I’ll be heading to RightOnline 2012 in just few weeks. The event is this June, in Las Vegas.
Here is a bit of video from last year to get things started.
Concord Monitor Takes a Stand – When It’s A Republican
We’ve been reporting the apparent 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 taxpayer time and state equipment to politic at (ironically) the Concord Monitor.
We even called the Monitor out on it for ignoring the story and pointed out when their moderators were deleting comments from their site about our investigation, and their not reporting it.
While the Concord Monitor has (at lest temporarily) stopped deleting the comments, they have yet to make a n editorial peep about the problem of Democrats and Union sate employees wasting thousands of hours in payroll, with state equipment, to engage in on-line political activity. Not. One. Word.
But when the accused is Republican Bob Mead…and they can tie him to Bill O’Brien, they are all over it.
Public employees who want to engage in political activity should take time off to do so. That happens routinely in New Hampshire, for example, when a member of the governor’s staff takes a leave of absence to work for his or her reelection campaign.What were New Hampshire taxpayers getting for their money when they paid Mead’s salary? What does any taxpayer, particularly those who are undeclared voters or members of a minority party, get when state employees do the work of political parties on the job? Not anything they’d willingly pay for. The next session of the Legislature should specifically prohibit on-the-job political activity by all state employees.
Great Idea that, suggesting such a thing. Wish we’d thought of it. (That’s right we did.)
You have to admit that this would have been a great time for some balanced editorializing; to mention of Dick de Seve, or the almost no longer mysterious Gaia, both Democrat state SEA (SEIU) employees with years of recorded abuse of the taxpayers trust for political purposes, on their very web pages. But no. (Not very encouraging coming from the “equality” crowd running the Concord bird cage liner.)
For the record, we agree with the Monitor that “state employees” should not engage in political activity while doing state business. Now if we could get the Monitor to name all the guilty parties without deference to party affiliation. That would be something to see.
You are reading “Concord Monitor Takes a Stand…when it’s a Republican.” by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)
Posted in Democrats, Hypocrats, Unions
Leave a comment
New Hampshire Gets Another “Passing Grade”
Courtesy of The Blaze.com.
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship, and Thumbtack.com have released a study ranking the “least” and “most” business-friendly states in the U.S.
Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah all got an A +. New Hampshire got an ‘A.’ The only respectable grade in the Northeast. (Notice how the failing states are all shades of blue?) The next closest was Maine with a ‘D+.’ Massachusetts and Connecticut got a ‘D,’ Vermont and Rhode Island received the big ‘F.’ You have to go all the way to Pennsylvania to get a ‘C.’
The survey was completed by actual small business owners so it is encouraging but hardly definitive. But we know we have a good thing going on. Highest average income, lowest poverty, best quality of life, safest, lowest overall tax burden, and –surprise!— a business friendly climate. A business friendly climate that four years of democrat rule tried to destroy. An advantage the progressives would happily exchange, enthusiastically exchange, for what the other New England states have if given the opportunity. (D’s and F’s if you were not paying attention.)
You are reading “NH Gets Another Passing Grade” by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)
Posted in Local NH Politics
Leave a comment
New Hampshire’s SAU 21 Hooked A Double-Dipper
Meet Robert M. Sullivan. Mr Sullivan, at the age of 58 ( I believe), ‘retired’ as the Superintendent of the Middleboro Massachusetts School District, where he was earning 128,000.00 per year. But like many “retired” public school superintendents, he didn’t stay retired for very long. He’s currently the Superintendent for the six schools that make up SAU #21 in New Hampshire. (Hampton Falls, North and South Hampton, Seabrook and Winnacunnet Co-op.)
But he’s retired!
“Retired?” Retired, to a Superintendent means you have a new job lined up before you leave the job you retired from, which the retiring Sullivan did. But while Mr. Sullivan is working in the Granite State he isn’t moving to New Hampshire permanently. He and his wife are staying in Massachusetts. Why?
…the out-of-state job will enable Robert M. Sullivan to collect his full Massachusetts pension, estimated to be in the range of $70,000 to $85,000, while also being paid for his new position.
So Superintendent Sullivan ‘retired’ so he could double-dip, collecting a $70,000.00 to $85,000.00 per year pension from the taxpayers in Massachusetts, while collecting a generous salary in New Hampshire? (I have not identified Sullivan’s SAU 21 compensation, but the national average is around $160,000.00 per year, and the man he is replacing earned $126,000.00 so his new wage is probably…’adequate.’)
Mrs. Sullivan is probably doing rather well. She is still a teacher and coach in Middleboro, so things are probably comfortable. Comfortable enough so that when Bob says he would like a “second residence” in New Hampshire to avoid a “difficult daily commute,” that this would not be a huge burden on them. Just hope no one registers to vote from that address.
So Double-Dipping is good work if you can get it, yes? Here is a man who is probably more than qualified to do the job at SAU21. I don’t doubt that. And he is certainly young enough to do it for a number of years and probably be very effective. And yet somehow, while still in the prime of his life, at what could turn out to be his peak earning years, he could be making close to three times the national average in income per year from one school ditrict while simultaneously taking a pension almost double the national annual income on top of that from another, because he was allowed to ‘retire” from his other taxpayer funded job–and collect his substantial pension–long before he should have been able to.
Don’t you wish you could retire at 58 and start collecting $70-85K a year for the rest of your life–plus some walking around money from a side job that pays a lot more? And people wonder why public sector pensions are in distress, running deficits in the billions? People wonder why taxpayers get a bit grumpy when public sector workers cry about raises, or complain about having to pay for more of their own pensions or benefits. This is why!
Now I think everyone who is able should be Working to support themselves or their family. Earning what you are worth is between you, and your employer, and no one else. But burying taxpayers in billions in pensions and benefits package benefits that will pay out sums that most of those taxpayers will never ever see for themselves in actual wages, is a path that leads to the bursting of the public pension bubble. Sure, it may not affect most public employees well along in their careers, but someone in the not so distant future is going to get screwed.
What the up and coming career public employees need to understand is that the unions really don’t care or they’d be writing contracts that deflate the bubble now. The majority of existing public employees, union or not, don’t seem to care either because if they did, they’d be pitching a lot more into their own benefits and pensions or voting for contracts that deflate that bubble faster to secure some kind of pension for future state workers. But is not what we appear to have. While we are picking at the edges during a down economy, all but a few are hoping something happens to make the problem go away. But the only thing that will do that on this trajectory is when someone says, yeah, I know you put x number of years in, but there’s no money. That means no pensions, slash and burn layoffs, and all those people whose protection or education demanded higher wages or larger benefit plans–they’re all screwed too.
They will suffer because people who went before them took $80,000 dollar per year (or more) pensions while still more than able to earn as much or more than that, sometimes for ten, fifteen or even twenty years. That is not what the pension was meant for. And it has to stop.
This is not, by the way, the fault of Bob Sullivan. I do not begrudge him his pension windfall. He is just following the “rules.” But wouldn’t it look a lot better if he could let someone who hadn’t retired on a decent pension get a shot at improving their career instead of improving his own after he retired on a wage most Americans will never see in their lifetimes? Is there no sense of guilt at screwing taxpayers in Massachusetts out so much in a pension, for so many years, while being able bodied enough to cross the border and earn even more on top of that, doing the exact same job, someplace else?
Mr. Sullivan is not alone. There are more than a few such superintendents in New Hampshire right now, doing the same thing. And yes, we are going to talk about them as well.
You are reading “NH SAU 21 Hooks a Double Dipper” by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)
Posted in Local NH Politics
Leave a comment
Fascilitators & Organizers
by
The Foster’s (It’s Australian for Beeyah!) Daily Democrat, gave GraniteGrok some ink this morning regarding James O’Keefe’s “appearance” at a Rye Republican GOP event yesterday…(That’s Rye NH, not the grass or the spirits, though perhaps the humor.)
O’Keefe’s video appearance Sunday was facilitated by the conservative political website Granite Grok, which provided live video coverage of the Rye gala online.
Foster’s (It’s Australian for Beeyah!) also said this…
Between O’Keefe’s comments, the Granite Grok organizers showed brief clips from some of the videos created by O’Keefe and Project Veritas, the group he founded approximately two years earlier to assist his work.
Facilitators and Organizers. At least they spelled the name right. I could not, unfortunately, be there, but Skip and Mike had things well manged as always.
Here’ a link to the Grok Exclusive video of the O’Keefe appearance which, yes…without the help of GraniteGrok, would not have been possible.
You are reading “Facilitators & Organizers” by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)
Posted in Local NH Politics
Leave a comment
Smokes and Mirrors – What’s Up With Tobacco Taxes?
All across the the Granite State Democrats have gathered in their secret underground lairs. The unthinkable has happened. Tobacco revenues were up last month. (Audible Gasp!). That’s right. Revenues beat estimates.
This is, of course, a double edged sword for the liberal left. When their grotesque estimates (overall) were forever coming in under target, how many times did they say, “it’s just one month, wait and see. Give it time, they’ll come around. We’re not that far off.” No such quarter for Republicans. ( Typical hypocrats.) At the ugly end of the 2007 to 2010 Democrat “experiment” they were off by about a billion dollars which might suggest they have no clue what they are doing.
But when the Republican’s estimated revenues for their budget the Democrats cried and whined anyway as if they were suddenly experts; the religious left even gathered to pray for more spending. I’m not kidding. They prayed for more spending. The left claimed repeatedly that Republican estimates were purposefully low to punish people. That is what the left said.
But the overall estimates are close. Very close. This means the Democrats were wrong about Republicans underestimating revenue on purpose, which means they were themselves wrong about estimates again (no surprise there). With revenue nearly in line with spending, bitching about it makes them look petty and just reminds everyone what wretched stewards they were of our tax dollars.
So left hanging without an economic axe to grind they have bet their rhetorical money on the cigarette tax cut. But they may have lost that bet as well.
In February tobacco revenue was reported to be $900,000.00 over projections. In April, it was above projection by close to a million. (That’s $1,000,000.00). In between tobacco revenues were down. Lottery, gaming, liquor and beer, over the entire budget cycle, are all below protections. Sales on all these items are down across the board. It’s not just tobacco. The message from the secret lair however is that the tobacco tax cut was irresponsible, but given the economic climate (created by Democrats, by the way), and the poor overall performance in the sin tax sector, tobacco revenue is actually doing fairly well.
Would the Democrats like to now argue that cheaper cigarettes are costing us tax revenue in beer, liquor, lottery and gambling receipts?
“Yes, we see a pattern where, during these economically depressed times, people are flocking to higher tax states to get as little for their dwindling dollars as they can.”
How about “they are doing what people always do when they have less money”–doing with less. Oh, sorry. We’re talking to Democrats. When they have less they always spend more, or tax more, and then more, and more, and more. But outside the liberal ghetto of the left wing mind real people have to make sacrifices and driving to New Hampshire to save a few bucks might not be cost effective right now. Why? How about gas prices? Perhaps our current energy policy and a weak dollar have made the cost of traveling to and from New Hampshire to save a few bucks untenable. (See, I told you we should have lowered the gas tax.)
Let me save you some time. Democrats don’t care. They’ve got talking points to talk about. Dwindling tobacco taxes are killing unwed mothers and fatherless children and old people with brain disorders. No answers, no past experience to run on, just scare tactics.
When was the last time a New Hampshire Democrat lowered a tax or spent less on government? How about never. To a Democrat balancing spending with revenue is the equivalent of fiscal hate speech. Government can never get smaller, those bureaucrats and their unions finance their campaigns and vote for them. They need that money and those votes, so screw you. And for four years they did. Hard. And no amount of Tobacco taxes (which they raised several times) would have ever covered up the gross fiction of left wing revenue estimation, a felonious event they continue to perpetrate even when out of power.
But undeniable truths will not be silenced. Democrats were wrong about revenue estimates when they were in power, Governor Lynch was wrong as usual with his budget, and if the Democrats were still in power now they’d be wrong to the tune of a few hundred million more, heaped onto the backs of people who clearly do not have extra money for liquor, beer and cigarettes, and would have even less under the yoke of the Democrats ever rising tax burden and grow government first agenda.
New Hampshire Republicans took a very bold and responsible approach to the budget, one that people are clamoring to see in Washington. They provided relief on a dead end tax that disproportionally hits lower income earners but at least presents an opportunity to stimulate other forms of commerce, something no tax increase will ever do. The Republicans estimated revenues in a way that avoided putting additional state tax pressures on small businesses and struggling citizens, while removing others. And then only spent what they thought they’d have. So far that’s worked out pretty well, and Democrats hate that.
We cant overcome the Democrats failed economic policy and disastrous energy policy agenda overnight. New Hampshire can’t drill for its own oil. So we have to do the best we can until we can do better. And we are doing better. And Democrats hate that.
And while the progressives would like to see gas prices come down for their buddy Obama, odds are very good that this price signal could encourage people from outside the state to use those savings to save even more on cross border sales of cigarette’s, beer, liquor, and lottery tickets, and Democrats don’t want to see Republicans proved right.
If the tobacco revenues eventually come it at or above projection, at the end of this fiscal experiment, all the left will have left is that $72,000.00 dollar taxpayer funded luxury remodel of the bathroom next to former Democrat House speaker Terie Norelli’s office (in the middle of the worst recession in history™ ), and another chapter in New Hampshire politics where they were completely wrong about the budget–again!
Let the New Hampshire Democrats scream at the darkness. Everyone else, feel free to ask for a light.
You are reading “Smokes and Mirrors – What’s up with Tobacco Taxes?” by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)
Posted in Local NH Politics
Leave a comment
The Complete Gaia Comment Stream
New Hampshire Public Employee Gaia managed to read, consume, and then comment at the Concord Monitor’s web site some 1200 times in just three years, more often than not during office hours. (Just to clarify this last point, a super majority of time during office hours.)
We could guess that they were doing it during one of their “breaks.” We know that DES has a very forgiving break policy so perhaps the whole of the bureaucracy is as forgiving? But then why did Gaia stop commenting all together after we announced our investigation into who they are?
(For those unfamilair, Gaiais the handle of the second State Employee we found spending their work day online, commenting at the Concord Monitor. The first was SEIU Chapter VP, and DES employee Dick de Seve. Ed Naile, myself, and Skip Murphy are in the midst of a series of RTK’s to discover the depth and width of his abuse and internet abuse in general among public employees.)
As to who Gaia is, we are narrowing down the search, and we’ll let you know when we’ve got that figured out. (We are very close.) In the mean time, here are the links to the Scribd posting of both PDF’s which include all 1200 Gaia comments at the Concord Monitor. Links to browser versions will be available at GraniteGrok, in the next day or so.
Please feel free to crowd source this. We have also posted the comment stream of Dick de Seve, which is available in its entirty over at the Grok.
If you would like to report a Public Employee Behaving Badly, email us at grokwatch@granitegrok.com
You are reading “The Complete Gaia Comment Stream” by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)
Posted in Local NH Politics
Leave a comment
A New Front in The War on Women – Do Liberal Chicks Dig Polygamy?
Piggy-backing off of Tim’s post on Mark Steyn’s recent article, I think the polygamy thing (which Tim does not mention) is worth visiting–repeatedly of course–just to remind everyone of the kind of campaign this has been and will continue to be. Nothing coming from the Obama side will be relevant or substantive, everything utter nonsense. And nonsense with the same lack of sourcing on the Democrat side as we’ve seen in everything they do.
For their next exploding cigar, the Democrats chose polygamy. Brian Schweitzer, the Democrat governor of Montana, remarked that Romney was unlikely to appeal to women because his father was “born on a polygamy commune.” Eighty-six percent of women, noted Gov. Schweitzer with a keenly forensic demographic eye, are “not great fans of polygamy.” You can understand the 86 percent’s ickiness at the whole freaky-weirdy idea of a president descended from someone who had multiple wives. Eww.Just for the record, Romney’s father was not a polygamist; Romney’s grandfather was not a polygamist; his great-grandfather was a polygamist. Miles Park Romney died in 1904, so one can see why this would weigh heavy on 86 percent of female voters 108 years later.Meanwhile, back in the female-friendly party, Obama’s father was a polygamist; his grandfather was a polygamist; and his great-grandfather was a polygamist who had one more wife (five in total) than Romney’s great-grandfather. It seems President Obama is the first male in his line not to be a polygamist. So, given the “gender gap,” maybe those 86 percent of American women are way cooler with polygamy than Gov. Schweitzer thinks. Maybe these liberal chicks really dig it.
Another first for Barack Obama. Too bad about the polygamy narrative though. I imagine that could have had a lot of legs.
Which leads me to the next obvious question. Could federally funded contraception users redefine polygamy to mean multiple partners instead of just multiple wives? Or how about married men who cheat on their wives? That would make Bill Clinton and John Edwards Polygamists–mighty good company if you are the average modern day Democrat.
You are reading “…do Liberal Chicks Dig Polygamy?” by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)
Posted in Local NH Politics
Leave a comment
Concord Monitor Wont Cover it, But They’ll help Cover It up.
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. Articles that implicate State employees (known and unknown) in the abuse of their taxpayer funded privileges. Abuses that occurred on the Concord Monitor’s own web site.
Now, to be fair, it is not technically the Concord Monitors job to police the misbehavior of others who otherwise abide by the rules of their electronic presence; though given most of their editorial positions one would think them obsessed with the idea of meddling, and you would be right to be curious about why it fails to apply here? You’d also be right to wonder why the Monitor staff would both ignore stories about a potential theft of services by state employees themsleves and also delete comments linking to a New Media investigation of same?
You’d think they were hiding something.
It certainly would not be their bias.
So what’s the excuse for removing comments with links to legitimate reporting that brings more depth to their pages, that they didn’t even have to pay for? We didn’t put a pay or subscription wall up at Granite Grok. So what’s the problem? Where are these so-called defenders of Free Speech and Free Press when it is inconvenient to their obvious bias?
You are reading “Concord Monitor Wont Cover it But They’ll Help Cover It Up.” by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)
Posted in Local NH Politics
Leave a comment
Remembering Democrat Rule In New Hampshire – Part 1
In the 2006 Elections Democrats took control of the New Hampshire House for the first time in 95 years (giving them complete control of State government for what would end up being four years). What happened after that must not be forgotten, for it is the doom of men that they forget.
They forget that the House Democrats first move was to turn budget policy on its head. Instead of estimating realistic revenues so that the governor could have a guideline for his budget, they would let the governor request a 14% expansion of state government in February of 2007, to which they would pad or add their spending spree agenda items before figuring out how to tax New Hampshire citizens to pay for their wish list.
In the now infamous shout heard round the State House, Democrat House leader Dan Eaton would later condense the entire four year budget strategy of the New Hampshire left into one sentence.
’It makes sense to know how much you’re spending before you decide how much money to raise.’
Now that might just make sense for a school trip or new band uniforms but this wasn’t a fundraiser. Eaton was talking about using the force of law and the power of the state to extract juice from the fruits of other peoples labors based on the whimsy of big government legislators with little or no regard for its affect on the state, our economy, or the people who would be paying, and that was exactly how the Democrats would govern.
Spot the Hypocrisy?
The current Democrat narrative is one of a Republican Legislature with skewed priorities out to hurt the most vulnerable, an agenda to which they themselves could easily relate because in March of 2007 the new Democrat Majority, in the midst of their out of the gate 2007 spending spree, found time to preserve barns, buy a Mountain, and expand the bureaucracy, but voted down a floor amendment that would have fully funded and completely eliminated, the developmental disabilities waiting list during their first biennium. In the same month the Democrat controlled Senate bulldozed SB 186, a bill to provide a property tax credit for senior citizens, down to study committee that was then killed in the Democrat controlled NH House.
So despite the New Hampshire Democrats complete control of state government and an unhealthy and unrealistic desire to spend (spend spend), instead of using that opportunity to live up to their rhetoric (to help some of the state’s most vulnerable) they kill bills to help those people and pass a bill that would allow the Democrat party to profit from the sale of the state’s voter list.
And this was just the beginning of tax and spend era of a Democrat party I would promptly dub Hypocrats.
The new Democrat majority had already raised the cigarette tax 35%, increased some annual vehicle registration fees by 20%, added a new ‘real estate tax’ that would screw new home buyers out of $40.00 per recorded page of deed mortgages, and decided that we needed a new $30.00 Scratch ticket without having held a single hearing; there was a luxury sale and use tax on the docket, a payroll tax, an inheritance tax. Taken along with their decision to calculate revenue after the Governor wrote a wish-list budget, the new era of spending and debt, only three months old, was just the beginning of a long and unpleasant four year journey down the toilet. A journey we are going to walk you through right here, all summer long.
By the way… did you know that the Republican House recently passed 267-12, a measure to add money to the Rainy Day fund the Democrats had drained while also voting to send 1.5 Million to shorten the waiting list for New Hampshire citizens with developmental disabilities. Yeah, the same waiting list of citizens the Democrats screwed back in 2007.
You are reading “Remembering Democrat Rule Part 1” by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)
Posted in Local NH Politics
Leave a comment
The New Media Militia 