“We should be working to make sure that high quality health care is provided to the uninsured to make sure the full range of health care services, including family planning services that are available to people with money are available to the poor and uninsured as well,” Nadler said.

That would be Congressman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and a member of the Progressive Caucus and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America stating that Planned Parenthood should have an abortion clinic in every neighborhood.  So, who’s YOUR Dr. Gosnell, convicted baby killer, going to be?

But that’s beside the point – the real issue is this: “that are available to people with money are available to the poor“.  So, according to this Socialist, life is unfair because the poor do not have the same access to abortion as those evil rich people (er, I’m quite sure Nadler’s net worth is way more than most of us).  So, he’s quite happy to take money from others to give abortions to the poor.  But that raises a question – an important question

“Yes” for abortion (a choice) that would end a life, but always a “No!” for educational / school choice in giving a child a better life?

Umm, so why the double standard, Mr. Socialist?  Why is ending a life “a public good” when a “better education” is not?

Ah yes, Progressive value in one, and Progressive control in the other.  Yeah, that explains the hypocrisy.

Morally Straight.   I don’t think that phrase has any meaning any more in a world where secular loudmouths are trumping people of faith, where the ever changing mores (swinging from what used to be Politically Correct and “good” then is now Politically Incorrect and ‘bad’ longer now – simply on some group’s say-so)  trump traditionally absolute values.

It used to, when right and wrong were absolutes but it seems nowadays everyone has their “own truth” and “what is right is what is I say it is” – some foundation for running an entire society, eh?  However, those incremental socialists from the Franklin School (progenitors of Cultural Marxism cum Political Correctness) knew, along with Gramarcie, that Americans would never accept Socialism (and then to Communism) if its backer were absolutely open and truthful about their aims, their goals, and what American would lose in the process (sounds like most Democrats nowadays, doesn’t it? ).  What was necessary was to keep nudging the culture to a tipping point that would sneak up all at once – and those that truly believed in God, traditional values, and the Constitution would, overnight, become a minority not because of the politics but because of the culture (which would then be expressed in politics).  So, like minded sojourners infiltrated the inflection point: the churches, the media, the music, the arts, governmental policies towards the traditional family; all those things that could move the culture to where secular socialism would be acceptable.  Media and newsrooms swung Left, in search of changing the world instead of reporting the news.  Music, theater, and the arts moved into the direction that the only way to succeed was to ‘push the boundaries’ – that is, going from going past cultural norms to attacking them.  Religious faith has been attacked both from within (turning from The Gospel of Individual Salvation and saving souls to some nebulous gospel of “social justice”) and without (by groups going “reverse judgementalism” to attack the pillars of faith as failing to rise to meet “current social needs of fairness, Political Correctness, and inclusion) with the attendant loss of faith in the younger generations (helped along, in no small part, by the radical Ivory Tower minions who are shielded by the tax dollars earned by those they actually attack – such work when you can get it).  The goal has been to cut the knees out of traditional American society – so as to replace it with foreign ones. And the Boy Scouts have certainly been a traditional American value for over 100 years; no longer.

So, one brick by one brick, they have removed the foundations of traditional America – and last night, they have torn out yet another one.  The Boy Scouts of Ameria have just changed their stance of “we are a private group and we conduct ourselves according to long standing mores, traditions, and morality” and (with a number of gay activists or gay sympathizers hollowing out its leadership) placed themselves at the mercy of the PC mob.  No longer willing to take the heat, they came up with a decision that has pleased no one.  Their national policy is to now allow gay Scouts into the troops, no questions asked.  No adult gay Scoutmasters – for now.

Edwina Rogers, executive director of the Secular Coalition for America said the Coalition is pleased that the Scouts have decided to allow openly gay youth, but that it’s not enough.

Oh, BSA may exist in some form, but it will be diminished in size, diminished in importance.  Having bowed on bended knee to the PC Barbarians, more tribute will be demanded.  No, not for “inclusiveness” or “parity” or “equality” – but for power.  We’ve already seen this play out here in NH – in demands for a forced acceptance of their mores (or more like it, a forced abandonment of theirs by others) – when it was first civil unions and then outrage for full marriage.  Civil unions were only the ploy, the nose under the tent so that the real goal could start to gain traction.  Hit from one side, the militant sexualists, and and the other, those that avidly seek the total denial of the Public Space to discussion and influence of Religious values, the BSA is just the latest (and amongst the biggest) of the scalps now taken.  For they will not be satisfied until, as with marriage, the ramparts are completely compromised:

Edwina Rogers, executive director of the Secular Coalition for America said the Coalition is pleased that the Scouts have decided to allow openly gay youth, but that it’s not enough.

Again, even that is not the real goal  – the goal is the lessening, and then complete disappearance of traditional Americanism, the “Fundamental transformation” of America.  BSA is just part of that.  There is no “win” for the BSA in this – I predict many if not most will now leave either voluntarily or by conservative organizations that cannot countenance that which they see is sinful behavior.  Most Packs and Troops are supported by churches and those conservative ones that have stood firm in the Gospel of salvation (versus that of social justice) will no longer sponsor all those kids (typical of Progressives, they hold to the value of “to save the village we must first burn it to the ground” – they are willing to sacrifice the vast majority for the very few).  Even as they stand strong, however, the PC Police will try to cut them off from further from Civil Society (for they themselves are not civil at all and are, indeed, certainly illiberal).  Or these churches will break away and form their own organization – made of sterner stuff, they may be able to ignore the barbarians that will come, in turn, to their gates.

For these Barbarians care not for individuals and what others want – they are the Borg looking to assimilate into the collective.  All will be accepted – but none will be any different than any other regardless of any innate skill, strength, motivation, or beliefs.

BTW – the last and greatest goal is found in the pic at the top of the post.  That badge at the top reads “For God and Country”.  IMHO, part of this, as the Secular Coalition for America wants, and the Progressives work for, is the elimination of God from the American scene; if not completely then certainly by influence.

Remember, our Rights are given to us by God our Creator.  Remove God, and guess what happens to those God-given Rights?   Yeah, we go back to pleading on our knees – just like serfs used to do with their King.  That is the highway we face until somebody starts saying “No further”.

Think I’m kidding?  Just look at what Obama Administration is doing with the Rule of Law – but that is yet another post, but also, another on-ramp to the same highway.

So why didn’t Chairman Issa hold an investigative hearing a year ago? Why didn’t Chairman Camp, all Republicans, hold an investigative hearing a year ago, and all the other tripping over themselves right now? I’ll tell you why. Because the establishment Republicans, the RINO Republicans, despise the Tea Party. They despise the conservative movement. We exist to be managed, to be shuttled to the polling place, to vote for their candidates. The Karl Roves of the world, and all the rest of them. They fight us in the primaries, they fight us at the grassroots. We’re a bunch of kooks, don’t you know. We’re right-wing nuts, don’t you know. They’re not going to hold an investigative hearing before an election and screw up Mitt Romney’s chances to become POTUS, because a handful of Tea Party activists, you know a couple hundred, claiming that the IRS was targeting them.

Oh, what a bunch of nuts. We’ll fire off a few letter, we’ll ask a question here and there, we might follow up here and there. We’re not going to have a spectacle and actually conduct a hearing. We’re not going to actually exercise our authority under Article One of the Constitution for these Tea Party types of crying out loud, the unwashed. That’s why they didn’t hold a hearing last year! And they’re holding hearings today, not because they give a damn about the Tea Party, or conservatives for that matter, who they are raising money to defeat in the next bunch of primaries, its because they think they can get a political advantage out of this.

- Mark Levin, radio host, author

(H/T: RealClearPolitics)

Yesterday, the pusillanimous powder puff currently lounging in the Oval Office gave a speech on the “war on terror”. Below are some of the lines that struck me as interesting given the current maelstrom of power abuse scandals spinning around the great eared one.

Oblow-hardia:

“We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society. What we can do – what we must do – is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend.”

Naturally, the “networks that pose a direct danger” is in the eye of the beHolder. Given the recent lens that many more now peer through to clearly make out this administration’s penchant for abusing power and disrupting networks of American citizens it’s hard not to know what else he’s referring to. 

Those “networks” he’s seeking to “dismantle” evidently include various Tea Party and Pro Life groups, Christian and Jewish organizations, the Associated Press, Fox News, Jim Rosen in particular of Fox News and his parents. So far his “dismantling” efforts have at least worked in dismantling the efforts of these groups in having an impact on the electorate last November.  So at least he’s competent in that area. Subversively sabotaging political enemies here at home, while simultaneously abandoning Americans abroad.  His next bumper sticker: “Change you can believe in, just ask Ambassador Stevens and if you don’t agree, go abroad and we’ll help you meet him.” Or “To Drone or not to drone? With the question of how do you vote?” (Too harsh? Perhaps.)

 “Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in all wars. For the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred through conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq”

“these deaths will haunt us as long as we live” Anyone buying this line? This bovine scat dropping from a president that was snoozing away while our Ambassador in Bhengazi was seeking refuge and help before being brutally assassinated along with the murder of three other Americans. A Commander in chief Sleep who didn’t bother to even inquire as to the well being of those being brutalized, let alone risk his withered backside trying to help them.

I guess he views “haunt” as a relative term.

When I think of haunt, I think of looming IRS bureaucrats periodically infiltrating my business unannounced and demanding that I fetch more papers without providing any other reason that I may not be in compliance.

I can also see “haunt” as being a heavy and severe concern weighing over my every thought that my parents phone records were seized by the DOJ because their son is audaciously doing his job asking questions but had the misfortune to simply query about the wrong thing and is now a “co-conspirator” in some injustice yet to be divulged.

Haunt could also mean the forever recurring pang of guilt when hearing in your mind the ghostly words, “we’re under attack” from a friend and knowing that the Administration you worked for abandoned him and let him die because it was politically expedient.

Hey, but that’s me.  “haunt” to him apparently means, being slightly disturbed with the incessant phone ringing while languishing supine and trying to get some shut eye before the ever important fundraising event the next day while the embassy burns.  Damn, that’ s inconvenient.  Hauntingly so.

Then, of course he went on to talk about drones as an option:

 “… It is also not possible for America to simply deploy a team of Special Forces to capture every terrorist. And even when such an approach may be possible, there are places where it would pose profound risks to our troops and local civilians– where a terrorist compound cannot be breached without triggering a firefight with surrounding tribal communities that pose no threat to us, or when putting U.S. boots on the ground may trigger a major international crisis.

Capture every terrorist, sheesh, he won’t deploy troops on the ground to save one Ambassador, let alone capture terrorists.  Give me a break.

Interesting, one can infer that “major international crisis” translates into “leading from behind” which is a tactic used when one is either too wimpy to do the right thing or simply too obtuse and ill-bread to know what the right thing is.  Usually the former is also accompanied by the unsophisticated inability to persuade others. (Ding! Bingo, that’s why he must coerce and use the force of the state to “persuade”.)

All of this presidenty-ness was finely punctuated with the news today that Oblow-hard didn’t return the salute of a Marine, then returned to shake his hand instead.  God save us these next 3 plus years, this guy is an absolute moronic disgrace.

This week when we assemble in Concord, New Hampshire to record the next edition of GrokTALK! out guests will be…

Kate Baker, the Executive Director at The Network for Educational Opportunity;

Laura Condon, New Hampshire State Director of Advocacy for the National Vaccine Information Center;

Karen Testerman, Former Candidate for Governor of New Hampshire and former Executive Director of Cornerstone Policy Research;

And John Hikel, Republican House Rep from Goffstown, New Hampshire.

Skip and I will be there, as well as whomever else decides to drop by.

GrokTALK! Two hours of News and Information you could only get from GraniteGrok.com

The complete Podcast and guest segments are posted at GraniteGrok.com on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.  The complete program can also be heard Tuesdays from 8-10pm at ACNation.com.  You can also Download GrokTALK! on iTunes – just search ACNation and subscribe.

c/o Ed Morrissey…

In my column today forthe Fiscal Times, I argue that this epidemic of sudden incompetence and ignorance completely undermines the argument for large, activist government.  That’s true whether one believes that these executives are either telling the truth or lying about their knowledge and involvement:

So what are we to think about this competence epidemic of executive ignorance, impotence, and incompetence?  The symptoms are either self-serving lies intended to avoid responsibility for wrongdoing, or genuine statements of impotence and ignorance.  Either way, it demolishes the argument for bigger and more activist government.

Start with the credulous assumption that everyone is telling the truth about knowing nothing about what happened on their “watch,” as Schulman said, from the top down. David Axelrod tried to use this defense a week ago, telling MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “Part of being president is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast.”

That, of course, is precisely the argument conservatives make for scaling down the size of government.  Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been told the same about Cabinet-level positions (Attorney General Eric Holder) and sub-Cabinet positions (IRS commissioners within Treasury). If Schulman’s argument is that he can’t be expected to account for the performance of his 90,000-member organization, then the federal government at every level is too large for proper accountability and management.

The icing on the accountability cake, of course, is the left’s persistence in holding George Bush accountable for things while he wasn’t even the President, while Obama is responsible for absolutely nothing while still actually in office.

Obama has met the enemy and this time, it may be the Internet?

Did he really say that?

Via Twitchy:

Pervasive, isn’t it?

Ah yes, the Sequestration that Obama’s White House came up with as a ploy during the debt ceiling / budget continuance back a bit now that was never supposed see the light of day – but it got voted in.  Well, when the Piper’s Bill came due, Obama decided that he was going make it hurt the ordinary folks simply because:

• he thought he could get a political win by making it hurt others
• and because he could.

He even turned down Republican efforts to allow him to actually manage it with a bit of money moving – just like a modern corporation that has run into a hard patch – adjust here, adjust there, cut the fat, cut the unnecessary, even cut some necessary as necessary – but still be able to respond to customers.  That, however, begs the question: “what, Obama actually having to manage instead of doing the “Irritator from behind” / community organizer”?  To quote Nancy Pelosi: “Are you SERIOUS??”.

So tomorrow, we have the IRS, HUD, EPA, and OMB shutting down – completely!  Not a single employee on the premises – and no one to answer the phones, answer the emails, respond to the websites….no one.  By intent.  115K strong – all gone (love the timing – just in time for the normal “Friday Info News Dump” AND a long weekend to boot!).  I’m OK with HUD and EPA getting shut down – in fact, I’d be willing to donate to keep extending their “vacations”.  After all,

there is nothing the Feds do in HUD & EPA that the States couldn’t do for themselves

And that’s the dirty little secret that few will discuss (especially if that Fed money is “redistributed” back to the States).  Somebody has to collect the taxes, IRS,  and somebody has to actually do some managing (OMB).

But ask yourself this:  if you were in charge, would YOU send everyone home all at once like Obama is, or stagger the furloughs out to rotate resources so that citizens would experience the least amount of harm?  If Obama was a real life honest-to-goodness CEO, how long would his Board of Directors put up with this?

I wonder if they know TreeHugger??

TransportNH seems to be yet another one of the “Sustainable Community Initiative” type websites  as in “let’s complain how rural New Hampshire is so unlike urban dominated Big States”.  For YEARS, I have been commenting about the local version of “Public Transportation” here locally in Central New Hampshire – two Winnipesaukee Transit System buses whose only purpose, it seems, is to keep a couple of bus drivers employed.  In fact, when I raised the issue a few years ago on how empty they were every time I passed one of them (1, maybe 2 people), they went and tinted the windows.  Given the fixed costs and the ridership (I got their budget, too), they might as well give a $20 voucher to the private cab services in town and end up spending taxpayer money more efficiently.

Stupid buses are still traveling the road – still mostly empty.  But I digress; back to a post I left a comment on – back on April 24:

What if you couldn’t drive?

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Rebecca Harris

Concerns about Public Transportation in New Hampshire:Transit:

•  19% of New Hampshire residents are concerned about losing their ability to drive in the next few years.

• 53% of New Hampshire adults would find getting things in the community difficult if they needed to use crutches or a wheelchair for at least 4 weeks.

• No public transportation system exists for more than 80% of New Hampshire’s communities.

Data Source: Feb. 2006 Granite State Poll

From the Institute on Disability at UNH

So, I decided to try and start a conversation:

0 thoughts on “What if you couldn’t drive?”

Really – Zero conversations?  I’m still awaiting moderation – almost a month later?  What did I say that was all that outrageous (heh!)?

Hmm, I went to the front page and saw yet another link to another one of these same type of sites: Commute Green NH and this is on it’s front page:

Why Commute Green? NH Department of Environmental Services would like you to give yourself a raise.

Take the pledge: Don’t Drive One-in-Five

Commute Green NH encourages you to start a new habit by pledging not to drive one out of every five days from now through December 31st, 2013. Click here to sign up for the pledge. Then tell a friend or coworker to do the same!

 

 

NH Department of Environmental Services???

Nice to see that our own DES has decided that it isn’t enough to just do its job, but to be “social engineering” us as well.  Haven’t they seen how that has been turning out in DC lately?

Oh Wait!  I went to the About Page – all of the normal suspects (emphasis mine):

Organizers Include Representatives from:

• Advance Transit/Upper Valley Rideshare
• Berry Dunn
• Central New Hampshire Regional Planning Commission
• Community Action Program Belknap-Merrimack Counties
• Contoocook Valley Transportation Company
• Cooperative Alliance for Seacoast Transportation
• Healthy Eating Active Living New Hampshire
• Nashua Regional Planning Commission
• NH Department of Environmental Services
• NH Department of Health and Human Services
• NH Department of Transportation
• Rockingham Planning Commission
• Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission
• Southwest Region Planning Commission
• The Scott Lawson Group

What a way to make yourself to seem to be ubiquitous – just keep pumping out these sites!  But ask yourself – WHY are Regional Planning Commissions all pushing for more “public transport”?  Especially here in New Hampshire where we have an over-abundance of “low population density geo-locations” (er, “not a whole people around for miles”).

Once again, we see the mindset of the Federal Govt’s “one size WILL fit all scenarios”.

Or just plain tax money-grubbing – take your pick.

Sometimes blogging is about creative commentary and piquing the other side while, hopefully, providing a different perspective. Other times, it’s just about spreading information. This is one of those times. I initially dressed this up with all sorts of semi-wittiness (heavy on the “semi”) reminiscent of a tired comic strip, but the length of the blog was inordinately long, so I trimmed it down, but if it’s still too long, I urge you to at least read the brief IRS history of abuse further below.

From Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) speaking of the IRS to the outgoing Acting IRS Commissioner (and previously the head of the department that targeted the conservatives when that targeting was going on) Steven Miller before the House Ways and Means Committee last week (emphasis mine), and I encourage you to see the whole thing here.

“I have a grandson who is afraid to get out of bed at night because he thinks there’s somebody under the bed that’s going to grab him, and I think most Americans feel that way about the IRS.”

“I mean, you get a letter from you folks, or a phone call. It’s with terror that you look at it. And now this kind of reconfirms that.”

“You know what? They can do almost anything they want to anybody they want anytime they want. This is very chilling for the American people.”

Indeed, Rep. Kelly is right. The recent IRS scandal is bone chilling– targeted audits, delays, denials based on political and sometimes religious beliefs. Anyone with the misfortune to find their name dangling off the tip of an IRS auditor’s pen knows the true fear that accompanies an audit. The exhaustive search for compliance involves details nestled in documents dated several years old, many of which are tucked in file cabinets, are wadded receipt balls in a box, or online records in software with sketchy search capability. And they all need to be collected, collated, analyzed, and presented for “compliance”. The entire process may take months or years and can be iterative, requiring additional periodic spelunking into forgotten records.

The result of the audit isn’t as unsettling and unnerving as the process itself. The stress and constant wonder whether you’re finally through, that you finally forked over and submitted all the required records, and you can go back to your life without the bureaucratic interruption that hangs on your neck like a Mariner’s albatross, quelling any joy and mirth in your daily life. And with every submission, you hope you dotted and crossed accordingly and all is accurate. In short, it’s a kind of sanctioned legal harassment.

What makes the abuse even more infuriating is the insouciant and glib responses from IRS “professionals”. If you happened to catch the aforementioned Steven Miller or Douglas Schulman’s (former IRS commissioner during the interrogation) exchange with Representatives and Senators, you’d see what I mean. And I know why. They don’t give a ****. They’re like a yawning, quota-saturated salesman, too busy to field additional questions, unless they are trailed with, “I’ll take it,” but bright enough not to admit it as he quickly shuffles you out of the showroom so he can catch 18 holes. The usual “feel the need to take a shower” cliche doesn’t do it justice. To truly remove the unctuous, frothy slime one feels after spending even a minute listening to them requires more of a sand blaster acid wash to free the filth.

That’s the problem. There is no skin in the game. They are members of the administrative state, the untouchable sinecure bureaucratic club that applies the rules that they conjured up themselves (warning, this is how the gazillion Obamacare’s regulations were created), the rules that find you in compliance or non-compliance. They are not elected, not held accountable by the public, or even known by the public, in general, to exist. Yet, these snide, wretched creatures wield a tremendous power. Most are non-partisan. They’re bureaucrats. They simply seek what all bureaucrats seek: self-preservation. They don’t care if they’re serving the Obama administration, Bush administration, Clinton administration, etc. They’ll do as they’re told or as they’d like to please their boss.

The salient and little-exposed fact that is usually met with a paranoid riposte is that the IRS has a long history of being used as a political weapon. If you’re smirking, stop. It’s only a matter of time before you’re the target. It’s not one-sided. It’s bipartisan. Elected officials and private citizens both have been targets, with businesses destroyed and people’s lives ruined. IRS has been unleashed from the White House, Congress, and their surrogates. You just need to make it on an enemy’s list, and today, it doesn’t seem that hard.

With that, I’d like to references a brief history of the IRS. And as you read this, I ask that you think about a few questions as you read it: 1) Does a free society benefit from a department that can unleash such a living hell capriciously on its citizens? 2) If it does, is it truly free? 3) Is this department even necessary? and 4) Are you in favor of a solution if it includes dissolving the IRS? In my previous blog, I stated a definition of Rule of Law, do you agree with that definition, and should we do everything we can to restore it in this country?

The following is a list excerpted from “James Bovard: A Brief History of IRS Political Targeting” ( I implore you to read the whole thing) and my little conclusion at the end:

President Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to “harass newspaper publishers who were opposed to the New Deal”, and go after “political rivals such as …Huey Long…father Coughlin, and prominent Republicans such as former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon”

John F. Kennedy‘s IRS “… targeted right-leaning groups”, and he used it to “strong-arm companies into voluntary price controls”, and “Steel executives who defied the administration were singled out for audits”….A 1976 report by the Senate Select Committee on Government Intelligence on the Kennedy program noted: “By directing tax audits at individuals and groups solely because of their political beliefs, [and] established a precedent for … targeting ‘dissidents.’”

Not to be outdone, Richard Nixon put in an impressive count.  “More than 10,000 individuals and groups were targeted because of their political activism or slant between 1969 and 1973… IRS was also given Nixon’s enemies list, …‘ to screw our political enemies.’”

Then Bill Clinton took office. After a White House and DNC report in 1995 entitled “Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce” that listed magazines, think tanks other critics of Clinton were hit by IRS audits, “More than 20 conservative organizations… and almost a dozen individual high-profile Clinton accusers, such as Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers…”

The Congress must have been envious. “…an Associated Press report in 1999 that “officials in the Democratic White House and members of both parties in Congress have prompted hundreds of audits of political opponents in the 1990s,”. Congress even included, “personal demands for audits… Audit requests from congressmen were marked “expedite” or “hot politically” and IRS officials were obliged to respond within 15 days. Permitting congressmen to secretly and effortlessly sic G-men on whomever they pleased epitomized official Washington’s contempt for average Americans and fair play. But because the abuse was bipartisan, there was little enthusiasm on Capitol Hill for an investigation.

Right, Left, Conservative, Libertarian, Liberal, Progressive etc, all have a right to speak and assemble freely in the arena of  ideas without government weighing in.  Its role doesn’t entail being in the debate, but doing what the people decide within the constraints of the Constitution.   The government is for the people, not the other way around.  Let’s solve this problem.  Let’s dissolve the IRS and any other department, agency or bureaucracy that attempts to change that.

The NH Senate has tabled HB 135, the Deputy Dawg Shurtleff House passed bill that would have repealed stand your ground in New Hampshire and replaced it with Run Away or else go to court and have them tell you a year later…yeah, you should have run away.

Bad bill.

Tabling is not death, however.  HB 135 could still rise zombie-like to haunt us another day.  But that day is not today.

Update! – The Democrats claim they needed the Monday Caucus so that both sides could give their views on the Casino Bill, and that this was a legitimate purpose for which they could exact a mileage reimbursement on a Monday, but Wednesday morning of the same week, before the session and vote on the Casino Bill,  the Democrats held a caucus at which they discussed…. the Casino bill.  Democrat Governor Maggie Hassan even came to that Caucus to make her final pitch for the legislation.

Original post Follows…

From the Concord Fish Wrapper…

“Please remember that mileage reimbursement will only be paid for travel on Mondays and Fridays for statutory committees which meet on those days,” Norelli wrote in the April 26 edition of the House Calendar.

But this Monday, House Democrats held a closed-door caucus that didn’t appear in last week’s calendar. Norelli’s spokesman, Mario Piscatella, said the caucus was held to discuss the casino bill, with members on both sides of the issue presenting their views followed by a discussion.

That doesn’t sound like a statutory committee.  And yet 78 Democrats–the attendees of the “Caw!-cus” –all requested mileage reimbursement.

Six other Republicans and four other Democrats were also listed for reimbursements for other purposes, according to the Fish Wrapper.

Norelli’s excuse for allowing the Democrat “Caw!-cus” attendees to claim mileage was that the move was to keep costs down not prevent legislators from doing their jobs.  And if Republicans held a caucus on a Monday, they could get mileage as well.

So it’s not exactly a rule, but more of a guideline.

Minority Leader Gene Chandler, a Bartlett Republican, didn’t have an immediate comment on the flap. But for the record, he was one of the 10 representatives who listed non-caucus reasons for mileage reimbursement Monday.

“Leadership traditionally gets paid,” he explained.

Maybe leadership on both sides should lead by example and not get paid on those days as directed by the Speaker, except for statutory committees.  Or perhaps the Speaker should clarify the rules for mileage to include these other things?  Or should we just call these legislative perques or how about waivers? Or was the “rule” more for show, for the press, to give the illusion of fiscal prudence where none actually exists?

“You have to ask me nicely”

Ms. Pillsbury,

Please advise where I may obtain electronic or hard copies of each of the “handouts” detailed in Attachment 1 of the 2010 Interim Report of the Commission to Study Water Infrastructure Sustainability Funding, created by SB 60, Chapter 245:1, Law of 2009, as well as all commission meeting minutes and notes.

For ease of reference, I have attached a copy of the Interim Report.

Your prompt reply will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Susan Olsen

CALL TO ACTION:

SB48 passed the House Ed Committee. 

The good news is that both the Democrats and Republicans had ISSUES with ASSESSING “Dispositions”. That word was removed with an amendment.

Unfortunately schools will be labeled “Priority” and “Focus” schools based upon the standardized assessment results.

This means that if your students do not perform well on the standardized assessment that is ALIGNED TO COMMON CORE, your school could end up identified as a “Priority or Focus” school.

If that happens, the STATE DOE steps in to remediate the school. This means putting together a plan to make sure the school is properly aligning WITH COMMON CORE.

No where do they call for ANY PARENTAL involvement in this process. 

Once again we have the schools responding to the UNELECTED bureaucrats with NO involvement from the parents.

Once again, schools are accountable to the State (DOE – Unelected bureaucrats) who have agreed to implement Common Core without any legislative approval.

It is IMPORTANT to contact YOUR State Reps and tell them to vote NO on SB48. Tell them that you oppose cutting parents OUT of the ACCOUNTABILITY process. http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2013/SB0048.html

You can find your State Reps Here:http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/members/wml.aspx

By a vote of 4 – 2 Senate budget writes have ‘Just said No’ to the proposed Medicaid expansion option tied to the “Eliminate Any Hope Of Affordable Care Act,” frequently misrepresented as the ‘Affordable Care Act,’ or ObamaCare.  Speaking for the majority, State Senate Majority Leader Peter Bragdon, who happens to be State Senator, said something incredibly intelligent.

“I’m not a big fan of spending a whole lot of money on something that seems to me to have some doubts as to whether or not it is effective.”

To which I would add, “Oh, Yeah- so why do we still have RGGI?”

Cheap shot.  Sorry.

Well he happens to be right in this case.  And don’t be fooled by the fools like Senator D’Allesanrdo who say things like this…

“How many times in our life do we have an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of so many people?” 

NHPR, from which I am quoting by the way, goes on to provide this to back up D’Allesandro’s remarks.

An independent study found expansion will provide roughly 60,000 additional New Hampshire residents with health coverage, and bring $2.5 billion in federal money into the economy. It comes with an estimated $27 million price tag to the state.

What really happens is the mandate expands state responsibility and all the costs that go with it by making people eligible who could probably manage just fine if they were not being incentivized to go on the medicaid dole.  Much like the expansion of SCHIP, which now covers kids in families with incomes who have no need of such coverage–up until the government finishes its ongoing process of forcing people into the program by destroying affordable care–the Medicaid expansion is designed to do the same thing.

So the state isn’t making a difference in anyone’s lives unless by that Senator D’Allesnadro means they are teaching them to be more dependent on people like him, and less dependent on themselves.  And the money is most certainly suspect.  A Federal government that spends more than twice what it takes in can and should be expected to offload these costs as soon as it possibly can.  So there will be no 2.5 billion injected into our state economy, nor any other state.   More than likely we will end up creating a huge recurring budget line item that will extract money from the state from now till the end of time, a net loss to economic activity, year after year ad infinitum.

(Any money we might get would come with sharp and painful strings that would stay long after any money stopped.  And the entire exercise, on the whole, is more like a drug pusher giving the product away for free until the addict is hooked.)

Senator Bragdon is correct in observing, even if indirectly, that it does us no good to create 60,000 dependents who may have managed well enough on their own, or could be encouraged to do so if encouraged,  rather than lie to them about an unpredictable future only to find out later that Federal dollars are whimsical things, That no amount of rhetoric will address the real needs of the victims of bait and switch advertising when the money that was never really there to begin with is suddenly gone.  His caution may be late in arriving to the party on the whole but at least it is finally here.

Whatever fiscal slack New Hampshire would be forced to pick up for the pleasure of being so foolish as to bite into this empty Medicaid expansion pie, would have to come from someplace else in a tight budget that the current crop of Democrats is already (very Likely) insisting is underfunded now.

And if we were to offer free this or expanded that, or state supported  this or that, people looking for a free ride will be more than happy to come here and or create the circumstances whereby they get to suck on those benefits;Psychological distress (all forms of distress) will always expand to meet the supply of publicly funded services available to reduce it.

The only way to reduce them is to create an environment where self-sufficiency and self reliance provide a better quality of life than being on the dole.  So instead of drooling over the prospect of a few billion in unreliable future dollars from a suspect and incompetent Federal pusher, wouldn’t it be a better idea to incentivize people and businesses to create economic opportunity an thereby address real needs with local resources and dollars instead?

It would.  But that might require less government and an open insurance market based on competition instead of all the mandates, strings, stifling Federal regulations, bureaucracies, and controls.

The Federal government is ruining the insurance market and it will take health care, and actual health down with it.  We can either ignore the signs, the history, and common sense and thumb a ride down into the crapper with the rest of them, or we could be an innovative leader in viable alternatives to the garbage coming out of Washington DC.

But before we can go there we’ll have to stop electing pin-headed Democrat governors who are more interested in inventing revenue to spend to grow government regardless of the economic situation; governors who would rather rely on out of state influence peddlers and federal dollars to make them look like they mean us well and have our best interests at heart.  They don’t.  Spending only benefits the political class, and taking Federal money is a trap and always has been; just ask Governor Maggie Hasbeen about that 800 million dollar hole her party left in the budget after the last cascade of One-time federal money came along and abruptly stopped.

It always stops, and sooner than you think.  And someone has to pay for it or fix it, and fixing it means someone that was lied to has to live without it.

Better to keep the place clean and tidy, free of Federal cobwebs, than to place a side bet we all know we eventually are going to lose in a big way.

The expansion is a trap.  Let’s hope the State Senate doesn’t back away from this unusually smart move.

Update: added links c/o Bill O’Brien.

New England Journal of Medicine: Oregon Experiment

Forbes: Four Reasons Oregon Results Worse Than They Look

 So it’s been interesting to watch their reaction to the Oregon Medicaid study, which found that the $450 billion-a-year program “generated no significant improvement in measured physical health outcomes.”

The song you perverts.

Online media has been vibrating for the past 24 hours about the public murder of an off-duty soldier by two Muslim fanatics. Masses of midday witnesses could do nothing but watch in horror as the soldier was hacked to death and beheaded in full public view. You see, in Great Britain…

…no one is allowed to carry a gun, concealed or otherwise, with or without a license. The right to self-defense has been outlawed. Yet what if just one bystander had had a pistol? The murder could have been prevented, and the soldier would be alive today. (What is that slogan the anti-gun Regressives always repeat, “If only one life is saved”?)

In the end, isn’t this type of atrocity the logical outcome of the Regressive’s drive to disarm everyone? In your progressive zeal to outlaw self-defense and defense of others…isn’t this type of killing entirely predictable? Ask yourselves this: Why is it that mass shootings always seem to take place in “gun-free zones” like schools and movie theaters? And why is it that when mass shootings are foiled, they are always stopped by someone on the scene with a gun?

Knowing the above facts, why do you continue in your campaigns to outlaw self-defense? Are you trying to empower murderers? You regressives need to face facts: Your disarmament campaigns are dangerous and anti-social. Thus, you own this:

Blood on his hands, hatred in his eyes, 2.30 pm on a suburban street, Islamic fanatics wielding meat cleavers butcher a British soldier, taking their war on the West to a new level of horror. Two men repeatedly stab and try to behead off-duty soldier in SE London. During attack they shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ and told witnesses to film them. Charged at police officers with rusty revolver, knives and meat cleavers. Killing took place 200 yards from barracks and close to primary school.

You can read all about it in the MailOnline here. (h/t: Headline quotes from the Drudge Report.)

EEEK!!! FSP parking meter coins!!!

Robin Hoods win.

Heh: The Free State Project’s “Keeniacs” are at it again. It seems that a bunch of libertarians down in Keene have become modern-day Robin Hoods. They roam Keene searching for cars where parking meters are about to expire…and then pop in some more coins. Great fun! (And, not incidentally, less money for the state/county/town or whatever level of government sucks up the parking ticket dough…which is a good thing. They also…

…leave some libertarian literature for the lucky car owners, which is also a good thing).

But now a lawsuit has been filed against the Robin Hoods (fellow Grokster Steve has previously written about this HERE). Apparently the town doesn’t like the fact that the libertarians are preventing parking tickets from being handed out. (WAAAH! They’re hurting the town’s bottom line!) The lawsuit allegations are that the Freestaters are harassing and intimidating the PEO’s (Parking Enforcement Officers, if you had to ask), who are “just trying to do their job” (oh please). The libertarians deny the charges vociferously (probably for good reason since the allegations sound like a bunch of hooey and sour grapes cooked up by local bureaucrats pissed off about losing their parking ticket gravy).

So as a result of all the sturm und drang by the local town bureaucrats, somebody recently wrote a column at a union website (that nobody ever reads)…and a regular food-fight broke out! As usual—again!—the comments at the end of the article equal and exceed the original piece. Wailed the union writer: “Everyone deserves a workplace free of any kind of harassment”! To which a fellow named Rob Rule responded as follows:

I agree! As a result, I anticipate that there will be a movement afoot to outlaw booing in professional sports stadiums – sports officials and athletes deserve an environment free of harassment. In addition, to remain consistent with this policy all union shop states shall be immediately converted to right to work states, as everyone should be free from the harassment of having to choose between joining a union or not having a job.

LOL!  You rule, Rob!

: )——   <—Republican elephant smiley face with a long trunk.