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.

The Law Can Never Be Philanthropic

tipping the scalesThe law (justice) can never be philanthropic.  It cannot guarantee property of any kind to anyone because the law has no property to give.  The law does not create property.  The Law does not summon property out of thin air-where none previously existed.  The Law can only take from someone else what is theirs.

It therefore behooves those charged with writing and managing the law (and more importantly those who elect or appoint the stewards) to ensure that philanthropy is not the foundation of the States interest.   The only way to fulfill that interest is through the progressive accumulation of other people’s property under the cover of legalized plunder.  The only way for the law to be philanthropic is to legalize theft.

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1.8 Million in Democrat Gov Funding For NH …99.51% from Outside The State

DGA NH has 1.8 million for NH Gov Race--, 98% of it from outside New HampshireBragging about how the Democrat Governors Association New Hampshire PAC is sitting on 1.8 Million in June of 2012 does tell us something about our Governors Race.  It tells us that Democrats can’t say anything about out of state campaign money polluting local elections.

Of the 354 pages of donations that make up the $1.79 Million advertised on the June 2012 DGA NHPAC filing I could only find 198 line items listing donors living inside the state of New Hampshire.  That is 0.6% of all donors listed in this report.

Of the nearly $1,790,000.00 collected just under $9,000.00 came from those New Hampshire donors.  That’s 0.49% of all donations. (99.51% from outside donors.)

Can we say with certainty that whomever the Democrats pick for their candidate out of state influence is a given?

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Anonymous Durham NH Donor Pays When Obama Campaign Will Not

Saw this first at CBS/Boston.  A local Durham New Hampshire resident has offered to donate the up to $20,000.00 dollars necessary to cover the cost of Police, Fire, and EMT coverage for President Obama’s Campaign visit. Durham officials say they didn’t mean to raise a ruckus, but they didn’t have the money budgeted for police, … Read more

FauxBama FauxMemoir Real Trouble

From Mark Steyn (Fellow NH Resident no actually from here.) Courtesy of David Maraniss’ new book, we now know that yet another key prop of Barack Obama’s identity is false: His Kenyan grandfather was not brutally tortured or even non-brutally detained by his British colonial masters. The composite gram’pa joins an ever-swelling cast of characters … Read more

Afterburner – Follow the Ideology; Fast and Furious

Bill Whittle’s latest Afterburner punches the Obama Administration and their media lackeys right in the onions  over Fast and Furious.  Using the theme ‘Follow the Ideology’ he covers territory I tread over repeatedly going all the way back to May of 2011, September 2011; I even asked in October 2011 if the DOJ was ignoring … Read more

So much Deception So Little Time

Skip is clearly on to something here.  Following his lead on the absence of an actual ofanh.com web site (even though all the local office email is tied to the fictitious ofanh.com)  I went on a digital  scavenger hunt.

Our neighbors to the south don’t have an ofama.com but they do have an ofama.org.  It hasn’t been updated since the year before HealthCare reform was forced into law.  But it does have a link to massforchange.org.  That leads to a Japanese site whose English translation makes it appear to be designed to help female sex workers find jobs.  (I guess that’s close enough.)

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Global Tax To Save The Earth (again.)

The latest annual moon-bat confab of global warming wackos is taking place in Rio where the idea of a global tax to funnel money directly to the corrupt and incompetent UN (and presumably the UN MDG agenda) has reared it’s ugly little head again. In fact, one of the items on the negotiating table here … Read more

Where Has The Other Senator Ayotte Gone?

Obama’s war on coal is netting some unusual suspects as supporters.  New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, who indicates that she has a history of preventing outside meddling with policy of this nature, voted against a resolution that would have overturned the EPA’s utility MACT rule.

From her Web Site

Continuing New Hampshire’s tradition of protecting the state’s environment through commonsense policies, U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) announced today that she voted against a Senate measure that would weaken national Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for power plants aimed at reducing emissions of toxic air pollutants such as mercury, arsenic and metals.

There are a lot of things that are bad for us, and even if you agree that the DC should do something, there are other factors to consider–unless you happen to be a stooge for the Democrat party and the Green movement in which case adding to the bureaucracy is always job number one.

This rule will add costs and threaten the coal industry, which just happens to be at the top of President Obama kill list.  It will probably result in job cuts to that sector, increase energy costs for everyone, and add more hoops and administrative costs, all borne by rate payers, in the midst of a stagnant economy, and for what?

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New Hampshire says No – HB 1701

This is one of those laws, just signed by the Governor, that makes me proud to live in New Hampshire.  It’s HB 1701. An Act prohibiting New Hampshire from entering into or enforcing reciprocal agreements with other states to deny rights and privileges  for non-payment of taxes  owed to another state. Excerpt: Under no circumstances … Read more

The DNC Mail Bag or is That The DNC D-Bag?

From the Desk of the DNC This weekend, the Koch Brothers are holding a secret gathering of billionaires to plot their strategy to buy the election. They plan to throw millions — if not billions — of Big Oil money into Super PACs to smear the President and Democrats across the country No offense but … Read more

How Will You Support Liberty and Freedom In New Hampshire?

The New Hampshire Republican State Committee is looking for new donors willing to set up recurring monthly donations of  $12.00/month anywhere from 2 to 12 months.  It’s called the Grassroots giver program and you can check it out here.   Or… If you feel like you would like to support Republicans in New Hampshire but you … Read more

Andrew Manuse on WMUR

Andrew is the Executive Secretary of the RLCNH, the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, and he sat down for a few minutes with WMUR’s James Pindell to talk about not running for office again, and the current state of the Republican Party in New Hampshire.  

RightOnline 2012 – Breitbart is Here

Breitbart is Here - From RightOnline 2012Plenty of things happened at the RightOnline conference in Las Vegas last weekend but not one of them occurred without the understanding that there was something we all had to do.  Something more important than anything we had done previously.  Wherever we were as bloggers or new media journalists we had to step up our game.

Andrew Breitbart was no longer there to give us a rhetorical kick in the backside or more importantly to simply lead by doing.   Breitbart would no longer be strolling amidst union protesters or walking into NetRoots to challenge the left or their ideas to their faces.   Andrew Breitbart was no longer there to challenge us to do those things.  Or was he?

In reality, Breitbart was everywhere at RightOline, telling us to get off our asses and expose the left for what they are, not just yesterday, or today, but tomorrow and every day after that.  Imploring us to get out of our comfort zones and challenge everything.  Reminding us that all we had to do was show up and they would expose themselves.

It reminded me of the moment when I decided that I was done with my years of lurking on blogs and posting or commenting anonymously.

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NH House Redistricting Plan Stands

The State Supreme Court does not believe the redistricting plan passed by the State legislature violates the State Constitution.

PER CURIAM. These consolidated cases are before us on interlocutory transfer without ruling from the Superior Court (Brown, J.). See Sup. Ct. R. 9. The petitioners, New Hampshire voters and the towns and municipalities in which some of them live, seek a declaration that Laws 2012, chapter 9, the law redistricting the New Hampshire House of Representatives (the Plan), violates the State Constitution. We conclude that such a declaration is unwarranted.

Emphasis Mine.

I confess that I am not familiar with all the intricacies of the debate, but whenever the State Supreme Court opts out of meddling with something a majority of the elected legislature has passed–and then passed again after the Democrat Governor vetoed it–it is usually a good day.

But it gets better.

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Income Inequality On The Left…Where’s the Outrage?

Where is The Liberal OutrageFrom the Desk of two for one, we have reports that some of the “protesters” showing up at Romney events are getting paid to heckle the candidate.  Now I have no problem with that.  People need jobs, and it is nice to see the union spending its money (maybe even our money) on the legal act of protest,  just as long as they are filing out the proper state and federal forms I say go team Marx.

Let’s just be clear that this is AstroTurf™.  And let us also admire (perhaps ‘bask’ is a better word) in the inconvenient hypocrisy resulting from the unveiling of another case of faux-protest, plastic-grass, left wing activism with an income inequality twist.  Apparently the  left wing protesters who admitted to being paid to disrupt the Romney event are  receiving substantially different sums of compensation.

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It’s Time for the IRS to visit the NHCAA

I just mentioned this, about Shaheen asking the IRS to go after 501(c) (4) groups, and look what falls into my lap.

Historically, the IRS has stayed out of politically charged battles over campaign spending. But lately the agency appears to be giving nonprofits a closer look. IRS rules permit 501(c)(4) social welfare groups to engage in politics, but not if it’s their “primary purpose.”

An Exempt Organizations Division work plan for fiscal 2011 outlines a new project examining the activities of 501(c)(4) groups. A recent IRS move to strip a nonprofit known as Emerge America and its local affiliates of their tax-exempt status has alarmed some in the nonprofit sector. The agency’s explanation to the group, which helps elect Democratic female candidates, hints that overly partisan organizations may not pass the “primary purpose” test.

I think the IRS is being used to harass legitimate non-profit activities, but…I also think that Sarah Warner’s New Hampshire Citizens Alliance for Action PAC fails to pass the smell test.  They have only ever advocated for Carol Shea-Porter for Congress making it their primary political purpose.  Based on his article they are in violation of the law.

Anyone out there interested in bringing this to the IRS’ attention?  (Please?)

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Not So Fine

Obama has a lot of problems, but for most of us, it’s just the economy that is not doing fine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7VLSnI2DAw&feature=player_embedded

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