NHRVC Merges with the RLCNH

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Steve Mac Donald
Last Friday I announced that some changes were coming with the New Hampshire Republican Volunteer Coalition, the NHRVC.  Well, they are upon us.  Effective last Monday, we have joined forces with the RLCNH, in an effort to create one of the largest Grass roots groups in the state dedicated to supporting and electing  principled conservative and pro-liberty Republicans to office in New Hampshire.

Every member of the NHRVC is welcome to participate in any capacity that suits them, just as it always was with the NHRVC.  And while I will be contacting everyone personally, I have provided links here to help you along.
For those interested in the joining the Facebook Group you can request to do that here.

Join the RLCNH Yahoo! Group here. (Much like the NHRVC Yahoo! Group but quite a bit more active.)
You can subscribe to the RLCNH Report and email updates here.  The sign up box is on the right.
You can provide contact info and sign up as a volunteer here, to do the kind of on the ground, hands on work the NHRVC was created for.
You can even become a full Dues paying member by signing up here.
You decide your level of involvement, from Facebook lurker, to comment junkie, to full membership or anything in between, just like before.  But whatever your speed is, I encourage you all to come an join us so that we may continue to find, support, and elect principled Republicans to office in New Hampshire.
[Updated – I added the RLCNH Yahoo! Email group]

Here is the Press Release…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 26, 2012
Media Contact: Carolyn McKinney, chairman RLCNH, 603-769-4264, chair@rlcnh.org
REPUBLICAN LIBERTY CAUCUS OF N.H. ACQUIRES GRASSROOTS ACTIVIST ORGANIZATION
NHRVC Merger Into RLCNH Will Add Thousands of Activists to Liberty-Minded Republican Election Effort

CONCORD, N.H.—Today, the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire announces that it has acquired the political assets of the New Hampshire Republican Volunteer Coalition and has added NHRVC Co-Founder Steve MacDonald to its 10-member RLCNH Board to lead a merger effort and help carry on the mission of the NHRVC within the RLCNH organization.

“By merging the NHRVC into the RLCNH and adding Steve MacDonald to the RLCNH board, we are adding new vigor to our now substantially larger political action organization and ensuring the ongoing success of principled Republican activism in New Hampshire,” said Carolyn McKinney, chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. “During the last few election cycles, the RLCNH and the NHRVC groups had been duplicating efforts to elect liberty-minded Republicans. It simply makes good common sense to merge our efforts so that we can motivate our now larger group of activists to pursue one effective mission.”

The NHRVC was founded in the wake of the November 2008 elections as a grassroots coalition of highly motivated activists working to elect principled Republicans who stand for low taxes, fiscal responsibility, free enterprise, individual liberty, and the U.S. and NH Constitutions. Founded by Kevin McHugh and Steve MacDonald, the NHRVC grew from just a handful of people trading e-mails to more than 4,000 members working to spread liberty through the Republican Party.

The RLCNH was launched in December 2004 to promote the ideals of limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise and adherence to the N.H. and U.S. Constitutions among Republican Party officials and throughout the state by identifying and supporting candidates sympathetic with the organization’s ideals, and by supporting, through public education and outreach, initiatives in the N.H. Legislature that further these ideals.

Both RLCNH and NHRVC have operated on the Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo Groups social media portals and have a Web site with a blog. The NHRVC social media portal sites and blog have been shut down. As part of the merger, NHRVC members will be migrated into the RLCNH social media sites (Facebook | Twitter) where members discuss political ideas and candidates, and they will be invited to sign up to receive the RLCNH Report of state legislative action items as well as to visit the RLCNH Web site and blog.

“Beginning today, I am inviting all former NHRVC members to continue their involvement in pursuit of the same aims, to whatever degree suits them, under a new banner,” Steve MacDonald said. “We will be able to engage in the same  debates on Facebook and start thousands of new ones, share important links and commentary on Twitter, and use our ‘boots on the ground’ mentality in the RLCNH Yahoo Group and beyond to connect our principled ideas with principled Republicans in New Hampshire and across the nation.”

Leading up to the merger decision, NHRVC Co-Founder Kevin McHugh handed the reins to MacDonald and resigned from the organization to focus more of his time on his work and family. It was at that time that MacDonald determined that the mission of the NHRVC could be more effectively fulfilled within the structure of the RLCNH. The merger plan was developed by MacDonald and members of the RLCNH Executive Committee during the past week, and today’s announcement seals the deal.

###
About The Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire
The Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, a state chapter of the national Republican Liberty Caucus, was launched in December 2004 to promote the ideals of limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise and adherence to the N.H. and U.S. Constitutions among Republican Party officials and throughout the state by identifying and supporting candidates sympathetic with the organization’s ideals, and by supporting, through public education and outreach, initiatives in the N.H. Legislature that further these ideals. For more information about the RLCNH, please visit www.rlcnh.org.

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The NH-D.E.S. Break Schedule, and Other Mysteries of The Known Universe

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Steve Mac Donald
by Steve MacDonald

We have it on good authority that Richard de Seve, State employee over at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, only reads and comments on the articles at the Concord Monitor-online, during his breaks.  He did, after all, admit this too me, so what better authority can there be?  And who am I to doubt the “word “of a long time Public employee, part time UNH professor, and high ranking member of the SEIU/NH-SEA?

That question answers itself, yes?

So I did a little test.  I took another look at his last four years worth of comments at the Concord Monitor, and checked the posting times.

My conclusion?  That DES either offers its employes a very liberal rotating break schedule that occurs with greater frequency than J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbits stop to eat or Dick de Seve is simply giving himself a “break” to read and or respond to content at the Concord Monitor, on any given work day, whenever the mood strikes him, in any one of these potential time periods.

8:00-8:30, 8;30-9:00, 9:00-9:30, 9:30-10:00, 10:00-10:30, 10:30-11:00, 11:00-11:30, 11:30-12:00, *12-12:30, 12:30-1:00, 1:00-1:30, 1:30-2:00, 2:00-2:30, 2:30-3:00,  3:00-3:30, 3:30-4:00, and 4:00-4:30.

*It may comfort you to know, taxpayers,  that while there are comments posted between 12:00 and 1:00, that they are few by comparison and extremely rare in the first half of that hour, and almost always in the last ten to fifteen minutes before 1:00 when they do occur.  So Dick is making time during one of his “breaks” to eat.  We certainly wouldn’t want him to starve  on our account now would we?  He’d hardly have the energy to write any more comments later in the day if he didn’t buy himself some lunch with part of that $60,000.00 plus per year salary we pay him  to “work” at the NH DES.

While that is all wonderful news, you may have sensed that my research has resulted in a more significant concern; that the only time at which taxpayers might reliably expect Mr. de Seve to be doing the people’s business, based on the history of his extensive work at the Concord Monitor, is before he arrives at work or after he has left for the day, when he does not appear to be commenting at all, and unfortunately for us, is no longer on the taxpayer dime.

Food for thought, yes?

So Mr. de Seve is right in agreeing with me when he admits that his commenting history created the wrong perception.   It certainly does.  It also creates the “perception” that we have been paying him to invest large swaths of time, whenever the urge or opportunity strikes him (or whenever actual work does not manage to interrupt him), to read online news articles all day long and then respond with very partisan left-wing political commentary when he finds it necessary; that no one at DES appears to have noticed, cared, or been capable of prevent him from wasting our tax dollars, and that it very likley would have continued endlessly had we at GraniteGrok not shamed him publicly into stopping, and initiated a 91-A right to know request to determine if it was worse than what appears obvious.

And while the DES might have every right to assume that a “professional “such as Mr. de Seve, who is also a University Professor, was someone worthy of their trust, we can assure you that it is, in fact, worse that what appears obvious.   This last bit, to some degree, can be resolved with more certainty once we have the IT traffic records we requested from DES.  Information we have asked for through the Right to Know law.  Information we are still ‘patiently’ waiting for.  But there appears to be some relevant past on-line history as well, to support the claim.

In the mean time, we are happy to remark at length on what we do know and will continue to do so.

You are reading The NH DES Break Schedule.., by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.

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We Just Learned The Proper Way To Cancel Your Carbonite Subscription

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Steve Mac Donald

by Steve MacDonald

Following my post at GraniteGrok on David Friend and Carbonite’s likely ties to Media Matters and the lefts AstroTurf factory, I received this comment from Mark, in California…
Great article. I just tried to cancel my service to Carbonite and when I told them it was due to the advertising pull on Limbaugh, they said, “too late, your service has been restarted.  If you had told me it was due to a technical error or problem with Carbonite I could cancel your service and offer a refund.”  I asked for a Manager and some guy named Jim got on and played the corporate policy line on me. When I asked who his boss was he told me David Friend.

I cancelled the service back on the 7th of March knowing my subscription was set to run out on 3/18.  Carbonite claims our e chat was not a sufficient request for cancelling service. However after telling me a technical problem would be sufficient, you tend to think this is political more than anything else. I hope their stock slide continues. Thanks for posting the alternative companies to this sham organization.

Emphasis mine.

Carbonite sounds desperate, clinging to their subscribers by all means possible.  Even if it means being as dishonest to their customers as David Friend seems to have been about pulling his advertising off Rush Limbaugh’s radio program.  But there is a lesson learned here.

If you use Carbonite, and are thinking about cancelling, don’t tell them it was because their progressive CEO is part of some astro-turfed outrage orchestrated by Media Matters against Rush Limbaugh, tell them you have had technical problems or…that you no longer even have a computer to back up because you had to sell it to put gas in your car.  You see where I’m going?  Be creative.  Have some fun.

And  may the Free Market turn Carbonite into an abject lesson in failed alliances, with your help.

And hey! Do you have a story like Mark’s?  Know someone who does?   Share it with us so we can continue to expose this fraud for what it is..and more importantly, do to them what the Machine tried to do to Rush.   They probably won’t stop trying to intimidate advertisers so our only defense is to punish them for their politics with our own.  If they can do it so can we.

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Isn’t it Time We Enforced the State’s IT Policies?

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Steve Mac Donald
Friday, March 16, 2012 at 07:18AM

by Steve MacDonald

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.

I believe we’ll find, in the coming days and weeks, that state employees are just as human, if not more so, that the rest of us.  That there is rampant abuse of state time and state property, in violation of the states own internet policy rules, whose apparent function is to create pointless paperwork for show, since it clearly serves no purpose as a deterrent.

The time has come to talk about cutting off state employees access to the main-stream news-porn they obsess over on taxpayer time,  to limit access, and enforce signed policy agreements.

We know that the left is all about putting limits on us, and that the bureaucracy on the whole is a pro big-government, left leaning body.  But will they feel the same way about limiting state employees access (from state equipment and property) to the newsy distractions of the outside world?

All I can say is that if they won’t block them, they had better be prepared to punish the people who violate the rules.

More to come…

             

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Sandra Fluke; ‘Pay for My Birth Control….I’ll Be in Spain If You Need Me.’

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Steve Mac Donald

by Steve MacDonald

While Hillary Clinton is comparing Sandra Fluke to a political prisoner in Burma, we have discovered that Sandra “I can’t afford my own 9$/month birth control pills” Fluke, recently took a trip to the place where the rain stays mainly on the plain.

So Sandra Fluke and Michelle Obama have something else in common.  A desire to spend other peoples money, and vacations in Spain.  No evidence either of them came under imaginary sniper fire, but there is always time to add that in to either story later.

Take away question: Did the government of Spain pay for her birth control while she was vacationing there?

         

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If You Are Looking For More…

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Steve Mac Donald

Just  reminder.  I don’t cross post everything, but everything I do post can be found here.

You can check out all my content and more at GraniteGrok.com

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Is A NH Public Employee Using The Internet to Sell his Political Agenda On Your Time?

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Steve Mac Donald

What does  a New Hampshire Public employee who is also an SEIU chapter Vice President and shop steward do while working on the taxpayer dime?  If your name is Richard de Seve, (Dick de Seve, or DickNH, from Gilmanton, NH, VP of the Gilmanton Conservation Commission) you may be posting comments to the Concord Monitor online, throughout the work day, when you shouldn’t be.   At least that’s how it looks from here.

How could I suspect such a thing?  After encountering the amusing screen name DickNH at the Concord Monitor Online, I felt compelled to find out what kind online footprint someone with that handle generates.  What unfolded was a series of connections with a curious conclusion.  That a self proclaimed adjunct professor at UNH, with a law degree and former law practice, who is also an SEIU chapter Vice President and Union Steward,  employed as a Compliance Supervisor at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, might be using Newspaper Message Boards online to promote the Democrat/Union agenda when he should be doing the taxpayers business.

          

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Introdution to the Constitution

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Steve Mac Donald
Over at GraniteGrok I have been posting a series of 30 minute presentations on the Constitution by Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn.  These are the five links to each of the respective parts.  For those interested in Hillsdale’s free online Constitution 101 class, while these are not necessary, they do make an excellent introduction. 

These are also MP3 version of the first four lectures at their respective links if you want to listen instead.  (Had an issue with part 5 loading up to the server.  I’m looking into that.)

 Part One,  Part Two,  Part Three, Part Four, and Part Five.

        

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Will Jeanne Shaheen Send The IRS After the NHCAA?

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Steve Mac Donald
By Steve MacDonald

The NHCAA is the New Hampshire Citizens Alliance for Action.  They are a 501 (c)(4), and the political-action arm of the New Hampshire Citizen Alliance (NHCA). The NHCA is a 501(c)(3) and the local chapter of USA Action which, if it was in a vat and you scooped some out, it would provide you with a frothing cup of primordial progressive/socialist poison.
I point this out {the 501 (c)(4) part at least} because according to a letter signed by New Hampshire’s own Senator Shaheen, sent to the Internal Revenue Service, several Democrat Senators have expressed a concern about whether 501(c)(4) groups are engaging in any campaign activity which (according to the Senators) is expressly prohibited by their 501 (c)(4) status.

So how might this affect the NHCAA?   Well, the NHCAA is a 501(c)(4) that began filing reports with the FEC in October of 2010, specifically to canvass for then incumbent Democrat Congressional candidate Carol Shea Porter.   In fact all they ever appear to have done is canvass for Carol Shea Porter.  And according to Shaheen, that is against the law.

From the Shaheen signed letter to the IRS…

“…The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for political office.”
So is creating a PAC, then spending over $30,000.00 in the waning days of a losing campaign, “canvassing for just one Democrat candidate, sound like it might be “direct or indirect participation in a political campaign on behalf of a candidate for political office?”

According to FEC records, not only did the NHCAA rent office space to support Carol Shea Porter, by the time they filed their end of year report with the FEC the NHCAA had spent over $30,000.00 on supporting one candidate for political office.

Over at Open Secrets, they report on some 15,000 plus spent on communication costs and “coordinated” support of Democrat Carol Shea Porter.

And if that is not enough, in a letter dated August 15, 2011, to the FEC, New Hampshire Citizens Alliance for Action, clearing up what they assume is a “Housekeeping measure,” state that.
“With respect to expenditures you have identified in your second letter, these expenses were administrative charges ancillary to the distribution of political flyers in the ten days prior to and including election day, with the vast bulk of expenses serving as administrative charges in support of canvassing on election day itself, November 3rd, 2010…”
So here’s the rub, and there is plenty more of this red-meat by the way, like how–for whatever reason, the NHCAA never needed to register with the New Hampshire Secretary of State in 2010;  If it is acceptable for this particualr 501 (c)(4) to participate in what is obviously…
“…direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for political office.”
…then it must be acceptable for groups that do not advocate Senator Shaheen’s political views.

Or…we must assume that Senator Shaheen is prepared to invite the IRS to the offices of the 501 (c)(4) New Hampshire Citizen Alliance for Action, to investigate their having spent tens of thousands, in a very short time, advocating for a single Democrat candidate from her home state.
Or was she planning to back off?

We’ll be watching.

You’re reading Will Jeanne Shaheen Send the IRS after the NHCAA? by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com on 2-28-2012.

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Obama’s Stasi Get Rebranded (Again)

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Steve Mac Donald
Yes, for what is this the third or fourth time now, you are being encouraged by the people running things to submit the names of your fellow Americans so that Obama’s campaign Gestapo (The Media) can hunt them down and humiliate them into silence.

Read More

            

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