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.

UNH may have to Layoff More Staff

Box of tissues for UNH cry babiesBoo hoo.

Faced with a deficit, after years of a bad economy, UNH may be forced to do what many companies had to do years ago–cut more staff.  I can’t tell you how bad I feel for them.  The small business I work for went from 30 employees down to 12…two years ago.  Of course we were not supported by taxpayers, nor did we have unions or arbitrators insisting we pay people like Ed Larkin to do nothing for five years at the staggering cost of almost half a million dollars.

At my office we streamlined down to the bare minimum needed to keep things running, and have discovered efficiencies and opportunities to be more productive with less resources.   Not only are we still in business, but things are actually looking up. Yeah, it’s more work for the rest of us, and no we have not had raises in years, but we are working and providing a product and service (and paying taxes).

But State run enterprises, or those who have become dependent on tax payer prop-ups, have little or no incentive to make those hard choices. 

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Democrats Continue to Obstruct Obama

Reid still giving us he fingerHarry Reid’s excuse for refusing to bring the Obama Tax away jobs bill to the Senate floor was a busy floor schedule. This is only important because Reid and the Narrative gang are busy blaming Republicans.  But Dirty Harry Reid might as well have said he couldn’t do it because he had to wash his hair or arrange his sock drawer. 

The same Senate that cannot be bothered to address the matter of a budget–except when erecting straw men about Republicans obstructing this or refusing to fund that when they already know there is money available–does not appear to have much in the way of important business.

Would you like to see the more pressing matters before the US Senate for which Reid could not make time to ‘issue This Bill.?’  Follow the jump…

 

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Introducing The Morgan Freeman Rule

Morgan FreemanMr. Freeman is not the first but the most recent left winger to publicly declare their partisan ignorance on the matter of racism and the TEA party.  It is a shame really.  I like Mr. Freeman’s work.  And while I will continue to appreciate his other contributions to the culture, this most recent addition may prove to be one of his greatest.  For he has provided us with another name for the lefts poisonous and ignorant rhetoric on race, and a new template with which to apply it.

If objecting to  Mr. Obama’s lack of leadership, poor policy choices, and a destructive economic agenda is considered racist, then the "Morgan Freeman Rule" identifies as racist, anyone who speaks in opposition to the job performance of someone who is black.

It also exemplifies a narrowness of left leaning minds that requires them to assume objections must be based on the color of skin and not the character or choices of the man beneath it.

So having been handed this template I am more than willing to apply it to the real world with an equality no leftist ever would.

The entire staff at ESPN are racists.

 

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Weekend Round-Up

Steve’s Blog post Round up from the Weekend. Posts you may have missed that are worth a few minutes of your time.

A New Ed “Flash” Larkin Inspired Scratch Game From The NH Lottery?

Banana flasherIn the fall of 2009 UNH Professor Ed ‘Flash’ Larkin was put on paid leave for exposing his genitals to a young lady and her mother in the Milford Market Basket Parking lot.  (My earlier remarks here.) As of October of last year, the plan was to let him go, but it looks like the Union and an arbitrator have stepped in and Flash still has a job.

Ed “Flash” Larkin has, to the best of my knowledge, continuously collected his $87,375.00 per year UNH salary, since the incident.

Under the terms of his probation, as reported in the Sunday Union Leader, he will remain on the UNH staff for another three years before being permitted to meet with students.  That restriction prevents him from teaching during that time. We can only assume that a University that pays full salary during an investigation does likewise when they are told they cannot terminate said employee.  Without knowing any other details, this amounts to five years worth of salary at a state supported university, to a German Language professor, for what?   Exposing himself in public.

Talk about a government jobs program.  Show some strangers your “little professor” at the grocery store parking lot and we’ll give you $436,875.00 over five years.

But you get forced out of your job if you just expose yourself on Twitter? I bet Anthony Weiner is pissed.

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Democrats Want Lobbyists In DC

(Originally written September 13th but never posted –Blogger House cleaning.)

Anand Giridharadas, writing for the newspaper of record, took the time and column inches to suggest that when Sarah Palin spoke last week she had some useful things to say.

I know, shut the front door. 

While not flattering, coming from the New York Times, there is some measure of respect for the notion that Palin is capable of critical thinking.  But the left wing progressive memes still linger between the subdued high fives.

“Do you want to know why nothing ever really gets done?” she said, referring to politicians. “It’s because there’s nothing in it for them. They’ve got a lot of mouths to feed — a lot of corporate lobbyists and a lot of special interests that are counting on them to keep the good times and the money rolling along.”

Because her party has agitated for the wholesale deregulation of money in politics and the unshackling of lobbyists, these will be heard in some quarters as sacrilegious words.

Emphasis mine,

The end of the McCain-Feingold era of unconstitutional speech restrictions demonstrated one very important point.  It was wholly a left wing agenda item, and critical enough to the Democrats as a party that they would make total fools of themselves over its end. Almost every left winger who has spoken on the matter is off the rails and Giridharadas’ remarks are no different; that public corporate speech and backroom corporate lobbyists are a reflection the same problem when in fact restriction of the first is what necessitates more of the second, and that is exactly the point.

The left has no intention of removing corporate money from politics or political speech because no Democrat can survive without corporate money or its equivalents.  So the left wing narrative for controlling corporate speech has nothing to do with limiting corporate influence in politics it is about keeping the home field advantage.  It is about controlling the speech and controlling the narrative–free has nothing to do with it.

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Left Does Not Want You To Connect These Dots

Police Chiefs and Leftists and Lynches oh my!  They conspired to limit your right to self defense in New ON TARGET towards freedomHampshire.  Intimidated you with warnings of bloodshed.  Introduced fear as a catalyst against you.  And for what reason? 

Tyranny?  It is more difficult to use government power to manipulate an armed populace, armed with knowledge, armed for self defense. The first thing  tyrant must do is to go after their guns.

Or is it victim-hood?  Let’s face it, muggers and criminals are more than prepared to show you that they are willing to use force to commit a crime.  Why would Democrats refuse you a similar opportunity to prevent a crime? Are they afraid you will discover that a lawfully armed populace can prevent crime without them?  Do they need you to be a victim to advance some agenda?

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Obama’s Intercontinental Gaffe

And before you leftists try to write this off like all the other gaffes, just imagine Sarah Palin had said it and then write the first thing that comes to mind. Now replace Palin’s name with Obama and see how it reads.

SEA Sows The Dissent In Littleton NH – More Proof We Need Right To Work

Reasons to override the Lynch veto on Right to Work continue to Mount.  Yesterday–buried between the videos from the Steak Out–I asked how you could call yourself a Republican and be against right to work because forced unionization is an automatic funding mandate for the entire left wing agenda. How do you promote Republican principles while forcing others to finance people bent on their destruction. Workers deserve the choice to conscientiously object to that agenda and its affect on the nation.

As if to prove my point, in today’s Union Leader, we see another example of why workers need the freedom to shun union abuse and how Unions with deep pockets and national connections, try to pressure small towns.  In March the town of Littleton decided it had to cut its budget.  The economy being what it is who can blame them.  The $745,000.00 dollar budget savings resulted in having to fire one police officer.  According to the article, two days later the SEA, New Hampshire’s State Employee ASSociation called for a Boycott of 13 businesses in town that supported the reduction.

So trying to manage your town budget to keep spending within your means can result in the cry-baby Union using intimidation tactics on the local business community.

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Democrat Green Graft Stops Continuing Resolution

If the Democrats had passed a budget we wouldn’t be doing this at all. If the left in Congress had not broken the law and refused to write or pass a budget we would not be here. If the demolition party had not obstructed every effort by Republicans to pass a budget, to eliminate the need for continuing resolutions, there would be no debate about refunding the government every few months.

You Can’t Be A Republican And Vote Against Right To Work

Supporting forced unionization is the same as supporting mandatory campaign contributions to the Unions and the Democrat party.  There is no conceivable way to separate the two.  Unions are funded by dues.  Democrats receive millions of dollars from unions to promote their agenda.  And in some cases to promote it violently.

You can’t separate the two.

A vote to sustain the Lynch Veto and permit forced unionization is a vote for the mandatory and state funding of abortion;  financing efforts to cripple or bypass our second amendment right to self defense; you are supporting state financed birth control, confiscation of property, increased taxation and broad based taxes, an expanding regulatory state and more centralized top down government, gimmik accounting, Gay marriage, genderless bathrooms,  seat belt laws, the food police, socialized medicine, restrictions on free and corporate speech, and the entire manifold of Democrat party policy wishes which those dollars will continue to support and advance as long as workers are denied the opportunity to decide if they are willing to fund these policies or not on their own

I don’t think you can claim to be a Republican and support all of that, can you?

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Obama’s Keep Americans From Having Jobs Act

I was torn on the title.  "Obama’s Tax American Job Creators Act" almost got the gig.  But while this is a massive tax on job creators, one provision in particular won the day when it comes to keeping people unemployed, something you might think counter-productive in a Jobs bill.

Investors Business Daily Explains…

How do you get jittery businesses to hire? Threaten to sue them if they hire someone who already has a job! At least, that’s how the White House thinks. It stuffed in a provision to make it illegal to "discriminate" against the unemployed when hiring.

So the beautiful people in Obamaville are making it a crime if you do not hire someone who is not currently employed.  And this intimidation is supposed to incentivize them into hiring workers?

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I’d Check with Ray or The SEA

Tactics are everything for Democrats, and nothing is beyond the pale.  Just think Project Gunrunner, in which a left-wing narrative about American guns in the hands of Mexican drug lords is brought to life by the Obama Administration when facts failed to support the desired conclusion.  So when I read this report this morning of racially tinged graffiti painted on several houses in Concord, I got suspicious.

Tim Buckland reports for the Union Leader…

Ngendahayo returned home from church Sunday to find the message, which called his family “subhuman” and told them to leave. The message, several lines long, was also found on the homes of other African immigrants living at another Perley Street house and at a home on Downing Street…

I’m sorry, but this is just tailor-made to be some left-wing scheme.

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Harrel Tweets On Right To Work

HKirstein%20RTW.JPGSo here we have New Hampshire Democrat Party Propaganda Minister Harrell Kirstein sharing some cherry picked wisdom.

"7 of 10 poorest states are RTW4Less states…blah blah blah."

My first thought is, define poor? (…without getting into this and this.)

Poor, like rich, is an elastic concept which our friend Harrell and the Demolition party stretch to fit their narrative.   It looks at wages but ignores things like cost of living, tax burden and relies entirely on total annual income as an arbitrary line drawn on a national chart, to define poverty, irrelevant of any other factor.  But it is these factors that affect wages and as it turns out, states without Right to Work are exponentially more expensive places to live.  So even if you are working for less income, you’re spending exponentially less of it on things you need to live a comfortable life.  And here’s one very critical example of that.

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Will Hillsborough Three Let Themselves Be Rail-roaded?

Peter Leishman is a Train WreckWe have another special election next Tuesday, this one in Hillsborough District three, and if you let the Democrat win you might want to know who you are sending to Concord.

The Democrat is Peter Leishman.  Leishman got flushed out of office in November 2010 but he’s hoping he can float back up if you are not looking. Do yourself a favor and hit the flush handle again because he is the same train wreck I described back in July of 2009…

 

Lieshman just happens to be a rank-and-file House Democrat who is against your parental rights, voted in favor of the bathroom bill (twice), and voted to increase the budget by about one billion dollars during a recession… He’s a veteran state Democrat, and he’s into statewide fiscal abuse, and he has no problem with letting sexually confused men share your daughters personal space.

 

Leishman embraces the lefts genderless society regardless of risk, he voted against repealing the house weapons ban, against allowing spending caps and local control of spending, then Rep Leishman voted for the Tent Tax. He’s also implicated in insider, crony corruption, to go along with it.  He was accused of using his position in the House, knowing he was part of the relevant committee, to propose a bill whose passage would favor his own personal business interests.

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Turner & Amodei Win – Referendum?

You know as well as I that it is only a referendum when a Democrat wins, so the special elections to fill two US House seats, the ones that resulted in two Republican Wins, not a referendum. Dope slap, bitch slap, slam dunk, home run, owned; these are more appropriate descriptions of what happened last night, particularly in the cold blue underbelly of the Big Apple.

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