by Rep. Mike Sylvia

The shell game continues on County Drive. It’s understandable that this sleight of hand would lead to errors in the Laconia Daily Sun’s article covering the Belknap County budget.

Commissioner DeVoy, according to the Sun, said: “…it was poor budget management on the part of the delegation that helped create the current bleak fiscal situation for the county.”

While I’ll agree that ‘poor budget management’ is involved, the fact is the delegation appropriates funds, and the county administration is tasked with budget management. It would be helpful if the administration would keep their spending to monies that had actually been appropriated as opposed to finding ways to spend money which had not been appropriated.

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Each year, the Budget Committee devolves into sub-committees to handle each area or department of both the Town and the School District.  Yesterday was dedicated to three such meetings for me on the School Board budget: Federal Projects, Food Service, and “District Wide” maintenance.

Now those of you that have been reading the ‘Grok for a while know that one of my big bugaboos is the combination of TANSTAAFL and “free money” – the former being “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” (H/T: Robert Heinlein) and the “free money” really isn’t – somewhere someone is paying state or federal taxes in order for my hamlet to get “free money.”  I dunno about your elected or appointed officials but mine can very seldom put those two concepts together in a cogent fashion.  Actually, TANSTAAFL doesn’t seem to be in their vocabulary but “free money” often is.

Well, our Assistant Superintendent for Business (chief bean counter) Scott Isabelle decided a bit of bamboozling was in order (paraphrasing here):

Of our total budget, we only have to raise X number dollars via taxes as Federal/State grants take care of the rest.

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The labeled horizontal lines on these charts aim to give a sense of perspective on electricity consumption levels across the world. For example, in the chart below a very large hydro or nuclear plant could produce enough electricity to meet the demands of 100 million people in Ghana; a large hydro, nuclear, or coal plant could provide for 10 million average global citizens, and average-sized plant would meet demands of ten million in Brazil.

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Adam J. MacLeod, (from the clan MacLeod–did you do that with the accent?) recently shared a speech he gave to his students in an article titled, Undoing the Dis-Education of Millennials.

Adam teaches Law and has found that many of the students in his class while bright and ready to learn, “cannot think, don’t know very much, and are enslaved to their appetites and feelings. Their minds are held hostage in a prison fashioned by elite culture and their undergraduate professors.”

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No one makes fun of the left like The People’s cube, and in keeping with that tradition they provided the above image as a guideline to help the regular folk figure out the difference between your run-of-the-mill left-wing fascist and your run-of-the-mill leftist ‘antifascist.’

Antifascists movements, historically, are communist/socialist affairs, who operate identically; use intimidation and violence to advance your political agenda.

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Reformatted, emphasis mine:

Sales of new, single-family U.S. homes reached their highest level in ten years due to an increase in housing demand across the country.
The Commerce Department released a report Monday stating that home sales rose 6.2 percent, the highest increase since October 2007, according to Bloomberg Markets…Reuters polled several economists who originally predicted that new home sales, which comprise 11 percent of all home sales, would decline by six percent last month. Instead, new home sales have continued to increase for three months straight.

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We keep hearing that illegal immigrants are a “boon” to our economy – this example (like the meat packing plants of a few years ago) shows that American workers see a “boon” when illegal immigrants, working at lower wages, are removed from the workplace (reformatted, emphasis mine):

A huge Chicago bakery is now hiring Americans at higher wages, following a federal immigration enforcement action which forced the firing of 800 illegal immigrants. The forced departure of the illegal-immigrant workers at the Chicago-based Cloverhill bakery was a financial shock to the Swiss company which bought the bakery from a U.S. investment group in 2014. The illegals comprised one-third of the bakery’s employees, so U.S. sales fell by seven percent when the enforcement forced the company to rebuild its workforce by hiring Americans

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Boy, they just keep coming as if Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 weren’t enough!  It does bring up a couple important questions:

• Do they ever wonder when enough is enough?
• Do they really think that we in Civil Society have no clue in making decisions for ourselves?
• Or, do they not believe that the vast majority of us would just rather be left alone?

Certainly doesn’t seem that way, does it?  Any ways, next up are the 30%-35% ratings

More after the jump:

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Batter up!  More LSRs / House Bills.  As before, I’m bolding the ones that I’ll be looking at.  As before, if you, dear readers and commenters, have a bit of time and interest, pick one or two (or more, there’s PLENTY to share!), write a paragraph on why you think it is anti-Freedom and pro-Statism (e.g., politicians get to make the decisions instead of letting us Individuals make that decision for ourselves).  I’ll use your name or post it up anonymously based on what you’d prefer.

So, we previously did 0-5% and 6-10% HRA ratings by the LSR/House Bill sponsor; this time we’ll go 11% to 29% (seems like the worse they are, the more they wish to meddle and make our lives more regulated – simply because they believe they are special and won more votes than the other guy):

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A friend of mine once scribbled idly on a piece of paper (about 30 years ago), “Because Baptists believe intercourse leads to dancing.”  He was joking about how some Baptists believe dancing leads to intercourse. Alcohol increases the risk, and underage drinking is not prohibited at Princeton (not exactly), so perhaps that is why they (Princeton), or more specifically Sexual Harassment Assault/Advising, Resources & Education (SHARE), are taking the consent to dancing thing so seriously?

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A UC Riverside Student (Edith Macias) snatched a Make America Great Again hat off another student and then proceeded to go into a vulgar rant, on video, which will now serve as evidence against the student for charges that could land them in jail for a year.

“According to California’s Penal Code 487, grand theft is committed when “the property is taken from the person of another.”

A local law group further explains that the statute applies to cases where the property “was taken directly off of the property owner, no matter how much the property is worth …”

Here’s the vulgarity filled rant that followed (with lots of asterisks).

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Continuing on from Part 1, here is the next tranche of LSRs/House bills submitted into the House of Representative:

Reminder: this list is for purposes of triage – quickly guesstimating which bills are bad or good based on whether their sponsors have good or bad voting records. There are times when bad Reps sponsor good bills and vice versa. But if I were looking for bad bills, I would start by looking at bills from bad Reps, then look at the bill text to make a more definitive evaluation.

So, we did the 0-5% sponsor rating LSRs/HBs last time – now for the 6-10% range.  Again, I am bolding ones that I’ll try to look at:

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“I can go bankrupt at 40 percent as easily as 100 percent.”

One or two or three stories may be anecdotal – but this is starting to turn into a flood and we have only Obama and Democrats to thank for this.  They designed it, they legislated it, they passed it, they regulated it, they did illegal changes (via E.O.s to it), they ran it.  And not one Republican voted for it and they ALL ran on getting rid of it (but they’ve proven, as a Party, they can’t get the job done when it really counts).  RedDiaperBaby and Jeemo have tried to deflect, discombobulate, and blame everyone except those that did the deeds (er, Democrats) and deny that the stories about the cost of individual plans for those that make too much to qualify for everyone else to pay their bill (e.g., subsidies from the Government).

So, here’s a few more – that hit more to home because they are from NH (and I know some of them as well).  Once again, let’s watch RDB and Jeemo try to plug up the Obamacare dike that’s leaking like a sieve.  From the Union Leader (emphasis mine, reformatted):

Sticker shock hits NH health insurance buyers

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House Speaker Shawn Jasper, R-Hudson, narrowly won confirmation as commissioner of agriculture Wednesday, setting up a battle to replace him as the New Hampshire Legislature heads into the 2018 session. The two Democrats on the council, Andru Volinsky of Concord and Chris Pappas of Manchester, helped deliver the appointment to Sununu, a first-term Republican.

How apropo is that headline from the Union Leader! He became Speaker of the NH House by dint of the Democrats “appointing” him after his own Party had essentially rejected him.  Bad things came from that, especially on issues that really mattered to the base.  I still have no clue how the NH GOP House members voted him in again after him pulling a Doug Scammon (a Republican that also used the Democrats to gain power).

And now he has gained a Commissionership courtesy of the Democrats.  That will be his legacy – a Republican who only succeeded by the active involvement by Democrats (and not Republicans).

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David Axelrod had Kathleen Sebelius on his Podcast during which both added their voices (or is that knives) to the slaying of Ceaser (and his annoying wife who won’t go the hell away).

Yes, they all knew, but they did worse than nothing. As Mark Steyn reminds us below the left, the media and the feminists defended Clinton because of his politics. And this is a point I keep making over and over again. Democrats do not care about Blacks, Latinos, gays, trans, children, workers, or women.  All they care about is political power.

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A few assorted posts in surfing where Progressives are just out to ruin some families’ Thanksgiving – just because they can.  And I bet, will:

You Should Get Drunk and Cause a Scene Today

Are you avoiding your family right now? So desperate to escape them that you’re sitting in the bathroom reading a productivity blog on Thanksgiving? Dreading the inevitable fight over Fox News or your lack of a plus-one or which kid hogged the college fund? Here’s your solution: Get drunk and cause a scene.

A fight was going to happen anyway. Now it’ll be on your terms. You can choose the topic, and pre-empt the fight you’d lose with the fight you’d win. Or you can steer away from politics or religion and toward some personal argument, taking one for the team just to avoid sinking everyone into an existential funk.

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