There is talk in Washington of raising the federal gas tax to deal with our “crumbling infrastructure.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — As gasoline prices plunge to the lowest level in more than five years, some lawmakers see a golden opportunity to bump up taxes at the pump to help pay for the repair of crumbling roads and bridges.

Fuel taxes have been flat for more than 20 years, starving the Highway Trust Fund of revenue used for rising infrastructure repair costs. Lawmakers have fueled the fund with last-minute short-term injections of cash, but want to find a more permanent fix.

The feds have spent 22 trillion on the Federal ‘Government’ since 2009.  Given the obvious mismanagement of that sum, why would we allow them to take more?

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Heh!  This ought to be fun.  First Jack Flanagan goes after an activist (and ‘Grok friend) by calling him a Democrat Lemming  (wrong thing to do, btw) and then decides to slag us at the same time.  Well, stay tuned as we can play this game all. day. long.  And Jack Flanagan? Is that REALLY how you treat your constituents?  Really?

From an email thread sent to me (mostly anonymized, emphasis mine).  It starts off with an activist telling their House Reps voting the right way by voting NO on the rule change that would have made it much harder to have roll call votes on motions / Amendments / Bills.  First to all

While roll call voting is not necessary for every single item that requires a vote, if someone in the legislature feels it is important or helpful or appropriate to have a roll call vote so WE can know how YOU are voting, it should not be made more difficult than the standard that is currently in place to do so. Voting to make it more difficult by increasing the number of people it takes to second the motion for a roll call  =  voting for secrecy, enabling yourself to “hide” from your constituents, dishonesty, non-transparency, distrust and division. Why would you want to do that unless you have something to hide. We have the absolute right to know what is going on up there and by whom.

VOTE NO ON THE RULES CHANGE. VOTE NO.

I agree whole heartedly – you REPRESENT us and if we can’t verify how you vote, we can’t know how well you are representing us.  If it all.  And then just to their reps:

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Remember, it was the erstwhile NH House “Majority” Leader Jack Flanagan who invited us to this game.   This was just sent in speaking to

I was on a committee where Flanagan was for a while. He is very “moderate,” i.e. squishy. He admits that his district doesn’t like conservative Republicans (I don’t buy it, but he justifies his big-government votes with that). He is no friend of Liberty. His idea of “Republican values” is far from mine, but that is the Big Tent for you.

Squishy.  Translation – will o’the wisp where ever the political winds blow.  Sticking a wet finger up into the political breeze is my visualization – not exactly a winning attribute for a Leader that folks actually look up to the position earned (remember, Jack Flanagan was NOT elected to the position – he had to be appointed by the Democrat appointed Speaker Jasper).

Big-government votes?  I Trust the person that sent this to me and their reputation as a Limited Govt personage is impeccable.  For him to say that has the alarm bells ringing. So gosh, what does the NH GOP Platform say about that?  Let’s see:

We, the people of the New Hampshire Republican Party, do stand united in our dedication to preserving freedom, limited government and unlimited opportunity for all.

We can through this one as well:

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I know, “Shocker!” he’s been blowin off the VA since Satan’s fetid vapors blew him onto the steps of the Capitol on that cold, macabre inauguration day.  Here is his cavalcade careening past the VA in Phoenix:

But this was not just any VA.  This was the crux of last years VA scandal.  The VA where 18 vets died while awaiting doctor appointments. 

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More emailing today than postings, so a chance to combine the two.  And it comes up with a single “what if” supposition.  Again, reference back to my Pat Caddell “ready to quit” and the notices about the “3” and the “4” (slightly edited):

… the NH GOP just doesn’t get how close many of its activists are just ready to quit.  Yet, they just keep doing the same things. I can only surmise that they want a new GOP base – one that doesn’t complain and just votes the way they’re told.  They just don’t seem to want to play chess and look forward a few moves [if they got that base]…

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Bishop Peter A. Libasci, Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire took to the pages of the Concord Monitor yesterday to appeal to Governor Hassan and the NH State legislatures “better nature” on the matter of the budget.   The opening paragraph frames the context.  It is again time for a new state budget.  How will we measure whether they have succeeded in their work?

The overall thrust of ‘how’ turns to our shared journey and the obligation to care for each other and those most in need.  There is the obligation to family members, of citizens to their community, the need to apply justice, prudence, and sacrifice, and the general will to support public and private charities.

These are all ideas fundamental to Christianity and our personal responsibility as individuals of a community to emulate the life of Christ in our daily lives–something a Catholic Bishop has every right to profess.  But suggesting that temporal budget planning should begin there?  It almost sounds as if Bishop Libasci is preaching collective salvation.

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The problem is that the vast majority of politicians and those in Govt are often SO quick to start the groupthink of “hey, paid this off – that’s the signal to turn around and buy more debt!”.  It always seems to be the mindset that Govt should always be funding itself more INSTEAD of thinking “Hey, let’s give the taxpayers’ wallets a break by lowering taxes for a while”.  Saw it all the time when I was on my hamlet’s Budget Committee.  Thus, when I saw this, I kept marveling “wouldn’t this be nice if ALL levels of Government adopted this“?

Mishawaka is officially a debt-free city

Mishawaka now joins a seemingly small club of debt-free American cities, according to a release from the mayor’s office. This means some minor savings for homeowners come property tax time, and everyone is invited to a “Debt Retirement Party” on Friday.

Here is the full release:

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In the wake of yesterdays tragic terror attack in Paris, comes in-box material I had not expected.

This is a video from YouTube (No! Not a YouTube Video!?) in which a Paris police officer was reportedly “executed by a terrorist.”  Take a look and tell us what you see.

Note: Press reports identify him as “..Hero French police officer Ahmed Merabet, whose shocking execution at the hands of the Paris gunmen was yesterday caught on camera, was a married 42-year-old Muslim…”

Update…Video was pulled but I found another copy.  Have tried to download a local copy but I am suddenly having issues with that.  Feel free to do that for us if you can.

I moved the back up video to the jump in case this one gets pulled as well.

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My previous post on Pat Caddell’s observation on the anger among the GOP grassroots (“up to one-third of Republicans are ready to call it quits as members of the GOP“) elicited an inbound email  directed towards the NH GOP (emphasis mine) – a real life example of calling it quits:

Just finished your article on Republicans having come to the end of their rope. My interpretation, not especially yours. I could not agree with you more. I worked very hard to get Republicans elected both in the state and on the national level.

I am a Fox News junkie and find Pat Caddell to be an honest observer of what is happening. Even though he is a Democrat, he is fair in his reporting. I cannot agree more with his assessments. After hard work to get our candidates elected for our district you can imagine how we felt when the NH House speakership was “stolen” from our candidate. Within 3 days I had emails from several of our members that they were going down to the town hall to register as an “undeclared” and to hell with our party…the NH GOP <will>be the big losers.

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Remember that awful, horrible, just awful YouTube Video?  The one that for two weeks was the focus of the Obama Administrations explanation for the ‘spontaneous’ attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi?  The one they lied about for weeks?  Yeah, that one.

WMUR News 9 has just posted a story from CNN on the Terrorist attack on Paris Weekly Charlie Hebdo and the papers history of controversy that includes this paragraph:

In September 2012, as France was closing embassies in about 20 countries amid the global furor over the anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims,” the magazine published an issue featuring a cartoon that appeared to depict a naked Mohammed, along with a cover that appeared to depict Mohammed being pushed in a wheelchair by an Orthodox Jew.

Twenty-eight months later and CNN is laying fresh blame on the video?

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