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.

NH Unemloyment Not So Good?

A closer look... Beginning in April 2010 the New Hampshire employment picture, the reported percentage at least, started to look a whole lot better. Having reached a high of 7.1% in February 2010, April’s 6.7% was a promising sign, a cool breeze on a hot day.

Things continued to look better through May and the preliminary June numbers are now reporting down to an even more palatable 5.9%.

If these numbers hold it would be the fourth consecutive month of improved reporting.  But is it really a sign of improved employment?

Can we pop the champagne and predict even rosier employment numbers in the months to come?

Probably not.

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Carol SEIU-Porter

Fergus Cullen get’s the Hat Tip for spotting this first and posting it over at Red Hampshire, but he didn’t go the extra mile and get a copy of the actual invitation. Here we have a campaign fundrasing breakfast for Carol "Look for the Union Label" SEIU-Porter; remember to make checks payable to Carol SEIU-Porter for … Read more

A.D.D.D (Revisited)

Sing...Sing a song....Sing out loud....
 
[[Given the recent noise from progressives about unemployment extensions (not just the payments but the joblessness) I thought I’d revisit a post I wrote back in March, the last time we went through this—because to be honest, it still applies.]]
 
 
A.D.D.D
 
There’s this liberal talking point, it’s spin actually, that anyone who does not disown Jim Bunning is an obstructionist.  It is founded on the premise that the Senator was against extending unemployment benefits.  The meme therefore goes; if you do not scold Jim Bunning you hate people who are unemployed and should burn in hell.

This is a natural extension of all the other mutually exclusive applications of association that elitist, finger-wagging, dimwitted, left wing spin doctors and their blindfolded parrot-like familiars shout from the rooftops of foreclosed homes.  It’s the same one that makes all white, heterosexual Christian, men, racist -globalist- misogynistic robber barons, and lets liberals try to escape the hypocrisy of ignoring the behavior of violent liberal bigots and hate mongers while whining about right wing complicity with all the winsome air of finger nails following Obama’s declining popularity down to the bottom of the chalkboard.

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Or…

The Union Leader has a bi-weekly feature sponsored by Mclane Law Firm called Know the Law.  Here’s this weeks Q and A. (With an additional comment from me at the end.) Q: We have owned lakefront property rights on the water for many years and would like to expand the old house, upgrade the permanent docks … Read more

The Past As The Present

  I picked this up from RedState who got it recently from the Chicago Tribune where it was apparently published back in 1934.  We are invited to read the list on the sign in the bottom left hand corner but there are plenty of interesting things to catch the eye. "It worked in Russia."  And … Read more

Hodes Found Someone…

…he thinks he might be able to beat in the New Hampshire Senate race.  Lord knows he can’t beat anyone actually running.  She polls better than he does, but she’s not from New Hampshire, so that improves his odds a little bit.   That’s right, Paul Hodes is now apparently running for the Senate….against Sarah Palin. … Read more

I Stand Corrected

FECFor the record, there is a PDF available of Sean Mahoney’s individual donors at the FEC but it is not as easy to access nor review on line as any of the other FEC data for New Hampshire candidates.  Perhaps I should be clearer.  Out of the 19 candidates reporting receipts to the FEC in all the federal level races for New Hampshire only Wesley Michael Sonner Jr, Timothy Vanblommesteyn (Both in CD-2) and Sean Mahoney do not have their detailed data available on the front end FEC candidate list page for each respective race.  I know what you are thinking.  Who the hell is Timothy Vanblommesteyn and why are he and Sean Mahoney being dissed by the FEC.

 

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Got Hate?

  In another round of "Who’s Really Got the Hate" liberals win again. This time the liberal hate comes from a producer for an NPR program called "Left, Right, and Center" from affiliate KCRW.  (It’s NPR so it’s more likley Far left, Left, and Mostly left.") In todays example a member of the impartial media comments … Read more

Mr. Lynch Does The Right Thing

You might have missed this. The Governor just vetoed HB 53. HB 53 was a bill proposed by Kimberly Casey (D-Rock 11) and Jim Garrity (D-Rock 6).  Both of them should be run out of the state for even proposing it. In short, it would alter 91-A (Right to know law) by redefining what a public body … Read more

The Potemkin Congressman

Hey you...smell my finger.

Paul Hodes, or more likely someone writing as Paul Hodes, took to the safe confines of the Daily Kos to pretend the CD-2 congressman and soon to be private citizen is in fact a vertebrate.  That is to say, he went to the socilist progressive locker room to talk smack about the opposing team.

That alone speaks volumes.

 

So here’s an excerpt, (original KoS Kontent here)

 

“I’m sick and tired of Democrats getting weak knees every time the right-wing media flexes their muscles.”

…

And every time we respond to their attacks with weak knees and cowering in the corner, we give them credibility. Even worse – we encourage them to keep it up. When faced with a bully, we progressives should stand and fight – not run and hide.

 

Bully? Stand and Fight? Bwahahahahaha!

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I’m Batman

I'm BatmanA "little bird" suggested to me recently that in New Hampshire congressional district one, there were two candidates driving hard for the attention of the grass roots, Frank Guinta and Sean Mahoney.  The comment caught my attention because it was just a tiny bit derisive, as if neither of them even deserved that kind of support.  He was obviously backing someone else so I left it alone, but I did find it interesting that he thought Mr. Mahoney was courting the grass roots.  Mr. Mahoney never struck me as the grass roots type.  I always pictured him as more of an institutional republican, someone like Rich Ashooh; active and connected, has money or knows people with money, with a hint of the K-street ruling class mentality.  You know, like Charlie Bass.

I guess I just didn’t recall Sean Mahoney and no offense to whatever his other redeeming qualities might be, courting the roots, the tips, the tea leaves or anything else.  But I can’t know everyone, even though I know enough "someone’s" to have second or third hand access to almost everyone in the NH grass roots.  Maybe Mr. Mahoney really was trying to make in-roads and was simply not doing a very good job of it?  Or maybe I’d missed out on a well hidden patch of Fescue or Rye and there was something to this?

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Hodes Anoints

Back in April Paul Hodes took the original tack of reminding us that Kelly Ayotte was ‘picked’ by the GOP establishment.  It’s a common theme played up by the left so Hodes was just being a good democrat an repeating what he’d been told. I don’t know what Ms. Ayotte, who was essentially picked by … Read more

Democrat Deficit Deficit Disorder

How many times have you heard people say, "Well the state can’t print its own money?"  Well J-Lynch and the democrats have found a suitable equivalent; just pretend it’s there anyway and call it even. But it’s not enough to just pretend you balanced the budget, you have to follow it up with a cover story and … Read more

I…Uh…You….Huh?

I’m still trying to figure out where Sean Stands on this issue. Watch for yourself, and then let me know if you know if he knows, then tell me. The Video comes courtesy of the Sandown GOP Forum last week. So, what’s his position? You know it actually sounds a lot like the the Bush-Kennedy … Read more

Just Tell Them To Kiss Your ….Donkey

Kiss My...A few weeks ago the NHDP mounted what they would call (if a Republican did it)a smear campaign.  It was against Bob Guida, and it was for being honest.  I know, that’s probably what threw them but that’s not why they dropped the arugula or spilled their latte in a mad dash for the keyboard.  Bob, bless his heart, had the gall to suggest that “Marriage Equality" was the root of all evil, and also said that single mothers were the result of a breakdown of marriage.

That’s Bob’s opinion.  How refreshing.

Meanwhile, the digital ditch diggers and ditch fillers over at the NHDP–proper Keynesian’s that they are–felt the need to dust off an old standard (not terribly forwarding looking or progressive of them by the way) and wave it in the direction of Mr. Guida.  It’s the "we demand an apology" and "the GOP should denounce this or they are all agreeing with it" meme.   In response, the GOP and Mr. Guida did almost exactly the right thing.  They paid almost no attention whatsoever. 

So why bring it back up?  Because they didn’t do ‘exactly the right thing.’

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Lynch Had Nothing To Do With It….or Did He?

Lacking any tangible bullet points with which to elevate their governor the New Hampshire democrat party would like you to believe that John Lynch can take credit for New Hampshire’s better than average unemployment situation.  If this is true then John Lynch is responsible for the existence of Mount Washington as well because it, like the base factors that drive unemployment in New Hampshire, predate him.

New Hampshire was designed for low unemployment long before governor Lynch came along.  The mechanism is one that is both relatively unique and has very little bearing on the length or breadth of federally mandated hand outs designed as assistance for those still looking aimlessly for any of the 8 million jobs that the Obama administration admits it has permanently destroyed.   Put simply, we do not pay people in New Hampshire enough to survive at the same lifestyle level to which they may have become accustomed while working.  When prolonged unemployment compromises your comfort,  you are more inclined to find work almost anywhere work can be found.

So more New Hampshire people are looking for work, more of them are finding it,  and John Lynch had nothing to do with that— which should not to be confused with how Mr. Lynch did impact employment.

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Behind The Curtain

No, we are not surprised to hear that a cabal of media elites (defenders of the ruling class) has been working to co-opt the message and suppress public discourse they do not approve of.   From The Daily Caller Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal … Read more

He Went To Do Good And Stayed To Do Well

The saying is that "he went to Washington to do good and stayed to do well" and the first name that popped into my mind was Charlie Bass.  C-Bass epitomizes this ruling class cultural maxim.  He promised you term limits then changed his mind.  He became a Main Streeter, moderate fence sitters who abandoned principle … Read more

What John Lynch IS Good At

John LynchWilliam F. Klessons has stretched credibility to the breaking point. Who is Klessons you ask? He is Salem’s self-styled print equivalent of Keith Olbermann. A Kool-Aid stained liberal apologist and basher of all things to the right of Mussolini in the pages of the Salem Patriot, and the Observer.

Klessons came to my attention when someone sent me a copy of his most recent piece of fiction. In it he proclaims the greatness of Governor Lynch. While everyone is entitled to their opinion Klessons justifies this because of some budget surplus he has imagined, and then lauds the little governor for his business acumen as the catalyst for all the good in the Granite State. Not to knock you off your dung wagon Bill but having no state or income tax is why we are better off than most states and Lynch and the democrats did their best to screw the state up despite that.

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