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GraniteGrok

A new arrow has been added to the Citizen’s quiver: make’em pay!

NH Right To KnowWe here at the ‘Grok have used RTK requests( NH’s RSA 91-A, the Right To Know law which is better known elsewhere as FOIA – Freedom Of Information Act) a few times in the past (Richard De Seve, the DES employee blogging on NH taxpayer dime, getting emails from the NH Water Commission that is looking to revoke private water rights) and we have a new project coming up soon.  I have also used this in my own town, and have given advice to others trying to get information from recalcitrant public officials and department at town, county, and State level.

One thing we have ALL found out is that when these recalcitrants decide to truly be recalcitrant (as in “Who do these subject believe themselves to be?  You’ll get it IF I feel like it and when I get around to it”), there was little recourse that the normal citizen had except to take their valuable time and spend their hard earned cash to sue in court to get data that they have already paid for via their taxes.  Elected officials and bureaucrats could just wait them out or stymie the requestors by withholding data – without worrying about any consequences .

BUT! not any MORE!  Thanks to Bob Guida, who had a hand in HB 1223, Citizens now have a way to make Big Government come to heel come January:

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Notable Quote – George Will: observation and advice to Progressives

Many liberals who, with solemn self-congratulation, call themselves “pro-choice” become testy when the right to choose is not confined to choosing to kill unborn babies. They say the right to choose is not progressive when it enables parents to choose their children’s schools or permits workers to choose not to fund unions’ political advocacy. Democrats … Read more

Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA): “The Rights of the few…”

Every Sunday, I DVR the talking head shows.  This week was more arduous than most because we already knew what the topic du show were going to be: Newtown and the horrific event that happened there.  Knowing, too, who was going to be on the shows, I heard exactly what I thought I would – call for increased gun control under the stereotypical Progressive rubrics of “Nobody needs that” and “I don’t know anyone that…” as if on their worldview, only their “acceptable” items should be purchased under some strange definition of “Freedom”.  But that wasn’t the worst of it – my eyes nearly popped when I hear Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA, San Francisco) say the following on “Meet the Press” (emphasis mine):

Is this the way we want America to go?  In other words, the Rights of the few overcome the safety of the Majority?  I don’t think so!  I think America is ready (on her intent to submit a gun control bill on the first day of the next session).

The “Rights of the few” – funny, I always thought that Rights were an innate part of the ALL simply because they are US Citizens.  Perhaps I am just too old school for these fascist Progressives – I do believe in what the Founders wrote that our Rights are given to us by our Creator and Nature’s God and not just a bunch of legislators yammering away.  Sadly, she is from the philosophical Left that only believes that when it is conducive to their argument of the day.

No, Ms. Feinstein, it is NOT the “Rights of the few” –

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Blogline of the Day – blame game

“Wait. So Eric Holder isn’t to blame for Fast and Furious, but the NRA is to blame for school shootings? Got it.”

Progressives truly believe that laws change EVERYONE’s behavior – and ignore everyone’s nature.

What a rather silly notion, Skip.  Why, if Progressives actually believed Law, we Conservatives would never have had a (sad) hoot of a time with Sec. of Treasuery Timothy “Turbo Tax” Geitner, Sec of Labor Hilda Solis, Cabinet wannabe Tom Dashle and the other assorted current denizens of the White House staff who have “under obeyed” well known and understood tax Laws.  All it took, as they derided “the rich for not paying their ‘fair’ share”, was to just not bother to whip out their checkbook or credit card.  Paying THEIR fair share to the Govt that they administer?  Doing the right thing?   Those are just laws for the masses…

..just not for them, the “enlightened” ones.  Or so it seems.

They just don’t get it – people watch so-called leaders.  They look for consistency – will they stay the course or do they fold?  Do they do things and pass laws that are truly for the “common good” (whatever that means anymore) or just for some special interest group?  Do they say one thing to one set of people, and another to yet a different group?  Does their public persona match that of the private one?

Or their morality?  Or how they have changed what sets our public morality?

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There’s a coupla reasons this gun grabber petition isn’t going anywhere….

Here is the White House petition that the “Security and Safety comes before Freedom” gun-grabbers have put up:

The goal of this petition is to force the Obama Administration to produce legislation that limits access to guns. While a national dialogue is critical, laws are the only means in which we can reduce the number of people murdered in gun related deaths.

Powerful lobbying groups allow the ownership of guns to reach beyond the Constitution’s intended purpose of the right to bear arms. Therefore, Congress must act on what is stated law, and face the reality that access to firearms reaches beyond what the Second Amendment intends to achieve.

The signatures on this petition represent a collective demand for a bipartisan discussion resulting in a set of laws that regulates how a citizen obtains a gun.

  • “ the only means in which we can reduce the number of people murdered in gun related deaths” – Really?  That presumes that the only thing that can be done is to establish more and more laws – external governance.  Why is it that the real underlying cause is the Culture (under Progressive manipulation) has been a desensitizing towards the value of a human life?  Are they saying inculcating a real reverence for life, strengthening the internal values, is a worse way to solve the problem?  Or does that interfere with that other Progressive value – killing of unborn babies upon demand?

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If the Political Class is terrified by a lobby group, we know their priorities are screwed up

On the Piers Morgan show was an exchange with the Congressional Progressive Caucus member, Nadler (D-NY):

REP. JERROLD NADLER (D), NEW YORK: What are we most angry about? It’s that every poll shows that by massive majorities, Americans agree with what you just said. Yet we have a lobby, the leadership of the NRA, who function as enablers of mass murder. And that’s what they are. They’re enablers of mass murder, because they terrify the class of political people. And even though polling shows that most NRA members would support reasonable gun controls, every time someone proposes it, they come in. They lie. They say they will take your guns away. And they stop any kind of legislation to prevent that.

First, I want to see that poll of NRA members and what they agreed to what ‘reasonable’ is defined as.  Certainly, keeping firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill and deranged  and of those of violent felons is a given.  But many gun owners DO believe that there are those, such as Nadler himself and certainly Nanny NYC Mayor Bloomberg would have no problem in taking each and every gun and bullet if ever given the slightest chance.

But I really chuckled at “They’re enablers of mass murder, because they terrify the class of political people“.  What is that phrase again by John Basil Barnhill?  Ah yes:

“Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.”

Perfect –

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Why not the teachers?

Fox News Sunday:

On the program earlier, Illinois Democrat senator Dick Durbin argued that arming school employees would be the wrong way to tackle the matter.

“I honestly think that that argument just doesn’t hold water,” Durbin said, “When you think about it, are we talking about arming teachers, arming principals? Is that going to make us a safer America? I don’t think so. Too many people are harmed by firearms, their own firearms, accidentally misused or turned on them.”

Well, we’ve armed pilots on planes, to good effect in the skies (along with air marshalls, and no one is complaining that they are armed).  Sometimes, when I used to fly often, it was easy to pick out the A.M. as they joked and talked too much with the flight crew and if they stood just right, you could see they were carrying.  If I could do it, so could the bad guys.  Thus, the pilots are the last line of defense against evil.

Durbin has no basis to assert what he does – he doesn’t know that it wouldn’t make schools safer.  In the first few moments of a tragedy like CT, people are going to get hurt and, unfortunately, die.  But given some short amount of time (as the national average is about 23 minutes for law enforcement to arrive), those willing to be trained and willing to be that ‘go to” person could stop others from being involved in that tragedy.

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Guess the USDA doesn’t like contrarian points of view left in comments on their blog

USDA: Americans aren’t doing what they’re told

Well, that was the headline of a post over at the Washington Examiner.  Any combination of a Federal agency and words intimating that our Overlords ain’t happy with what their subjects are doing with “their” suggestions ABSOLUTELY gets my attention:

When Americans go to the grocery store, they rarely do what they are told by federal nutrition guidelines, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“Many of our diets aren’t what they should be,” Richard Volpe, part of the USDA’s Economic Research Service, wrote today. “Americans eat fewer fruits and vegetables than Federal nutrition guidance recommends, and we over-consume fats, added sugars, and refined grains.”

So I went on over to read the whole thing.  I learned that they can be snippy (emphasis mine), so in the end, I was snippy back:

Many of our diets aren’t what they should be. Americans eat fewer fruits and vegetables than Federal nutrition guidance recommends, and we over-consume fats, added sugars, and refined grains. Health professionals warn us that the less-healthful food choices are showing up on our waistlines and in our health, contributing to increasing cases of overweight and obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Knowing how far we stray from good dietary patterns, and whether the diets of certain segments of the population are more misaligned, can help in designing more effective programs and consumer education.

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Sadness – of many things

As I remarked to TMEW as we went out for a quick bite to eat “This is not a problem with guns.  This is a problem with morality and culture if everything we are hearing is true”.

And we have to remember – we don’t know all the details.  We do know that Adam Lanza was a troubled young adult.  We know that the guns were owned by his mom whom he shot at their home in the face.  What evil must have been present in his heart, or conditioned by our culture, that he felt he could take out his anger, his evilness, perhaps a sense of having been wronged in some fashion, to have executed every innocent 4 & 5 year olds in her class?  Complete innocents at the mercy of a deranged person – for who can kill mere children except for a deranged defective person?

  • I hear journalists nowadays long for the days that “our shared” news was presented by the same kind of newscasters / newspapers.  I grew up in that time.  Shared values.
  • I hear from historians of a time when our outlook as a society was more homogenous – we shared similar values.  I grew up in that time. .  Shared values.
  • I heard from older family members that our social order was that of Civil Society – that social mores kept people “in line” without the need for external governance.  Shared values.
  • I heard and saw that self-restraint and self-sacrifice were of high social values – a more polite society was a given.  Shared values.
  • I heard and saw that the rules were the rules – present, reliable, knowable and enforced.  Shared values.
  • I heard that people that were a danger to us and to themselves used to be kept out of normal society – to protect us against them.

Times have changed.  I blame the 60s.  I blame my generation for deciding it knew better than all other generations combined….without their experience, knowledge, or wisdom.  Such hubris

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im41 has some rules for Bloggers to defeat Libs

He asked a number of bloggers what they believe the “rules” are to help recover what happened in November and in the culture in general.  Here are a few of them:

Of course: Andrew Breitbart:  War!

Atlas Shrugs: A complete reevaluation of the opposition strategy is needed. The Republicans have failed. The Republican Party has failed…..

Moonbattery:  Be relentless. Liberalism is like rust; it never stops corroding every aspect of society. That’s we why can never stop fighting it…

(It’s BigFurHat) – There is no denying that American culture is on the decline. Most people. left and right, agree. Where we split politically is which way the finger of blame points. I think it’s important to be able to lay all societal ills at the feet of progressivism, where it rightly belongs…

(Zilla of the Resistance) – Don’t be afraid. Just tell the truth as you know it to be, because if you are thinking it the odds are that someone else is also thinking it and wishing someone would say it, so say it…

Tim will love this one:

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Americans for Prosperity Blogger of the Month – Steve Mac Donald!

AFP LogoYesterday, Steve let us know that AFP had selected him as their Blogger of the Month – my immediate response was:

YAAAAAAAYYYY!!!!!!!!  Way to go Steve!

Absolutely tickled pink!  In my estimation, well deserved.  Just about every day, Steve has made sure to let us know what his opinion is on a whole range of topics from those here in NH to national ones.  In all cases, he writes from a Conservative / Libertarian viewpoint and always trying to show how these pertain to the enhancement of personal Liberty and Freedom (or not) and free markets.  He has always amazed me with how he brings in different issues to his main point – and he wields his keyboard as a virtual stiletto in skewering the object of his disdain.  In each of his posts, there is almost always a “line to remember”.

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Well what do you know, there may be hope yet?

Seen over at The Corner:

So the question is, can you have a liberal, progressive America without unions? History says no. For 200 years the existence of the union movement has been wedded to the rise of democracy, to the rise of liberalism. We saw this here, in South Korea, in Spain, in Africa. But now America is moving toward an experiment with whether it can have liberalism without unions. I think the answer is no. But we’ll see.

Interesting thought.  Certainly we have seen, more and more, the major unions (especially the SEIU) forming alliances with Progressive / Socialist organization that are certainly in step with Obama’s “fundamentally transforming” the United States.  Their stated goal is to move away from the democratic Republic of the Founders and to that Progressive version of ruler-ship first begun by Von Bismarck as he rolled up the Germanic city-states into a unified Germany (and in the process, creating the foundations of the trappings of the modern welfare state to “sidestep” the real Socialists).  The unions, once focused on improving unsafe working conditions, have gone well beyond that to the acquisition of power and the enrichment of a few relative to the many.

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Michigan Union Thuggery – Give us what we want or we will hurt you!

Union Thug Sucker Punches Steve Crowder

Noted Conservative comedian Steven Crowder (whose videos we have posted here on the ‘Grok) paid a physical price simply for expressing a political  viewpoint.  Grokster Tim posted the video of the union thugs assaulting other peoples’ private property (the AFP tent) and Grokster Steve put up more updates.

This one picture simply confirms what many have said for years – the only tactic that unions can employ against the general public is fear and intimidation – the Rule of the Strong Man.  Sure, they can scream “This is what Democracy looks like” – really, this is how they wish to portray their version of democracy, go for it.

Problem is this  (via Instapundit):

“Question No One Is Asking: Will Obama Demand Union Members Behave Peacefully, Or Will He Bless Their Violence With Silence?”

Answer?

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Data Point – Why Work? Welfare pays better

Welfare Pays Better Than Working

Yep. As the chart clearly illustrates, total welfare spending in the U.S. (if converted into cash payments) equals approximately “$168 per day for every household in poverty,” higher than the $137 median income per-day.

 From the senator’s office:

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Data Point – Federal Subsidies for electric power

    Yes, the enviros can complain that coal gets more of a subsidy than solar; true enough.  Add the subsidies for the top 4 items vs the renewables?  No contest – fossil fuels get $4.557 billion while renewables get $5.954 Billion.  In the end, however, is what is the bang for the buck.  It … Read more

Only in the minds of DC tax-grabbers is my house a “tax loophole”

I had seen this before but when I read it again, the only thoughts I have is “Is this my house or the Government’s?” and “At what point does Government’s stash no longer needs more of my [much diminished] stash?” when looking at “tax loophole” that I take advantage of when I, well, live in my home :

…to the technocrats in the federal government, the tax you don’t have to pay on the value of rent you don’t have to pay because you own your home is a loophole.  Read that last sentence again. Its called “The Imputed Net Rental Income on Owner-Occupied Housing” and the feds include it in their annual list of “tax expenditures.” That term is how Washington officially refers to credits, deductions and exemptions. Here’s how the federal government describes it:

Under the baseline tax system, the taxable income of a taxpayer who is an owner-occupant would include the implicit value of gross rental income on housing services earned on the investment in owner-occupied housing and would allow a deduction for expenses, such as interest, depreciation, property taxes, and other costs, associated with earning such rental income. In contrast, the Tax Code allows an exclusion from taxable income for the implicit gross rental income on housing ser- vices, while in certain circumstances allows a deduction for some costs associated with such income, such as for mortgage interest and property taxes.

Let’s say you own a home and your mortgage is $1,000 a month. If, however, you instead rented the home from a landlord your rent, let’s say, would be $2,000 a month. To the mandarins at the IRS, you are “earning” an implied $1,000 a month because you own and not rent, and that “value” should be added to your taxable income. If you own your home out-right and don’t have a mortgage at all, you would be “earning” $2,000 a month which the IRS thinks should be added to your taxable income.

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NH GOP – a riff on the E-board angst reported by DiStaso

I had bookmarked the Dec 4 version of the UL’s DiStazo’s column which discussed the $25 fee that the NH GOP was looking to impose upon the new State Committee members (which I labeled a “poll tax” because it was set to be collected in order to vote for the new officers of the NH GOP and whatever business needed to be attended to.  Sure, I’m a bit late, but because I seemingly fit into NH GOP Finance Chair Jim Foley’s “so-called journalist” category, I had a few thoughts (reformatted to save space):

NHGOP finance chairman Jim Foley opposed rescinding the fee.   “This drives me crazy,” he wrote in an email reply to MacDonald.  “Why, when there is some push-back, do we cave in?” wrote Foley, who also chairs the Derry Republican Committee. “This decision was made by unanimous vote of the executive committee after much discussion and with the idea of getting a more committed state committee member. We deliberately imposed no sanction for failure to pay this fee.

And we out in the hinterlands (as Kevin Landrigan says) are supposed to simply nod our heads

“Who are these complaints coming from? Very few new state committee members have been elected. The Derry committee has been chosen and we have heard no issues about this fee.”

Foley wrote that the two candidates for state chairman are “pandering to what they perceive will be their supporters, and so-called journalists who always try to stir things, creating a controversy where none exists.”

He suggested the state party send an email “that makes it clear our reasoning behind the request for the fee and that there are no consequences for failure to pay the fee.”

He said he does not believe a special meeting is necessary.

Of course not; after all, he’s on the E-Board!  As he wrote here:

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NH GOP – a riff on the E-board angst reported by DiStaso – Part II

Same column, but where Jim Foley expressed a hubris, it is easy to hear the frustration of former NH GOP Chair and current RNC Committeeman Steve Duprey.  While Foley gets what he deserves, I have a bit more sympathy (yes folks, I did use that word voluntarily) for Duprey (reformatted):

Duprey said that especially after a poor GOP showing on election day, “Anyone who thinks you don’t need adequate resources in what has become a purple state is dreaming.”…He also said the party should have a “job description for the members of the state committee.  “When I was chairman,” he said, “we used to have a guide of how many hours we expected of you. You had to help us recruit candidates, you had to train candidates, you had write letters and update our data base. And you must help us fund-raise.”

You know, I think this is a good idea – but it has to be done well ahead of time if it is going to be a formal responsibility. Given the poor results, things do need to change and…

Sidenote: hey, I wonder if what the consensus is on the E-Board really is given Foley’s remark (“Don’t think that the State Party did that badly in this election.“) and Duprey saying” a poor GOP showing”?

…given what the other side did, change in a major way.  While what Duprey is preaching can be construed to be major, one thing is sure: you don’t spring it on people just before the picking of Members. and before the State Meeting.  I will say, concerning what tasks and expectations may be required (once and future), they  have not been communicated downward from the NH GOP well lately.  This decree sure was a really bad example of poor thinking, poor planning, poor communication, and poor messaging.  And the E-Board is/was surprised at the reaction?

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