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The shift from mutual aid and self-help to the welfare state has involved more than a simple bookkeeping transfer of service provision from one set of institutions to another. As many of the leaders of fraternal societies had feared, much was lost in an exchange that transcended monetary calculations. The old relationships of voluntary reciprocity … Read more
Engineers HAVE to fix root causes when they are obvious – or they get that achy, fidgety feeling even worse. (H/T: The Home Front)
I had bookmarked this a couple of days ago as it mirrors the same situation here in NH – Voter ID. For Conservatives, this should be but a simple matter: with the current and rampant Identity Theft epidemic, what is so wrong with making sure that the person who is asking for a ballot is … Read more
The notion that New Hampshire needs to set a minimum wage higher than the current and equally arbitrary federal rate is as flawed a notion as the faux-benefit of a federal minimum wage in the first place. But New Hampshire Democrats and some Democrats elected as Republicans, continue to make a case for it.
But allowing the government to define an arbitrary price point for labor is absurd and anyone who has ever had a job already knows why.
Grant Bosse has a great piece over at NH Watchdog that addresses the hyperbole of New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan on the state budget and its priorities. Hassan has decided to ignore the striking similarities between her budget, the House version, and the Senate version, and has instead chosen to release her talking points to the professional left so they will be equipped to shout down anyone who dares point out the obvious.
Quoting Grant…
My colleague Joshua-Elliott Traficante at the Josiah Bartlett Center finds that the governor’s budget, the House budget, and the budget up for debate by the full Senate this week have nearly identical priorities for the critical areas that Hassan claims are at risk.
“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” — James Madison, Federalist #51.Via Ace – read the whole thing:
Organizations large and small develop unique cultures over time. You see this in companies like IBM, Apple, and GM. Employees who stay in these companies over the long term, those who move up the ladder into the executive suite, tend to personify these corporate cultures to a great degree. Employees marry each other, socialize with each other, attend the same events. In company towns, this corporate culture can characterize the entirety of the town itself.
Which is why the current IRS scandal has left me completely unsurprised.
He’s shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED! !
New Hampshire Democrats attacked Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte’s vote on the background check bill by supporting the out of state anti-gun money 
spent by New York City Mayor while bringing someone from Connecticut here to tell us how we need to support the same kinds of laws for New Hampshire that failed in Connecticut–as if we couldn’t make that choice for ourselves.
Well someone has a message for those New Hampshire Democrats and Mayor Bloomberg…
The mayor of New York City is running ads against me because I opposed President Obama’s gun control legislation. Nothing in the Obama plan would have prevented tragedies like Newtown, Aurora, Tucson or even Jonesboro. I’m committed to finding real solutions to gun violence while protecting our Second Amendment rights.
Who said it?
He must be in Hog-Heavan. Chris P. Bacon doesn’t have a movie deal like Grumpy Cat but he does have a web presence, Facebook and Twitter, merchandise, and a three book-deal. (Thanks to the Internet you can turn your handicapped pig into a revenue stream.) Lucero and his now-5-month-old pig announced that the inspiring little … Read more
…ALWAYS spot-on!
Via The Looking Spoon:
What, you disagree that we need more than BaCoN? You fools! EVERYthing tastes better with bacon!!! (far better than Steve’s peanuts….) (H/T: Powerline)
FairPoint Communications purchased all of Verizon’s landline business a few years in NH, VT, and ME. They made a big deal out as well they should have – it greatly increased their subscriber base. They also made a lot of promises, such as ramping up employment and rolling out “high speed” Internet, especially out in the northern part of the state. However, they took on a ton of debt to do so – and it showed early on in carrying out those promises.
Personally, their customer service sucked. Just as soon as they announced their “new website”, I went over to set up electronic payments – especially since they had to pay Verizon to continue to provision a number of software packages as FairPoint was not ready with their own when Cutover (when the line transferred from Verizon to FairPoint). Accurracy and quality of response simply sucked when the FairPoint systems kicked in. I CANNOT tell you how many hours I spent on the phone trying to get my online account to actually allow me to pay my bill. I finally gave up and just recently tried again (and was quite surprised when it actually worked).
Yeah, that feeling lasted a whole long time. I called them a bit ago on a billing question and ended up signing up (under NH’s deregulation of the electricity provider industry) to sign up for their electrical provisioning arm, FairPoint Energy (yeah, delusional at the time). Kept paying the PSNH bill as normal – and I did see a small downtick in the cost. But NOT enough to put up with this:
But this is more of the case of winning the “TSA Lottery” – and frequent fliers know EXACTLY what I mean. You have just gotten the attention of theatrical security corps and they are about to go through your stuff and your junk and apply that micro-duster to your carryon. Well, in the last couple of days, our HHS Bureaucratic Overlords (you know, the ones that have decided that Religious values has no place in THEIR Public Square) have announced a few more “features” that our pocketbooks are going to cringe over. Most of us knew that the Young are going to be paying well MORE than their fair share in supporting Obama’s Socialized Medicine and that Oldsters would not be (mostly because they vote more frequently). Those following this “train wreck” (great line, Senator Baucus! Thanks for being the “Architect” for this – and now retiring as it comes into reality) pulling out of the station already knew that smokers are going to get hit REAL heard by this – their premiums may lead the pack (yes, pun intended).
But the news of the day is that there are now others in the Obama line to pay the Obamacare train wreck ticket prices:
Yeah I win the Trifecta – even as the last two CAN be modified by weight loss, but EVERYone in my Mom’s family had the last two two – ya think the IRS will give me a pass on my paperwork (due to genetics)? I CAN fix the first (yeah, I gotta start that diet again) but the genetics are already stacked against me there. Hey, IT.JUST.ISNT.MY.FAULT! But what about…
(H/T: Liberal Logic 101)
From this morning’s Union Leader: ” A Thank You: Sens. Nancy Stiles, R-Hampton, and Lou D’Allesandro, D-Manchester, were absent from Thursday’s Senate session. They were in Jordan at the invitation of the king, who wanted to thank them for their work to allow the American University of Madaba, which is located in Jordan but incorporated … Read more
An Ohio woman held a would-be burglar at gunpoint until police arrived, warning him, “if you move, you’re gonna go to the morgue.” Tammy Takach of Steubenville was sleeping Thursday morning when a noise in her home woke her up. She told WPXI-TV she grabbed her gun and went downstairs to find an intruder who’d … Read more