The ‘Grok chronicled the efforts of co-founder Doug Lambert and friend Tom Tardiff when the Belknap County Delegation wanted to hide how they voted for the new County Sheriff Wiggins.  When the Delegation voted in secret, the 91-A demand was given, and the Delegation refused.  It eventually went to court where Doug and Tom, pro se (acting as their own lawyers), were victorious and proved that the “Peoples’ work” must be done in public. This ruling set a precedent that has been used in some subsequent Right To Know (RTK) court decisions.

The problem is that if our government decides to NOT abide by both the letter and the spirit of the law and starts stalling tactics, starts to hide data, or outright refuses to obey the law, what’s a citizen to do?  

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The Concord paper serves a city that has a ton of people who work for or have a family member who works for the government. They like a news source that makes them feel happy and secure. Well, they have it in spades with the local paper.

Take this poorly crafted, but standard, attack article about the devious motives of a person who only wanted to put to rest all the allegations of voter fraud in New Hampshire. The story writer attempts to expose House Speaker Shawn Jasper for asking the Secretary of State to match the secret statewide database with NH DMV records of who has a valid driver’s license in NH.

There you have Speaker Jasper’s crime;

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Oberlin College is at the forefront of social justice outrage hoaxes but until recently had not reported any real-world consequences. See what I did there? Real world? Mizzou went full-stupid with their fake outrage which cost them, and cost them and cost them, and then cost them some more.

Evergreen took it to another level, and now they are paying the price. And now the snowflakes at fragile artsy Oberlin have set themselves up to fail with their hoaxes and nonsense which (you should think to their drama-queen delight) parents and potential future students have been watching.

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With hurricane Harvey and Irma sucking up most of the cable news programs and it also being National Preparedness Month, I figured a coupla more data points might get someone’s attention that otherwise is part of that group that goes “Disaster??!?!?  Quick, get to the grocery store / gas station!”.

• Stat 1: Federal spending on disasters increased 6698% from 1953 to 2009 (1)
  Stat 2: Only 39% of individuals have a basic emergency plan (2)
• Stat 3: 75% of health care workers claim to be unprepared (2)
• Stat 4: 44% of Americans don’t have first-aid kits in their homes (3)
• Stat 5: The survival rate for CPR has been calculated at 20% (4)
• Stat 6: 42% of Americans do not know an immediate family members phone number (5)
• Stat 7: Over half of Americans do not have copies of their critical documents (3)

Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative (Print Book) by National Academies, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy.
FEMA surveys
CDC surveys
AHA statistics
Pew Research Center

We’re lucky here in the Northeast this time around –

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Maryland Congressman Anthony Brown has proposed legislation that would force every American college to define rules for acceptable speech. It includes federal money for small schools that need assistance in meeting the laws reporting and enforcement requirements. Rules that, if not followed could result in schools losing other federal dollars.

The Supreme Court should save us all a lot of bother and drop Mr. Brown a note before he says another word.

Dear Congressman Brown. Please see emphasized text in item one.  US Constitution. Bill of Rights. First Amendment,

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This was originally linked at New Media Militia but given what an “active” topic this is I thought I’d share it here as well.

Jim Simpson, who’s been a friend of the Grok, more or less, since 2014, has written about the report by Dave Gaubatz shared here back on August 5th. Jim Comes to the defense of the rating system used to declare the mosque in Manchester as “a Sunni/Saudi and Pakistani front for Islamic based terrorists groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.”

Jim explains.

(Dave Gaubatz) has investigated over 280 mosques in the U.S. alone and uses a rating system developed by a former Islamist, Tafik Hamid.

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…

…It’s over.

The election is finally over.

Democrats finally have accepted the results.

Trump saw this, and cashed in on Wednesday. He is playing the Democratic Party leadership against the Republican Party leadership that for nine months have blown him off.

Indeed – what has the Congressional leadership done with Trump? Gorsuch and a number of anti-regulation legislation – one biggie and a lot of little stuff.  None of it would hurt them politically. Easy-peazy.

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The biggest reason for Obamacare’s rate hikes? Two of its most popular provisions, guaranteed issue and community rating. These are the technical terms for Obamacare’s ban on insurance companies denying coverage or charging people who are sick more.

The McKinsey report found that in Georgia, these mandates added between 44 and 52 percent to premiums. In Ohio, they were responsible for 41 to 50 percent of the hikes — and in Pennsylvania, as much as 62 percent. In Tennessee, guaranteed issue and community rating accounted for between 73 and 76 percent of premium increases.

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There is zero evidence that Russia hacked the “presidential election” yet New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen leads her New York Times editorial with, “The Kremlin hacked our presidential election.”

It is difficult to take much she says seriously most days, but opening with an unsubstantiated talking point makes the rest of her remarks difficult to accept, which is sad. Russian hacking and cyber war, in general, is a real thing worthy of some attention.

Jeanne Shaheen isn’t serious about that or anything else unless it advances the party line and partisan politics. 

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Yesterday, a report was released that there were over 6,500 voters in the 2016 election who used out-of-state driver’s licenses to vote in New Hampshire. Of that number of voters, over 5,300 had not established residency in the state by getting a New Hampshire driver’s license as of August 31, 2017.

It’s actually state law that if you move to the state with the intent on staying in the state, you must give up your former driver’s license and get a New Hampshire driver’s license within 60 days. The 5,300 who voted with out-of-state drivers’ licenses in the 2016 election never established residency. Either they weren’t ever going to establish residency or they broke the law.

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SHOT: House Overwhelmingly Passes $7.9 Billion Harvey Aid Package

By a 419-3 vote, the House of Representatives passed an initial $7.9 billion aid package to help victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana.
The bill is now on its way to the Senate — where some have said an increase to the nation’s debt ceiling could be tacked on — before it reaches President Donald Trump’s desk for final approval.

“This is a chance to be your brother’s keeper,” Rep. Al Green (D-TX) said. “This is a chance for the unity that we express when we’re before the cameras to manifest itself in the votes that we cast here in Congress.”

CHASER: Not yours to give…Davey Crockett

One day in the House of Representatives a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:

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New Hampshire Democrat Party Chair Ray Buckley doesn’t even have the decency to apologize for implying that thousands of likely New Hampshire voters are white supremacists. Instead, he has a spokesman spin his treachery to blame Republicans.

“The Republican outrage apparatus is expectedly taking this comment out of context to manufacture controversy,” Ronan said. “Chairman Buckley would never characterize unregistered, disaffected voters as white supremacists.

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