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This past Tuesday night, my hamlet had its Public Session where the Budget Committee presented both its budgets (Municipal, School District) to the townfolk to explain the numbers and to take questions or listen to concerns.  Fred Butler approached the mic and decided to, once again, make a math fool of himself.  He knows how our SB2 system works – for a few years he was on BudComm as the duly appointed representative of the Water District.  He has participated in the the discussion, meetings – and the votes.  He also, along with a relative who also served on the BudComm, tried to get the townfolk to eliminate it via petition warrant (it failed miserably every time).  So when I say he was disingenuous, that is being far too kind as he decided to take on first one engineer who does math for a living, Selectboard Chair Chan Eddy, and then another (moi!).  Here is the reporting from the Laconia Daily Sun (I am hoping to get the actual transcript or video as the District was recording it. DANG!  It’s after 4pm – well, here’s hoping for Monday!) (emphasis mine, reformatted):

Fred Butler took the selectmen and budget committee to task for their statements about rising taxes, pointing out that Gilford’s tax rate is declining. “You need to do a little more research to break down the facts,” Butler said. Eddy explained that the tax rate is only part of the equation when it comes to taxes. The tax rate falls when the town’s assessed valuation increases, but it doesn’t mean the amount collected changes. The growth in budgets also comes into play, he said.

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Yep, Chuckie Schumer and the rest of his Democrat demi-god-wannabees have decided that if they don’t want to fund the government when the money runs out tonite.  It’s clear what the reason is: DACA.  Now, far be it for me to lament the Feds having to close down (other than the military that protects us won’t get paid) as I have said for years that I don’t care – we’ve got 50 good governments (well, mostly?) that will still keep on going and a lot of stuff is on auto-pilot as well financially.  What will happen is that people will see, once again, how much control the Feds have – and shouldn’t.

All that said, the best line of the day putting Democrats into the proper light:

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IT CAN’T BE TRUE! AL GORE SAID THERE WOULD BE NO MORE SNOW BY NOW.  THE WEATHER SUFFERS FROM FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS!  Half of US soil covered in snow at the same time.

Heh!

(H/T: Instapundit)

See about Shaheen’s failed pronouncements here, here, here, and here (mostly covered by Steve!).  And lest I forget, look what Jeanne Shaheen wrought:

MANCHESTER — Owners of some small New Hampshire businesses said at a forum Thursday that paperwork and expense are threatening the economic platforms on which their companies are built — to the point that the Affordable Care Act could trump nature. Greg Goddard, general manager of Gunstock Ski Resort, said requirements that health insurance be offered to employees who are on a company payroll for 120 consecutive days or longer could mean opening the slopes later and shutting them down earlier.

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The idea that towns can set up their own ordinances willy-nilly to fight anything they want (lately here in NH, that would be the Northern Pass project) is sheer stupidity on those that accept this idea that a Rights Based Ordinance would “save them from Big Corporations sinning against our little town” and the organization peddling this, a cross between those demogoging Marxist class warfare and environmental utopia is the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund who rears its head every year this time of Town Meetings lately.  My response to Alexis Eynon of Thorton’s Letter to the Daily Sun’s Editor, I hope, was short and to the point (that LtE is after the jump):

To the Editor,

This is in response to the Letter to the Editor by Alexis Eynon of 1/17/18 (http://www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters/110893-alexis-eynon-1-17-330) and states:

“3) Assert local governing rights and ban the project — do not compromise by voluntarily surrendering our local authority and force the powers that be to strip these rights from us publicly.”

As has been pointed out by others, no need to have these “rights stripped from us” as you never had them before. NH is not a home-rule state so each town or city is merely a political sub-division of the State. The CELDF organization is leading you right down a primrose path with the glittering idea of “RBO” – right up until you go over their “lemmings cliff”. There will be no public stripping – you will either be told “it is not legal”…

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More on that stuff about Google “fact checking” sites but this time on a Republican US Senator – would they do this to, say, Dick Durban (D-IL) or Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)?  Hardly: Google refers to Republican senator David Perdue as ‘lying, unscrupulous politician.

Wikipedia was cited as the source. It appears that the senator’s Wikipedia page was changed to include such wording, but the description was restored to its original wording three minutes later, according to a revision history page.

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And that word is “contract”.  First issue is in this area – RSA 40:13:

IX. (a) “Operating budget” as used in this subdivision means “budget,” as defined in RSA 32:3, III, exclusive of “special warrant articles,” as defined in RSA 32:3, VI, and exclusive of other appropriations voted separately.
(b) “Default budget’‘ as used in this subdivision means the amount of the same appropriations as contained in the operating budget authorized for the previous year, reduced and increased, as the case may be, by debt service, contracts, and other obligations previously incurred or mandated by law, and reduced by one-time expenditures contained in the operating budget. For the purposes of this paragraph, one-time expenditures shall be appropriations not likely to recur in the succeeding budget, as determined by the governing body, unless the provisions of RSA 40:14-b are adopted, of the local political subdivision.

It seems innocuous, doesn’t it? There are a number of issues with this word, contract, and how it plays into not only the Default Budget (which, in SB2 governed towns, it is the budget that gets put into place if the PROPOSED budget is shot down in flames when the townfolk vote after the Deliberative Session.  This has happened a few times in my hamlet – mostly on the School Board side of things.  Well, Contracts may drag things down again.

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Of course this is from TreeHugger on a post labeled Efficiency is important, but it is time to get serious about sufficiency where the theme on the post how to decrease overall energy use and just not make things more efficient in their use of energy (because we keep making more and more things that use energy).  This snippet pretty much covers it (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Sufficiency can involve a reduction of services (less light, less travelling, less speed, lower indoor temperatures, smaller houses), or a substitution of services (a bicycle instead of a car, a clothesline instead of a tumble drier, thermal underclothing instead of central heating). Unlike energy efficiency, the policy objectives of sufficiency cannot be expressed in relative variables (like kWh/m2/year).

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No, not my words but I do think they fit:

Yet, I’ve always suspected that Obama has a gear in reserve, one he’s never been called on to display given the desire of so many to anoint him on sight (I assume his Harvard law professors called on him to display his full intellect, but we don’t know his law school grades). First gear will suffice with David Letterman and his audience. Second gear was always good enough for the mainstream media.

But after the Letterman interview and his chat with Prince Harry, perhaps it’s time for me to conclude that Obama has no gear beyond second. Perhaps it’s time for me to accept Rich Lowry’s assessment:

[T]he deepest truth about Obama is that there is no depth. He’s smart without being wise. He’s glib without being eloquent. He’s a celebrity without being interesting. He’s callow.

And that of Kevin Williamson:

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When Doug and I first started the ‘Grok in May, 2006, we just wanted a place to put our opinions and figured that we might, at BEST, get 4 or 5 people to read our musings.  Now almost 12 years later, we’ve had millions of visits, more than our share of Instalaunches and posts that went national, and I’ve had fun doing it!

RightWingNews was one of the national blogs that linked to us in that early time – something that I’ll always be thankful to John Hawkins for because that linking meant we weren’t as nuts as sometimes we thought we were. Someone actually thought we had ideas sufficiently intriguing to spend time with us. Now, years later, John has announced, like many other blogs that we have outlasted, that RightWingNews is shutting down.

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It never seems to end, does it?  If you are white (which the majority of Americans still are, and even afterwards will be the majority minority), you are guilty of all kinds of sins and evils simply because, not of your character, but by simple dint of your skin’s tint.  It seems from politics to the arts to the media and academia, if you are low on melanin, you are automatically The Oppressor regardless of what you haven’t done (or your ancestors – after all, what kind of a guilt party is to be had if SJWs can’t haul in your entire family tree into their fiery rage?).  Conscious, unconscious, be outright like the Klan or polite as all get out, “you will be made to care” (H/T: Erick Erikson) and be guilty because DIVERSITY!  And SOCIAL JUSTICE!  And POSTCOLONIALISM! And RAGE! And….you get the picture. The SJW chains of Oppression are out for anyone that disagrees with them.

And here comes this screed by a “chip on her shoulder” Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt who has decided to provide a list of  “tails you lose, heads you’re guilty” observations,

Are You Supporting White Supremacy?

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Given that Monday is Martin Luther King Day, today’s WMUR’s CLOSE UP had a segment on race relations here on NH.  Most of it was the expected verbiage from Adam Sexton’s

Sidenote: Congrats to Adam on his promotion to Political Director. In my dealing with Adam, I’ve always found him to be fair and balanced and generally has kept his politics (which I really don’t know how he leans) to himself and not in his reporting.

questioning of his two guests: Dr. Dottie Morris and Rogers Johnson.  I don’t know Dr. Morris but I do know Rogers Johnson for being a blogger on the Right side of the aisle, we have spoken a few times in the past.  Thus in watching the piece, I was absolutely flabbergasted that this self-described Conservative on something he said that sounded outright out of the Progressive Identity Politics bible:

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“Inclusive” – that’s the word that is tossed around by the Left to describe the world as they want it to be.  Kumbyra and all that – a glorious Utopian place to be.  There’s a hitch in all that and Jennifer Abbott shows the true face of the Left – and why their usage of “inclusive” really means “as long you you submit to our philosophy” (sorta like with militant politico-Islam, which means “submission”). Feeling “the love” – just read her own words and guess what is dripping from them.  I love the predictions as well…

BY 2020 ANGRY MEN WILL BE DINOSAURS, WOMEN AND MINORITIES WILL RULE

To The Daily Sun,

Yawwwwnn……

I am tired of the Trump rants, you’re not convincing anyone that this fraud should be president. Bashing liberals and Democrats? Really, boys, it’s pathetic — what exactly has chump done for us? Nothing. You wanted to drain the swamp? You stocked the swamp, you elected a TV personality slash supposedly successful business man, who refuses to show his taxes. Why is he dismantling everything that keeps us safe from greedy corporations? A man who bragged about assaulting women — a coward, who thinks he’s a hero.

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