For immediate release.

Just a few hours after touting a bipartisan leadership style in her inaugural address, Governor Maggie Hassan, at today’s Governor and Council meeting, refused to allow or even discuss a motion from Councilor Wheeler to restore elected oversight of state contracts under $25,000.

Counselor Wheeler noted that “the previous Democrat controlled Council, knowing they would soon lose power, raised the oversight level to include only contracts and spending items over $25,000.” He contrasted this to the process just a few years ago where all contracts over $5,000 received Council oversight.

“This is a five fold increase in value of contracts not overseen by the council in the last few years,” Wheeler added. “This new secretive approach must go. The public has a right to know exactly how their money is being spent and who is receiving it. The more that is done in public, the less there is opportunity for corruption and graft.”

New Hampshire’s Executive Council was established to be a check on the unrestrained powers of both the executive and legislative branch. 

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Okay, competitions over. No need holding our breath for the next 12 months to find out the winner of the “Dumbest Thing Said in 2015” competition. This guy’s a sure thing. Speaking to Andrea Mitchell (who’s placed in the competition in years past), Eugene Robinson, provided his thoughts on the Islamic Terror attacks in Paris and said:

“Just to keep it into perspective, I don’t think we should imagine that the conditions and the threat are exactly the same in the United States as they are in France. They are different. In fact, one thing that is different here is weapons are universally available and so it is actually a very good thing that, that the tensions are not exactly the same because we would expect to have a lot more carnage,”

His implication: Think if there terror attacks occurred here, my God, they’d have guns! Think of the carnage.

I’m sure that’s what the supine police officer in France was thinking as the terrorist scum raced towards him with an AK-47 raised in his direction, “Thank God I can’t defend myself!”

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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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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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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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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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Much has been made of this current Congress not able to pass legislation – as if that was their major Constitutional mandate.  Certainly the media does believe that as well as Progressives and Big / Bigger Government lovers for it seems that “the masses” need to be controlled, that they are children that need direction from their betters.  So a chart like this:

…believes there is a lack of governance, that Government only works when “stuff gets done”.  It doesn’t for me because all it has become is a Money Transfer Mechanism – taking over $1 Trillion / year (when you look at the Federal budget) from some to give to others for “Social Justice” purposes that used to be called “the dole”.  It’s simply an expression of the Progressive “Freedom from need” – you cannot be free if you have worry (at all) about anything.  Freedom from need, freedom from want – let someone else provide for you.

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