to recognize that criminals respond to incentives, too. Gangs and drug smugglers can increase their revenues by adding cigarette smuggling to their repertoire of illicit activities. In the name of public health, states can find themselves strengthening existing organized crime networks and even creating new ones by imposing bans or high tax rates.

Bans and punitive tax rates also induce evasive behaviors among otherwise law-abiding citizens.

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue’s Illegal Tobacco Task Force issues press releases boasting of its enforcement of the state’s tobacco laws. Those press releases list people charged with running large-scale smuggling operations that include flavored tobacco, vapes, and marijuana. But they also include store owners arrested, convicted, and jailed for purchasing tobacco products out of state to avoid Massachusetts’ high taxes.

It’s worth noting that the task force is part of the Department of Revenue. It was created “to address the problem of illegal tobacco distribution in the Commonwealth and the loss of millions of dollars of legitimate tax revenues to the state every year [emphasis added].” Massachusetts’ tax policy stimulated so much tax evasion that the state created a separate team just to find and punish tax evaders.

The solution to this interstate smuggling, some advocates argue, is a nationwide ban. Such policies used to be called “prohibition.” But as that term has fallen out of political favor, advocates instead use the term “ban” now.

There is a large overlap between the people who want to ban tobacco and vaping products and the people who want to maximize government revenue for social welfare programs. Those two goals are in conflict. A Tax Foundation analysis of a proposed menthol cigarette ban shows how.

“A nationwide ban would result in a federal revenue decline of $1.9 billion in the first full year after prohibition,” according to the Tax Foundation. “In the states, the decline in excise tax revenue would be $2.6 billion, the decline in sales tax revenue would be $892 million, and the decline in MSA payments would be $1.2 billion, for a total state revenue loss of $4.7 billion.”

In New Hampshire, where menthol cigarettes make up 34% of the state’s market, a federal ban would mean more than $49 million in lost revenue, of which 71% would be a decline in excise tax revenue.

And just like Massachusetts’ ban resulted in 90% of its lost sales merely moving to neighboring states, a federal ban would increase sales and consumption of other tobacco products like non-flavored cigarettes, and it would move sales and consumption of menthol cigarettes underground.

For example, according to Reason Foundation, “approximately 22 million additional packs of nonmenthol cigarettes were sold in those states in the year after [Massachusetts’] flavor ban, leading to a net increase in cigarette sales.”

Where will illicit menthol cigarettes come from after a nationwide ban is enacted? The same place so many other banned products do: China.

In 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned flavored vaping products. It boasts that since the ban, it has rejected 99% of requests to sell new e-cigarettes, implying that the ban has reduced access to undesired products.

But CBS News reported in June that the “number of different electronic cigarette devices sold in the U.S. has nearly tripled to over 9,000 since 2020.”

The FDA’s ban excludes disposable vape products. So, predictably, consumers migrated to disposables. But closing that “loophole” isn’t the solution advocates think it is. The surge in different vape products sold has been “driven almost entirely by a wave of unauthorized [emphasis added] disposable vapes from China.”

Consumers and suppliers always find ways to circumvent federal bans.

The primary achievement of such bans will be to replace legal, regulated products with illegal, unregulated ones, often from unscrupulous manufacturers. In a legal market, manufacturers and sellers have strong incentives to build market share by building trust with consumers. Legal markets promote accountability. Black markets do the opposite. Manufacturers and sellers have strong incentives to conceal their identities, which weakens accountability and reduces consumer safety.

Any federal ban would bolster illicit trade, flooding the market with less safe products from unaccountable manufacturers.

The goal of high cigarette taxes and flavored tobacco bans may be an altruistic one, namely, to reduce smoking and improve public health. But the actual outcome of such policies is what’s important. Creating black markets, reducing accountability, shifting money from legitimate businesses to criminal networks, and reducing overall economic and personal freedom create a net negative for the economy and society.

Reducing teen smoking is a worthy goal, which is why it’s already illegal for teens to smoke. Rather than using policy levers that distort market incentives and infringe on the personal freedom of adults, activists should focus on improving their efforts to educate young people about the risks of smoking.

 

Mitchell Scacchi | Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy

The post Bans and High Taxes Fuel Black Markets for Tobacco & Vape Products appeared first on Granite Grok.

New Hampshire residents & lawmakers, please wake up fast and recognize what is going on, and start to ponder the level of corruption and how to address it.

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

The Andy Sanborn PPP loan case should be the trigger:

Senator Jeanne Shaheen lobbied for the PPP loans.

The City of Concord Planning Committee approved the Sunburn proposed Casino on Loudon Road.

The members of the City of Concord accept bribes – Jim Bouley and Amanda Grady Sexton are among those who got paid to promote Marsy’s Law but didn’t report the earnings from Marsy’s Law as required by RSA 15.

Debra Douglas is the Chair of the NH State Lottery. She is married to Chuck Douglas III, who is Chair of the Judicial Selection Committee. He also got paid to promote Marsy’s Law by Henry T Nicholas III – a drug trafficker who goes to Las Vegas with local DAs who also don’t report their earnings and who kept an underground lair for his sex and drug fantasies.

Andrew H. Crews of Autofair is/was the President of the NH Lottery.

Andrew H. Crews is also based in Bedford, and he is on the board of Children’s Advocacy Centers and Granite One Health.

Children’s Advocacy Centers is tied to the AG’s office, DA’s offices, Police, AND Boston Billiards (Casino/Gambling).

Autofair is listed in the Pandora Papers and Paradise Papers. Autofair got hundreds of thousands in PPP loans given by Primary Bank, on whose board Andrew H. Crews is a director.

Autofair and Andrew H. Crews were sued in Mass. for failure to pay employees even though Autofair was getting PPP loans from Primary Bank where Autofair’s CEO was on the board of directors.

Shaheen & Gordon is the law firm that represents the directors of Primary Bank, which is based in Bedford, just like Andy Sanborn.

Shaheen & Gordon also represent the NHCADSV and Amanda Grady Sexton and threatened me with a defamation suit for calling out the NHCADSV for being involved in a Kids for Cash enterprise.

Remind me again why Amanda Grady Sexton has no issue dealing with Henry T. Nicholas III, a drug trafficker. Remind me again why the Children’s Advocacy Center is tied to Boston Billiards Gaming and to Andrew H. Crews of Autofair and why NHCADSV is tied to CAC and DCYF, which covered up and deleted files of child sex abuse.

$932.5 billion in Pandora Papers accounts is the highest amount for any State in the US, and it is in New Hampshire, where there was just one secretary of state for 42 years.

It is apparently the 2nd highest amount in the world. How does that happen? Money laundering, drug trafficking, sex, and human trafficking are how.

Could you recognize sex and child trafficking in your own agencies?
YDC

Could you recognize money laundering in your own agencies?
Pandora Papers

Could you recognize drug trafficking in your own agencies?
Jeff Hatch, Granite Recovery & Fentanyl drug bust.

Could you recognize Medicaid fraud in your own agencies?
Lori Schibinette’s resignation six days after the US DHHS OIG audit fined NH $7.9 million for Medicaid fraud

Could you recognize PPP fraud supported by your own agencies?

Could you recognize blackmail, bribery, and extortion involving your own agencies?
St. Paul’s School, Dartmouth College

Could you recognize a Ponzi scheme in your own agencies?
FRM Ponzi Scheme

Could you recognize the corruption of the court?
NH v Father Gordon MacRae, NH v Owen Labrie, NH v Griffin Furlotte, to name a few of many

Could you recognize the corruption of the news media in cahoots with the police, attorneys, agencies, and courts?
WMUR, NHPR, Concord Monitor, Union Leader, AP, Seacoast Online, Boston Globe, NH Press?

My conclusion from my years of research is that you cannot, or you don’t want to.

• As a result:
  Decades of abuse at the Youth Detention Center have been covered up.
• Decades of financial fraud involving police, AG’s office, local agencies, non-profits, and local attorneys have been covered up.
• Who is covering this up? The AG’s office, the US Attorney’s Office, the NH Supreme Court, and elected officials in the highest positions, including some on the Executive Committee.

Who pays?

The public.

Is this the world you want future generations to inherit? This kind of corruption from the top to the bottom? It is from the top because it goes all the way from the NH Supreme Court and US Attorneys down to the bottom.

 

The post PPP Loans are Just a Fraction of the Fraud in New Hampshire appeared first on Granite Grok.

If it is noble to die for your cause, what do we say about this? Minnesotan Cindy Flash, a long-time resident of Kfar Aza (living in a home abutting the Gaza security fence) was murdered by Islamic militants. Hamas killed her and her husband.

 

What makes Cindy’s story particularly poignant is the irony that she, an advocate for Palestinian rights, became a victim of the very group she sought to help.

Cindy was known for her advocacy for Palestinian rights. She would often protest against Israeli military operations in Gaza, standing up for the dignity and humanity of Palestinians, according to CNN.

 

After skimming a few of these stories, I could not find where Cindy was protesting for Hamas, but Hamas runs Gaza. Hamas is the reason Israel gives for military action in Gaza that Cindy opposed. Is it possible for her to have advocated for one and not the other?

She clearly had a blind spot. She chose to live next to the security fence in a region with a long, bloody history of conflict.

Whatever you think of Israel, Hamas has sworn to destroy it and everyone in it. They are not shy about this. It is why they exist. It is how they get weapons and funding. Their goal is to kill the Jews. Exterminate them.

Whatever your opinion about the arbitrary nature of Palestine or people claiming to be indigenous to the area, the people in Gaza either elected or allowed Hamas to take control, which begs the question: why wasn’t Cindy protesting that? Hamas is sworn to holy was by all means. Peace isn’t even an option for them – unless it delays reprisals and gives them time to prepare for their next sortie.

If military action by Israel, justified or not, was something she was committed to protesting, where was she when Hamas retaliated, which it has done often?

Perhaps she did, but the stories that include her activism fail to mention it, and that may be editorial bias. The Press is overwhelmingly on board with the approved narratives about Palestinians and Israel. If she is killed as retaliation for taking Israel’s side in some instance or other, she’s a martyr for the wrong side instead of a casualty of her own pursuit for peace in a place and with people (Hamas) who have no interest in it.

Cindy Flash is dead, as is Igal Flash, her Israeli husband, and while Hamas killed her, the Palestinians in Gaza enabled the violence that was her undoing.

 

 

HT | Truth Press – USA Today, …

The post American Pro-“Palestinian” Protester Murdered by Hamas appeared first on Granite Grok.

When I was growing up and attending Catholic schools, I was taught that the pope is infallible.

But then I read Pope Francis’ updated encyclical letter last week, and now I can only conclude that at least this pope is fallible. In fact, the declaration is so filled with anti-Christian fallacies that one has to wonder whether we have a pope that is actually Catholic.

Pope Francis was full of doom and gloom as he warned that the Earth is “collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point” because of climate change. He takes a metaphorical ruler and whacks the knuckles of climate “skeptics” who are preventing the draconian/statist actions that are apparently necessary to cool the planet off. What comes next for the “deniers”? A knock on the door from the Spanish Inquisition.

The pope has given a new voice to the “blame America first” globalists and denounces Americans’ “irresponsible lifestyles” for the ruination of the planet. (RELATED: ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Publish The Names Of Campus Cowards Who Support Hamas Atrocities)

What about China? Amazingly, the pope pointedly gives the world’s greatest polluter a free pass. He declares that “emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries.” This is naked appeasement to a country with some of the worst human rights violations on the planet. President Xi Jinping is loving life right now.

It’s also intentionally lying with twisted statistics. Yes, the U.S. has more emissions and uses more energy than many other nations, but that is because we produce far more output per capita than all other nations except China. It’s the reason the United States is the breadbasket of the world. Africa doesn’t use much energy. And that’s why it is a desperately poor continent. The solution isn’t for the U.S. to consume less energy, but for poor nations to have access to much more energy.

As Catholics, we are taught to help the least among us to help end poverty, hunger and deprivation, but the primary victims of the environmentalists’ crusade against fossil fuels will be those in the poorest nations of Africa and Asia — deprived of cheap and reliable power from coal and natural gas.

China, meanwhile, emits two times more greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere than America — but we are the problem, not them.

Worst of all, we now have a Vatican that has aligned itself with the radical “limits to growth” theology of leftist environmentalists. The radical greens view human beings as the problem, not the solution, which is contrary to Catholic dogma that there is dignity in every human life.

Has the Vatican forgotten that the more radical voices of climate change hysteria have come right out of the sinister population control movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when we were told that the world was running out of everything and that the only solution was fewer people? This movement led to some of the most barbaric government actions of modern times: forced abortions, mandatory sterilizations of women, and brutal one-child policies.

The theology in the Pope Francis letter called “Laudate Deum,” which means “Praise God,” is a direct contradiction of the teachings of our greatest pope in modern times, John Paul II, who magnificently declared that economic freedom and human ingenuity have always been the solutions to our planetary problems and the sometimes winds of change that Mother Nature throws at us. People, he reminded all Catholics, are the greatest resource.

Another way of saying this is that the Western world’s economic affluence and our advanced “lifestyles” haven’t held back the poor countries or jeopardized civilization. We have made life on Earth profoundly better for everyone. The pope’s call for energy poverty is a call for everyone to get poorer. That hardly seems to be a very Christian solution. (RELATED: STEPHEN MOORE: Washington’s Nanny-State Credit Card Rules Will Only Hurt Consumers)

If climate change really is the existential threat that the pope sermonizes that it is, we will confront this challenge the way humans have combated every problem since the days when human life on Earth was nasty, brutish and short: We will harness human know-how and new-age technologies that will tame Mother Nature’s savage outbursts.

Thanks to the freedom agenda and scientific advances, deaths from natural disasters have fallen by 90% over the past 100 years. Has anyone in the Vatican told the pope that?

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. He has also served as a senior economic advisor to Donald Trump.

 

Stephen Moore | Daily Caller News Service

COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The post Pope Francis Joins The Climate Cult appeared first on Granite Grok.

We want to congratulate ‘Grok author Laurie Ortolano. The Nackey Loeb School has chosen to honor her with its First Amendment Award on October 26th at the NH Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.

Laurie has been writing for us for several years, documenting her travails with the City of Nashua and its obsession with claiming to be above the law.

 

A Gate City resident who has been fighting city hall for public records for nearly a decade will be celebrated later this month in Manchester.

Laurie Ortolano of Nashua will receive the Nackey S. Loeb School’s 2023 First Amendment Award at an event on Oct. 26 at the NH Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. The guest speaker is Maggie Haberman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from the New York Times and CNN.

 

And I can assure you that the Mayor (Donchess), his legal Igor (Bolton), and the rest down there at City Hall are steaming, stewing, and pissed off that she’s earned this recognition. But they should have seen it coming. Another sometime contributor who also got a lot of coverage on GraniteGrok, Donna Greene, also won the award after years of struggling to get the Timberlane School District to follow the same law.

More from Tony Schinella at Patch.

 

Ortolano was awarded this year due to her unwavering commitment to open government since her first encounter with right-to-know requests as a member of the Litchfield School Board more than two decades ago. The org said her move to Nashua in 2014 began a different journey.

“City officials in Nashua have met Ortolano’s numerous right-to-know requests for tax assessment, finance, and development information with denials, court battles, and even an arrest for criminal trespassing when she visited city hall during the pandemic without an appointment (the arrest was later annulled),” the org said. “Undeterred by these challenges, she has consistently taken her fight to court, accumulating legal fees and costs totaling $270,000.”

 

And after all of this, I bet you the current Democrat rouges gallery at Nashua City Hall hasn’t learned a damn thing. Despite the mandatory 91a training and all the trouble they themselves caused, they are likely spending more time and energy looking for a new way to keep public documents away from the public.

There is a cure: a New Mayor, new leadership, and new management in the Cty of Nashua.

And look at that: you’ve got an election coming up in a few weeks.

 

Note: The Embedded form will not appear if you are using ad blocking. Use the QR code or go to the Event Page to get tickets!

Support Independent Media 

DonorboxEventWidget.embed({container: 'donorboxEmbed',embedFormSlug: 'https://donorbox.org/embed_event/504084'});

 

You can also give here – no transaction fees!

 

 

 

The post GraniteGrok Author To Be Honored With Loeb School First Amendment Award appeared first on Granite Grok.

“Safe and Effective” already needed a public relations makeover. Hackneyed and threadbare, the mantra rang from every street corner for months on end as COVID town criers peddled what amounted to a bottle of piss. Almost no one wants them now, but could the pro-jab news get any worse?

Yes. Yes, it could!

New data covering June 1, 2022, to May 31, 2023, from the UK Office of National Statistics shows 95% of all covid deaths in that time were among the vaccinated.

 

The unvaccinated population barely broke into four figures throughout the entire year, hitting a total of 1,161 Covid-19 deaths, whereas the vaccinated population hit five figures with 20,336 Covid-19 deaths, 19,143 of which were among the triple and quadruple vaccinated.

This means, as is shown in the following chart, that the vaccinated population in England accounted for 95% of COVID-19 deaths between 1st June 2022 and 31st May 2023. Whereas the unvaccinated population accounted for just 5%.

Being unvaccinated provided the best odds of surviving infection or reinfection, which is terrible news for the COVIDiots and the jabornaughts. But their natural reaction, when confronted with contrary science, is to ignore it. Pretend it never existed. Like homelessness or foreign-war body counts under Democrat Presidents. It’s not something you need to know. You could even go so far as to call it fake news, disinformation, misinformation, or a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Sadly, the UK Office of National Statistics is, like any bureaucracy, about as far from right-wing as one can get without calling everyone comrade. But unlike many of its comparable, like-minded pencil-pushing American counterparts, it does what is asked. The UK may be a multi-cultural wasteland teetering on an inescapable cultural revolution, but when it comes to public health data, they put it out there, even if quietly.

Blame the media, who would be singing from every hilltop if the results showed 95% of COVID deaths were unvaccinated. It’s the opposite, so the truth is suddenly something that can wait … indefinitely, certainly on this side of the pond, with good reason. The bad news gets worse. Ninety-four percent of that ninety-five percent were recipients of three or four shots. If you got scared into getting the COVID one-two punch and one or more boosters, catching covid wasn’t a death sentence, but statistically, the odds were not in your favor.

No shots at all were best, followed by fewer (one or two), assuming you suffered no vaccine side-effects like heart injuries, blood clotting, other organ failure, or death (here’s a longer list). Oh, and let’s not forget how the “vaccine” could help COVID kill you. And they knew that before it hit the streets.

 

 

After launch, CDC scientists were too busy cashing checks from Pfizer to clinically review the AE’s of special interest. Instead, they sidled up with Pfizer and advertised the crap out of how safe and effective they were. Whether there was political pressure and from how high up may never be litigated, but having lived through it, there was a lot of pressure to take the money they were tossing around if you just smiled, rolled up a sleeve, and said, “Safe and effective.”

We’ve known the truth for a long time, but I’d like to thank the UK for sharing this current events update, not just because it will aggravate COVID-19 bots. As we have pointed out often, aside from the systemic failure to achieve fully informed consent – because they lied – there is also the ongoing matter of meaning. What did the CDC, FDA, Pfizer, and everyone else who approved the tagline mean by safe or effective?

Is it safe to say that these will effectively kill many people? That it doesn’t protect you from COVID; it increases the odds of hospitalization or death. That the passports were red flags identifying people more likely to get infected and spread COVID or drop dead at dinner or during a live event?

Yes. Yes. And Yes. And while we’re at it, Operation Warp Speed meant how quickly they could launder vast sums of fiat money into the medical fraud mill at the expense of millions of lives, using a vehicle that did more harm than good.

 

 

HT | Dr. Paul Alexander

The post UK Office of Statistics: From 2022 to 2023 The Vaccinated Accounted for 95% of All COVID Deaths appeared first on Granite Grok.

Why, oh why, is the media still suffering us to watch the likes of Asa Hutchinson in New Hampshire when we face our own local elections in mere weeks?

While it’s true that NH possesses the hard-fought power to elevate previously unknown presidential candidates to national importance, the regional media is focusing their attention on obvious losers like Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum at the expense of local election coverage. As Foster’s Daily Democrat—Dover’s hometown paper, now a servile subsidiary of USA Today—hosts dismally empty town hall events featuring these two goons, the local candidates for the November election are wholly absent from coverage.

For the first time in years, Dover has brought forward conservative candidates for a City Council, which has hitherto remained the uncontested territory of liberal Democrats (as the tax bill well proves). Like other seacoast cities, Dover has experienced a rapid explosion in urban crime, prompting the outcry of many residents who are increasingly eager to vote against the trend.

What do we hear from the media in these communities facing the steady erosion of their way of life at the hands of drugs and homelessness? A meaningless mélange of GOP primary pleas and the rhetoric of USA Today’s corporate editorial policy.

By reading the coverage in USA Today/Foster’s, one might even be so fooled as to believe that gun violence is the cardinal problem of our New Hampshire cities. If the candidates they platform are to be believed, the war in Ukraine is the second greatest.

While there is clearly a measurable interest in breaking local news, the USA Today papers run stories on condo developments, public sculptures, racism, and Asa Hutchinson. Despite the nearly nonexistent rate of gun crime on the seacoast, Foster’s has nonetheless published no fewer than eighteen stories on the subject since the beginning of April (many within the space of a month), while the word “fentanyl” never appeared in a single headline over the same period. The word “overdose” did occur once, but only in connection to a laudatory story about a van that provides free needle exchange.

In many cases, this dullness results from local reporters deriving their content from press releases rather than actual investigation. But the problem is more inveterate than mere negligence or mercenary drive can so easily excuse.

Indeed, it seems that Foster’s editorial policy proceeds along two tracks: pro-development stories which generate advertising revenue and overt political hackery. The surplus firearm opinions and desolate Hutchinson town halls are intermixed with a heady brew of stories on infrastructure investment and the welcoming progressive ideals of the seacoast, evincing their constant attention to attracting sponsors with upbeat pseudo-newsworthy pablum.

But their pieces on the many virtues of the Dover Children’s Museum neglect the ubiquity of human excreta and castaway heroin needles in the park immediately adjacent to it.

As we are living in the ‘20s and thus brazen to blatant media collusion, it’s no surprise that progressive city governments and local news are naturally acting in ideological concert. That the Dover City Council happens to have instituted a ‘stolen land pledge’ for their meetings at the same time as their adoption of $20+ million waterfront development budget is a mirror image of the press’ bizarre mix of shameless greed and performative progressivism. The USA Today papers seem to be engaging with the leftist government in an act of mutual self-anointing to the detriment of both effective law enforcement and public information.

New Hampshire communities will have the opportunity to throttle back the actual criminal justice, tax, and zoning policies that are harming them in November, but on this, the papers remain mum.

If you wish to see another reason why mainstream media may be turning a blind eye to local politics, look no further than the Northwood special election, where out-of-state Democrat organizations spent over $5,000 to flip the district’s State House seat. Conservative control of the lower house now hangs dangerously in the balance.

It’s clear that the media policy is to dismiss local elections, ignore invidious outside influences, conceal crime, and distract from any pesky national candidates (like Trump and even Kennedy) who threaten the delicate status quo.

While one can’t blame them for preserving their domain of comfort, one can surely detest them for it.

Wary voters ought to continue voicing their protest against this trend by ignoring artful distractions, attending important local events, and rejecting media outlets that seek to sow unending complacency.

 

The post Presidential Zeros Over Local Heroes: New Hampshire Media’s Priorities Askew appeared first on Granite Grok.

As promised in Monday Memes, I have an overflow. My meme cup runneth over.  And yes there will be a Friday edition too.

Also please do check out my memes / links / commentary on the situation in Israel.  A lot of info, but I’m confident a lot most will not know.

Let the mayhem, mockery, and ridicule resume:

 

*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

I personally would have gone for leech or tapeworm…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been used car shopping as we need a replacement.  Holy…  I saw one used minivan on the lot for over $40K.  Used.  How the heck much was it new????

 

 

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Pick of the Post:

A tie IMHO:

 

 

IMHO the sooner this POS takes a dirt nap, the better.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Palate cleansers:

 

—

—

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Come back on Friday for more memes.  Same meme time.  Same meme channel.

 

 

The post Meme Overflow appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Israel-Hamas war wagon is quite popular on our pages, so my apologies – I have another related article later today, but both were too good to pass up. As you’ve likely heard, a hospital in Gaza was bombed. Hamas blamed the IDF. The IDF says it was Hamas, and which is it?

You get to decide, and we won’t even approach the well-known fact that Hamas launches rockets from hospitals, schools, and mosques becasue they know Israel is less likely to strike them from the sky.

So, here we go.

 

Lots of talk in recent hours of a failed rocket launch striking the grounds of a hospital in Gaza. I think it’s timely to remind viewers that rockets produced by terrorists aren’t always effective. pic.twitter.com/7UxVZMqlDI

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 17, 2023

 

The timing is also suspicious. The rocket attack on the hospital occurred right after Hamas announced that it was launching rocket attacks on Israel.

 

The blast occurred just minutes after a large barrage of Hamas rockets were fired toward Tel Aviv, and Hamas reportedly announced that they were in the process of launching their “most robust weapons” at Haifa just before the hospital explosion — but no such weapon reached Haifa.

 

Townhall.com has several tweets with video claiming proof it was a Hamas misfire, but this one from Al Jazeera is alleged to have accidentally recorded the misfire, impact, and a secondary explosion.

 

An Al Jazeera broadcast documented the moment that the Islamic Jihad launched a rocket which misfired and hit a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds. pic.twitter.com/O5Lx1BtOtJ

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) October 17, 2023

Oops.

Hardcore partisans on either side will likely not be dissuaded from their approved positions, leaving us to interpret what we see (was that really the hospital, etc) and what we are being told.

Another day in paradise.

Have at it, then.

 

The post Did Hamas “Bomb” Gaza Hospital? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Former MLB pitcher Trevor Bauer seems to be the victim of an old fashion succubus after text messages appear to show he never raped accuser Lindsey Hill.

Their sexual relationship appeared to be not only consensual but likely predatory on the part of Hill.

In a video posted to Twitter, Bauer claims Hill sent messages to her friends devising a plan to take advantage of the former L.A. Dodger. He had no idea what was coming for him when he invited her to come over, but he should have. A woman who understands her worth doesn’t accept invitations for meaningless sex.

2 years later and I can finally talk about this pic.twitter.com/o6jFqMzY05

— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) October 2, 2023

Bauer lived up to every stereotype for professional athletes. He made himself an easy mark by allowing his selfish desires to cloud his better judgment. It’s like if a woman decided to travel to a country known for imprisoning women only to be shocked she’s sitting in a foreign jail. Of course, men will be victims of manipulative women if they don’t see the value in sex other than to serve their impulses.

Living in the aftermath of the “MeToo” movement is surreal. Men can’t come back from the stain of rape allegations. They are forced to wear scarlet letters until they can sway public opinion. Our society doesn’t abide by the “innocent until proven guilty” rule for men anymore. They are guilty, without mercy or consideration. If they can gain definitive proof of their innocence, as Bauer seems to have done, they are timidly allowed back into polite society.

Men shouldn’t be in fear of losing their lives to false allegations. Still, it is reckless to live like consequence-free sex is a real thing. Evil women are going to use your weakness for cheap sex against you. Complain about it, think it’s morally reprehensible but do not for a second become complacent.

“You can’t treat bodies as sex toys and then complain when you wake up in bed with an abusive pimp or a crazy whore,” Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan wrote on Twitter. “Pimps and whores are vicious people – what did you expect?”

 

https://t.co/5qlxpOIJ9L pic.twitter.com/Yv8MmccMAv

— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) October 4, 2023

 

To put it plainly — men, avoid women who believe their sexuality is all they have to offer this world. They’ll lie, cheat, and steal to fill the emptiness they feel selling themselves for clout. It’s easy for them to pretend it is empowering to use men — acting like it’s their chance as an independent woman to enact revenge against the predatory men in their past. (ROOKE: Women Aren’t That Complex)

The pain of being their own pimp affects their ability to see human dignity in others. They walk around broken. It’s obvious they aren’t loyal women looking to build a legacy. What is the point of risking your future on anything less?

 

I confronted Trevor Bauer’s (@BauerOutage) accuser, Lindsey Hill, one-on-one today about the inconsistencies in her story.

Do you believe her? pic.twitter.com/MvDlGeV3Rx

— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) October 4, 2023

It cost him millions of dollars in lost contracts and legal fees to prove his innocence. Bauer was forced to leave a top career in the MLB to play in Japan. His life was effectively ruined over what appear to be false allegations. Still, all of it could have been avoided if Bauer had been looking for a wife instead of a one-night stand.

A good wife will be loyal and loving. She will comfort and take care of her husband even if the world abandons him. It will always be fun hanging out with the party girl, but kingdoms are not built on infertile ground. Bauer’s ordeal should be a cautionary tale to all men — if you are going to waste your passion on immoral women, don’t be shocked when evil things happen to you.

Mary Rooke is a reporter at the Daily Caller.

 

Mary Rooke | Daily Caller News Service

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline, and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The post Dear Men, Sluts Lead To Ruin appeared first on Granite Grok.

How about a Silicon Valley Big Tech guy opening up about how “Democrats” must stop shooting the messenger and listen to the message? He’s referring to Donald Trump, but it is a general call for sanity. From the border to the economy to Israel and Peace in the Middle East.

It is an admission and lesson, not just for folks with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). Judge the message, not the messenger. Feel free to look for loopholes, provisions, and traps. These are politicians. But you also have to ask who best can deliver the message in a way that translates to action, and it is fair to say that TDS may have created an environment where Trump can’t be that guy.

You’ll have a hard time convincing his supporters or – if polls are any indication – Republican primary voters who should, in my opinion, give the rest of the field a fair shake with three months before the voting starts. I made the case countless times at the NHGOP FITN summit. While the 20-50-point lead is stunning, would we be better served if things were closer? If Donald Trump had to get on the debate stage and wrestle in the mud with the other piglets.

Even a few Trump supporters agreed.

Good debate leads to better policy, and sometimes, the other side has a good idea or the inkling of one, assuming it’s not another blatant attempt to hide another assault on your liberty.

Not that what passes for a modern presidential debate will accomplish any of that. You’d need neutral non-media moderators, smaller groups, and a process that didn’t reduce every opportunity to speak into a 30-second commercial for candidate x.

And as it turns out, Trump had some good ideas, and now we can see just how good they were. It’s so good that this increasingly less Democrat guy is concerned enough to say it publicly.

Here’s the conversation.

View on Rumble

 

 

The post Democrat Billionaire: Is Trump Derangement Syndrome Doing More Damage Than Anything Trump Could Have Done? appeared first on Granite Grok.

At the time of the mayoral primary, I was approached by an older gentleman outside Charlotte School while I was holding a Mike Soucy sign. He approached to encourage me to stand near “the runway” because he wanted maximum visibility for the sign.

I acknowledged the merits of what he said and cited my reasons for the location I chose. To shore up that anti-Donchess connection, I offered to give him the sign I was holding on a wood post while I fetched an ordinary yard sign for myself from my car. He declined my offer, saying he had to be somewhere, but I took advantage of an opportunity to introduce myself as Alderman Dowd’s opponent. Suddenly, he had an extra 59 seconds to spare!

He said he was from the Kessler Farm condos, which is a huge community, and Dowd was kicked off the condo association. According to this resident, he was playing hooky way too much, perhaps like the likenesses of former Reps Cote and Gidge. I made a mental note of that to save for a rainy day.

I later received a hot tip that there are squadrons of resentful residents in Kessler Farm and that Dowd is NOT a popular guy there. I’ve been doing lit drops for myself, Mike Soucy, Alderman Comeau, and private citizen Sean Rogers, all rolled into one packet at targeted addresses throughout Ward 2. I won’t bore readers with all the details involved in how much time, attention, and resources are divided up, but a vote is a vote. What I learned from this hot tip was that I should be focusing on the condos as they are a gold mine of Dowd critics.

Kessler Farm, being the big community that it is, has hundreds, if not thousands, of voters. I ran out of literature and had to resupply. It took three separate trips to cover the territory. I first started with the northwesternmost part of the area, as that’s where Dowd lives. My plan was to lit-drop but knock if it was obvious that someone was home. An example of evidence of that would be an open front door with a closed screen door. A barking dog is sure to get its owner’s attention, sometimes making the doorbell unnecessary. One such situation opened the door for some very helpful discussion.

Related: Alderman Dowd Is Out of Touch With His Constituents and the City of Nashua

“Good afternoon,” I said in the light rain as a little dog barked at me through a screen door. I greeted the resident, introducing myself as Alderman Dowd’s opponent and handing her a packet. She was quite happy to talk. For her privacy, her identity or address will not be shared, but she was most helpful in telling an oral history of the Kessler “Enron scandal.”

What I heard was that Dowd was the president of the board of directors, the very elected body charged with oversight of the management company and its affairs, as any intelligent person would suppose. When you’re the captain of the ship, YOU are ultimately responsible for what happens. Remember what I said about him playing hookey? This management company was hemorrhaging money, the lost money being the association’s treasury funded by unit owners’ monthly maintenance fees. Think of it like the city losing(spending money) on a new school and arts center and YOUR resulting property tax bill.

Exterior maintenance was being neglected, and it turns out that the contractor for such handyman services was allegedly the spouse or in-law of the property manager! No conflict of interest there, mind you. This resident cited several examples of unit owners taking little exterior odd job matters into their own hands(at their own expense) out of frustration with their maintenance requests being delayed or ignored. There were even some large projects with lousy workmanship that later needed expensive corrective action. This makes one want to ponder.

Dowd’s homepage comment about being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

 

 

What I noted above was what I heard on day one of three days of canvassing. Day two was rather uneventful, and I ran out of literature. Once resupplied, I set out on day three to complete the project, saving one particular subset of the Kessler Farm community for last. I saved it for last because a certain sibling and fiscal agent of a certain former elected official that I never voted for lives there. Let’s just say it’s a relative of someone who doesn’t like me broadcasting her voting record if you know what I mean. (wink, wink, nod, nod) Anyway, while completing that part of the area, I ran into another resident who happened to be outside. Having seen her earlier from down the road, I thought I recognized the unit number(which I will not share) where she resided.

I greeted her with a “Hi, are you from unit #__?” When she answered in the affirmative, I smiled and introduced myself as Alderman Dowd’s opponent and handed her a packet, which had my business card paper clipped on top. I haven’t felt so much love in a really long time, but this resident was amazingly glad to meet me! Time stood still as I didn’t have to be in any hurry. We must have talked for a good 20 minutes or so. I listened to all kinds of dirt on Dowd’s condo association presidency and learned that there’s still pending litigation against the management company. This resident went door to door with a petition to remove the at-the-time board of directors and collected signatures from almost all of the community. Again, canvassing this large territory is a big task, especially when it involves required in-person contact. And I found it extremely amusing that this “certain relative/fiscal agent of a certain former elected official” did indeed sign the petition to remove Dowd! How sweet was that to hear!

Alderman Dowd is not only bad for Ward 2, but he has absolutely no business being on any sort of committee that handles money, let alone serving in leadership! Think of him as a “fiscal cancer” in city hall. Once he’s gone, he will have more time to play golf with that “certain neighbor,” and Nashua can begin picking up the pieces from the flotsam he helped create. If you or someone you know has ties to Kessler Farm, please boost and share this message. Saving Nashua is an all-hands-on-deck effort.

 

The post The “Scandal” That Alderman Dowd Doesn’t Want You To Know About appeared first on Granite Grok.