Steve MacDonald

Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, an award-winning blogger, and a member of the Board of Directors of The 603 Alliance and the National Heritage Center for Constitutional Studies. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC and the Managing Editor, Executive Editor, assistant editor, Editor, content curator, and more (yes, there's more) at GraniteGrok.com. Steve is also a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, the Republican Volunteer Coalition, and has worked for or with many state and local campaigns and grassroots groups, and is a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.

Merrimack Starts A TEA Party

Former Merrimack Town councilor Mike Malzone has decided he has had enough. What tipped him over the edge? An 11 pm town meeting decision to implement pay as you throw after just about everyone had gone home.

The Bill Binnie Network?

Word has it that Bill Binnie has considered buying WNDS to use as the flagship studio for what would be called the New Hampshire 1 Network.

Smoke Em After You Buy Em…In New Hampshire

Right off the bat, thanks to Matt at Red Hampshire for reminding me about Ken Wyler’s bill to cut the cigarette tax by $0.10 cents per pack.  (HB 156) I’ve been queuing up a post on this having written about it often and what better time than now to unload it.

First the basics.  Wyler thinks cutting the tax by a buck a carton will actually increase revenue by attracting more out of state traffic.  Ken is correct.  A larger cut would be better, but I guess we can crawl before we walk.  And with that in mind, lets review why it will raise more revenue.  And I’m not even going to have to go back very far for a decent flashback.

Read more

Who Voted Against HB 474? The Right to Work Bill

Right To Work MapYou can probably guess who voted against HB 474.  Democrats.  In fact not one single Democrat voted for it. But they are not beholden to the unions.  Nah.

The Final Roll Call was 221 for, 131 against.  My original post, with a margin of 221 to 121 was incorrect, (which means I need to find a second tweet source in the House for verification purposes.)

Of those voting no 40 were Republicans.  Of those not voting, 11 were democrats and 36 were Republican.  So while a veto is promised, an override is still very possible.

But is it likley?

The Republicans can’t just hope the entire caucus shows up, they need to flip a chunk of those 40 Republicans to make this happen.  But can they herd cats like the left?

We’ll probably get to find out.

Until then, here are the lists of those Republicans who voted no, and those who did not vote. (on the jump.)

Read more

Guest Post- Richard Olson Jr.: “House Bill 125: Asserting The Tenth Amendment Rights”

House Bill 125-FN, commonly referred to as the, Lawful Commerce In Firearms Act eminently faces a house vote. Much has been said about the bill while, at the same time, much has not been said about this bill.

Simply stated, this bill exempts firearms, accessories and/or ammunition manufactured in New Hampshire, and remains in New Hampshire, from Federal Regulation under the National Firearms Act.

Similar to New Hampshire’s pending legislation, Eight other States (Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Tennessee, and Alaska) have already passed  a Firearms Freedoms Acts bill and twenty-one other states currently have active and pending legislation. Three states are proactively crafting FFA legislation.  

The New Hampshire version of the Firearms Freedom Act allows Granite-Staters to assume responsibility on a limited basis, the self-regulation as well as some freedom from the overly burdensome yolk of bureaucratic and restrictive federal firearms regulations.

(Keep Reading…)

Read more

I Guess The NHDP Is Now The “Monkey In The Window Party”

AL GraphicsBeing a New Hampshire democrat means never having to denounce anything.  This only matters because the liberal-progressive whip holders who direct traffic leftward around the democrat’s rotary-of-hypocrisy like to tap the hair trigger on their own media Weapons of Mass Outrage (WMO) whenever they can manufacture the provocation.  So if someone to the right of them puts together a sentence that could in any way be misinterpreted as racist, misogynist, bigoted and so on they create outrage, then pitch it to anyone who will listen. 

But when it’s one of theirs no one has anything to say, including the local media whom I cannot recall claiming that "no democrat was available for comment" on the latest left wing outrage of the day.

So how about we ask?  Ask both why there has been no comment and why no one has asked for any, after AlterNet had itself a picnic lunch of racist slurs that ended in calling  a black man "a monkey in the window."

Read more

A Democrat’s Idea Of Tough Choices

Obama’s budget is out. It raises tax revenues by adding more taxes. It is reported that the deficit will increase by as much as 7 trillion dollars as a result. (That’s $7,000,000,000,000.00). It defends all the abusive spending of the past two budgets by ignoring the trillions in new spending and debt. It will set records for a third and forth consecutive trillion plus budget with record setting deficits.

What Zandra Rice Hawkins Was Really Selling At Her “Fake” Sale

cupcakeZandra Rice "The Huckster" Hawkins of Granite State Progress (an out of state funded left wing group) staged a bake sale based on words she put in State Rep Jeanine Notter’s mouth.   

Hawkins just decided that because Notter had more faith in individual responsibility and more local control that this guaranteed that people would suffer; that Notter’s solution meant people would need to have a bake sale to raise money to pay for cancer treatments if New Hampshire tried to opt out of the unconstitutional Health Insurance mandate.

I think this says a good deal about Zandra the Huckster’s world view and it’s not all that flattering.

Read more

Bedford School District Book Woes Re-ignite

Warning. Strong Sexual Content.

The Bedford Public School system is back in the news again.  Another book has popped up in the curriculum that is questioning the standards of the towns (cough-cough) educational experts. This time is it ‘Water For Elephants.”

This book appears to have some very interesting subject matter, which someone in the Bedford District finds suitable for students to read.  I’ll let you be the judge. (This is just a sample, and relates to the “warning” strong sexual content” portion.)

(Warning! By jumping to the conclusion of this post you accept all responsibility for the content you are about to read.)

 

Read more

NH House Passes Right To Work Bill

By a vote of 221 to 121 HB 474 passes the NH House. While this is not a veto proof majority 58 House reps did not vote leaving plenty of room for a veto override.

Half-Bass’d Mast [Updated]

Well the timer was short. The result? When you copy an image location and someone does not like what you do with it, they snip your little life-line and the image goes away. You are left with a broken link, some alternate text if you added any, and plenty of people asking–huh?

Kathleen Sullivan DiFruscia

You remember Tony DiFruscia? Lawyer, democrat, republican, independent, ex RINO NH House rep. Yeah that guy. Well his law partner and wife–wait until I tell you her name, is running for selectman in Windham.

Atlas Shrugged – The Movie?

Someone said this was one of the most anticipated movies…..I….no, I was not anticipating it.  In fact I didn’t know they were making it. And having watched the trailer, the first two words to come to my mind were ‘Red Box.’

But who am I?  Certainly not a qualified movie critic.  And this has to be at least as good as most of the crap that Hollywood makes.  And Hollywood makes a lot of crap.  So will this be more crap?  I can’t tell you that from the trailer.  Movie trailers are like airbrushed models in print.  That’s about as good as it is ever going to look.  So does it look good enough?  Red Box. 

I realize the books continued appeal is why we have a movie based on it.  I get the whole idea of going Galt.  And that will appeal to a slice of the movie-going public, but how big a slice.  Ayn Rand is provocative but can it be translated onto the big screen, and since this is part one, how many more parts must we endure to resolve the driving question of this trailer.  Who is John Galt?

One bonus I can comment on is that it is NOT scheduled to be released in 3D.  Movies are made in 3D as an excuse to charge 50% more for a ticket, turning a nice family outing to the cinema into another reason to refinance.  The movie is not supposed to cost more than dinner is it?  For that kind of cash you should get live actors and sets and an intermission so you can hit the restroom and not miss anything. 

But that doesn’t get us any closer to the trailer for Atlas Shrugged Part 1.  So here it is, on the jump, one of the most anticipated Movies….well, we talked about that already.  I watched the trailer.  I’m still not anticipating it.  Sorry.

 

Read more

Democrats, Trains And HB 218

De railedThe Union Leader has a great editorial in this mornings Sunday News titled "Free Trains."  It is great for several reasons the least of which is that it mirrors concerns I have been expressing for years.  That no matter who pays to build them, someone has to pay to keep them.  That would be New Hampshire Taxpayers. But Democrats are aghast that the NH House would dissolve the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority–the head of a beast seeking to force commuter rail upon us–because hey it doesn’t cost anything.

But it does cost and it could lead to something that costs us even more in the future.  A lot more.

December 2009 at NH Insider – I hit it out of the park when someone compared road taxes to rail taxes.

Passenger rail costs are not limited to the root infrastructure itself.  That would be rails versus roads.   Taxpayers would have to subsidize passenger rail-cars, fuel the cars, maintain the cars, probably pay the workers and their benefits, and support the entire system when it fails to turn a profit, which will be always and probably forever.   While roads have some other infrastructure nothing compares to rail.

In contrast people buy their own cars, and pay for their own fuel and maintenance.  They may buy the car to get to a job that’s probably not funded by taxpayers either. (Except in Concord) Taxpayers do not need to subsidize any of that where with rail we’re supporting all of it.  So there is no possible apples to apples comparison to road and rail taxes. 

The state also makes a lot of money on registration fees and fuel taxes for road vehicles, tolls and license plates, and some towns rely so heavily on registration fees that even minor reductions can cause budget issues.   Passenger rail offers no comparable net increase in revenues and in all likely hood a net loss.  So Passenger rail risks reducing revenues and increasing tax obligations for no significant greater good. 

Read the whole thing here. 

But that’s hardly the most pressing point about the ongoing illusion of free commuter rail…

Read more

Share to...
BufferCopyFlipboardHacker NewsLineLinkedInMastodonMessengerMixPinterestPrintRedditSMSTelegramTumblrVKWhatsAppXing