From the Union Leader (emphasis mine, reformatted):

One Medicaid managed-care company leaving the state

CONCORD — Meridian Health Plan, one of the three managed-care companies administering the state Medicaid program, will withdraw June 30.  Meridian, based in Detroit, Mich., said it wants to focus on its core businesses in the Midwest.  With the NH Health Protection Program beginning this year, Meridian and the Department of Health and Human Services agreed a summer withdrawal would minimize disruption to the program and newly eligible patients.  “We will work quickly with the company to develop a transition plan that protects Meridian members,” said Health and Human Services Commissioner Nicholas Toumpas. “Meridian’s members and providers can be assured that we will work very closely with Meridian on how best to transition their members to our other two MCOs.”

Read more

“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year.“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

Buy that park.  Buy that library.  Buy more schools.  Buy light rail (think Boston’s Green line).  Buy EVERYTHING for that foundational Progressive saying “It’s about the quality of life!”.  Sure it is – for there is NO connection between having Government do more and more for your quality of life and the cost of the same.  Congratulations, Gretchen, you just “only a cuppa coffee a day” yourself out of the neighborhood for every spending project possible – how’s that “Java tank truck” of your’s getting for mileage now?  You wanted it, you voted for it – and now you are complaining that you’ve priced yourself out of your own home?   While on my Budget Committee in my hamlet, I fought against new or expanded projects because I KNOW the people that can’t keep up with rising property taxes.  But this one, that did it to herself?  Hoisted on her own petard, logically speaking – no sympathy for this one.

We think of Texas as being this really Conservative state – but just like Portsmouth or the college towns here in NH, Austin is a dot of Liberal Progressive blue in a sea of red.  Liberal?  Check.  High taxes?  Check.  Looking for a scapegoat instead of looking at yourself and said “maybe we shouldn’ta bought all that stuff“?  Check (emphasis mine, reformatted):

Read more

 A Merrimack business group rescinded its invitation for a one-on-one meeting with Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown after concluding that Brown ducked showing up at a forum with his GOP primary rivals. Merrimack Business Association President David McCray said it’s clear to him Brown’s campaign was untruthful that he couldn’t make a June 18 forum with other candidates in the town because of a scheduling conflict.  In a letter to Brown campaign officials, McCray said the invitation was extended more than six weeks ago.

McCray cited an editorial in The Telegraph that revealed Brown’s campaign had sought to have the candidate meet with the newspaper’s editorial board during the day on June 18.

Steve wrote about this here (and Mike on the shell company) but I wanted to add my two cents (and Mike has the story on He may not be able to say it, but we here at the ‘Grok can say what others only WISH they could say:  IT CERTAINLY LOOKS LIKE SCOTT BROWN OUTRIGHT LIED TO YOU, doesn’t it?  After all, the leader is responsible for the actions and statements of those underneath him.  It works both in civilian life and in the military world.  Else, how could Brown tell the Merrimack Business Association to go pound sand while at the same time trying to firm up time with the Telegraph board??

Read more

The California state legislature is considering a bill that would require (verbal or) written consent before sex on all college campuses in the state. ( Breitbart)

According to the language of the bill, “consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual encounter, and can be revoked at any time. The existence of a dating relationship between the persons involved, or the fact of past sexual relations between them, should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent.”

The point of the bill, according to sponsors, is to address poor handling of the rape culture issue on college campuses that got Dartmouth and 54 other colleges in hot water last month. Claims of rape, actual rape, the very definition of rape, have become all muddled by an army of gender studies professors, but then, what else might you expect in a sexually charged, gender-no-matter, litigious, PC paradise like the modern American University?  The answer has to be to add another law, right?

And one need only look at the source of the legislation, nutty California Democrats, to gauge the scope of the hypocrisy that follows from it.  They are putting even more of the government into people’s bedrooms.

Read more

 Jeanne Shaheen Is Thankful for Bowe Bergdahl’s ‘Courage’

June 2, 2014

U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) released the following statement after it was announced that Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was being released after five years in captivity in Afghanistan:

“I was so grateful to hear of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl’s release after five years in captivity. His release is an incredible testament to our military and our country’s commitment to leaving no one behind on the battlefield. I am looking forward to him being reunited with his family soon and am thankful for his service, his sacrifice, and his courage.”

Bowe Bergdahl appears to have been a deserter and terrorist sympathizer who aided and abetted the enemy. It also seems clear that he was portrayed as a prisoner of war so he could be exchanged for as many high ranking Taliban leaders as could be managed.

Obama and his administration fell for it, probably clawing for some semblance of foreign policy win. Jeanne Shaheen did what she always does–went along with Obama for the ride. But Bowe is looking a lot like a suicide bomber without the bomb–potentially trading his life for five leading Taliban terrorists.

Read more

President Peace Prize, NH’s Jeanne Shaheen, even Congresspersons Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes (Paul Who?), claimed that Afghanistan was the war we should be fighting.

Well, after six years under Obama (with Shaheen on the hook for six years as well), guess what?  It’s Their War.  This is Obama’s War.  It is Jeanne Shaheen’s War.

Why is Afghanistan, as Bob Woodward correctly termed it, Obama’s war? Del Castillo’s sharp pencil work shows that during the period 2002-2013, $650 billion have been appropriated for the Afghan war effort, and a whopping $487.5 billion of that (or 75%) took place after President Obama took office (see accompanying chart).

Read more