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.

Slippery Slope…?

Sylvia Larsen is making a slippery slope argument against the New Hampshire Senate’s passage of a bill that would make causing the death of an unborn child murder. Senate Minority Leader Sen. Sylvia Larsen, D-Concord, joined other Democrats in criticizing Forsythe’s bill. “I think it establishes a bad precedent. It establishes a non-scientific basis for … Read more

Smart Girl Politics Radio – On ‘Everything’

From 10-11am this morning I will be guest co-hosting Smart Girl Politics with Susan Olsen on WSMN 1590 AM.   We will be discussing everything so pay attention. There is a slight possibility that we may not get to “everything” in one hour so thinning it out to topics like GrokWatch, ‘Julia’ and the war … Read more

Screw The “Most Vulnerable?”

Internet access - NH House bans taxing internet accessThis morning’s Union Leader reported the passage of a bill in the New Hampshire House that would ban any tax on internet access.  They also reported that it included $1.7 million in funding for the reduction of the developmentally disabled services wait list.  The vote margin was 245-80, with the majority of dissenters on the Democrat side.

If this reporting is accurate the scope of the lefts hypocrisy here might be epic.  Internet and broadband access have been used as a left wing class, warfare, dirge.  Voting to tax it is not exactly “pro less-fortunate” nor pro-more “in need of internet access.”  But to vote against funding the disabled services list again?

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Did You Know That You Have A Lobbyist In Concord? [Updated]

[Update at end of post]

You may already have your own lobbyist.  Maybe.  Oh, and this lobbyist might not be representing you or your legislative whims specifically.   But you are paying for them with your tax dollars, if that makes you feel any better.

The lobbyist you are paying for, if your School district participates, is the New Hampshire School board Association (NHSBA).  The NHSBA

“has provided member school boards with training, support, advice, information, and other essential services to help school board members perform your very important jobs.”

That sounds great.  Who wants a School Board that hasn’t been properly “trained” by professionals since 1916?  Is there a class on how to make taxpayers feel like morons who should sit down and keep quiet?  How to convince people that the budget divided by the number of students is never, ever, the actual cost per student.  I bet there is.  I’m sure they don’t call it that though.

And then there’ is that lobbying thing I mentioned.

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99-0

The smartest man in any room can’t seem to put his name on a budget anyone will vote for.  This years nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue is worse than the last–it even has the distinction of being discarded with more no votes than last years budget nighmare.  99-0. The Senate torpedoed his last budget 97-0 in May 2011, … Read more

A Democrat’s Evolving Positions

revolving on gay marriage- Democrats revolve on every issueMr. Obama has evolved his position on Gay Marriage.  Not surprising.  Most everything the candidate ran on “evolved” once elected to the office.  The lesson then, is not that Mr. Obama is seeing homosexual marriage in a new light, the lesson is that no matter what he says or does about anything, you should expect him to evolve those positions as well.  He has too.

It is a fatal flaw of pragmatism (the left’s safe word for their socialist/Marxist proclivities),which insists on ignoring what has worked in the past in favor of whatever the average room full of left wing intellectuals believes will work now.  Right now.  And what will always work for any room full of smarty-pants liberals is more government and more money to pay for more bureaucracy.  And they’ll tell you all about it.  But they wont tell you this.  When that fails, and fail it shall, they will continue to fund whatever it was, and simply imagine a new solution for a new “right now” problem, that would be the one they just made worse, and that “solution” will require even more government, and more money, to pay for more bureaucracy.  To quote Kyle Resse from the original Terminator Movie.  “You still don’t get it, do you? … That’s what he does! That’s ALL he does!” He, Democrats, don’t know anything else.

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Do Retired School Superintendents Ever Really Retire?

Starting in July of 2012, Mr. Irwin Sussman will begin his new job as the Superintendent of SAU#43 ( Croydon-Newport), a not so curious turn of events for a man who recently “retired” after 40 years working in public education in New York State.  (Last week, you may recall, we introduced you to Robert Sullivan.  He retired as the Super in Middleboro MA, and is collecting $70-80K from the State of Massachusetts, while currently running SAU#21 in New Hampshire.)

Mr. Sussman was a teacher, school principal, and finally a superintendent, working in Lake Luzerne NY, when he “felt it was time” to retire…

After two decades at the Hadley-Luzerne Central School District, and the last eight years as the superintendent, Irwin Sussman told the board last week he will retire at the end of the school year.

Sussman, who turns 64 next month, will work his last day on June 30. His career in education spans 40 years.
“I feel that it’s that time,” said Sussman, who was the high school principal for about 11 years before he became the superintendent in January 2003.
Wait.  Didn’t I just say he was starting a new job in Croydon-Newport this July?

What and who are the neocons, really?

Me in stern rebuke mode

So I got into a little contretemps online the other day about “neocons” when someone suggested that I was one, or at least a supporter of one in saying Rep. Allen West of Florida would make an interesting choice for GOP vice president. In response I went off on a bit of a historical rant, explaining who the neocons (more accurately “Neo-Conservatives,” as they were originally known) are, and where they came from (the moniker today is usually just used as an epithet, with no historical background; kind of a substitute for “war monger”). My rant apparently served some purpose, as some people have emailed me and said “thanks, I never was clear before on exactly who or what the neocons were.” Then Skip saw it and said “run it, run it!” So, okay, here’s a heavily edited version of what I said:

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Adoption “Advocates” Have No Sense of Humor?

In the new Avengers movie, Thor is defending his brother Loki–the arch villain in the film–when he is reminded by Black Widow that Loki has killed 80 people in two days.  Thor replies, “he’s adopted.” I laughed.  The theater laughed.  It was funny. But not to Mara Parker from Trinidad, California.  She was offended and … Read more

“Hope…We Don’t Get Caught?”

No time like a famous fundraiser to revisit reality. The 2008 Hope poster, of Obama…” “‘… the artist who created the poster, Shepard Fairey, used another photograph of Obama but said he relied on the Obama-Clooney picture to avoid a copyright infringement case with The Associated Press. He pleaded guilty in February to criminal contempt … Read more

Celebrate Mother’s Day With the Gift of Abortion

It’s still Mother’s day so you’ve still got time to take some gift advice from Democrat US Senator Kirstin Gillibrand; “This Mother’s Day, I can’t think of a better way to honor all the mothers in the country — past and present — than with a contribution to EMILY’s List,” Gillibrand writes. “They’re the ones … Read more

ABC Cancels GCB – Too Much Competition from DCB?

ABC Canceled GCB.  (That’s the family Friendly Disney/ABS’c short-lived controversial program about so-called Christian women who do not behave according the The Word.)  Who among us is without sin?  ABC certainly cannot claim otherwise.

While I’m sure GCB could have played well enough in the coast cities and liberal ghettos, it must–after all–be a show based on how Democrats actually approach the faith (you write what you know, yes?) no one else seems to have cared for it.  And why would they?  We already have the ugly version of this progran running 24/7 in DC called Democrat “Christian” Bitches (DCB).  (I’m not being sexist here–most of the ‘bitches’ in the Democrat party are actually men, and most if not all the of the “Christian” Democrats are simply hypocrites.)

ABC's GCB

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Another Summer of Our Health Care Discontent

World Health Organization- organizing for socialized medicineIn all likelihood the US Supreme court will deal a mortal blow to Obama-care, the Patient Affordable Health Care and Socialism for All or Something Act before they go on recess for the summer.  Progressives being who they are, and seeing as this is an election year, will only view this as another opportunity to flog opponents and to pontificate in favor of whatever elements of the ‘plan’ they were told to tell you about the first time around.

But these are details that, as it turns out, were based on an ancient study (2000) by the World Health Organizers in the WHO whose mission it was to make socialized medicine look good.  So it behooves us to gird our loins with the armor of truth; that this major source of all those Health Care talking points is a fraud.

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New Hampshire’s SAU 21 Hooked A Double-Dipper

Public School Superintendents double dipping

Meet Robert M. Sullivan.  Mr Sullivan, at the age of 58 ( I believe),  ‘retired’ as the Superintendent of the Middleboro Massachusetts School District, where he was earning 128,000.00 per year.  But like many “retired” public school superintendents, he didn’t stay retired for very long.  He’s currently the Superintendent for the six schools that make up SAU #21 in  New Hampshire. (Hampton Falls, North and South Hampton, Seabrook and Winnacunnet Co-op.)

But he’s retired!

“Retired?” Retired, to a Superintendent means you have a new job lined up before you leave the job you retired from, which the retiring Sullivan did.  But while Mr. Sullivan is working in the Granite State he isn’t moving to New Hampshire permanently.  He and his wife are staying in Massachusetts.  Why?

…the out-of-state job will enable Robert M. Sullivan to collect his full Massachusetts pension, estimated to be in the range of $70,000 to $85,000, while also being paid for his new position.

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NH Has a Business Finance Authority

  Bill Walker has a great article over at Bedford Patch on the New Hampshire Business Fiance Authority. According to the first page of the 2011 Annual Report, the BFA has transferred over 1.4 billion dollars from we lazy, undeserving taxpayers (and all holders of dollar balances) to those who truly earned the money (by … Read more

Second Amendment humor, courtesy of the Concord Monitor!

Concord Monitor comes over to our side, approves concealed carry!

This is so funny!  What appears below is a column from today’s New Hampshire government-newspaper, the Concord Monitor. I glanced at the top of the top of the column and though “Hey, great! My friend—the excellent Rep. JR Hoell—has written an interesting piece about 2nd Amendment concealed carry for everyone!” So I happily read the excellent column…

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Norovirus Source – Reusable Grocery Bag

Remember when I wrote about LA looking to ban paper and plastic grocery bags?I included this quote… Coliform bacteria, suggesting raw-meat or uncooked-food contamination, was in half of the bags, and E. coliwas found in 12 percent of the bags. Running the bags through a washer or cleaning them by hand reduced bacteria levels to … Read more

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