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Co-founder of GraniteGrok, my concern is around Individual Liberty and Freedom and how the Government is taking that away. As an evangelical Christian and Conservative with small "L" libertarian leanings, my fight is with Progressives forcing a collectivized, secular humanistic future upon us. As a TEA Party activist, citizen journalist, and pundit!, my goal is to use the New Media to advance the radical notions of America's Founders back into our culture.

The Harry Potter of the debt ceiling debate – that which cannot be named.

Or, at least to this point, hasn’t been talked much at all and if so, in hushed tones – actually paying the $14.5 Trillion debt actually racked up, not to mention the piling onto it by Obama and the Democrats spending?  Instead we’ve heard about:

  • The tax revenue enhancement
  • Closing loopholes
  • Flattening the individual and corporate rates
  • Restructuring the entitlements 
  • The deal is on, the deal is off, there’s a new deal
  • Obama is a petulant President.
  • And today, we know that Obama has been cut out of the dealing.
  • And Obama is one very scared President, with the realization that he’s fast becoming a one term President

Especially if the best efforts of Pelosi, Reid, Geithner, and Obama can’t keep the GOP from a two tiered effort with a short term effort that will result in yet another vote right smack dab in the Presidential general election.

And yes, Pelosi is scratched out as she has become irrelevant.  And yes, I scratched the GOP.  Sure, it is Republicans Cantor, Boehner and McConnell that are driving the bus up front.

But they ain’t the engine – the TEA Party is.  From a rag tag collection of fed up regular type folks that started off complaining that the Govt was going to pay their neighbor’s mortgage to staging rallies attracting <tens| hundreds |tens of thousands> of people to influencing municipal, county, and state level officials and elections.

And then on to getting Federal candidates elected to both the US House and the US Senate. The TEA Party was ALWAYS the force that could derail the Progressive train-wreck-to-happen right from the get/go, and the Progressives knew it at the start.  They realized that as soon as there was no one single leadership, they were doomed – it was only a matter of time.  And this past November, the TEA Party doomed a lot of the Progressive politicians (mostly Democrats but a fair number of Republicans as well)

And it is the US House that is in the driver’s seat and Obama knows it.  And Obama knows that it is this populist uprising against his expansion of Government to full blown Socialist levels & a vast expansion of the welfare state. And this is the nexus of raising or not raising the debt ceiling:

Are we going to allow the foundational philosophy of a limited government evaporate?

Mark my words – unless the spending is racheted down NOW, at THIS point in time, there may no longer be an environment where we, rather than government, can determine our future (or our present).  The spending has to stop – either…

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TeleTown Hall with Frank Guinta

Got a call and was joined onto Congressman Frank Guinta’s TeleTownHall event.  In listening to some of the others, a couple folks had some things to say that, of COURSE, I have opinions on: Al basically said to just tax the rich; they need to pay their fair share.  Well, All, using the latest numbers … Read more

Facebook Doodlings – Obama’s mini-speech

A couple of observations from Facebook as President Obama spoke to the nation at 9pm this evening (and once again, gave the networks agina): Obama’s Presser: " I think these Patriotic American willing to pitch in. In fact over the last few decades, they’ve pitched in every time we’ve passed a bipartisan deal to reduce … Read more

An apologist’s defense for funding Planned Parenthhood.

Executive Councilor Chris Sununu has an op-ed in the UL this morning defending why he voted to let a contract to biggest abortionist organizations in the United States, Planned Parenthood.  However, without even exploring the issue of abortion, he should really listen to his own words for the advice he should really implement.  The relevant portions:

Let me be clear that I am not fan of Planned Parenthood. From their excessive administrative costs and political lobbying, to its attempts to thwart parental notification, there is no shortage of issues I have with this organization. Like most Americans, I have never supported the public funding of abortions. But contrary to popular belief, that’s not what this contract is about.

As to the first – the financial point; he should vote no. He is already admitting that he has already voted once to give money to an organization that cannot spend our money wisely – and now is on the cusp of doing it twice?  Isn’t that the primary mandate of the Executive Council, to see that contract money IS spent correctly? So why vote to spend more money than what is necessary? At the very worst, why not make the demand that PPNE make structural changes as to its internal costs?  After all (heh!) if Obamacare can do that to healthcare insurance company administrative costs, why can’t NH do a similar thing to healthcare providers?

In any case, while you are concerned with health providers in your district, a lot of your constituents put you into place because your predecessor spent too much.  They will be remembering their top concerning, unwise spending, your own words "excessive administrative costs" and wondering: really?

"Thwart parental notification" – to the second which is the political point.  So you have an organization that forcefully and vigorously not only campaigns against a pillar of the Republican platform, and this does not concern you?  You have voted for an organization that is openly supportive of those that would throw you out of office (as well as your fellow Republicans)?  After all, you just pointed out that they do political lobbying – is this part of the re-election calculus?

So why are you letting a contract with fungible money only to see it used for political purposes? Some of the commentors at the UL talk about ideology – why should we give contract money to an organization that has demonstrated an ideology that is counter to most NH people?

Executive Councilor Sununu, all you have to do is to listen to your own words as to listening to good advice.

He continues on – the third point: structural point:

So why must it be Planned Parenthood? Why not some other provider that doesn’t have the scrutiny of this group? That’s the exact question I asked Health and Human Services Commissioner Nick Toumpas prior to the initial vote. Unfortunately, these contracts do not overlap geographically. Every provider is assigned specific towns to ensure that disadvantaged women (many of whom don’t even own a car) don’t have to travel great distances to get their care.

You are an MIT trained engineer – as your Dad pointed out to me…

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Facebook Doodlings – those with “excess” should pay more?

Adapted from a Facebook thread

‘Grok friend Robert Jursik had a link where Michele Bachmann suggested that everyone should pay taxes (almost 50% pay no Federal income taxes); I have written many times that this would be a good idea – ALL should pay for the Government we have with no exceptions.

Immediately, there was blowback from a Liberal with a snarky line of "how dare the poor waste the little money they have on foolish things like food and housing…and need to eat".  Bob correctly pointed out that 300 million people paying a small amount in taxes produces better revenue than 70 or 80 million paying more than 40% of whatever they earn and that:

we’re in a circumstance now where we have an entire class of Americans who are only too happy to keep voting for those politicians who will promise them all kinds of benefits and entitlements, knowing full well they’ll never have to foot the bill for them. That’s an outrage. And in the same way, you have entire tax brackets that are coughing up at least 45% of their income to pay for welfare services and entitlements they’ll never use – basically getting screwed over to pay for somebody else’s public dole. Our Michele is quite right: the answer here is not to bleed those brackets even more. The answer is to tell those entitlement classes to get off the sofa and start pulling the wagon for a change.

Well, Bob was right.  If you examine the revenues for both NY and CA, you can see that they plummeted during the beginning of the recession.  Why?  Their state level income taxes were very skewed; using a Progressive rule of thumb, they highly taxed the rich in their states and not much at all on others.  Well, weighting that skew SO much meant that when the rich were no longer rich as the recession deepened, neither were the State coffers – a lesson that Progressive Obama would be wise to learn (50 labs of Democracy and all that). Anyways, what Bob said didn’t set well with the Lib and he challenged that 40% taxation number. Of COURSE, I chimed in on the topics of that skewness, those who have "excess" ("cover your utilities, housing, food and medical care?") should pay more, who should be able to decided when someone, as Obama stated, has enough ("excess" was the actual word), and that times have changed since the Declaration of Independence was written:

Right now, the top 1% of all income earners pay more than the bottom 95% in income taxes. <redacted>, from your accusatory posts for Robert, it seems that you are just fine with "free riders" on the system. frankly, IF we get the chance to look back, we will see that separating the receivers of Govt largesse from helping to pay for that largesse will be one of our biggest mistakes. Why? If one pays nothing for something, it is not as valued as having to have worked for it. What we are generating a social class that is selfish – "Govt, give me more and what NEXT are you going to give me?" Doubt me? Just look at Greece where former largesse recipients are rioting in the streets because the Govt can no longer afford to give them ANYTHING – the money is gone.

So, you have the hubris to decide who has "excess" and who doesn’t? <Redacted>, you get to decide upon whom "coerced charity" will be enforced? This is my main problem with Progressives / Liberals: they have little regard for the Law of Private Property. They have no clue the message they send to others: that THEY and THEY alone are reasonable and moral, and thus, should have the power to take from others – their ends justifies their means. How nice….

Review the Declaration – …

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Operation Payback: maybe a time for a “clean up in Aisle 4” moment?

It seems that the School Board in my town just can’t seem to keep itself out of the news lately – who do they think they are, the Budget Committee (heh!) ? Certainly my hamlet is seemingly abuzz with School Board member Derek Tomlinson’s resignation from that Board.  At first, his letter was not made … Read more

NY Gay Marriage – Perry’s fine with it but Santorum asks the obvious question!

The Corner had this up earlier today – it will become part of the issues of the Primary campaign: 

Gov. Rick Perry Says He’s ‘Fine’ with New York’s Gay Marriages; Rick Santorum Tweets Back

Gov. Perry was at the Aspen Institute, that upscale gathering where great minds come to think together, when someone asked him about New York passing a gay marriage law.

According to a Des Moines Register reporter:

“Texas’s Republican Gov. Rick Perry on Friday said he’s “fine” with New York’s approval of gay marriage because such decisions should be left up to states.

That prompted a response from Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who tweeted overnight: “So Gov Perry, if a state wanted to allow polygamy or if they chose to deny heterosexuals the right to marry, would that be OK too?”

It is a legitimate question – all polling aside that show that the general population is becoming more accepting of gay marriage (a function of encroaching secularism, IMHO), every time that a state’s general population gets to vote on whether or not to legalize homosexual marriage (as opposed to judicial fiat or, in the case of NH and now NY, much $$ was thrown into the legislative issue to grease the skids of changing politicians votes) has gone down in flames.

It seems to be de rigueur that the "marriage equality" folks hate the idea of polygamy, polyandry and polyamory brought brought up – once again, I bring up what happened when I brought that question up to Ron Tunning, gay activist and former Chair of the Laconia (NH) Democrats, when we were doing Meet The New Press back in 2007 and just discussing civil unions.  At the time, my co-host Pat Hynes wrote:

One line of questioning I attempted to pursue in the interview with Ron didn’t go very far, but it is this: Are civil unions the end game for the homosexual lobby?  Will gay activists be happy with civil unions or will they springboard from the civil unions law into the courtroom in pursuit of a judicial edict mandating full-blown gay marriage?  (For the record, I think civil unions are plenty bad enough to get exercised about without the threat of gay marriage on the horizon. But I wanted to know where the gay lobby was headed with all of this.)…

…One line of argument I did not pursue in the interview, but which my co-host Skip Murphy did pursue, was the so-called slippery slope argument: If this is okay now, what next?  Ron’s answer was, essentially: Screw you, I’ve got mine.  If the polygamists want marital rights, let ‘em form a lobby group and make it happen.  Again, Connecticut shows us a glimpse at the future:

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This will make TMEW VERY happy!

And of course, make all those Nanny State "anti-salters" like Michele Obama and NYC Mayor Bloomberg rather sad – one less thing that they can hector us about (even as they use tons of it themselves): For decades, policy makers have tried and failed to get Americans to eat less salt. In April 2010 the … Read more

This is a good description of Chair, DNC Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

By now, most of you may know that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL, Chair of the DNC) decided to "dis" her fellow Floridian, Allen West (R-FL, Lt. Colonel (ret.)), on the floor of the US House of Representatives over the debt ceiling – after he had left the floor (after all, what she did is not considered … Read more

Spenditol

(H/T: Concerned Women of America)

I’m not sure that I agree with John Hawkins!

John Hawkins is one of the very few "solo" professional bloggers that I know.  Running RightWingNews, he makes his living from that site plus a few others.  A couple of days ago, he ran a depressing post entitled "The Slow, Painful Coming Death of the  Independent, Conservative Blogosphere" and he listed a few reasons why:

  • Some established bloggers have quit & fewer are taking their place
  • Some sites got big, got big quickly, and partnered with other sites and became real professionally crewed operations.  Thus, they suck up a lot of viewers.  As opposed to the past, new bloggers have an extremely tough time getting eyeballs.
  • Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites have peeled off a lot of folks that either used to read blogs or will never visit Right side ones.
  • Most bloggers suck at marketing, double dealing themselves a bad hand:

Most bloggers are not very good at marketing, not very good at monetizing, there are no sugar daddies giving us cash, and this isn’t the biggest market in the world to begin with. In other words, this is a time-consuming enterprise, but few people are going to make enough money to go full time. How many people can put in 20-30-40-50 hours a week on something that’s not going to ever be their full time job? Can they do it for 5 years? 10 years? 15? 20? This is the plight that 99.9% of serious, independent conservative bloggers face. This has already created a lot of attrition and over the next few years, as people realize that their traffic is more likely to slowly, but surely significantly deteriorate rather than explode, you’re going to see a lot more people give up.

So overall, recognizing that enthusiasm can float more boats, he’s a wee bit despondent over the long term future.  At the end of his first post, his advice was Go Big or Go Home. Translation:

If at first you don’t get big enough to go pro, just go home.

My take on this?  Nonsense!  The Blog is Dead – Long Live the Blog!  Reason is, I have a whole ‘nother take on this bloggish stuff from a whole ‘nother viewpoint.

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Barrington / Lee / Madbury TEA Party – Presidential Candidate Picnic

TEA Party Presidential candidate Picnic WHEN:     Saturday, August 6, 2011 TIME:       11:30am WHERE:   Dante’s Pasta & Vino / Soccer Field                320 Route 125, Barrington, NH Live music, burgers, hot dogs, chicken, software drinks, and speakers! ================================================== Personal Note: The organizer has told me that Dante’s … Read more

Data Point – Poverty is NOT what you might think (US Government Data)

It has been often said that the poor in the US are not really poor – only in contrast to the rich in the US could that be applied.  Using another measurement, more of our "poor" are actually materially richer than the middle class in Europe and far better off than most when compared to world wide conditions.  From Heritage (who used US Government data to put these infographics together):

    

Compare those statistics; certainly not the wide disparity in ownership that I would have expected.  So, it is a difference in quantity of material goods or just in quality of them?  And compared to the amenities nowadays, many of them did not even exist as I was growing up in my middle class neighborhood.

Some snippets that caught my eye from the Heritage post:

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Data Point – Let’s add in House Size

A follow on to the comparison of All US household material wealth to Poor US household material wealth is the comparison of the sizes of various countries’ houses. From ApartmentTherapy:   US: 2,300 sf Australia: 2,217 sf Denmark: 1,475 sf France: 1,216 sf Spain: 1,044 sf Ireland: 947 sf UK: 818 sf

Gee, and I thought the RSAs were pretty much clear on this

OK, because I am a blogger but not a lawyer (nor play one on the ‘Grok), a bleg and favor to all those folks, lawyers and legislators, that can send some advice! 

As I have blogged before, I am an elected official in my NH hamlet – the Budget Committee (SB2).  Now as a former biz analyst, I like data – a LOTS of it.  Now, the last couple of years, I’ve looked at what was presented: each department with each of its own line items (e.g., electric, phone, salary, benefits, inventories, et al).  And then at the end, I re-aggregated all the like items together (all electric, all salaries,…) and was none too happy.

Well, this year, I’ve made a bunch of data requests to both the Town and School District for long term trending data on these same items; stuff that i bet no one has ever asked for before.  After all, if only presented with a couple or three years of data, it is all but impossible to say if there is a cost trend, and if there is, is it advantageous for taxpayers or against them?  And the RSAs clearly state that the Budget Committee is allowed to do so.  Period.

Well, it has come to my attention that the Selectmen and the Town Administrator have decided that they have the ability to add their own restrictions:

Selectmen have notified the chairman the town’s Budget Committee that requests for detailed fiscal information may be getting out of hand, and they feel requests for in-depth budget analysis be supported by a vote of the committee.

In a letter to Budget Committee Chairman Dick Hickok selectmen said committee members have a certain role to fulfill and a protocol will be set up to request information after a member of the committee was asking questions that might have exceeded his responsibility.

The letter to Hickok was send after a request made by Budget Committee member Skip Murphy. In the letter dated July 13, the town states the concern of possible other requests, similar to what was made by Murphy, could be forthcoming from each and every other member of the committee, which could hold up town resources from a time perspective.

…“With this in mind, the selectmen are concerned that this particular request may not truly reflect the ‘pertinent information’ needs of the Budget Committee as a whole, absent a vote taken at a duly public meeting that reflects a majority decision along those lines,” states the letter.

The town is requesting that a formal vote is to be taken if a member of the committee requests information on RSAs, regulations, unfunded mandates, financial consequences stemming from donating, 10-year trending data, hourly cost of service or other specific information.

“In addition, please be advised that we are troubled by the voluminous nature of the information being requested that will require research and the preparation of reports that are not currently available, especially given the dubious value of this information when you consider the level of line item detail that is typically provided with the budgets along with the numerous opportunities Budget Committee members will have to directly question department managers,” the letter states.

But like the salary studies I did my first year on the BudComm (that reverberated around our larger community and effected a number of fiscal structural changes in our town), I’m betting this data will do the same. 

And I’m betting they know it too.   Problem is for the Selectmen, the Town Administrator, and the lawyer that is most likely advising them, they have a huge problem…the RSAs do not have the Selectmen in the driver’s seat, they have the Budget Committee. If you read them (after the jump), there is NOTHING in the RSAs that allow the Selectment (or the School Board) the ability to direct how the Budget Committee does its job, makes it requests, or how it votes.

And since it is the Budget Committee that is judging the two respective budgets, nor should they.  And the Chair of the Budget Committee has made the formal request.

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