Notable Quote – John Mackey

“Capitalism is ending poverty on planet earth. The problem is not that there is an unequal distribution of wealth in the world. The problem is that there is an unequal distribution of capitalism. – John Mackey, Founder and CEO, Whole Foods

Colorado Ammo Mag Company says “You Pass that Bill and We’re Gone.”

News from the world of ‘How bad did you really want that‘ and “reap what you sow“…(Michelle Malkin.com)

On Friday, liberal lawmakers in the Colorado state House passed legislation requiring background checks on private gun sales and placing limits on ammo magazines. A final vote may come today before the bills move on to the state Senate. Dems now hold majorities in both chambers and the governor’s mansion is occupied by Democrat John Hickenlooper.

…

Colorado’s largest and most profitable manufacturer of high-capacity ammunition magazines has vowed to leave the state if lawmakers pass a measure banning the devices — a move officials with the company say could cost hundreds of jobs and upward of $85 million in potential spending this year

Most of Magpul’s materials vendors are in Colorado and it looks like some of them may follow Magpul wherever they go, taking jobs, revenues…all of it with them.

So is Magpul that serious?

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“Chase” That Chill Away – HB 307 is Dead.

Last Wednesday the New Hampshire House voted on HB 307, an act relative to government being a big pain in the ass.  Wait…that would be most of the bills and all of the ones written by Democrats.   I’ll be more specific.

HB 307 – AN ACT relative to the removal of certain wood stoves upon the sale of a home and notification of such removal to the department of environmental services.

While that might keep someone at DES from wasting your tax dollars surfing the Internet, the committee released it to the House as Inexpedient to legislate. (From the House record)

The purpose of the bill was relative to the removal and destruction of certain woodstoves not certified for sale as new after July 1, 1986 by the government protection agency. The reason given was to reduce excessive particulate discharge from certain inefficient wood burning stoves. The committee had questions about enforcement, and financial reimbursement of the owner’s property, hence the ITL motion. Vote 13-6.

When it came time for the floor vote to put an end the HB 307 nine legislators voted to try and save it.

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What if we DIDN’T have the genius of Federalism? Magpul is an object lesson

Grokster Steve just put this post up concerning Colorado based Magpul, one of the premier gun magazine manufacturers in the country (along with lots of other accessories – and yes, I have a few of their mags).  Right at the end is this announcement from the CEO, warning Colorado legislators they are not bluffing (emphasis mine):

We’re hearing some rumors that the Gov and the Dem caucus think we are bluffing. Just to clarify for them, then…we’re not a political company. We don[‘]t play political games. We’ve made our position very clear, very publicly. We would not survive lying to our customer base, nor would we ever consider it. If you pass this, we will leave, and you will own it. We’ve already got plans in place to get PMAG manufacturing moved rapidly, and the rest of the company will follow. We will make sure to at least have a small remain-behind operation through the 2014 elections so that we can remind folks why we are gone.

States and provinces (or whatever other terminology works) are invariably mere subdivisions of their respective nations – a top-down command and control system (as town and cities are here in NH).  But our Founders, in their philosophical genius, came up with the idea of Federalism whereby the States retain their Sovereignty within the national system (leaving aside seceding).  Would Magpul be able to pull off this economic and PR threat future promise  if regulatory and taxation policies were “normalized” across the nation?  That basing one’s operations in NH would be no different than in California?  How would this play out if there was only the Federal government and “regional administrators”?

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O Lights Another Exploding Cigar

The cunning charlatan-in-chief has once again outdone and outsmarted someone… himself.

Just last month, one of O’s schemes exploded in the faces of his voters as if they were attending an exploding cigar festival and he was the one doling out the stogies.  O promised not to raise taxes on families making under $250,000. Then, with his keen focus and acute brinksmanship, he solidified the “Bush tax cuts” for 99% percent of the people that pay income taxes (yeah, Boehner got snookered; keep telling yourself that) . That sounds good, right?  Well, wait. There’s more.  While he solidified those cuts, he simultaneously allowed taxes to go up on net to families that make under $250K, thus detonating yet another promise with the same sly agility as Wile E. Coyote.

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Obama’s SOTU:“They deserve a vote,”

“They deserve a vote,” he intoned during the obligatory gun control portion of his speech. “They deserve a vote,” he repeated, just in case you missed it the first time. “Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence – they deserve a simple vote.”

(H/T: RightWingNews)

A State of the Union address?  Nay, Narcissist-in-Chief Obama turned it into a political agenda rally. I remembered another time when such politcking was that crass – I tweeted a bit during the State of the Union address this past Tuesday and this is what I said as Obama talked deserving a vote:

He just turned SOTU into the gun equivalent of the Wellstone funeral. Disgusting.

US Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) was one of the most Liberal folks in the Senate at the time of his death (plane crash just before the elections of 2002).

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Notable Quote: Lord Acton on Rights of Man and America

Europe seemed incapable of becoming the home of free States. It was from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their own business, and that the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of State–ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden from Latin folios–burst forth like a … Read more

NH Listens? No They Don’t. They Tell!

NH Listens is running around the state training “facilitators” to advance a decidedly left wing agenda.  And why not?  The ‘interim’ directer of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire–which runs NH Listens–is not only a well connected left winger, he doesn’t even live in the granite State.

He lives in Maine.

And have you seen who he donates to politically?

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Zero Hedge and “the machinations of a single party system”

ZeroHedgeLogoZero Hedge is a blog that according to Wikipedia “reports on economics, Wall Street, and the financial sector.” In 2009 it exposed the practice of “flash trading” by Goldman Sachs’ to gain what were said to be unfair profits. In 2012 Zero Hedge had almost 2 million readers a month, a number that is apparently growing. Today an essay was posted on Zero Hedge that is both very alarming and very well-written. Its thesis is that…

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Maybe the start of a Revolution? Pushback against the faux “freedom” of Progressivism?

This paragraph from Tim’s post on Zero Hedge really caught my eye:

There is no other culture on earth that has the capacity, like Americans currently do, to defeat centralists, defend individual liberty, and end the pursuit of total global power in this lifetime. We are the first and last line. If freedom is undone here, it is undone everywhere for generations to come. This is our responsibility. This is our providence. There can be no complacency. There can be no compromise. There can be no fear. It ends on this ground. One way, or another….

Indeed; if not me, who?  Ronald Reagan’s statement on freedom comes to mind:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

My answer to that is simply read what I write here – I (and the other Groksters) do fight in the arena of ideas every day here at the ‘Grok.  That said, there is no doubt that another incipient pushback beginning against Progressively driven Government that is, more and more, shoving itself into all aspects of our lives.  This morning I learned that Cheaper Than Dirt, Templar Custom, and EFI all have effectively said “if your civilians can’t buy our products, your government can’t either”.

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Data Point – Teenage Jobless Rate vs Minimum Wage increases

Teenage Unemployment vs Minimum Wage increases(H/T: AEIdeas)

For years, I have been saying “where are all the traditional teen-age entry level jobs?” with the stereotypical gas station high school attendants example.  Yes, times have changed and the types of jobs of changed.  Yes, there are some teens that have hit it big in the tech field where meritocracy and innovation can propel some to the top in a single step.  On the other hand, what percentage of teens operate at that level?

Obama said that he wants to move the minimum wage to $9 – a “living wage” that can support a family at or above the poverty line.  There’s a couple of problems with this:

  • Why do we allow, since the New Deal, Government to deny us Economic Liberty and Freedom?  If Government can mandate $9 now, why not $15 next year (“we have established what you are – now we are only haggling over the price”)?
  • Why do we let Government continue to “fundamentally transform” the economics of America by Government fiat?  Fascism (the true meaning) is so much Government control over the means of production that actually owning it is no longer needed; that was used in both Italy by Mussolini and in Germany by Hitler (and no breaching of Godwin’s Law here).

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A use of the Fifth Amendment to protect the Second

Commerce Claws the rest of the Constitution?US Senator Diane Feinstein and NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo have infamously said that they would be fine with an outright confiscation of citizens firearms.  We do see talk of Government officials, via either official or de facto gun registration databases, coming to demand peoples’s guns.  Some have mentioned voluntary gun buybacks (which I would be fine with from the owners standpoint (not so much using my tax money to do so, however).  Some, however have declared that such should be mandatory.  Which then triggers the Fifth Amendment:

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Already there is talk that the NY SAFE gun ban may well be unconstitutional as it mandates that gun owners must get rid of their arms and standard capacity magazines (no, they are NOT high capacity magazines with 10-15 rounds for a handgun and 30 rounds for a modern sporting rifle as those have been sold for years for time and in the millions for quantity of sales). In essence, to this non-lawyer (oh, Grokster Tim?  Weigh in here if you can!), it seem that the State is “taking” a person’s personal property away without recompense (and in fact, declaring them to be a felon).  So would simply paying the owners $50 a pop for mags sufficient?  Hmmm, Lars Larson, a talk show host that I listen to in the early evenings if I am out and about has an interesting theory that simply paying for them is insufficient to satisfy the Fifth (and thus, protecting the Second):

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Madam Pelosi, a job’s “dignity” comes from doing it right.

 

NH Democrats have Nancy Pelosi Values - and they used to be proud of that.
NH Democrats have Nancy Pelosi Values – and they used to be proud of that.

Rasmussen:

Even after going along with President Obama and compromising on a deal to avoid the end-of-the-year “fiscal cliff,” Congress receives good or excellent marks for its job performance from just nine percent (9%) of Likely U.S. Voters. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 64% give the nation’s legislators poor marks.

The Hill:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she opposes a cut in congressional pay because it would diminish the dignity of lawmakers’ jobs.

“I don’t think we should do it; I think we should respect the work we do,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. “I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”

As we in the private sector know, the amount of dignity comes not from what you do, but how well you do it.  Not everyone can hold the “prestige” jobs even if they have the ability to do so.  Dignity is not an attribute that is accorded to you just on your say so, Nancy Pelosi.  If the level of pay (approx $174,000 / year) is the true measure of “dignity”, our Representatives have accorded themselves quite the allotment of dignity all to themselves by themselves.  Dignity comes from a job well done – not mere words.  Can she really think that the job being done right now is exemplary of the full definition of dignity?

About Merrimack’s Town Tax Rate

Town of Merrimack NHMore than a few folks in Merrimack probably had heart attacks when they saw the front page article “Council OKs 23.5 million budget” in the Merrimack Telegraph Journal.  In the second paragraph, right below the front page fold, it claimed this new budget would mean a  $5.25 increase per $1000.00 of assessed value.

That would be an increase of approximately $1,312.00 per year for a home valued at $250,000.00 and a new town rate of $10.50/1000 –the sorts of numbers typically reserved  as the low end of a school budget that still can’t manage to teach math adequately.

Those are torch and pitchfork numbers.

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My Christmas present from the Youngest came in just in time for Saturday

Molon Labe - AR-15

The Youngest gave me a slim envelope yesterday and in it was an accessory for my AR-15: Molon Labe (“Come and get them”).

Molon Labe with a Gadsden Flag twist (close up after the jump)!  And just in time, for this Saturday (2/23) there is a 223 Day of Resistance rally at the NH State house being held in conjunction with rallys all over the country by other like minded folks

.223 Day of Resistance Header

Susan Olsen (who writes here at GraniteGrok)  is the organizer for the Concord rally – details here:

Concord, NH Day of Resistance Rally
Location: State Capital Steps
Time: 12 noon – 2 pm
Sponsoring Organization: Molon Labe New Hampshire
Organizer Contact: Susan Olsen MolonLabeNewHampshire@hotmail.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/495242900522432/

If coming to Concord is a bit too far, I would be remiss in letting you know that our friends in the Free State Project are

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Guest Post by NH State Rep. Jane Cormier – “ICLEI is ICKY!”

ICLEI is ICKY!

Okay, if you haven’t heard anything about the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) also known as Agenda 21, then you may have been living in a cave. ICLEI is a United Nations sponsored organization (that should tell us something right there) which helps promote “sustainability, climate protection, and clean energy initiative for towns, cities, and counties”. ICLEI supports (usually with GIANT federal tentacles) local governments by providing technical assistance and training opportunities to communities seeking its services. Sounds good doesn’t it? Actually, ICLEI is a lobbying and policy group that is designed to influence and change local governmental policies related to all aspects of human life. ICLEI/Agenda 21 is dedicated to changing the ideal of our inalienable rights which include life, liberty, and property. How does this happen?

Through legislation of course.

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