Transportation Archives - Page 2 of 6

Adams: DeSantis Urges Congress to Defund Sanctuary States That License Illegal Aliens as Drivers

August 28, 2025 Jacob Adams

lorida Gov. Ron DeSantis is calling on Congress to defund sanctuary states that provide illegal immigrants with driver’s licenses.

Roper: Those Polluting EVs….

August 8, 2025 Rob Roper

In my recent “Cage Match Conversation” with fellow WDEV radio host Kevin Ellis (Great debate, check out the podcast!), the subject of electric vehicles and the recent decision by Congress to end the EPA’s ability to regulate tailpipe CO2 emissions as pollutants came up. I pointed out the reason for this policy change is that … Read more

Smith: Renewing Your Registration; Things To Consider

July 28, 2025 Julie Smith

I’ve been accused of being like a dog with a bone, but I’m not going to apologize for obsessing about broad-based taxes, which include the cost of renewing your car’s registration. I wrote about this matter almost a year ago and revisited the topic recently in my article comparing town hall to city hall, but … Read more

Roper: NH Eliminates Vehicle Inspections – What Other Useless Programs Can We scrap?

July 25, 2025 Rob Roper

There is an overwhelming psychology on the Left that if the government isn’t doing something, nothing is being done. It’s an expensive, inefficient, and often counterproductive mindset. However, sometimes reality and common sense prevail, as recently demonstrated in neighboring New Hampshire, where the state has eliminated its vehicle inspection mandate. According to the Josiah Bartlett … Read more

MacDonald: Peak No Car Inspection Fearmongering Has Arrived

July 17, 2025July 15, 2025 Steve MacDonald

The handmaiden media doesn’t have its hands full with the legislative session over, so it needs something to fill those “column inches.” How about scaring people! The media loves those stories, and New Hampshire just eliminated inspections for passenger vehicles (effective January 1, 2026). You are going to have to share the road with people … Read more

MacDonald: NH’s Sticker Tax is Dead – No State Vehicle Inspections Required Beginning in 2026

June 27, 2025 Steve MacDonald

HB2, the budget dumpster fire/trailer bill, has a lot of crap in it I like and a lot I don’t. One of the wins was eliminating State motor vehicle inspections for passenger vehicles. The House passed it, the Senate watered it down, but in the end, the original had to land in HB2 or it … Read more

Klar: Gas-Powered Engine Revival in High Gear

June 13, 2025 John Klar

GM revving up to create new V-8 engines as EVs flounder Americans aren’t as excited about electric vehicles (EVs) as they once were, so now General Motors (GM) is getting back in the gas-burning game. The company announced a major production shift at its Tonawanda Propulsion plant in New York state. GM has abandoned its … Read more

MacDonald: This Is Saving Democracy?

May 28, 2025 Steve MacDonald

Whenever anyone references our Democracy, especially on social media, someone, typically several of them, feels compelled to remind anyone in range that we live in a Republic, with good reason. No one is taught that. You have to learn it on your own. You also must learn that it is a Federal Republic, and everything … Read more

Middle of the road The middle, compromising stance of those called “centrists” or “moderates” is very often mistaken for a balanced and reasonable position. Little else is worse than an entire world tricked into what rationally amounts to crime, thinking it is balanced, realistic, and optimal. The centrist has become convinced that their middle position is the only fair and just stance, and that anything else is imbalanced extremism. The opportunity to rationally examine these assertions has never been as important as it is now. Let us start by realizing that most people do not actually call themselves centrists yet are convinced that their views are a proper mixture of ideas, a negotiation to meet somewhere in the middle, which is what centrism entails. Whether this is a mixture of safety and freedom, socialism and capitalism, or collectivism and individualism, few have admitted that their unique mixture ratio is behind their confidence in their own political views. Most are convinced that they have the right mixture, while they believe those with different views have their mixture somewhat off. How many traditional conservatives are against socialism without realizing that many of their views are based in socialism? They do not put the label of “socialism” on their beloved military, police, and public schools, but these are textbook examples of socialism. How many progressives for wealth distribution via government will truly admit that they want the profit motive to remain as the deep well from which they can perpetually draw? Nearly everyone has a mix, if only so they can satisfy themselves that they are not radical extremists. To further the confusion, there are parallels in our world that suggest to us that a mixture is best, like the alloys of metals being more useful than pure metals alone, or the right temperature being a mixture of not too hot and not too cold. It is intuitive to infer a moderate compromise in social, economic, and political matters. Now let us see the mixture from a different perspective. Engineers do not strive for a healthy balance of both planes that continue to fly and planes that fall from the sky. They are very imbalanced in their view that all planes should continue flying without issue, to every possible extent. We would find it unacceptable if the legal system outwardly promoted a healthy mix of bringing criminals to justice and letting them do whatever they want. The point to see here is that we must not mix poison into our food and call that a healthy balance. No percentage of violent crimes have a fitting place in civilization, same with fraud, corruption, and a long list of wrongful acts. The practice of forceful plunder through the apparatus called “government” is the rational equivalent of criminality, asserting that the ability to do so equates to the right to do so, and dismissing other peaceful means for funding as if they are inferior. No degree of what is rationally criminal is somehow a quality ingredient to mix into one’s political stance, even if the current laws legitimize it. That it comes from the basis of “might makes right” and violates inalienable rights means that justifying any degree of it makes a person complicit with this criminality, which is objectively criminal and evil because objective reality is altered thereby, to the subtraction from objective and measurable well-being. Well-intentioned people of all kinds mix in ideas that are objectively criminal, not seeing with rational eyes because they used the going laws as their only measure for what is just. Even those reaching for higher moral ideology believe in things like city-states and small or local governments as the solution, as if to not have fully admitted that nobody is fit or entitled to rule, whether they are a person or a group. It is the rational that gives us the tools to collaboratively orchestrate law and order, and the same that stands as the constant standard for what is good and evil, what preserves rational rights and what depletes them. If rationalism can reveal what toxic and evil justifications we might have mixed into our views, it can be the tool for helping us clean up our views, even if someone thinks that doing so will amount to extremism. Author: Ben Jarick Ben Jarick is a writer, inventor, entrepreneur and lifelong student.

Underwood: ‘Education dollars’ make no more sense than ‘Transportation dollars’

May 25, 2025 Ian Underwood

I just got my new jetpack, and my new micro-helicopter, so I won’t be using the roads anymore. Who do I see about getting my ‘road dollars’ back? What, you say? There’s no such thing? We just pay for the roads, and whoever wants to use them can? And because anyone can use them, we … Read more

MacDonald: EV School Buses Sidelined Over Fire Hazard

May 20, 2025May 20, 2025 Steve MacDonald

Buses built by Lion Electric are bursting into flames across the fruited plains. The fires have prompted a local transportation company providing bus service to a Vermont school district to discontinue use. After reported fires in Lion Electric buses across the country, Student Transportation of Vermont removed Barre Town’s buses for safety precautions. They reached … Read more

Podcast: Right Side Up 5-19-2025

May 19, 2025 Right Side Up

This week we discuss the pause on clean truck mandates, the new Pope, and Chinese-made inverters. Authors’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers. Agree? Disagree? Submit Op-Eds to steve@granitegrok.com – We want to hear from you, too! Follow these links for … Read more

Cline: Outdated auto inspection laws appear more related to culture than cold

May 18, 2025 Andrew Cline

Every time legislators propose ending New Hampshire’s annual auto inspection mandate, opponents allege that inspections are common in Northern states because cold weather hazards (road salt, frost heaves) make them necessary. In fact, most cold-weather states, like most states overall, don’t require annual auto inspections. Mapping the states that require annual inspections reveals that culture … Read more

Roper: From “Net Zero” to Just Zero

May 18, 2025 Rob Roper

And then there were none. This week, Governor Phil Scott (R-VT) signed an executive order delaying the implementation of the California Clean Cars & Trucks policies in Vermont for a year. This essentially puts an end to the last standing significant GWSA greenhouse gas reduction scheme hatched up by the Democrats and Progressives in the … Read more

Petition: Tell The NH Senate to Pass Passenger Vehicle Inspection Bill (HB649)

April 23, 2025April 16, 2025 Steve MacDonald

Note: Petition sent 4-23-2025 To the New Hampshire State Senate and Governor Kelly Ayotte. We, the undersigned, request that you advance and pass HB649 without further amendment or delay with the understanding that, while the “every two-year” compromise to the original bill is an acceptable move in the right direction, ending unnecessary passenger vehicle inspections … Read more

Tell Your Senator To Say No To Unnecessary Safety Inspections That Don’t Make Us Safer

April 10, 2025 Jason Hennessey

When I first read about a bill to eliminate inspections, I had never questioned whether they make us safer. So I researched it, and was surprised to see that pretty much all of the studies over the past 30 years say the same thing: inspections don’t make us safer! That’s why there’s only 11 states … Read more

Taxes crushing vermont original Photo by Chris Andrawes on Unsplash

“Cap & Invest” Program on Fossil Fuels Requires 80¢/Gal Gas Tax to Meet Mandates

March 30, 2025 Rob Roper

In 2024, the Vermont legislature charged the State Treasurer’s Office with studying what a “Cap & Invest” program would look like as a means for meeting the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) targets for greenhouse gas reduction in the transportation sector (aka you driving your car). That report is now complete, and, just as the Public Utilities … Read more

Naked ‘Weiner’ Flees Scene of Crash

March 10, 2025 Steve MacDonald

It is not a story I’d typically cover, but when you hear the particulars, you’ll see why it was hard to pass up. Shawn P. Weiner Sr., 35, of Somersworth, was arrested and charged by the NH State Police with indecent exposure and lewdness, reckless conduct, two counts of disorderly conduct, and littering. The Dover … Read more

Ending Mandatory Vehicle Inspections Would Save Granite Staters Tens of Millions a Year

March 10, 2025March 10, 2025 Andrew Cline

In a cost-cutting move, New Jersey ended its annual auto safety inspections in 2010. State officials cited a lack of evidence that inspections improved public safety. “If we’re going to invest millions of taxpayer dollars year after year in a program, then it is essential that we be able to justify the expense and effectiveness … Read more

Will They Vote Your Will Or That of The Lobbyists Who ‘Pay’ Them?

March 10, 2025 Julie Smith

Think of this installment as “Part 2” to my previous article asking if our Senate is compromised. As HB649 makes its way to the Senate, I’ve already pointed out some “problem donors” and some of their disturbing amounts donated to Senate Transportation committee members and the Old Battle Axe, Queen Sharon (Carson). Let’s first look … Read more

How Compromised is the NH Senate?

March 8, 2025 Julie Smith

The news of 2025’s perennial attempt to abolish the “sticker tax,” aka HB649 (ending annual passenger vehicles inspections), is good so far. The House has voted in favor despite the failure of the House Transportation Committee to produce a proper recommendation. The committee did not recommend either pass or fail, which has happened to other … Read more