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The alternative title was “Concord Monitor: taking cues from Twitter, set up their own comment jail?” The Concord Monitor on Friday afternoon suspended the commenting section on all articles following continued abuses. The Monitor will explore alternatives that facilitate civil dialogue and allow a better ability to ban fake accounts. Not just mine – everyone! … Read more
The last time we formally compared our Alexa Online ranking to other digital footprints in New Hampshire GraniteGrok was sixth on our list. That was last September, right after we launched Grok 3.0. Since then we’ve been caught up in the process of getting all the backend (and some front end) details squared away. I wasn’t really … Read more
Earlier this week, the Executive Council voted on a $4.1 million scholarship plan.
The program, approved by legislators last year, will provide for scholarship funding for 23 post-secondary institutions and training programs. Open to any New Hampshire high school graduates who are eligible to receive Pell Grants, the scholarships are set to be available for the next school year.
From today’s Concord Fish Wrap:
All of us who blog at GraniteGrok expect comments on the things we write, hoping to engage folks in thinking, in discussion, in exchanging ideas. There is only one rule at GG and that is whatever we write – and whatever commenters post – must be family friendly. That means, if your children – or your mother, for that matter – came across GG, they should be able to read anything posted and not be offended. Perhaps they might not agree with what each of us writes, but they should never be offended by bad language or offensive images.
So, as I’ve begun blogging with a bit more frequency, I seem to have caught the fancy of one of GG’s long-time commenters who goes by the handle ‘IWKAGGP’, or as ‘he’ has come to be revealed, ‘Hunter Dan’ who purports to be a school teacher. I’m taking him at his word that he is male but for whatever reason, he seems to have a real problem with me, and not just with what I write. From “IWKAGGP –
“You can’t burp a zygote. You can’t put diapers on a zygote. You can’t breastfeed a zygote. You can’t potty train a zygote. Your comparison is “apples and oranges.”” To “IWKAGGP – Her hair looks different in every picture”.
Thank the good Lord he didn’t pick up on my last year’s little Prada shoes!
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” —Genesis 1:26 (NIV)
Yet another anti-hunting hit piece. The ever-dependable Concord Monitor features such fare. In writing for the Monitor, Barbara Bonsignore provides the straw argument, “Hunters claim that they kill the weak and starving animals, thus helping the population.” I have never heard any hunter make that argument. Ethical hunters are consumptive hunters and our hunting ethos recognizes game animals as a resource not to be wasted.
Bonsignore…well-connected to the New Hamsphire Animal Rights League, (one source indicates she was its’ President at one time) makes several fallacious arguments and claims against hunting.
All we heard from these clowns the last two years was things like don’t you DARE touch the gay marriage law – the Legislature already “settled” the issue. How DARE you Republicans even consider revisiting that law! They adopted the mantra that once done, always done when it comes to the law. Sure, the body politic had decided that the Democrats were the extremists and threw them out of office in 2010. Well, as what always happens, the pendulum swings and the Dems have retaken Concord. Will they also stand firm on their crie-du-coer of “settled” law now that they are in power again?
Hardly. From Pravda-on-the-Merrimac (aka, the Concord Monitor that IS to the NH Dem Party as Pravda was to that other Party) just two days after the election:
Money matters aside, there’s plenty for Hassan and the new Legislature to do, and undo, next year.
The new House should start by exorcising the chamber with the abolition of the goofy but dangerous Regress of Grievances Committee. Then, with the support of the governor, the Legislature should, in short order, repeal the so-called voucher law that, contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the state Constitution, redirects money meant for the general fund to non-public education, including religious schools.
Hassan and the new Legislature should also give the recently-enacted voter ID law the ax. It risks disenfranchising some voters and, in the absence of any evidence of voter fraud, is an unnecessary and meaningless encumbrance on the process.
They should work to repeal the misguided parental notification law on abortion. And they should revisit the new “stand your ground” law and the policy that permits civilians to bring guns into the State House.
You can be sure that this mouthpiece is signaling two things:
“Let the other guys do the crybaby stuff…Go for the laughs.” —Rip Torn
Yesterday Morning, two Concord Monitor Reporters, Ann Marie Yimmons and Matt Spolar, were excluded (Barred – their word, not mine) from a press conference held by House Speaker Bill O’Brien. The topic “de jour” was a discussion of reforms to the ebt system in the state.
So what does Felice Belman, Editor of the Monitor do? She makes speculative statements.
Or, “Why the Mainstream Media Sucks.” Right here in New Hampshire!
Over at the Concord Monitor web site, someone going by the name of ItsaRepublic, has been doing some very heavy lifting for GraniteGrok. They have gone to bat for us on our investigation of Public Employees who have been using the Monitor’s web site, during office hours, at taxpayer expense. Not exactly a friendly environment to promote anything we do here, but we appreciate the effort.
And as I have pointed out previously, the Monitor had begun letting those sorts of comments stand (where in the past they had been known to ‘moderate’ them out of existance), and letting the debate take it’s bi-partisan course. But when it comes to allowing links back to GranitGrok articles on the investigation itself, a CM Moderator has explained why they wont be doing that any time soon…
By CM Moderator – 05/24/2012 – 8:39 am
We do not post links to websites making anonymous allegations against real people. It does not matter whether the site leans to the right or the left.
That’s curious for a few reasons. First, I’ve seen what the monitor passes off for news. Enough said? Second, Anonymous? Allegations?
We’ve been reporting the theft of services by an SEIU Union Chapter VP and NH DES employee Richard de Seve for months as we struggle with the Department of Environmental Services and the State’s IT department, and their resistance to part with data, in response to our Right to Know Requests about state employees using … Read more
This is so funny! What appears below is a column from today’s New Hampshire government-newspaper, the Concord Monitor. I glanced at the top of the top of the column and though “Hey, great! My friend—the excellent Rep. JR Hoell—has written an interesting piece about 2nd Amendment concealed carry for everyone!” So I happily read the excellent column…
If President Obama is re-elected, as the April 25, 2012 Concord Monitor editorial “Cutting food stamps to feed the rich” apparently assumes, then it is right, the Ryan budget won’t provide all the food stamps, unemployment, and other assistance that will be needed.
The Concord Monitor goes on to pooh pooh the idea of “Cadillac driving welfare queens” and undeserving welfare recipients. Some of us are alert enough to have noticed media reports of “Cadillac driving welfare queens” who have been re-located to prison, and we are not naïve enough to think they have all been found.
There is Free Press and then there is Free Speech. And then there is The Concord Monitor. The Concord Monitor would like you to believe that it is a defender of both Free Press and Free Speech. But if that were true, they would not be deleting comments that include links to posts at GraniteGrok. … Read more
The editorial in Friday’s The Citizen, reprinted from the Concord Monitor was totally irresponsible. So, I submitted the following as community commentary to The Citizen, and something similar to the Concord Monitor. I doubt they will publish my input:
+++++++++++++
Please check the attribution of The Citizen’s April 13, 2012 editorial, titled, “A budget to widen nation‘s income gap.“ If it really came from the Concord Monitor, please check to see if they have replaced their editorial staff with the Democrat National Committee. I am shocked that our respected local paper would print such a partisan and totally non-constructive editorial.
The editorial calls the Ryan plan ”radical”. Compared to what? Lets compare it to the Senate‘s budget. Oops, the Democrat controlled Senate doesn’t have a budget, it hasn’t passed a budget in three years!
The Concord Monitor’s April 5 editorial about House Speaker Bill O’Brien is one of the sillier ones of the last year and a half. It reminds me of the old legal adage, “When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is … Read more
OK, given how much GraniteGrok has been blogging about Richard de Seve and his political activities on the taxpayer dime, it was finally logical to Google him and see “have we been able to get our investigation out there?”. The answer is yes: the two highest rated search items are about his LinkIn profile – and then GraniteGrok’s posts start showing up immediately thereafter with no small smattering of other sites reposting our stories. But I found two other totally unrelated items about Mr. de Seve that were unexpected – Koofers.com (a student-rating-professor site) and a Letter that Mr. de Seve wrote back in 2006 at (where else??) the Concord Monitor (I have screen scraped the Letter if need be, given it’s content.). First, Koofers:
Only two students have rated him as a Law Professor; they aren’t impressed:
Arrogant, pompous, driven by ideology, more agenda – how could I be surprised? But that ain’t the worst of it! He decided to share his thoughts about 9/11 with us (emphasis mine):
Have you been following the tragic tale? It’s a dog bites man story. State agency appears to have an IT policy it can’t or wont enforce, the result of which is that people who blog for a hobby are the only ones with any hope of keeping public employees from wasting your time and tax … Read more
Democrats like to manage society, ever more so when they believe it has misbehaved. So here’s an idea the left ought to embrace with both left arms.
Because it is against state policy to use state computers for activities outside their intranet, like reading online news or–heaven forbid whiling the day away commenting on news portals like the Concord Monitor while on the taxpayers payroll–why hasn’t one of the states IT guru’s blocked all those IP’s from within the states network? (We know they have not.)
The policy is very clear yet the system is left open to abuse. So is this trust that the government is extending to state employees, something its leftist advocates are loath to offer to regular citizens on a wide range of things. Well, that trust has been broken.
A follow on to Steve’s post: “Is A NH Public Employee Using The Internet to Sell his Political Agenda On Your Time?”
Well, let’s start with the easy stuff. First, many companies of “size” have strict regulations about what employees can and cannot do with computer equipment – and Internet access using that equipment. After all, it isn’t the employe’s as someone else (i.e., the owner, the stockholders, the taxpayers) ended up with less money in their pocket so that this equipment could be purchased, could be provisioned (e.g., sSo, does the State of NH have such a document? InDEED it does!
In fact, there are several, very specific restrictions on what / how State of NH Employees can do with State owned computer equipment and networks – and Internet access. It also seems that each employee has to sign it to show that they have read the document (and, hopefully, understand it:
2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
YOUR SIGNATURE AND INITIALS ARE REQUIRED AT THE END OF THIS DOCUMENT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ AND UNDERSTAND THIS POLICY.
I would assume, given that Mr. De Seve is allowed the use of “Esq.” after his name (as he is a lawyer), the he would understand that this puts a legal obligation on every employee within State Government. Thus, anything he does (or doesn’t do) with State owned equipment paid for with taxpayer monies entrusted to his care are specifically enumerated within the policy (just like one of the SEIU Collective Bargaining Agreements he negotiated on behalf of the union with the State).
Once again, there is such a clause!
3 COMPUTER USE
The network and computer equipment are State of New Hampshire property and are to be used for State business purposes only.
Just thought I’d bold that part – makes it easier to follow along here in pointing out the important stuff. And yes, this is important! And if that wasn’t clear enough, being a Government document, it goes into more excruciating detail: