The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.“

– Lady (and former British Prime Minister) Margaret Thatcher

You know, I’m not sure if this is just the kind of creeping socialism that California has been practicing for the last few decades, or just dumb governance ideas gone crazy, or a willingness to participate in the kinds of “cooperative federalism” in which the Feds pass laws that offer much money to the “various States” but with strings attached.  Or, most likely, all of them at the same time (and a few more) (emphasis mine, reformatting):

The Sacramento Bee reports that the state’s Employment Development Department is about to cut its number of staff because the funding it gets from the federal government has been slashed.  Normally, the federal unemployment insurance program is the bulwark for the State Department, but the state will receive $150 million less through next June 15.  The federal program complains it is underfunded, blaming Congressional budget cuts, and is giving California less for two reasons:

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Living here in central NH, weather does go bump in the night.  Bizzards, severe thunderstorm, nor’easters, hurricanes – thankfully we get those but with some advance warning as opposed those Californians that get the “shake & bake” at almost any time with little notice (e.g., earthquakes or wildfires).  You keep food around, you keep a secondary source of heat around, even water.  We were here a few years ago during the great ice storm – we were out of power for almost two weeks.  You prepare accordingly.

You’ve heard about the Feds purchasing lots of ammo – far beyond normal limits for stated needs.  The rumor was 1.6 billion rounds, much of it for Dept. of Homeland Security (which they denied) to the point where Congressional inquiries were started.  At least today, it seems that prices and availability are starting to fall and go up, respectively, and headed back to normal levels.  And then I ran across this earlier this month (yeah, trying to play catch up once again):

This email was received by a company that sells preparedness and survival food stocks. What is the urgency of being able to supply rations within 24 hours?

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Issues that define the TEA Party movement?

• Fiscal frugality on the part of Government
• Constitutional boundaries – limits to Government (to protect us from Government)
• Free Markets

So, in advance of yesterday’s March on Washington on the 50th anniversary of MKL’s “I have a Dream” speech, what topic did a nationally known feminist blame the TEA Party for?

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Minnesota based Granite State Progress got a permit to hold a rally yesterday at 11am out in front of the New Hampshire state house.   The purpose of the rally was to show support for Medicaid expansion in the Granite State.

Yesterday was the public hearing on the issue ( which I wrote about here).  The expansion is a bad idea but it is one progressives want and while turnout for the hearing was good there does not appear to have been any turnout at all for the rally.

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Would_banning_firearms_reduce_murder_and_suicide?

That is the title (link takes you to the 46 pg PDF) of a Harvard study that looked at violent crime, murder and suicide, in various nations, based on the prevalence of guns and gun owners.  As is typical of the white tower, researches who actually look at the data are surprised by the results.  There is no correlation and in fact, places where more citizens are legally able to own firearms have less murder and suicide.

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No, the Farmers Almanac prediction for this winter (which is lent more than a little credence in these parts) is not using sophisticated sensors, sats in space, or high level math to have declared that we all ought to have our woolies cleaned and ready.  Watts Up With That? is one of the heaviest trafficed sites that is skeptical (to the point of being called a chief denier) that global warming is due mainly to human activities.  That’s not to say that the earth ISN’T getting warmer, just that the Warmists are going all enviro and seeing catastrophe around every bend, that humans are the curse and not the cure, and that only by submitting our lives to their Most Beneficient administration will we all get out of this alive in 100 years or so.  Hmm, we keep hearing this from regular type Progressives all the time – thus they have earned the title of Watermelon environmentalists (Green on the outside, Red on the inside (from a time when Socialists / Communists were red, not blue; such is rebranding)) but what is the measured reality vs the prediction of all the models that have been driving all this drivel that “we’re all gonna die!” by too hot (or not able to breath under water from rising sea levels).

And remember, back in the Stone Age of the ’70s, these self declared Smart People were the same ones hootin’ and hollerin’ that “we’re all gonna die” – but from a new Ice Age.  So, having heard that, I keep thinking that this latest stuff is the same thing, just the other side (and there is WAY more money going into this – as in “follow the money”).  Anyhow, WUWT has a post that has the summarization of the most frequently used warming datasets, shows the aggregate on a plot, and then shows that result compared to the IPCC predictions that is driving so much of Government policies in social engineering “for our own good”. The money question is – do the predictions match reality?

I’m afraid not.

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The latter, Trust, unless built upon blind faith (another topic), is only possible if there is a proven history in word and deed of Consistency.  I’ve been writing about this symbiosis and dependence between these two ideas for a while and we had a bit (just a wee bit) of a back and forth on this.  I think that, too often, the Republican Party just doesn’t get it – that the Politicians (and Politicians in waiting and the Operatives behind the Politicians) have forgotten what their Base wants (er, at least this part of the Base) in their hellbent race to do what they think is the ONLY important thing on the docket – WIN.  We all know that, understand that is a prereq, but for US, it is ONLY a prereq: what do you do afterwards.

After the November election, the GOP was all afflutter with “what went wrong” and have spent MILLIONS and millions of man-hours.  I can tell you, easy peasy, what has gone wrong:

1. You didn’t give people a reason to vote FOR the Party
2. Worse, the base that sat on their hands decided that they can’t trust you to do what you said you’d do.

Number 2 is more important than Number 1.  Case in point – Obamacare.  They haven’t repealed it (though they campaigned on doing so), they won’t defund it, and given Obama’s flagrant lawlessness with respect to the actual Obamacare authorizing legislation, they won’t impeach.  In short, they don’t stand up for their promises and they don’t stand up for the Principles they say they “live by”.  In short, when there is no Consistency between Principles, Words, and Deeds (legislative votes), there is no Trust.  And without Trust, they lose the Base – and lose the election.  This is not rocket science – why vote for people that won’t do what they say?

Case in point – another (short) email exchange:

– Skip

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We Groksters blog – a lot.  What most of you readers never see is that we have rip roaring discussions behind the curtain as well.  There can be days when we share no emails at all and then some days, a torrent ranging to a tropical downpour.  Sometimes, entertaining as we pull no punches.  We started in on the topic above: the Nature of Man and Government.  Now, none of us are academicians nor philosophers – merely a bunch of ordinary folk that are concerned that what we once had been given by the Framers has been lost by purposeful obfuscation by a foreign notion from a foreign land: that the idea that Individuals are Sovereign, that we have banded together to protect our Rights given by our Creator is no longer current, no longer useful, and that we, in a Hobbesian / Rousseauian moment of delusion; that we should turn over that sovereignty to a group of Neo-Feudalists (aka, Progressive Socialists) for safe keeping and trust that in their obsession with Collectivism, will be willing to return those Rights after their Workers’ Utopia has been reached.

We believe that Government was formed to protect those values and Rights.  I’ve been writing about this symbiosis and dependence between these two ideas for a while. We Groksters talk about this constantly from roundabout manners.  This time, GraniteGrok returned to its roots about a word from Robert Heinlein’s classic science fiction story “Stranger in a Strange Land”: Grok. As our About page says “To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge” leading to “grok in fullness”.  And we started our internal email conversation (edited for some grammer, some content (to follow the train of thought better), remove some fingertip dyslexia, and some emphasis)  talking about a character from that book whose vocation was that of being  “Fair Witness”:

-Skip

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Democrat Senator Martha Fuller Clark is NOT off the hook and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office, under the ever watchful eye of another New Hampshire Democrat, can make all the consoling statements it wants, Fuller-Clark facilitated the ability of out of state entities to erase your vote.

Consider…

Bryan Gregory Griffith lives in Arkansas but was registered to vote at Martha’s Motel.  When the November election came along he could have voted in either state.  We’ve already established that this creates a constitutionally questionable circumstance.

You can’t vote or claim domicile in Arkansas while living here, and according to Arkansas law, Griffith can’t vote in New Hampshire without abandoning his right of domicile in Arkansas, which I’m quite certain the lawyer from Arkansas has not done.   Something else Bry-Bry didn’t do, vote absentee in Arkansas.  But he did vote absentee in New Hampshire, and Martha Fuller Clark didn’t do a thing to prevent it, probably because Griffith is a Democrat, from another state, not staying in her home when he voted ‘absentee’ from her home, and was voting for her and her parties candidates, and she was certain she could get away with it.

Thanks to the NH AG, she just did.

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When the deficit was 9.x trillion, and we were spending a lot less than a trillion per year on the budget (back in the less than halcyon days when we not only had a budgt but had to have a budget), Democrats were whining about expensive wars and the burden we were putting on working families and our kids.

I realize that after seven years of Democrats more or less owning congress and five years with Obama as President, working and family have taken on a new meaning.  One is a racist term and the other bigoted.  But still, we hear about these mystical working families that Democrats claim to be defending…from working and being a family, is all I can figure.

Where was I?  Budgets, deficits, spending… oh my…

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Farmers Almanac 2014 Winter Prediction

After the unusually warm and snowless winter of 2011–2012, many people questioned if winter could make a comeback. Well it did. Last winter was cold and especially snowy.

So, what’s in store for this winter? The “Days of Shivery” are back! ?For 2013–2014, we are forecasting a winter that will experience below average temperatures for about two-thirds of the nation. A large area of below-normal temperatures will predominate from roughly east of the Continental Divide to the Appalachians, north and east through New England. Coldest temperatures will be over the Northern Plains on east into the Great Lakes. Only for the Far West and the Southeast will there be a semblance of winter temperatures averaging close to normal, but only a few areas will enjoy many days where temperatures will average above normal.

Precipitation-wise, the Southern Plains, Midwest, and Southeast will see above-normal conditions, while the rest of the country will average near normal. With a combination of below-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation the stage will be set for the Midwest, Great Lakes, and Central and Northern New England to receive lots of snow. Farther south, where the thermometer will be vacillating above or below the freezing mark, Southern New England, Southeast New York, New Jersey, and down through the Mid-Atlantic region will be seeing either copious rains and/or snows.

Well, let’s see what happens.  If this holds up, it certainly will put a lot of egg on those faces that have said “Our childrens’ children may never know snow!”

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New Hampshire should not expand Medicaid. Hospitals will lose hundreds of millions of dollars and Taxpayers will be burdened with billions in unfunded mandates.  At least that is what the results of the NH Department of Health and Human Services own study determined.

…an analysis from the Lewin Group, a prominent health care consulting firm, finds that if New Hampshire expands Medicaid, Granite State hospitals will actually lose $228 million in revenue over the next seven years.

and…

While expanding Medicaid will cost New Hampshire billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities, the expansion would only reduce the number of uninsured individuals in the state by 22,300. A larger number would be moved out of higher-quality, private insurance, and into the dysfunctional Medicaid program.

This is from an analysis of the NH DHHS study.  It is how they are supposed to base their own consideration.   Easy enough.  Not right for New Hampshire.

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