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.

RightOnline Blogger Roundup 7-17-2012

An official RightOnline BloggerThere were 200 plus bloggers at RightOnline 2012 and I’ve got links to the websites of at least 40 of them.  So I’d like to take some time (as often as I can) to visit them in groups and post whatever they’ve got at the top of the page.  No promises on how often, but I’m optimistic out of the gate.

My thinking is that these folks are more attuned to what is happening in their respective states than most, and they’ll have news and inside stories we’ll never get to see any other way.  And these folks are outstanding and dedicated.  That is certainly worth our attention.

In no particualr Order…

From Sunshine State Sarah

Locked in a tough GOP primary against U.S. Rep. John Mica for an Orlando-area congressional seat, Adams picked up a big-time endorsement that should help her tea party appeal. Sarah Palin gave her first U.S. House endorsement of the year

More on the jump

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Dennis Lamare – Nashua Telegraph Interview

NH CD-2 Republican Primary candidate Dennis Lamare (Challenging incumbent congressman Charlie Bass), was recently interview by the Nashua Telegraph.   Dennis is running as a Constitutional Conservative and in defense of State sovereignty.  He who would act to limit the abuse of congress and vote against anything the US Constitution has not empowered the Congress to … Read more

I’d Like to Know What New Hampshire Democrats Think About This?

I’d like to know what New Hampshire Democrats think about this? Under President Obama’s healthcare law, the HHS can levy $100 per employee, per day against institutions that won’t comply with the (contraceptive) mandate. Therefore, religious employers with hundreds of employees could be fined millions of dollars each year. A 50-employee institution, for example, would … Read more

Abortion is an Act of Tyranny

Abortion is an act of tyranny.  It is the expression of  legal force against another life that denies that life the right to the property of living and every expression of existence that follows from it.  It denies these rights solely for the benefit of another (others), who have exchanged the risk of creation for their own pleasure.

Denying life for your own selfish pleasure; even excusing it because the state has made it legal?   How is that not tyranny?

The pursuit of pleasure is a function of human existence–an animal instinct.  And the promise of physical pleasure drives us toward intimate human contact.   Societies try to manage this relationship with institutions like religion, marriage, even our government, but in recent decades the government has viewed these institutions as inimical to “personal freedom,” and sought to enact laws that prevent these social or cultural institutions from functioning as a brake on the unbridled human weakness for sexual pleasure.  While the state should have a very limited if marginal interest in managing the terms of otherwise natural and productive human relationships, somewhere along the way the State has legalized a form of tyranny.

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Well Isn’t This Rich. (Or Not, Actually.)

Has it occurred to anyone that the Democrat’s “Tax the Rich™” agenda (coming soon in “Middle Class” sizes) isn’t so much a goal of taking more from those who have more (to give it to those who have less) it is to keep people who are not connected to the government power structure–from becoming rich … Read more

Green Jobs? We Don’t Make No Stinkin’ Green Jobs.

Did anyone tell Jeanne “The Greene” Shaheen that all that Taxpayer investment in the Green Energy economy was not really about creating good, permanent, American jobs?  If I recall correctly she ran on that, has repeatedly suggested it, and in the wake of a domino effect of green energy loan failures, managed to avoid any … Read more

Let’s Play Spot The Socialist Dullard

New Hampshire has it’s share of obvious Socialist thieves.  Democrat candidate William ‘Hud’ Connery is an admitted socialist.  Folks like Catholic Socialist Peter ‘Can’t wait to get Connery on the team’ Sullivan, are a half-shade less obvious; Sullivan is an anti tax pledge guy as well and a supporter of Jackie ‘Tax and Spend us” Cilley so tax and spend or spend then tax are job one–complete with the class warfare tax the rich meme that has become a prominent feature of Democrat rhetoric everywhere you shop for flavorless-left wing political pablum–with a Marxist twist!

So I’m sure this is just a coincidence then, that.. “In 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels frankly proposed “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax” as one of the  measures by which, after the first stage of the revolution, “the proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeois, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state.”  And doesn’t that just mesh so well with what I just wrote here? and tried to simplify here.

So what about the other socialist hiding in the proverbial New Hampshire bushes?   Now that we have the Outsourcer in Chief channeling Elizabeth Warren, insisting that anyone who is successful didn’t do that on their own, we have another opportunity to play ‘Spot the Socialist Dullard.’  It’s validation from on high for left wing big government pragmatists everywhere.

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About That “No Tax Pledge” Candidate Hassan…

Has Maggie Hassan taken the no tax pledge or not?It’s a well regarded fact that Democrat Candidate Maggie “The Red” Hassan, early in her candidacy for Governor of New Hampshire, took a Pledge to veto any sales or Income tax.  This is something of an election year tradition.  Democrats who have been trying to raise old taxes or pass new taxes for years find the odds of achieving the states highest office against them if they don’t pay lip service to “The Pledge.”

Governor Shaheen fell off the horse and eventually passed the state wide education funding tax.  Governor Lynch signed the pledge then later signed off on RGGI, a regressive broad based tax that actually outsourced taxing power to an unelected out of state board.  And now Maggie Hassan has stated repeatedly that she has taken the same pledge, but has she?

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SGP Armed & Fabulous Shoot….some still ‘shots’

While the smart girls (and guys) were headed out to the range  to practice their skills I had to scoot home.  But before the range time their was training for those who needed it and some gathering for conversation.

Both Skip and I shot video, but I also took a few still shots.  Here are a few of them. (More to follow…)

Grok Banner at SGP Armed & Fabulous

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Which Utopian Democrat Dream-Scam Is Failing Faster?

Facepalm - Which Progressive Utopia will fail firstWhich Utopian dystopian Democrat dream-Scam is failing faster?

In Cah-Lee-Four-Knee-Ah the Workers paradise is collapsing at an ever increasing rate as the anchor of unsustainable public union contracts and pensions drag otherwise average, every-day, incompetently run, but barely sustainable left wing bureaucrapalities (bureaucratically strangled municipalities run by an endless string of administrators and political descendents of the Democrat bloodline) into bankruptcy.

In Obamaville, the chronically unemployed can look up from the gutters of Hopey-changey Way to watch the lights dim on an unending string of Solar Panel/Green Energy company failures as the DoE’s wasted-billions to prop up the Renewable Energy Utopia ding-bats like Jeanne Shaheen have oversight on, produce nothing but failure and rising debt service payments.

The missing link between these two is happily not missing.  And you cant blame George Bush.  These failures are both of products of Progressives, mostly Democrats, attempting to micromanage labor, its type, direction, output, and value.

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NH Republicans v. NH Democrats – ‘Simplified.’

How to pick pockets- A guide to Governing as a NH DemocratA lot of people avoid politics because it seems so complex.  And there are plenty of people who make it that way on purpose to keep those very same people from getting involved.  If you are not involved you are more likely to buy into the nonsense or not pay much attention.   But I’m here today to make it as simple as I can.  It’s Friday.  Things should be simple on Friday.

So here we go.

New Hampshire Democrats want to raise your taxes.  (Just look at 2007-2010 if you doubt me.)  They are convinced that the government needs the money more than you do and with Democrats the government always comes first.  So the first thing they do is spend it, then find ways to tax it out of you.

Most New Hampshire Republicans would disagree.  While there are some things government could do, can do, and maybe even should do, none of them take priority over you and your family, or your job or your business.   And that is on the good days.  In this economy we really don’t need to add to the cost of unnecessary government which is why the Republicans cut spending and the deficit, and cut unnecessary taxes and still balanced the budget, rather than taking money from you to do it.   They wanted you to keep more of your own money, especially in these trying fiscal times.

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Evil Tea Party Manipulates NH House To Produce First Balanced State Budget Since 2006

Hey.  If we (the TEA party/Right wing activists, etc)  are going to get blamed (by left wing radical Democrats) for making the New Hampshire House and Senate write and pass legislation (that reduces spending, taxes, regulation, and increases liberty and freedom), then we damn well deserve credit for this.

NH Republians balance budget to within +0.8%It’s the end of the two-year fiscal cycle and revenues came in +0.8%.  That means we took in revenue just a little bit more than we spent. And for the first time since (cough cough) 2006–the last year for which Republicans were responsible for revenue estimates–we are not in a fiscal crisis.  No late night, last minute, emergencies.  No layoffs.  No mid-budget hiring or wage freezes, no sudden need to borrow more money, no special, late night meetings to pass unpopular taxes that never had a hearing, or draconian plots to sell as yet defined public lands while cramming pension costs down on towns becasue revenue estimates were not even close.  No forcing department heads to look for savings in the middle of the budget cycle. No abrupt, heavy handed, executive orders to bring spending in line with revenue.   No delaying the pain or kicking the can down the road for someone else to deal with.

These were all features of the four year budgetary disaster known as Democrat majority control.  And thanks to the TEA party–if Ray Buckley and his Tax and Spend Democrat Party are to be believed–we no longer have that problem.

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“Harry Reid” Is now Defined as a Sexual Position

First, thanks to Duane Lester (Fellow RightOnline Blogger) for the heads up on this priceless piece of pop culture. Someone has made an entry to the Urban Dictionary defining the term “Harry Reid.” The Urban Dictionary lists ‘Harry Reid’ as : A sexual position where you climb on top and then do absolutely nothing. Named … Read more

Outsourcer in Chief

Hey, Obama Started it.  Let’s finish it for Him. Democrat Nancy Pelosi may have as much as 5 million dollars outsourced to offshore investments.  And there are other Obama insiders coming under scrutiny.  My guess is that we’ll find enough skeletons to knock this latest distraction off the table like all the previous ones, in … Read more

Democrat NH House Rep Cindy Rosenwald – About That 800 Million Dollar Deficit

We should expect more of this in the coming months.  More of what?  NH House Democrats pretending there never was an 800 million dollar deficit when they were shown the door in droves.  An example of this deficit-narrative popped up on Bedford Patch yesterday.  Nashua Democrat House Rep Cindy Rosenwald (Fiance Committee) penned an op/ed entitled ‘The 800 Million Budget Deficit Myth.

Rosenwald’s entire premise turns on the fact that the State has to balance it’s budget so how could there be a deficit?  But then she tries to explain it and things go horribly wrong.

[so] how did the Republicans turn the reality of the Democratic surplus into the myth of the Democratic deficit? Well, the answer lies in the additional federal stimulus money that flowed into New Hampshire for two and a half years through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  This extra money, $802 million in total, helped maintain essential safety net programs for vulnerable residents hit hard by the recession. The federal money was one-time assistance. The Democratic majority knew all along it would not continue, and that budget cuts would have to be made during the following biennium so that there would not be a deficit.

Wait a minute?  You said the 800 million dollar deficit was a myth.  Then you admit that democrats needed $802 million in one time money the state did not have to pay for their spending.  Then you say the Democrat majority knew that budget cuts would have to be made during the following biennium so that there would not be a deficit.  Not be a deficit. Not be a deficit?

So…..If Democrats knew there was going to be an 800 million dollar deficit how can the 800 million dollar deficit be a myth?

And if Democrats knew we would have to cut (because of the 802 million in one time money), to make sure there would be no deficit, why did Democrats freak out when Republicans cut that spending so there wouldn’t be a deficit just like you claim Democrats wanted?

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Americans For Prosperity NH- 2011-2012 Legislative Score Card [Updated-Added A+’s]

[Updated and Bumped- I added the Republican House Rep A+ grades on the jump.  Grok Updates by county etc coming soon.]

AFP-NH has released its 2011-2012 Legislative scorecard for New Hampshire.  In my review of the score card results there is not much that will surprise anyone who makes it a habit of paying attention to what happens in Concord.   But not everyone lurks in the Political sausage factory so lets take a quick review.

NH House Score Card…

Every Democrat in the New Hampshire House received an ‘F’ except for Domingo Baldwin in Stafford County and John Gilmas in Hillsborough;  They both got a C.

Joining these two Democrats on the Republican side with a grade of “C” …

Randall Brownrigg (Hills-27), Patricia Dowling (Rock-05), Richard Drisko (Hills-05), Laura Gandia (Hills-27), David Knox (Carroll-04), Michael McCarthy (Hills-21), Herbert Richardson (Coos-02), Tony Soltani (Merr-08), Frankilin Sterling (Cheshire-07), and Steve Vallincourt (Hills-15).

NH House Republicans receiving a ‘D’ Include

Michael Buxton (Hills-24), Tim Copeland (Rock-13), Russell Day (Hills-07). Mark Proulx (Hills-15), David Robbins (Hills-26), Jeffery Shackett (Grafton-08), and James Waddell (Rock-15)

And the NH House Republicans who got an ‘F’ like the majority of Democrats…

Peter Bolster (Belknap-05), Julie Brown (Strafford-01), Susan Emerson (Cheshire-07), Carolyn Gargasz (Hills-05), Tim Hogan (Hills-23), Karen Hutchinson (Rock-03), Kevin Janvrin (Rock-14), David Kidder (Merr-01), Priscilla lockwood (Merr-06), Irene Messier (Hills-17), Alida Millham (Belknap-05), William Panek (Strafford-03), Amy & Lawrence Perkins (Rock-14), Marshall & Matt Quandt (Rock-13), and William Remick (Coos-02)

So who got an A or an A+?

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