Articles tagged as

Statism

RINO OF THE WEEK REPORT

The RINO of the week is Nottingham House Representative Frank Case. This week features a Republican whose voting record shows frequent opposition to conservative values and resistance to liberty.

How Much Is Enough? (And Other Problems With Left Wing Policy)

How much Is EnoughWhy can’t democrats trust their own constituents to do the right thing?  Their first response to every problem is to institutionalize it with more government, typically as far up the legislative food chain as possible.  That means as far away from you as they can manage, even to the point of giving control to unelected bureaucrats you can’t punish, just to keep you from messing with it.  They entrench it in a bureaucracy, make it impossibly inefficient and expensive and then refuse to let anyone touch it ever again, while charging you more and more to maintain it.

The only reason I can think of for that kind of knee jerk behavior is that Democrats use themselves as the template for the rest of us. The left by their very nature must be selfish, insecure, inconsiderate and un-trusting. Only people so un-giving of themselves or simply incapable of volunteering their time and energy would have to mandate volunteerism and "giving" by legalizing the taking of other peoples time or property through mandates.

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I have cancelled my Facebook account. Here’s why…

Former GraniteGrok writer Tom Flaherty wrote and distributed the email below. I find that I agree with him. So as of today I have "deactivated" (you can’t erase it) my Facebook account. When the Facebook Fascists asked why I was leaving, I said "I don’t like your selective political favoritism." In fact, I don’t like their left-wing statism. So screw Facebook. (For an upcoming alternative that will respect privacy and hopefully not use itself as a left-wing political weapon, check out Altly.com.)

Read on….

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Assault Weapons: A Serious Problem in America?

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“The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.” – Thucydides

 HR 6257 Assault Weapons Ban Reauthorization Act of 2008 was introduced by Republican Mark Kirk of Illinois, and co-sponsored by Republicans, (defeated)Mike Castle of Delaware, Mike Ferguson of New Jersey, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Chris Shays of Connecticut. The Bill was introduced on June 12, 2008 and never became law, having been stalled in subcommittee.  In January, Republican Senator Dick Lugar said he supports a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.

These Republicans suck. Mark Kirk is a liberal, not to mention a demagogue and panderer. But coming from Illinois not much else is to be expected. Mike Castle of Delaware, also a liberal, was defeated by Christine O’Donnell in the primary. The bearded Marxist Chris Coons went on to beat O’Donnell which is not surprising, given Delaware “Kool-Aid-drinking” constituency. Mike Ferguson was a typical New Jersey anti-gunner who chose not to run for office again in 2008. Thank goodness. The dependable, but squishy Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, notorious for her associations with the “arts and croissants” crowd. and finally, RINO Chris Shays of Connecticut who got crushed in 2008. Two out of five left standing…

 According to Kool-Aid drinking Senator Diane Feinstein’s brochure, an Assault Weapon is, All semi-automatic assault pistols and rifles with detachable magazines and 2 or more “assault” characteristics, (my emphasis added) as well as semiautomatic shotguns with 2 or more such ‘characteristics‘…” “Characteristics…”

char·ac·ter·is·tic  /?kær?kt??r?st?k/ [kar-ik-tuh-ris-tik]

–adjective

 1. Also, char·ac·ter·is·ti·cal. pertaining to, constituting, or indicating the character  or peculiar quality of a person or thing; typical; distinctive: Red and gold are the characteristic colors of autumn.

–noun

2. a distinguishing feature or quality: Generosity is his chief characteristic.

Who makes this stuff up? Rarely is there ever a name attached to such a falsehood. But, if I have to lay odds it came out of Bloomberg’s camp or from the Brady Bunch. In that vein, the contemporary liars, shrills and demagogues are more dependable than a quarterly IRS Tax bill.

 What is an Assault Weapon? The rational and logical answer is nothing. There is no such thing. The term is a concoction of charlatans, the brainless colloquy bantered about by liberals and gun-banners as a pejorative mischaracterization on those firearms of a compact, utilitarian nature, originally derived from Military use. These so-called “assault weapons” available for sale in gun shops around the nation, generally do not differ in functionality from traditional hunting rifles. What sets these rifles apart are their mere appearance…or their characteristics.

 The definition for Assault Rifle, however, is a, “Light and compact selective-fire automatic rifle firing a cartridge of such power that it can deliver effective fire to a range of about 500 metres, but at the same time will permit the weapon to be fired in the automatic mode from the shoulder,” according to the Greenhill Military Small Arms Databook.  

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Can Romney Do It?

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“If you can’t convince them, confuse them.”   -President Harry S. Truman 33rd American President.

 Mitt Romney came to New Hampshire Thursday and formally announced he will seek to unseat President Obama in 2012.  Despite his formal announcement being overshadowed by Governor Sarah Palin’s visit, it’s official: Romney is in for 2012.

Can Romney win the nomination? The former Governor of the People’s Republic of Massachusetts has a very well-documented laundry list of problems. Romney supporters cringe at similarities between the Bay State’s health care program and Obamacare. Romney has shown himself to be a clear and unadulterated flip-flopper on the hot-button issues such as abortion, gun control, immigration, and gay rights.

In his 1994 bid for Senate, Romney said, “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I believe since Roe v. Wade has been the law in this country for 20 years, we should sustain and support it. I sustain that law and the right of a woman to make that choice…” Romney would ultimately go on to proclaim himself to be “pro-life.” The late Senator Edward Moore Kennedy, when campaigning against Romney in 1994, quipped, “(My opponent isn’t pro-choice or anti-choice, he’s multiple choice.”

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Thanksgiving in 2022

"Winston, come into the dining room, it’s time to eat," Julia called out to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it’s a tie score," he answered.

Actually, Winston wasn’t all that excited about the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington. Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world," Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn’t nearly as exciting.

But it wasn’t really the game that was keeping Winston from the Thanksgiving dinner table…. 

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THE VETO OF HB 474: “RIGHT TO WORK? NOT SO MUCH…

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“Labor unions would have us believe that they transfer income from rich capitalists to poor workers. In fact, they mostly transfer income from the large number of non-union workers to a small number of relatively well-off union workers…”   –ROBERT E. ANDERSON, Just Get Out of the Way

 

 CONCORD – Governor Lynch, true to his word vetoed HB 474, the right to work Bill recently passed out of the house and Senate.  Passed out of both the house and Senate, the bill has drawn the ire of the Union Hackarama far and wide. All of the pro-unionists came out in force to pontificate about being against the working men and women of this country; About people who will starve and go hungry; and when the rhetoric and false logic had no effect, They crowded hearing rooms and were disruptive with verbal outbursts. Despite all this bad behavior, rank demagoguery and cursing at lawmakers, the bill passed anyway.

Tom Fahey, Statehouse Bureau Chief for the Union Leader  writes, “Unions see the bill as a move funded by out of state interests to undercut their role in the workplace. (Unions) argue that the measure intrudes in labor-management relations,” in this morning’s UL article,GOP goes after right-to-work opponents.

Juxtapose that against Unions bussing in “volunteers” for Carol Shea-Porter’s campaign from, Lord-knows where; And, the Union interests from all around the country pumping big dollars into local campaigns, those hardly qualify as out-of-state interests? Leave it to Union mouthpieces to complain about the very thing that is not only pro forma for them, but done with absolute shameless impunity.

Governor Lynch and his union cronies, with their Machiavellian Template,  redefine the plain and ordinary meaning of words in the furtherance of their subterfuge. In his press release Governor Lynch chastises, “States should not interfere with the rights of businesses and their employees to freely negotiate contracts. That is unless there is a compelling public interest, and there is no compelling public interest in passing this legislation…” They would have us believe that somehow the veto of this bill is was advocacy for freedom.” Lynch would have us believe job seekers have this “freedom” already in place enabling them to be free from the yoke of the Unions. That is untrue, when an employee has to pay an agency fee to the coffers of the Union. That is essentially joining the Union by proxy.

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Fighting Leviathan

This from the newly-elected attorney general of Virginia: We have an overreaching central overnment—a government that seeks to plan and control virtually every aspect of our lives and our economy, from health care, to energy, to automobile manufacturing, to banking and finance….While we can derive some satisfaction from last November’s election results as a backlash … Read more

Clarity and Collective Bargaining?

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Mr. Sapienza asks in the Union Leader, “Do legislators even know what state workers do?”
Perhaps some don’t. I know for a fact that some do…many have been state workers themselves. With so many flawed or misquided assumptions, the demagoguery lives on. 

Edward Sapienza of Manchester, through the Union Leader opposite editorial pages seeks to “offer some clarity and ask our state representatives and state senators, specifically what conservative values do [sic] you bring to the table?” Mr. Sapienza asserts this legislature is taking from the rank and file working class. “Getting state and county spending under control is, “taking from the working class?” pointing to the measure to remove collective bargaining.

Mr. Sapienza is a correctional officer at the Hillsborough County Jail.  As a Hillsborough County taxpayer, I am grateful and thankful for his service because being a correctional officer is a tough job. The care, custody, and control of our societal miscreants is a significant task, requiring patience, an even temperament and intelligence. Correctional Officers must follow a clearly defined set of rules, procedures and standards in dealing with our county prisoners and detainees, who, on the other hand, adhere to no such rules or standards, other than those imposed by the facility that keeps them. Few truly know what a day in the life of a correctional officer is truly like and often times, the only public mention of the men and women who do this job is when we see acts of wrong-doing by them in newspapers. It’s unfair.

Moreover, very few understand that in Mr. Sapienza’s workplace; even the most seemingly innocuous question or request by an inmate or detainee can tax a Correctional Officer. A Correctional Officer must be able to think quickly, evaluate, and understand that his response may have an unintended consequence. The CO must ask, “Did the inmate or detainee already ask another staff member? Did that staff member say, ‘no'”? If I say, ‘yes’, am I causing an inconsistency with my other staff members, enabling an inmate manipulation?” Being a correctional officer is a challenging career and is not a job for stupid people.

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Parental Notification: It’s Not Really About ‘Choice,’ Is it?

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House Bill 329. A law that will require the notification of parents for unemancipated minors prior to the performance of an abortion procedure, will get it’s public hearing tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary committee. Most certainly, that public hearing will segue the militant hit-parade decrying this often-called, “anti-choice” legislation.

Planned Parenthood, making quick use of our tax dollars to lobby against this piece of legislation, gives us indicia that should the bill pass the Judiciary and Senate, Planned Parenthood might sue to block its implementation as they did in Alaska. In fact, Planned Parenthood has made concerted efforts all over the Country to block such legislation with various court challenges. Planned Parenthood shows their resolve and that they will not be deterred. In 2005, for example, A Minnesota court ruled that St. Paul Planned Parenthood violated a parental notification law when an abortion was performed on a 17-year-old girl without prior notice to her parents. History instructs us that Planned Parenthood not only actively opposes these laws, but that they are willing to simply disregard them.

In today’s Union Leader story, Gary Rayno reports that opponents of the bill say, “(This bill) will needlessly put the lives and health of young women at risk…” Seriously? opponents all say this, but they never tell you exactly how. Or if opponents tell how, they give anecdotal examples of extreme abuse, rape or incest.  If one accepts that logic, one also has to first admit that all of the other systems and precious safety nets they so ardently champion and advocate for have failed. In cases of abuse, where was DCYF? and why did they not intervene?

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The Shrill Kathy and the Business Finance Authority

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The “Shrill Kathy” Sullivan has a bee in her bonnet over Executive Councilor’s St. Hillaire, Sununu and Wheeler’s “vote to table” the April 13 agenda items two, three and four regarding the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority request for a public guarantee for small business loans.

An in her normal, usual and customary fashion of pandering, demagoguery and straw politics, the Shrill Kathy pens her diatribe in the Union Leader Op-Ed section, grossly mischaracterizing the meeting vote as being anti-small business and anti-job creation.

The Shrill Kathy’s first shot is at District 5 Executive Councilor Dave Wheeler and she quips, “Wheeler’s votes often lack thoughtfulness…” Really? How thoughtless? Councilor Wheeler posited the following question, “What does the thirty-five million look like to the bonding companies regarding state debt? and Wheeler adds, “We increased state debt tremendously in the last four years…how does this fit into that picture?”  To which the response was given, “This is reflected as a ‘contingent liability.'”

In that context, we should define, “contingent liability“. A contingent liability is The possibility existent of an obligation to pay certain sums dependent on future events. Liability which is difficult to quantify, or which may or may not come to pass, such as an outstanding lawsuit or a guarantee such as this.

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It’s The Christian Thing To Do.

Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson’s remarks, as expressed in a Sunday Union Leader staff editorial, suggest that it is immoral to reduce what the government spends on health and social programs.

As quoted, "When sacrifice is perpetrated on the vulnerable and weak by the strong and prosperous, it is social abuse."

He goes on to include the poor, the disabled, the blind, the unemployed, the impoverished elderly, the uninsured and children living in poverty.

His point (one of them at least) is that by reducing government’s fiscal contribution to bureaucracies established to manage such things, that governor John Lynch and the New Hampshire legislature are considering immoral choices to balance the state budget.

So where do I begin?

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“Ignorant bullies with badges.”

Vicious ignorant bullies with badges. Every government employee in this mess who abused his power should be fired, and never allowed to hold any government job again. It appears that some of them should go to jail too. h/t to Instapundit.

Local Fish Wrapper Concord Monitor Editorial On Asylums And Witch Hunts

When assertions come to the forefront accusing the government and the courts of corruption, misconduct and oppression…and those assertions are made by those who might be well-considered, “conservative,” those people are wing nuts…nut jobs, extremists, fascists and, as the Concord Monitor characterizes them, “Witch Hunters.”

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And, when accusations of government of corruption, court misconduct and oppression are made by those who of a liberal progressive bent, suddenly the conversation devolves into the plight of the poor oppressed and persecuted individuals and their plight before a corrupt right wing government consisting of the, “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Oligarchy,”…usually followed by the requisite hue and cry, “We must rise up and stick it to, ‘the man.'”

How an issue is couched depends largely on one’s world view. But to read the Concord Monitor editorial, accepting what is written at face value, one might easily opine that the actions of Representatives Itse, Ingbretson, Baldasaro and Seidel are patently without merit. But in typical liberal fashion, the editorial staff at CM banks its assertions on the notion that people are not going to critically think about what is being done in the name of justice and accept their notion that this is nothing more than a witch hunt.

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“You can’t use the roads!”

Is there any one of us who hasn’t heard the argument from the idiots on the Left that goes like this: "Well if you don’t believe in Social Security, then you shouldn’t take any money from it! Nyah! Nyah!" Or "If you don’t like everything the government is doing, then you shouldn’t use the roads! Nyah! Nyah!"

Gawd. I hate that spewing nonsense. Every Leftist child eventually comes up with it (thinking it’s brilliant, of course). Response? Check this out:

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Breaking The Addiction To Government

Image: thesassyminx.comThe December New Hampshire labor report, period ending October 2010, is not all that remarkable.  Coos County is still suffering while overall the state is hanging in at 5.4%.  This number is still reflective of issues with the size of the labor force versus mid 2009 numbers.  We have to watch that as we head through the November and December reports into January, where holiday hiring will add to the labor force, and then most likley drop off.

What may have been the most interesting aspect of the new report however, was this paragraph from the first page.

In New Hampshire private industry GDP growth was below that of government. The current dollar change in private industry between 2008 and 2009 was almost non-existent. less than a $1 million dollar difference.  When adjusted for inflation private GDP saw a 1.5% percent decrease.  Government however (this is New Hampshire State Government) saw a 4.6% increase in current dollars.

This is how Democrat-controlled states feign growth. 

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It’s Christmas in America….

…and here’s a fitting rebuke to all those who worship government and the power of the State while striving to stamp out Christmas and Christ from the public sphere. Merry Christmas to you all!  —Tim Condon

It’s Us Versus Them….

From Mark Steyn’s excellent blog:

"The other day The Washington Post previewed one aspect of this Saturday’s Jon Stewart rally – a march by government workers:

Organizers of the ‘Government Doesn’t Suck March’ (their choice of words, not ours) were inspired in part by last week’s Washington Post poll that revealed widespread negative perceptions of federal workers.

‘We hear it day in and day out: the government sucks, federal employees are lazy and their positions are redundant,’ said march organizer Steve Ressler, founder of GovLoop, a social networking Web site for public servants.

‘It’s time to turn the tables and remind the world that government employees just happen to be people — people that don’t suck,’ Ressler said in a message sent to The Federal Eye on Sunday announcing the march. Government workers ‘are a lot of cool cats’ who work hard, listen to good music and watch Stewart’s ‘The Daily Show,’ ‘but that’s all after they’ve spent a whole day keeping the country running,’ he said.

Actually, government does suck. It sucks too much money out of my pocket and gives it to Steve Ressler and his fellow “cool cats”…. "

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