The New Media Militia

Let’s say, hypothetically, that everything sucks because of George Bush.  Hypothetically.  So back in 2008 we gave the democrats complete control of the government.  They had it all.  And they promised us everything.  They promised jobs, cars, peace, good health, they’d save our homes, make peace with the world, and create a clean energy future.  No more infighting, partisanship, dirty politics, special interests running things–nothing but sunshine and happiness.

To achieve this they accumulated the greatest minds, to surround the guy they said was the greatest mind–Obama–so that the promise could be fulfilled. They then told us we would need to invest in that future, so they spent trillions.  Trillions is a lot.  In fact the Obama democrats spent more in two years than the entire nation had in the 230 plus years before that, all put together. 

So what did we get for our money?

Nothing. The world still hates us–and now they think we are incompetent to boot for electing a delusional moron.   Unemployment is still way above that ceiling of 8% the experts told us we’d never breach, years after they told us we wouldn’t breach it.  And fewer people are even bothering to look for work than at any point in the past 25 years.  Housing prices still suck.  Energy is getting more expensive.  Food costs more.  The government is still run by lobbyists and special interests, and there is even a massive shadow cabinet to be influenced further without any oversight.   Gitmo is still open, and using military tribunals.  We are still in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Race is more of a problem–because of Obama.  Every crisis produces five different messages about the administrations intent or priorities while the golfer in chief continues to vote present, making the occasional lofty speech about this or that, between flicking sod out from between the cleats on his golf shoes and washing his ball.  (Or does Secret Service wash his balls for him when he’s playing a round?)

So what’s my point?

There has to be a warranty on these things.  I want a refund.  I didn’t even choose this clueless, voting present, vacation taking, party throwing, couldn’t lead a scout troop let a lone a nation of a partisan douche-bag, but I’m still paying for him. Him and his entire, violent, full of you know what Union agenda.

And you can’t tell me that the consumer protection agency, or any of those boards of committees created to protect us, do not have a clause that permits us to return this turkey for a replacement or a credit or something?

Ladies and gentlemen, no matter what you think of the guy, or how much you want him to be any or all the things he has been made out to be, he hasn’t managed to be any of them.  We made a cultural investment on bad advice.  It is time to support another change.  Or more appropriately, to continue to support the change we started in November 2010.  Away from the policies of Obama and the democrats who would support them.  We cannot replace the guy just yet, but we can remember why we should, and support those who will stop his agenda, even if it is not always exactly how we would like it done.

Until then your state does have the right to nullification of unconstitutional acts by the general government.  It may be your ONLY defense against the overreach of this administration and any other, of either party.  Learn about it, support it, and encourage it.

From the nice folks at Yahoo News, we are asked to consider if screening applicants based on a past criminal record should be considered a form of discrimination?  Employers, having a massive advantage in available workers, are coming under scrutiny for what might otherwise go unnoticed if there were not five potential employees for each available job–this according to Yahoo News.  With so many people out of work any kind of screening becomes news-worthy.  So screening out ex-cons may be discriminatory and a waste of natural resources.

According to the article one in four Americans has a criminal record, a problem which , and I quote,  “…effectively mak(es) more than one quarter of the American workforce unemployable (and) may be an unsustainable policy for the economy as whole.” 

The article suggests another problem.  “Because discriminating against those with criminal records disproportionately hurts African Americans, the practice may violate the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race-based hiring discrimination.” 

The questions should probably be “why do more African Americans have criminal records–and how can we fix that,”  not “can we file discrimination lawsuits against employers because they do not want to hire ex-cons who may happen to be black.

I don’t think you can force an employer to hire someone with a criminal record.  Any equal application of that rule would require all employers to treat anyone with a conviction the same way instead of in a manner relative to the job itself.  This assumes no safety or security concerns can exist that might exclude candidates and that is simply not the case. 

All this does is invite lawsuits, which drain a business of resources it might have rather used to give someone a job besides some lawyers.  But is there, or should there be, a point at which a case for discrimination can be made?

Well yes, you public sector workers do pay taxes.  But we pay the same taxes as you do.  And we pay for most of your retirement, and most of your insurance benefits.  But we are also paying for most of our own retirement, and most of our own benefits on top of paying for your salary and your benefits.

So if public sector employees are genuinely interested in making a parity argument, where the cost paid by each and every working family are as close to equal as the statement “we pay taxes too” implies, then public sector workers either need to start writing each of us a check for the same percentage of our private sector retirement and insurance benefits costs as we pay for theirs. or they can just start paying for more of their own until we achieve some kind of cost equality.

Until then it can never be equal.  We will always be paying the same taxes, plus the cost of our own retirement and benefits–which (by the way) you public sector employees and your unions have made quite clear we need to support along with raise increases regardless of the economy or our incomes–which means we may have to give up adding to our own retirements so you can keep your sweet deal.

In fact.  The only way there could ever be “equality” is if  state or town workers paid for their own retirement and benefits, out of their pay check, just like we do.   Most of you guys have the unions to represent you.  Have them go work out a deal with private 401K providers and insurers like every other business owner or private citizen does.  That would make the “we pay taxes too argument” almost reasonable.

So to sum up, in case you just can’t follow, unlike your tax bill,  my tax bill does not come with a living wage, a pension I can collect for decades and benefits during and after employment.  My tax bill just comes with a due date.

By the way, I’m just as happy to take cash for your share of the cost of my retirement and benefits.  It doesn’t have to be a check.

The print media is curious about why the Republican lead New Hampshire House has had so many Roll call votes this session.  They seem to be implying that it is a waste of money.  My first thought was that I like to know how my reps voted, but then I read this by Steve Vaillancourt, over at NH Insider.  Looks like the call for the roll call is also a parliamentary stalling tactic and…Norelli and the Democrats have been using it to excess.

If Steve is correct, it is the Democrats who are going out of their way to waste taxpayer dollars on unnecessary Roll Call votes, particularly on labor related bills, so they can use those votes as political tools come 2012.

That’s not the only reason for the roll calls as Steve explains, but that makes sense.

New Hampshire Democrats, who benefit from taxpayer-money, laundered through public employee union dues into their campaigns, are spending taxpayer dollars in the legislature to make sure they have sound bites and talking points to give to their union buddies, to ensure the Aztec gold continues to flow moving forward.

Even out of power, they are finding ways to waste your money.

Cross posted: http://granitegrok.com/blog/2011/03/roll_callpalooza_another_democrat_taxpay.html

The Carbon CO₂alition’s charter signatories are a who’s-who list of left wing environmental organizations, some of them with questionable political goals not unlike the use of larger carbon schemes to redistribute wealth-which is what carbon schemes always do.  None of them have ever managed to reduce emissions or accomplish much more than creating rent seekers who lobby the political body with the money for their piece of the action. 

Now I don’t know Jim.  Never heard of him before today. I bet he is a great guy.  But he was in league with the global warming alarmist horde.  And whatever Jim may have to say about it, he was part of a group committed to convincing people of the risks of global warming from CO2 and clearly a supporter of RGGI for that purpose.  (The site is no longer updated, so they never got with the new narrative by changing that to “climate change.”)

Jim never mentions any of this in his letter, which I find suspicious.  Mr. Grady claims to be a long term Republican who has conservative instincts (a claim he makes in the opening paragraph ff his letter), then gives us a broad bush stroke about energy efficiency, news about an existing in-state tax that makes RGGI an obvious bureaucratic waste of time and resources, and ends with a bio that says “Jim Grady is president and owner of Merrimack’s LighTec, Inc.  He never says anything about CO2, global warming, the Carbon CO₂alition, or his political interest in advancing a Carbon scheme agenda like RGGI.   Is that because these ideas are now unpopular? Does that explain the shift to the “shared efficiencies narrative?”  But then, we already have a tax for that in NH according to Jim.

And one other point of interest.  If you Google the address for the Carbon CO₂alition, 100 Market street, suite 204 in Portsmouth, you get the exact same address as Clean Air-Cool Planet,  Granite State Clean Cities coalition, The New Hampshire Planners association (at least while rent seeking Recovery money as part of the New England Rail Association–scroll down to see address reference in this letter to Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood), and on and on….

Not exactly disinterested company in CO2 alarmism politics, all sharing or trading off the same office space to advance junk science in support of candidates and a left wing ideology with a decidedly non-bipartisan agenda, connected to neo-socialist, redistributive, environmental globalists.  And we are to believe RGGI is just about funding efficiency projects?  RGGI doesn’t even try to sell itself that way.  And since we already have the SBC, why not just put RGGI to rest?  And having two schemes to do the same thing?  That’s not very efficient.

Nothing personal Jim, but after reading your letter I am convinced, more than ever, that RGGI has to go.

Jim’s letter follows (New Hampshire Sunday News- Union Leader)

 RGGI benefits all Granite Staters

AS A SMALL-BUSINESS owner and long-time Republican, I’m perplexed when I hear the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) — once a GOP free-market bragging point — vilified as a Democrat tax-and-spend wealth redistribution plan. In the recent vote to withdraw New Hampshire from RGGI, leadership of the House Science and Technology committee called it a “plan to tax the many to benefit the few.” While my conservative instincts naturally warm to this description, the simple fact is that, as applied to RGGI, it’s simply not true.

What RGGI’s cap-and-trade revenue generation actually amounts to is a tiny tax on all — with all getting the benefit. The RGGI law requires the majority of its revenue to be invested back into our state to help reduce aggregate demand for electricity. This works for all of us because the price of electricity tends to decrease when we decrease our need for it.

When state Rep. Jim Garrity appeared on WMUR’s “Close-Up” program recently, he opined that the state should not invest public money in private energy efficiency projects. I have worked with Jim on energy issues and know him to be a selfless public servant; we are lucky to have him in public office.

I also share his view that any government role in managing public funds should always be scrutinized. Some thorough scrutiny of RGGI, however, will reveal a program that serves our state as an in-region alternative source of electricity that reduces rates for everyone.

Here in New Hampshire, this kind of public investment is not new. Most House members seem utterly unaware that for the past 12 years the state has levied a “tax” on the many that indisputably benefits the many: the Systems Benefit Charge (SBC). If you look at your electric bill, you’ll see a tiny charge of $0.0035 per kilowatt-hours of energy usage to pay for states-ponsored energy efficiency. This SBC “tax” (like RGGI, bipartisan) benefits the many by reducing the need to make multi-billion dollar investments in new power plants and electricity transmission and distribution systems.

It’s worth noting that last year demand for energy efficiency services from all of New Hampshire’s electric distribution utilities far outstripped available SBC funds, and utilities turned to RGGI funds to supplement business investments in energy efficiency. Thus RGGI allowed many businesses to justify investments in energy demand reduction projects within their facilities that would not otherwise have occurred. I also note that roughly every dollar on investment in utility electricity demand reduction programs leverages four dollars in job creation and sustaining private investment.

Despite this evidence, some of us Republicans somehow got it in our heads that New Hampshire’s RGGI law is a bad Democrat idea. After sitting through all of the testimony in the House hearings, I heard no real data at all that could remotely justify killing RGGI.

I do agree that the Legislature needs to stop diverting RGGI efficiency funds for use in other purposes; otherwise I view RGGI as an indisputable “win” for New Hampshire businesses and ratepayers.

Though hazy, New Hampshire’s energy strategy is really pretty simple: We encourage electric and gas utilities to make small annual investments in energy efficiency programs in order to push out the day when we have to make huge — billion dollar — investments in new sources of electrical energy. (Have we forgotten Seabrook Station overruns?) Given the slow-down in the Northern Pass project to create more transmission line capacity from Hydro Quebec to New England, we’re lucky that our RGGI and core electric and gas utility energy efficiency programs exist as alternative electricity sources that need not come from out of region.

Such energy efficiency programs have a proven track record of keeping electric rates as low as possible.

According to PUC testimony from our largest electricity supplier, the cheapest source of new electric power is that which is removed by improvements in customer end use energy efficiency.

We should help the RGGI law continue its current success: operating as an energy efficiency engine that keeps electricity costs as low as possible while spurring economic development.

Jim Grady is president and owner of Merrimack’s LighTec, Inc.

I will be tweeting and live blogging all day today from the Nullify Now Tour event at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester New Hampshire.  The event starts at 10:00 but we plan to have the GrokTALK! gear good to go by 9am, or as close to it as possible so we can live stream interviews, and commentary until the end of the event at 6pm tonight.

For a look at the list of scheduled speakers check here.


you can follow me on twitter @nhstevemacd

The live stream will be available through GraniteGrok.com

http://granitegrok.com