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.

Get it Off Me Man!

I think I'll Name it PaulThere is ample evidence that Paul Hodes toes the line, is a Kool Aid drinker, and a reliable party hack.  Each effort to sell himself as having fiscal integrity or ethics is met with an abundance of contradictory evidence.   So to suggest that he is an independent thinker lacks veracity unless you mean independent from reality.  To further demonstrate this break Hodes spokesman Bergman (not Ingrid but Mark) defended his paymaster from a recent attack on his record. (From the Union Leader)

Hodes spokesman Mark Bergman said Hodes voted for the stimulus to boost the economy and save jobs. Bergman disputed the ad’s claim that the government took over health care.

“We don’t believe it’s a trillion- dollar takeover,” Bergman said yesterday. “We’re arguing that this is an outside group that has helped Kelly Ayotte’s campaign. She’s getting another Washington establishment bailout.”

Bergman said Hodes voted for federal cap-and-trade legislation because he believes it will reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil and lead to alternative energy jobs in New Hampshire. 

Mr. Hodes doesn’t even know what is in these bills so what they "believe" is irrelevant. And that’s actually the point.

Read more

Democrat Civil War – Voter Fraud?

This documentary is about the disenfranchising of American citizens by the Democratic Party and the Obama Campaign. We the People have made this film. Democrats have sent in their stories from all parts of America. We want to be heard and let the country know how our party has sanctioned the actions of what we … Read more

Has Anyone Else Noticed….?

I find it instructive that whenever "independent voice" Paul Hodes wants to editorialize about an issue or the opposition–generally comments unsuitable for his congressional site where he has gone out of his way to put as little on the record as possible–he posts his comments at the Daily KoS or the Huffington Post.  (Cross posted … Read more

Real Hate–from where else?

Here’s some real left wing hate for you.  It’s so bad I won’t post it on Granite Grok, but you can follow the link and check it out for yourself.   Warning.  Coarse language, threats of violence, images of left wing nut-bags with offensive signs and t-shirts while the audio messages play. It’s who these people … Read more

This Tax is your Tax, This Tax is My Tax….

TaxThe democrats economic agenda uses rhetoric and class warfare to get you to believe things that are not true.  The biggest of these sins regards taxes–it is the biggest because they cannot possibly run their huge government without your money.

And that’s part one of the lie.  It is your money.  Weather you are a dishwasher or a CEO you made an agreement to do a job for compensation, whether it’s sweeping a floor or creating wealth for a corporation.  Your work, your property.  So when the left talks about repealing tax breaks all they are doing is talking about resuming more theft of someone else’s property.

The second part of that lie is that they can produce a method by which only the rich are taxed.  While the definition of rich will always change as the need for more of other people’s property increases to pay for more and more government,  consider that every tax in a free market is a tax on everyone else.

Read more

Comrade Carol’s Moral Compass

If you read this, then you’ll have noticed that Alan Grayson is on the list of Socialists in congress.  This got me thinking.  Seiu-Porter is on the record embracing Grayson and his moral compass, so we should perhaps revisit that to reassess Carol’s mental competence in the run up to the 2010 election.

Here’s is Carol’s ringing endorsement of someone whose moral compass is a wonder to behold.  Take note that according to Carol they share almost all of the same goals and values.

Let’s go to the jump where we get a look at his moral compass.

Read more

Drowning In Debt

Democrats will blame Bush, but after 2006 they had the power to stop every penny of it. Instead, they stepped on the accelerator. November is coming. We must stop the spending

Got Hate – Democrat On Democrat edition

Gateway Pundit has all the details, (here and here) and it is now clear that the person who firebombed democrat Russ Carnahan’s office was one of his own (former) disgruntled staffers.  This is a guy who spent time harassing Tea Party activists and who was later let go for failing to do the canvassing job … Read more

The Cost Of Education

When something doesn’t work, and you are a democrat, well you just keep doing it.  These graphs come to us courtesy of Andrew J. Coulson at Big Government.

Graph one Public education employees vs. student enrollment numbers.

Way out of wack@

Graph number two–on the jump–is the inflation adjusted cost of public K-12 education (that’s taxpayer dollars spent) compared to achievement levels.  (I hope you are ready for this.)

Read more

Fun With Jan And Carol

Democrats like to make up rules for Republicans which I then do my best to apply to democrats.  In this example we have a donor to Carol Shea Porter who has been up to some questionable behavior.  If Carol doe snot denounce it she is complicit in it.  So pay attention.

Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill)–remember Jan, she’s on that socialist party list–has apparently helped bail out a local Illinois bank outside her district.  What’s wrong with that?  Nothing unless you are one of the small banks in her district that she allowed to fail.  Nothing, unless you know that the bank in question appears to have donated to Senator Dick Durbin, Ms. Schakowsky, Obama and has connections to a distinguished list of Chicago insiders, many of whom are currently hanging with the man at 1600.  Even the Clinton’s and MoveOn.org have roots in SouthShore.  And nothing at all unless that bank just happens to be a bank Jan’s husband used to help him find a way out of his bank kiting scheme before he went to the big house.

Read more

Comrade Carol Seiu-Porter

PWorkers Unite! CSP / CP/ SP what's the difference?eople Helping Illinois Lead is a PAC that donated to Carol Seiu-Porter.  The PAC is run by Illinois congressman Phil Hare.  Both Rep Hare and Seiu-Porter sit on an education and labor subcommittee.  Phil and Carol are quite similar.  While Carol votes with the fringe left 98% of the time, Hare votes with them 99% of the time—the only significant difference being that Porter missed or abstained in 2% of the votes, where Hare only missed or Abstained from 1%.  Neither of them produces much in the way of original legislation, and neither of them has had their whole bills survive to become law.  Both are classified as “followers,” people who accomplish little but co-sponsor other people bills and use that as proof of relevance.  Side by side they are a guaranteed party-first vote, and  reliable co-sponsor of whatever leadership backs.

So put side by side their are no discernible policy differences.  They are liberal progressive twins.

Of Course Carol Seiu-Porter donor Phil Hare is listed as a member of the Socialist Party in America, and on the record as not caring about the constitution.

Read more

Look For The Union Label

So far this year, $24.7 million in independent spending has been reported to the Federal Election Commission, campaign filings show. Unions have spent 9.7 million (or 39 percent of the total), compared with $6.4 million (26 percent) spent by individuals and 3.4 million spent by corporations.

Target (ing) Gaypocrisy

Target donated money to a pro business PAC, which donated money to a Minnesota Candidate that makes the Gay activists less than merry.  (Can’t exactly say less gay can I?).  And since the "x degrees of fiscal separation" rule is only relevant to anything to the right of Trotsky, the Gender Confusion Corps (pronounced "corpse") has taken it to Target with a vengeance.

(I hope they are not upset with me but I  spent close to $1000.00 dollars at Target this week but if it helps I had a coupon. )

Anyway, in their quest to draw attention to the complex nature of the gender paradox  they have managed to make collective fools out of their collectivist selves.  At the end of a video in which they answer once and for all the age old question of whether people really do just burst into coordinated song and dance in public places like they do in the Musicals, we are treated to large type with the words "Stop Trying To Buy Elections," (see it on the jump) to which I must respond, only if you stop first.

 

Read more

Cost of Government Day

According to the Center for Fiscal Accountability, New Hampshire residents work 226.8 days to pay for the cost of government this year. So go ahead and celebrate. Everything you earn after August 14th is technically yours to keep.
Who would have thought they’d let you keep 138.2 days worth of income from a years worth of work? What a bargain.

Is the Coffee Party Out Of Juice?

Nothing UnderneathI’m not surprised to hear this.  The coffee party (let’s call them CP) was doomed from the start.  Why?  It was a top down construction of left wing propagandists and those sorts of fabricated movements have needs that the CP could never hope to meet.

It had no core principles to stand on.  We know from the CP themselves (see here,) that there was a lack of issues focus but it’s a bigger problem than that.  Being a recovered moderate myself I can tell you that when what you think you believe cannot somehow be linked to some consistent metric or core value you don’t actually believe in anything.  You risk becoming a leaf and the wind that moves you is as capricious as your most recent whim–be it one that occurs to you on your own or something someone else (the media or a trans-formative figure for example) convinces you of from moment to moment.

Left without an anchor and lacking a reliable lens or filter, everything becomes subject to change; response is based on emotion or selfish wants and personal pleasure–the only answer to every question becomes “will this make me feel good about myself or is this good for me?”  But we already have a movement like that, it’s called the new democrat party.

Read more

How Many Employees Do You Have?

After posting this on Wednesday–the discovery that New Hampshire has the third highest number of welfare employees per 100,000 residents in the nation (More than California by the way which, if you noticed is a tiny bit bigger than New Hampshire)–it occurred to me that this may not be the only circumstance in which the … Read more

Share to...
BufferCopyFlipboardHacker NewsLineLinkedInMastodonMessengerMixPinterestPrintRedditSMSTelegramTumblrVKWhatsAppXing