Skip

By noted attorneys, Gilles Bissonnette (ACLU) and Mark Sisti (defense attorney).  If only our Legislators actually read and adhered to both the Letter and the Spirit of our Constitutions….sigh….this piece of legislation, “Marsey’s Law”, would have been ITL’d (Inexpedient to Legislate) right from the get-go (reformatted, emphasis mine):

On Tuesday, the New Hampshire Senate held a hearing on Marsy’s Law, a proposed amendment that would add certain victims’ rights to the New Hampshire Constitution. Throughout the hearing, proponents of the amendment argued for the need to provide victims “equal rights” to that of the accused in state criminal prosecutions. This notion of “equal rights” is a seductive appeal to one’s sense of fairness. But it is a misnomer that misunderstands how the New Hampshire Constitution works. The state provides constitutional rights to the accused in a criminal proceeding because the state is attempting to deprive the accused – not the victim – of life, liberty and property.

New Hampshire’s founders were aware of the unparalleled power of state government to imprison or even execute its citizens. As a result, in 1784 – five years before the United States Constitution was even established – they provided in the New Hampshire Constitution a Bill of Rights for those accused of crimes as a necessary safeguard against government abuse. This New Hampshire Bill of Rights even, in some areas, provides the accused with greater rights than those provided under the federal Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution.

Read more

Just like I railed on NH State Rep Sean Morrison here, a quick thought on NH’s bureaucrats disliking competition in the “wine & spirits” marketplace as they seek to stifle any competition to their Power.  A Snippet (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Some wine lovers who look forward to getting new vintages in the mail would be affected if lawmakers approve a bill that would remove “retailers” from the list of those who are allowed to ship wine into the state. Joseph Mollica, chairman of the New Hampshire Liquor Commission, said the change is aimed at “brick-and-mortar” sellers in other states who compete with state liquor stores and other stores selling wine. “A winery that sells wine isn’t a retailer. A wine club that sells wine isn’t a retailer. But a large big-box store is a retailer,” he said Monday.

The bill, Senate Bill 353, would alter the existing law by removing the word “retailer” from the list of out-of-state groups that can get licenses to directly ship wine into New Hampshire, impacting customers who order wine by mail. In testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee last month, Mollica said the bill would affect “about 81” of 1,174 institutions that have the licenses, or about 7 percent of the license holders. But those 7 percent of license holders account for about one-quarter of the annual $11.3 million of “direct ship” sales in the state.

“We are looking to protect our retailers and tax structure,” Mollica told the committee, which is expected to vote on the bill soon.

My Response to this effort to keep a captive marketplace within “their fence”:

Read more

There is a water crisis going on in Cape Town, South Africa right now – they are expecting to run out of potable water in this city of 4 million people rather soon (a few months) and the Concord Monitor is both wringing its hands and bunching up its panties over it.  Given the headline of this post, you can quickly devine what it believes the root cause it. They actually say what they are but then quickly shift to their ideological casting:

…There are many factors that contributed to the crisis in Cape Town beyond the drought, such as outdated water infrastructure, and poor population planning and crisis management. And it’s not like the whole mess came out of nowhere. Baker cited this April 26, 1990, headline in the Cape Times as proof: “City will run out of water ‘in 17 years.’ ” The math may have been off, but the warning was clearly not taken as seriously as it should have been. Now 4 million people find themselves preparing for a worst-case scenario scheduled to arrive on May 11.

Cape Town’s lesson for a world living under the increasing strain of climate change is this: waiting for crises to move from the horizon to the front door before acting is an expensive and potentially catastrophic failure of government.

Sadly, that is too often the way in this short-sighted world, from Concord to Washington, D.C., to Cape Town, South Africa.

And this is TOTAL nonsense, 

Read more

From a study “The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence From Over a Million Rideshare Drivers.”, the folks at Freakonomics Radio did an interview with the authors (RE: “…The paper was written by five economists — two who are employed by Uber; two Stanford professors; and one researcher who’s been on Freakonomics Radio several times: John List, who’s chairman of the University of Chicago economics department, and he moonlights as head of the ubernomics team at Uber.”)

The Pay Gap has been debunked all kinds of times – that 77% is merely a talking point by lazy Leftists.  In fact, studies show that women now out-income males coming out of college as long as they are in the same industries (and studies show that women often choose lower much lower paying careers than men).  But that’s not the difference here as an Uber driver – I guess that militant Feminists might just chalk it up to another instance of “toxic masculinity” because the male drivers don’t drive like female ones.  From the transcript, a fascinating story why men make about 7% more than women:

Read more

This snippet from the UL caught my eye as we on the BudComm saw (and heard) that retirement costs are skyrocketing from almost every department head lamenting its impact on their budgets, especially as the State broke its “promise” to help local towns and cities pay the costs that go into the State wide pension plan (which is underfunded by $5-6 BILLION dollars) (reformatted, emphasis mine):

The House narrowly defeated a bill sponsored by Rep. Renny Cushing, D-Hampton, to restore a 15 percent state contribution to municipalities for the retirement cost of local police, firefighters and teachers. HB 413 failed in the January session of the House by a vote of 172-166, but was brought up for reconsideration on Thursday, and failed again, 171-170.

“As part of the budgeting process, payment of a percent of retirement payments was discussed and dismissed as an uncontrollable cost to the state,” according to Rep. J. Tracy Emerick, R-Hampton. The state ended its annual contributions to municipal retirement funds 10 years ago, with a contribution of about $50 million to municipalities in the last year of the program.

As I said last night, all of us taxpayers should be downright tired and disgusted with all of the politico talk of up-shifting and down-shifting of costs between the

Read more

So, because Dick Devens hasn’t understood, can’t understand, and seemingly never will, he wants to change a vital part of our Representative Republic to take away yet another Check and Balance that was DESIGNED to have checks and balances.  So because he doesn’t understand something, he wants it simplified; even if he doesn’t understand the severe repercussions of doing so.   From the Laconia Daily Sun (reformatted, emphasis mine):

For years I have read and listened to explanations of the Electoral College. They don’t make sense to me. Googling it is mind-boggling. The Electoral College didn’t make sense to me when I learned about it in high school, in the ’50s. The person who gets the most votes should win. 

Read more

UPDATE: because of trolls, I have disabled GUEST commenting.  If you wish to comment here, you will need to open a public DISQUS account first. Apologies to our regular commenters – you may now need to verify your email addresses with DISQUS before continuing; see troll, above, if you want to blame someone.

*****

And miserable is the operative word. As many of you know, we’ve been having a number of trolls coming in lately.  Now, I have no problem with those that disagree with me or other Groksters but it is clear that’s not why they are here. For years, I’ve had one rule for both authors and commenters:

Rule #1 – Adult themes, kid friendly.  Don’t post something

Read more

SHOT: Rupert Darwall on the Alarming Roots of Environmentalism.

If you look at what the Nazis were doing in the 1930s, in their environmental policies, virtually every theme you see in the modern environmental movement, the Nazis were doing. It happens to be historical fact that the Nazis were the first political party in the world to have a wind power program. It also happens to be a fact that they were against meat eating, and they considered…it…terribly wasteful that so much grain went to feed livestock rather than to make bread. It’s also the case that they had the equivalent of fuel economy rules because they had the most expensive gasoline in Europe and so they basically had very few people driving cars…I think actually the most extraordinary thing that I came across was this quote from Adolf Hitler where he told an aide once, “I’m not interested in politics. I’m interested in changing people’s lifestyles.” Well, that could be…That’s extraordinarily contemporary. That is what the modern environmental movement is all about. It’s about changing people’s lifestyles.

CHASER:  Environmentalists Push Global Wealth Redistribution

Read more

Like Al Letizio and Dennis Senibaldi, here comes this MIT alum (or so says her email address). Out of the blue, I get this email from her (reformatted, emphasis mine):

From: “Donna Sawyer” <dls@alum.mit.edu>
To: skip@granitegrok.com; steve@granitegrok.com
Cc: “Donna Sawyer” <dls@alum.mit.edu>
Sent: 2/5/2018 6:08:59 PM
Subject: Granite Grok site and Windham School District image share from 2/1 article

Hi Skip and Op-Ed,

I hope all is well. I am a Windham, NH resident and I clicked on an article shared on social media bearing the Windham School District sign from 2/1, written by Op-Ed. I realize now this is not a WSD-endorsed article, but an article on your independent PoliGrok LLC site.

Your site shows signs of affiliate marketing. The Amazon links have a tag for “granitecom-20” which typically indicates the site will achieve a profit when folks use your links to purchase on Amazon.

A profit, she says.  That there’s right funny, I don’t care who you are.  Really, a profit?  Hahahaha!  No, that’s getting paid for getting eyeballs.

Read more

Yep, other kinds of trolls – back to Donna Sawyer from Windham NH. Again, it is not enough to have the discussions or arguments – they view us as “societal infidels” (just like militant Islam – just sideways) and must be silenced, put down, or destroyed.  Thus, her opening salvo about our affiliations and about “profits”. Yes, a SPECIAL kind of troll – one that sees herself as doing the [Progressive] Lord’s work, for any dissent from their orthodoxy cannot be tolerated (like  Windham School Board Approves Unconstitutional “BATHROOM BILL” Policy).  As I said before, the timing of the incoming trolls in the comment area and the timing of her email was exquisite.

So, I wrote back:

Read more

OK, Fred Butler has another LtE in the local paper and, of course, he is off-point.  Not only off-point in the way that our own inimitable commenter Timothy (factual but of no real relevance in his own special Progressive way) but blames the BudComm for not cutting budgets.  To which I point out, he was part of that problem:

To the Editor,

Fred Butler complains, again, in his Letter of today, of how little the cuts have been to the Municipal and School District budget that the Gilford Budget Committee has made over the years. He knows why – during the time I was on the BuddComm while he was there, I can’t remember a single time he voted in favor of saving taxpayers some money. In fact, near one of the end of BudComm seasons, he argued in favor of more money for the town employees along the lines of “think of the economic impact that would have as they spend it on Christmas presents”.

Shades of Bastiat’s broken window – he failed to mention the economic impact if that money had simply been left in Gilford’s taxpayers wallets.

Read more