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.

“Deem” Them Voted Out Of Office

If Paul and Carol ‘Deem’ anything passed.  If they allow the Senate bill to self execute.  If they vote on anything that moves the Senate bill from the House, they have voted for everything in the Senate bill by default.  The President can then sign the Senate bill, while the side car dies in the … Read more

Doing The Right Thing?

  Majorie Smith cutting the budget reads like a prisoner forced to read a prepared statement just prior to their execution, that impugns their home country of ills for which they are about to be executed. Then there is this. "There are a lot of people who would not have believed the people in this room … Read more

Revolving Door

The Revolving door is the millwork of connected Political insiders in Washington.  These are the people that keep tax dollars flowing into the metastasizing tumor of big government, and through the veins of the groups that use the revolving door to feed their own wealth and influence.    It is a fiscally incestuous relationship between power … Read more

We Still Hold These Truths

Matthew Spalding from the Heritage Foundation is an expert on the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, Political Institutions, Political History and Citizenship and it is evident on every page of his book, ‘We Still Hold These Truths.’  This thing is crack for liberty lovers, and if you don’t already own a copy order one now, or stop … Read more

Notable Quote -Walter Williams

"For Congress to guarantee a right to health care, or any other good or service, whether a person can afford it or not, it must diminish someone else’s rights, namely their rights to their earnings. The reason is that Congress has no resources of its very own. Moreover, there is no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny … Read more

Strong Arm?

Rumor Has it that any democrat who wants Obama to campaign for them come November had best vote for health care.  Joe Biden too. How arrogant can you get?  Does he actually think that’s going to work?  Obama has been the kiss of death to any democrat who runs for office.  And Biden.  You might as … Read more

He Doth Protest Too Much

Paul  Hodes is out there talking up a storm about how he’s “not going to be bullied into changing his position” on Health care.  I almost fell out of my chair laughing.  I never realized he had his own position, but if that’s what he’s calling it fine. But consider this first because it tells you a good deal about who Paul Hodes is.  Six to eight months of increasing constituent objection, all the phone calls, email, faxes, letters; the comments in the old press and the new; the declining approval of Hodes, the congress, and the president, none of that has swayed “the position” of one Paul Hodes.  But the minute AHIP starts an ad campaign about the possible downside of this plot to reform health care, Hodes feels bullied?

Hodes reacts defensively to special interests but not his own voters.  Nice message.  And I know why, but maybe you don’t.

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Linguists For Hodes

  One of the joys of blogging is the anonymous commenters who drop the bottle of Booth’s Dry Gin long enough to type something lucid. (Lucid is a stretch)   Most of these word-smiths are probably NHDP staffers who can’t find anything better to do while they watch the party lose special election after special election on … Read more

The Tent Tax Party

What do you get when you mix 124 Donkeys and one RINO?  A list of NH House reps on the wrong side of a bill to repeal another stupid tax.

The House voted to ax the tent tax (HB 1445) and repeal the 9% ‘rooms and meals’ tax for people who go to a campsite and provide their own room and their own meal.  The bill still needs to pass the state Senate, which has a similar bill all its own, and then get past fence-sitter Lynch, whose position we can never know from day to day, not that we can rely on what he says as an indication of how he’ll act once an actual bill is on his desk, but it’s got momentum, even if some of it represented by legislators who are afraid to touch it.

HB1445 did still have its supporters.  Margie Smith tried to table it, but they lost 153 to 171.  The tax and spenders then tried to ITL it but failed 145 to 181.  Then, when Sherm Packard managed to get an OTP roll call vote to pass the repeal, it succeeded  202 to 125.

68 House reps did not vote on this bill. A list for another time, perhaps.

But 124 democrats and 1 Republican (Rock 5  Kenneth Gould) tried to keep the tax alive and were more than happy to do it for the record.  So here’s the record on the jump

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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.

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By The Pricking Of My Thumbs…

The bipartisan surge against the democrats ill-gained, late night, last minute LLC tax smells faintly of rotting eggs.  But I fear there is another secret formula brewing in darkened democrat controlled chambers where Norelli,  Almy, and (insert name of third witch here) are brewing up bigger trouble.  Charlie Arlinghaus, in his column in this mornings … Read more

Taxaholics

It takes commitment to vote for a new tax, even one whose cover story was as unlikely to have any affect as HB 1679.  But there are those who like to tax and those who love it, and the supporters of the ‘Soft Drink Tax’ drew a line in the High Fructose Corn Syrup and stood their ground.

Lucky for us the majority of House members saw this for what it was–inexpedient to legislate–and killed it.  But those in opposition to the ITL offer us yet another opportunity to see who is either not paying enough attention (see here for my broad coverage of this bill back in January) or want so desperately to tax us that they simply do not care how or why they do it.

I’d be inclined to choose all of the above, but that’s not entirely fair.  These legislators may be in complete control of their faculties and therefore committed to growing government regardless of your ability to pay for it.  So they are not only paying attention, they are looking for opportunities to deprive you of your income regardless of what circumstances are required to convince you that their crisis de jour can be saved if only you will give them more of your hard earned dollars.

But enough rhetorical effluvium.  Here they are.  Your Taxaholics. (All democrats, by the way)  On the jump.

Reminder: A Nay vote on an ITL out of committee is a vote in favor of the legislation.

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Hypocrats (again)

Being a liberal means never having to do better than whomever you can find that can be shown to be as bad or worse than whatever it is you are being accused of.  This, courtesy of Mike Brunelle, NHDP XO, as reported in this morning’s Union Leader, where Comrade Brunelle dismisses a request by the … Read more

Waste

I got a letter today from the US Census.  As a joke, I mockingly said to my wife, "I bet this is a letter telling me about how I’m going to be getting a letter." She laughed. That’s exactly what it was.   Dear Resident: About one week from now. you will receive a 2010 … Read more

Low Hanging Fruit

Low hanging fruitLast week the New Hampshire House voted against a bill to let taxpayers adopt charter provisions establishing limitations on the growth of budgets and taxes.  The actual short text reads as follows:

This bill authorizes cities and towns to adopt charter provisions establishing limitations on the growth of budgets and taxes.

For those not familiar with New Hampshire, residents can already adopt provisions to limit growth and taxes, but the teacher’s unions and the pro-government folks don’t like it.  So they do everything in their power to make it as difficult as they can.  They gum up the petition process.  They try to intimidate people, mess with them about the procedure or the number of good signatures, or anything else they can think of.  All this just to keep the thing from getting (what does Obama call it?) and up or down vote, in this case from the people (see also-taxpayers) who live in that particular town.

They can’t even trust the people to let them vote on it. 

If that doesn’t work, the town selectman, councilors, alderman, will try to keep it off the ballot or schedule it when it has the best possible chance of failing.  If that doesn’t work a well funded national union pr some faux-local non-profit NGO pretending to be a taxpayer advocacy group (as in they advocate taxpayers paying more taxes but won’t admit as much), files a lawsuit that no average bunch of citizens could hope to fight.  It’s all very burdensome.

So much so that at the end of the day the mere weight of the process scares most people from even trying which is exactly the message the tax and spenders want to send.  So its a form of intimidation to keep people from trying to limit the size and scope of government at its lowest level.

Such is the nature of man versus the machine.  Town politics are not any different from national.

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HB 1693 – Time To Roast Some Weenies

The best course of policy for a any liberal is to use the law to disadvantage law abiders at the expense of law breakers.  Speech, choice, rights, and even self defense should be filtered, tempered, or simply prohibited to people inclined to follow the rules.  This makes you beholden to the state for everything, including … Read more

Bass Finder

A recent ‘Monitor Staff’ editorial takes the occasion of the Charlie Bass candidacy to take a pot shot at the Tea party movement while asking who Charlie Bass really is?  We know who he is.  He’s a Blue Dog Republican. 

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Extinctions

Scientists have formed a consensus on the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. It was George Bush’s fault (couldn’t resist). Actually, it was global warming.  Sorry, that’s not it. To be honest it was the lack of affordable health care. Or maybe the stimulus was not “baby-Bear”—you know, “Just right.” Or maybe—(maybe) and this … Read more

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