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.

Are You Sure You Are Not Just a “Drug Mule” for the RPC’s Agenda?

Supports of SB11, and perhaps even the folks who are lining up to claim the bill will probably do no harm, should understand that the coincidences between what SB 11 says it wants to allow (and what it cannot clearly prohibit) and that which the Regional Planning Boards seek to implement after or through appropriate legislative action…are … Read more

GrokTALK! On AC Nation at a New Time!

GrokTALK! is still re-broadcast on AC Nation Radio but it is moving from Tuesday’s 7-9pm to Tuesday from 8-10pm. So check out this weeks program, or check it out again, tonight on AC NAtion.com Also available on iTunes, just search for AC Nation radio on iTunes and look for GrokTALK!  

Majority Report on SB152 The Casino Gambling Bill

Will Republians roll the dice on Gambling in New Hampshire

I don’t typically post reports from the House Journal because I am not flush with the time necessary to read them on any sort of regular basis. But the committee vote on SB152, the most recent effort to plop a Casino somewhere on the New Hampshire landscape, was close–and just happened to go my way.  What better incentive than that to report the results of that report…?

…to see what the bipartisan committee saw that inspired them to suggest, not so much that any Casino would be bad for New Hampshire–which is my position–but that SB152 was just a lousy effort at getting one even if you were in favor of it.

So here is the where and why of how the bill fails and should, by Rep Mary Jane Wallner.

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Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun?

I’m sure this is just another coinceidence, right? From The American Spectator Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun? The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts. March 31, 2010. According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the … Read more

Tyranny Waters Not Cold Enough For You Yet?

The IRS scandal is just the tip of a very large and intimidating iceberg.  Watch, and feel the chill. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wrxI878HjKc Here’s an NRO story about this as well. And then this by Mark Steyn. Meanwhile, who regulates the regulators? The president’s senior communications adviser dismisses media queries as “offensive“; the attorney general sneers at attempted … Read more

Pro-SB11 PR Campaign Underway…

Supporters of SB 11, the bill that would allow a new layer of bureaucracy for the purpose of taxing and managing intermunicipal water districts, are waging a public relations campaign on the premise that the opponents of the bill are seeing things that are not there.  Unfortunately for them, the real problem is that there is nothing in the bill to prevent any of the things we see.

Call us cynical but we do not trust rules-makers and bureaucrats to imagine limitations on their authority that are not spelled out clearly.  In fact, as proper cynics, we do not even give them much credit for constraining themselves when the language seems clear.  The language in SB11 fails on all counts.

So I have begun my own counter-campaign on that premise, and emailed the entire New Hampshire House Republican email list with the email below.  Feel free to use this premise or one similar as you reach out to your own representatives.

And a reminder.  Water, water rights, property rights, and fair taxation are not partisan issues.   It is your well, your water, your rain and run-off , and your money that could be taxed; no matter what we’d like the words in SB11 to mean, there is no specific language in it that seeks first and foremost to protect the people of New Hampshire.  Until such language does exist this effort must be opposed.

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GrokTALK! May 18th, 2013

This week on Grok Talk we are joined by Dr. Julianne Cooper who returns to discuss ADHD, the real ADHD, and the affects of these and other coding of children in public schools. The Honorable Jenn Coffey talks about stand your ground, what it really means in New Hampshire, what you need to know about … Read more

May 18th GrokTALK! Opening Segment

Skip Murphy, Mike Rogers, Rick Olson, and Steve Mac Donald interject on the IRS scandal, “how about that tyranny we’ve been warming you all about,” North Korean’s Fishing with ICBM’s, the definition of “Shaheening,” the mystery of Obama’s ‘Permission Structures,’ why moral behavior should drive social behavior and not the other way around, Mark Sanford’s … Read more

May 18th GrokTALK! Guest Segment – Dr. Julianne Cooper

In this segment of GrokTALK! we are joined again by Dr. Julianne Cooper who returns to discuss ADHD,(the real ADHD), and the affects of these and other coding of children in public schools.  We also talk about discipline in education, parenting, and how they all relate.  Listen Here Download this segment here You can get … Read more

May 18th GrokTALK! Guest Segment – Jenn Coffey

In Segment three of this weeks GrokTALK! the Honorable Jenn Coffey talks about stand your ground, what it really means in New Hampshire, what you need to know about knife rights and a few other topics as well. Note: You can listen to Jenn Coffey every Wednesday at 6:20am on the Jenn & Jenn segment, … Read more

May 18th GrokTALK! Guest Segment – Ann Marie Banfield

Ann Marie Banfield from Cornerstone Policy Research talks about Education and Common Core in the state of New Hampshire and the nations; what it is really all about, and what we need to know to stop it and why.  Listen Here Download this segment here You can get links to other segments or listen to … Read more

Mary Stuart Bile, er Guile, er Gile Schooled…

…by none other than Kate Baker, the extraordinary young woman who is the Executive Director of the Network for Education Opportunity. I swear, for the life of me I do not understand why Dems and Progressives are always ready to throw poor and disadvantaged children under the government school bus.

This Week on GrokTALK!

Dr. Julianne Cooper returns to discuss  ADHD and other coding of children, and we’ll discuss the drugs used to ‘dumb down’ our students. The Honorable Jenn Coffey  will visit to talk about stand your ground in NH, knife rights, up coming blade shows in Atlanta and more. And Ann Marie Banfield from Cornerstone Policy Research … Read more

Zandra “Rice-Out-Of-State-Palooza” Hawkins

Out of State funded, Colorado Model, intrusive Democrat Agenda-thumper Zandra Rice Hawkins of Granite State Progress, is a progressive mole, and paid lobbyist, planted by the out of state agenda-mill Progress Now to operate as a “local” left wing propaganda machine.  (Progress Now is an extension or partner with Democracy Alliance   both of which are funded by politically connected liberal millionaires none of whom are from or live in New Hampshire).

Out-of-state-funded-So-called in-state activist Hawkins latest event featured out of state parents whose children were tragically killed in a different state from ours,  so that they could come here and tell our US Senator (Kelly Ayotte) how she should vote.

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Carol Shea-Porter: The Federal Governments Representative To New Hampshire CD- 1

I have long and often argued that Democrats, New Hampshire’s variety in particular, favor the top down model of governance.  The power and the resources (money) must descend from the point farthest from the person who is taxed for the privilege of being governed by progressives.

A prime example or proof of this “theory” is the desire to “get back” tax dollars from Washington DC.  Democrats argue that we need representatives to go to Washington who will work hard to get back the money we send to the nations capital as federal taxes.   But they have it exactly backwards.  We send representatives to the nations capital to do everything in their power to keep the money in New Hampshire in the first place.

The contrast between the two could not be more stark.

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Shaheening – 501(c)(4) For Me But Not For Thee?

Shaheening; to be Shaheend: Named after our soon to be former New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, defined as either applying political pressure against the same thing you are simultaneous hoping to take advantage of for yourself, or being the victim of the pressure applied. Ex: While New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen and her Senate allies … Read more

Shaheen Received Money from IRS Employees Union

Open Secrets identifies the National Treasury Employees Union, which covers the IRS, as Liberal.  Go figure?

They only donate to Democrats, which includes New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, according to this recent press release…

Senate Democrats received more than $570,000 from IRS Union

Washington, D.C. – This week news broke that Senate Democrats were guilty of pressuring the IRS to target many of the conservative groups that the embattled agency now stands accused of doing.  But, a closer look reveals further evidence of Jeanne Shaheen’s feigning outrage: Shaheen was reaping the benefits from Democrats’ close relationship with the IRS, receiving $5,000 from the IRS Employees Union.

“While Democrats were pushing the IRS to target conservatives and other political enemies, their campaigns benefited from more than half a million dollars in campaign contributions from the IRS union,” said NRSC Communications Director Brad Dayspring. “After years of pressuring the IRS to crackdown on their political opponents, Jeanne Shaheen and her Democratic colleagues must be honest with taxpayers and return the IRS union’s contributions immediately.”

Senator Shaheen has been backtracking, back-peddling, disavowing any partisanship on the 501(c)(4) IRS scandal, but given how partisan she is, that’s hard to swallow.  you’d be hard pressed to find her supporting the rights of TEA party groups anywhere, let alone New Hampshire.

So would you be surprised to know that she isn’t the only hyper-partisan New Hampshire Democrat who has taken issue with third party issue advocacy and targeted TEA Party groups (though  not in writing to the IRS–that we are aw are of) and has also taken money from their union.

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IRS Agents – Just Following Orders

IRS agents in Cincinnati may not be willing to take the fall as rouge, lone-wolf agents on some personal vendetta against the right.  A local news channel claims an exclusive–They say they were just following Orders… Of course they were.  These are public employees.  That’s what they do.   FOX19.com-Cincinnati News, Weather

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