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.

Something Different

Man can not live on politics alone. Sometimes you need something different. This would be that. It is a cat, playing I-Spy. H/T April Swindle– NewsReel Blog

Will Buckley come Out Against Horrigan?

So I wonder what Ray Buckley thinks about Tim Horrigan changing his mind?   Mr. Horrigan found himself stuck in the event horizon of Keith Halloran’s "dead Palin" remarks in early August and in a fit of malaise swore off the House and resigned his position.  While I implied that would hardly last, (and I … Read more

Let’s Play Ball

If you believe the rhetoric Carol Seiu-Porter and Paul ‘Hot Dog’ Hodes are bulwarks of the middle class lifestyle and protectors of the elderly.  So what would they make of this, from a letter sent to Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday?

A number of tax cuts enacted in the past decade are due to expire at the end of this year. Our fiscal policy should be one that maximizes economic growth and private sector job creation. That is why we strongly believe that Congress should extend the current tax rates for dividend and long-term capital gains taxes…We [] have a responsibility to protect middle class families and seniors from harmful tax increases and their economic impact…

Many seniors depend on this income to supplement their fixed retirement income. A recent study found that in 2007 over 27 million tax returns had dividends qualifying for the reduced tax rate reduction. Of those returns, 61 percent were from taxpayers age 50 and older and 30 percent were from taxpayers age 65 and older.

Would they say it’s just a ploy by the authors to excuse an extension on tax cuts for the wealthy?   Could we expect promises to fix it, whatever it was that needed fixing, after the fact?  Or would they simply dismiss it and ignore the consequences to the elderly and those nearing retirement like they did with health insurance reform?

So what would they say if the letter was sent to Nancy Pelosi by 47 House democrats?

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The Lynch Budget Lie

Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory 

A balanced budget is a technical term for making the numbers add up.  The amount you say you have to spend simply matches what you claim to have spent.  So if you borrowed some millions that you would later have to pay back, and you found a few hundred million more on the sidewalk (maybe in Washington DC), if it added up far enough to cover how much you spent, you could claim to have a balanced budget.

The difference is that being at zero, and owing tens of millions you never had is not balanced.  Add to that the reality that you now have a larger bill to pay every year but can’t expect to just find a few hundred million laying around every year, and you have what is called a structural deficit.  Your political lifestyle vastly exceeds your expected revenue.  Call it a state wide mortgage that exceeds our ability to pay it by hundreds of millions annually.

This is called incompetent.  It is also the Lynch budget.  And even though an account or two may have pulled in more revenue than expected, there is still a massive debt due in the next budget, created by democrats, and signed off on by John Lynch, with no money to pay for it..

Why else proceed in contradiction to the supreme court, on the politically poisonous path of robbing $110 million in private property unless you really need that 110 million to start stuffing the sink hole of a massive structural deficit.  And even if you get this one time money, where’s the line of suckers you plan to screw after you are done with them?

If we had a real surplus they wouldn’t need to rob the JUA fund.  They would drop the idea of selling off 60 million in state land.  In fact, they’d stop all the hand-wringing about the budget.  They have not.  The deficit is real.  And the democrats are to blame, and John Lynch and it is one more reason why John Lynch has been the governor for too long.

 

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White Walshing Lynch

I guess the Lynch campaign is busting a kidney over the pressure being put upon them by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).  It looks like NOM bought up $425,000.00 worth of air time with which to expose our little governor to that which he has long become unaccustomed–he will have to stand on something … Read more

Number Poems

I neglected to share this, but on the first day of school this year my 5th grader’s first homework assignment in math was a math poem. Using numbers in a poem. That was the Math homework that day. Use numbers….to make a poem.

National Education Standards

Guest Post: Ann Marie Banfield

 

Dear Editor:

At the last Bedford School Board Meeting, the Board was presented information on the adoption of National Standards.  

The New Hampshire Department of Education recently voted to approve the adoption of Common Core Standards in Math and English.  During the testimony before the NH DOE, several people testified that the New Hampshire State Standards were not adequate.  The Fordham Foundation agreed and gave NH math standards a "D".

Under Governor Lynch, the NH DOE set the bar incredibly low.  While other states moved to improve their standards to an "A" level, our DOE was content to leave the bar low. 

(Continued on the jump)

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NHRVC Web Site

NHRVC LogoThe NHRVC has until now, done most of its business through email groups and Facebook.  And so far they have been extremely effective.  (They played a part in almost every GOP special election win since Nov 2008).

For those of you who do not know who they are the NHRVC is the New Hampshire Republican Volunteer Coalition, a grass roots group that helps activists and candidates find each other.  But not just any candidates, they NHRVC is "working to elect articulate and principled Republicans who stand for low taxes, fiscal responsibility, free enterprise, individual liberty, and most importantly, the U.S. and New Hampshire Constitutions."

That means No RINO’s!

So in the fight to stop the RINO’s and unseat more liberals, we decided to launch a web site, and you are invited to check it out.

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John ‘Job Destroyer’ Lynch ….Bad for New Hampshire

So John Lynch didn’t create a better job situation, he simply scared off enough people to make the absence of almost 11,000 jobs look like an improvement. 5.8% is better than 6.6% right? Tell that to the 11,000 people who lost their jobs or the thousands more who gave up on John Lynch’s New Hampshire.

Another New Hampshire Myth Busted!

Thirty nine democrats voted with republicans to hold off the adjournment, but the vote fell short, leaving the tax hikes on the books as the House leaves to defend two years of excessive spending, massive debt, the democrats unpopular health care plan, the failure to utilize Pay-Go as promised, the inability to even try and form a budget, repeated ethical lapses by liberal law makers, and a host of other ills that have driven their approval rating to historical lows.

Racists-R-Them

The Reverend speaks the truth. Too bad the liberal hypocrites won’t admit to any of it. H/T Big Journalism

“One Nation, under Government, with Liberty and Justice, for all…”

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Someone sent me a link to an interesting website tonight.  “One Nation Working Together” is a group that focuses on a matrix of the abstractions of “unity” and “justice”, with the objectives of “education” and “jobs”.

On her radio show, NPR’s Michelle Martin described “One Nation” as a “rapidly growing group", a mixture of “all backgrounds, hues, and faiths.”

“Hues”?  I’ll bet you can already tell which kind of group this is.

This group’s website features a welcome video by chief-kook-and-bottle-washer, Howard Dean.  In it, he says that "those who would force our Nation backwards, have become louder, and move devisive", and that "we still represent the American mainstream."  The entire theme of this welcome (and the entire group) is a lamentation of the doused momentum from Obama’s "World Tour 2008", trying to replicate the essence and success of the completely unexpected "Tea Party" movement, with a twist of 1960’s communing.  It is a soup of denial and a reality-altering propaganda, just like the entire Progressive movement today.  You cannot manufacture sincere frustration, protestation, and Patriotism; especially when you are wrong.  You can only bend and twist the truth, or just outright lie, and hope for the best.

Let me throw a few quotes at you, from their website:

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Public School Propoganda So Obvious It’s Absurd.

Have you heard of Upfront Magazine?  It’s a product of the New York Times, delivered through Scholastic, to public schools and then public school students, and it is not much different from the actual New York Times.  For example, the September 6th 2010 issue has articles that promote workers rights in China (promoting Unions), seek to explain the complex problem with illegal immigrants (soft selling Amnesty), and then there’s the cover article–‘Americas Challenges 2011,’ a discourse on some of the issues that our new President Obama must cope with.

Here are the opening few paragraphs.  You ready for it?

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Coffee Party Needs More Prunes.

Apparently the post Tea Party, can’t we all just get along, moderate, reaching across the aisle movement had its big national Coffee Party Convention this weekend.

… (?)

Yeah, that’s what I said.

Hot Air has some actual video of a room (posted here on the jump) with a few people in it.  Looks like the seniors got lost on the way to the all expenses paid time-share weekend seminar, or maybe a bus or two missed Foxwoods and just kept going?  Like I said.  Big….national….convention. Big…..convention.

 

350 people showed up.

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Komrad Karol SEIU-Porter-Constitutional Threat

Carol SEIU-Porter seems to think we need government.  That the Tea Party and others do not want any government.  That there is no role for government.  And while there is a minority of people within the various facets of the movement who might agree, most of us do not because anarchy leads to oligarchy and totalitarianism.  That’s just how people are wired.

So what’s Carol’s real problem?  She has several but lets focus on the fact that based on the context of yesterdays’ CD-1 debate she has more or less admitted to being one of Jonah Goldberg’s aptly defined ‘smiley-faced’ fascists.

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Article IV, Section 4

The United States Shall Guarantee to every state in the union a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on Application for the Legislature, or the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

John Stephen for NH Governor – Petrone Fundraiser

I was very fortunate to attend a fundraiser for John Stephen for NH Governor this evening, in Dublin, NH.  The added bonus was the opportunity to meet Mr. Joseph and Mrs. Augusta Petrone.  Joseph Petrone was an NCO in Patton’s 3rd Armored Division in WWII, was later commissioned at West Point, was an aide to President Eisenhower, and was a US Ambassador to the UN European office.  Augusta and Joseph were co-chairs of the Reagan-Bush 1984 Iowa campaign.  Being a former military person and lover of history, meeting him was a special event.  I connected with Augusta via emails spanning the past 9 months, and meeting her was a treasured goal of mine.  The Petrone’s are significantly influential in NH (Republican) politics, and any event at their home is a special one.

Their home is a beautiful manse, built in 1902 by the Secretary of the Treasury for President William Howard Taft, who visited the residence a time or two. 

Among a crowd of about 120 supporters, former NH Governor, and current GOP chair, John H. Sununu, gave the formal introduction, then John Stephen addressed the group.  From the agenda of events and special guests that Stephen has lined up over the next couple weeks (and I was told there are more to be listed), I’d say that his campaign is wasting no time, and is being taken very seriously around the nation.  The remaining 5 weeks of this general election cycle are critical, because John Lynch must be defeated if we aim to stop the Democrats from completely ruining New Hampshire.

I donated to the campaign by attending this event, in order to help John Stephen cap the job that many fine NH conservatives are doing, running for the NH House and Senate.

John H. Sununu’s introduction of John Stephen:

John Stephen, Republican candidate for Governor:

 

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John Lynch – Job Destroyer

Governor Lynch and the left-o-crats are guilty of false advertising.  He (and they) have framed John Lynch as a man who is good for the state, and a shining example of how best to ride out a recession.  To support this claim they point to the states better than average unemployment rate, which while lower … Read more

Lack Of Enthusiasm Ray? Well How About Carol Seiu-Porter..

Just a few hours ago I reported the thoughts (see-gross exaggerations) of one New Hampshire democrat chairman on a so-called lack of enthusiasm in the GOP based on the delegate turn out at the GOP convention.  So what does it say of one Carol SEIU-Porter, who prior to this mornings debate had a rather serious lack of enthusiasm problem all her own.

Let me paint the picture for you.

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