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.

You Might Be A Liberal

Joseph Harris, who writes all over the place but also happens to post at Allrightmagazine.com (where I cross-post some content), has collected a Baker’s dozen +4 phrases on the theme of “You Might Be A Liberal If.”

Spun from the “You Might Be A Redneck” schtick of Jeff Foxsworthy, “You might be a liberal” is a leading phrase loaded with opportunity.

I Invite you to share your own variations on this theme in comments, but for the purpose of this post I am going to steal Joe’s list.  (In social media we call this sharing.)

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Phyllis Woods For State Senate?

There has been some speculation but I had not heard anything from Phyllis…until @WoodsforSenate started following one of my Twitter Accounts. Is it safe to say that Phyllis is running for the New Hampshire State Senate?    

L.A. City Council Votes 13-1 to Ban Plastic Grocery Bags

  The Los Angeles city council voted 13-1 to ban plastic shopping bags in grocery stores.  There is a lengthy review and implementation process to follow but if all goes to plan within about 10-12 months the ban will be in force.  Paper bags will still be available for a ten cent fee.  I like … Read more

The Senate Democrats War On Women #EqualPay?

“”Of the 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus examined in the analysis, 37 senators paid their female staffers less than male staffers.”” That would be about $21K / year / female staffer (about 35% less, on average) Left Wing Projection Strikes Again! ( H/T: Washington Free Beacon)

Anonymous Allegations?

Concord Monitor is deleting comments to stories about people who comment there on taxpayer timeOver at the Concord Monitor web site, someone going by the name of ItsaRepublic, has been doing some very heavy lifting for GraniteGrok.  They have gone to bat for us on our investigation of Public Employees who have been using the Monitor’s web site, during office hours, at taxpayer expense.  Not exactly a friendly environment to promote anything we do here, but we appreciate the effort.

And as I have pointed out previously, the Monitor had begun letting those sorts of comments stand (where in the past they had been known to ‘moderate’ them out of existance), and letting the debate take it’s bi-partisan course.   But when it comes to allowing links back to GranitGrok articles on the investigation itself, a CM Moderator has explained why they wont be doing that any time soon…

By CM Moderator – 05/24/2012 – 8:39 am

We do not post links to websites making anonymous allegations against real people. It does not matter whether the site leans to the right or the left.

That’s curious for a few reasons.  First, I’ve seen what the monitor passes off for news.  Enough said?  Second, Anonymous?  Allegations?

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Hide and Go Seek

The editorial in this morning’s Union Leader visits two problems we’ve had in spades around here of late.  A public body unwilling to part with public information and School superintendents. What’s worse than a public body denying access to an investigator’s report that was paid for with taxpayer money? Hiring a lawyer to fight the … Read more

Fake Spy gets Book and Movie Deal, And Real Spies just Get Dead?

When CIA Desk-Jockey Valerie Plame was “outed”  [*] the left went postal for years on the incompetence of the Bush Administration, then wasted millions on an investigation that was more a sound bite machine for Democrat friendly talking-heads than an effort to find justice for a pencil pusher with a disgraced husband.   Despite the … Read more

RightOnline 2012

Tim, Mike, Rick, and Steve (yes, me) will be heading out to RightOnline in Vegas in just a few weeks.  Here’s a little primer–clips from 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wL5kOxMdh74 Note from Skip: I had been expecting to go as well but I was told by my boss that I should be going to San Diego for a … Read more

Attention NH House….HB 1704 – It’s Still A Trap!

NH HB1704 is still a trapThe New Hampshire Senate has passed a “revised” version of HB1704, the amended, re-amended, amended version of what was once a perfectly functional campaign finance reform bill from the New Hampshire House that is now little more than a piece of crap with a bow on it.  Or perhaps more accurately described, it is an acceptable left wing baby-step toward silencing political speech, facilitated by progressives, under the cover of “election transparency,” at the hands of a Republican Legislature.

The House needs to strip it back down to it’s roots or kill it and here’s why: The Coalition for Open Democracy.

The Coalition for Open Democracy has promoted and supported the amended versions of the bill and this should set off some alarms because the Coalition for Open Democracy claims to be “a nonpartisan coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to ensuring integrity, transparency and efficiency in political and legislative processes in New Hampshire and the nation.”   What they actually are is a patchwork of left wing organizations, run by progressives, pretending to be non-partisan, pushing the Democrat campaign finance agenda to counter or if possible undo any or all of the advances made by the US Supreme Courts Citizen United decision.  And they’ll do it one tiny bit at a time if they have to.

So HB1704 is being used to move the issue a step or two to the left to establish a base from which to execute the next step or two to the left.  Put more simply… It’s a trap!!

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Smart Girl Politics – The Podcast

Last Thursday I was a guest/co-host on WSMN 1590,  Smart Girl Politics Radio with Susan Olsen.  We spoke about GrokWatch, some of what we’ve investigated so far, and what the goals are for this project.  We also discussed some bureaucratic objections to photo ID laws for voting and my objections to their objection.   If … Read more

Morse Code – It’s A Double Dip In Oyster River

James Morse - Bnagor Daily News Seth Koenig Photo credit“Sometimes, life throws you some curves.”  That was the response “retiring” Portland Maine School District Superintendent Dr. James Morse gave to the press and the public after announcing that he had taken a job as the Superintendent of the Oyster River Cooperative district in New Hampshire.

“Sometimes, life throws you some curves.”

But we can read the stitches.  One of those stitches indicates that Mr. Morse was one of 15 applicants for the job.  (Applicant: A person who applies, as for a job.) So how much of a curve ball is it when you announce you are “retiring” (after 32 years in the public education industrial complex), and then get a job for which you applied?

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Concord Monitor Takes a Stand – When It’s A Republican

We’ve been reporting the theft of services by an SEIU Union Chapter VP and NH DES employee Richard de Seve for months as we struggle with the Department of Environmental Services and the State’s IT department, and their resistance to part with data, in response to our Right to Know Requests about state employees using … Read more

Modern ‘Episcopal’ Family

Shield_of_the_US_Episcopal_Church.svgNew Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson is retiring.  His successor was chosen from these three candidates.

William W. Rich, senior associate rector for Christian Formation at Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston; A Homosexual man married to a man.

Penelope Maud Bridges, rector of St. Francis Episcopal Church in Great Falls, Va.:A divorced woman.

Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld, 50, of Grace Church in Amherst (MA): A Heterosexual man.

Not your Fathers Episcopal Church anymore is it?  Not even when they choose the heterosexual guy.

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Trayvon, Hurricanes, And Faux Pow Wow Chow

Democrats can't seem to hit anythingIf you’ve recovered from the underwhelming Facebook IPO, perhaps you are ready for this?

Trayvon was beating George Zimmerma badly before the man finally shot him in self-defense.  There is no doubt about that.

So here’s an observation for the anti-second amendment clowns who are always insisting that lawfully armed citizens run away from any conflict (the same folks who hung Zimmerman out to dry on day one).   It’s not so easy to run away when your attacker is straddling you and pounding the crap out of you.

 

Next Up, the Global Warming denier deniers took another kick to the green chestnuts this week.  Looks like more frequent and severe hurricanes were not in store for US coastlines due to the all-powerful invisible sky god known as Global warming; and we may have Al Gore to thank for that. (I guess it’s not just snow he can summon with his very presence.)

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Martha Fuller Clark Running for NH Senate District 21

Happy news that Amanda Merrill is not running again for the New Hampshire Senate.  In her stead, former Merrill clone–or perhaps I have that reversed–Martha Fuller “brush” Clark, will run to fill the seat.  Merrill and Clarke are both EMILY’s list support alums.  They are hewed from the same bit of socialist flotsam, with Clark … Read more

‘Properties’ of Marriage

Wedding Rings- does the state have an interest?Marriage is always a great topic to visit in New Hampshire. It irritates so many people on so many sides. But if we ever put it to a vote of citizens, New Hampshire would join the ranks of every other state to define “marriage” as a union between one man and one woman. Which is why the left would never want to allow that. And bigotry or inequality has nothing to do with it. And it certainly has nothing to do with love.

Love, as it turns out, is not a state’s interest. There is no ministry of love. No state department of love. No state director of love. And no one in their right mind would want the State organizing, defining, taxing or regulating it. Love is not a state’s interest.

And the idea that you “can’t help who you fall in love with” is total rubbish. Of course, you can. I haven’t fallen in love with anyone since I got married 18 years ago unless I count falling more in love with my wife. People fall in and out of love all the time.  They can help it. So what the gay marriage lobby means to suggest by this is that sex is love and that you can’t help who whom you want to have sex. But neither of those things is true either.

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