Pt. 1. A NH's School Boards Shenanigans, is any town USA.

I  asked permission of a friend, blogger, and Lady Liberty Extraordinaire Kimberly Morin, to repost some of her articles about the Windham School Board. They were originally featured on the examiner.com as well as Granite Grok. Morin is fantastic in her investigative journalism, and shined the spot light of truth on the School districts', inappropriate practices and actions. She began this investigation back in January. Recently however, a member of the Windham SB has contacted the examiner.com claiming that she was defamatory in her reporting and that she never contacting them. Morin claims that to be lies, and she has backed her reporting with facts, links and even has snapshots of involved parties FB pages. For as she began to report she clearly poked the bees nest.  The examiner.com site, caved and removed the posts. So much for Freedom of the Press, or Speech  for that matter. Granite Grok remains loyal to the truth, and refuses to pull the posts. I don't believe that any elected or non elected official should ever be given the power to squelch any part of our Bill of Rights. If we lose the 1st Amendment, we have lost it all. Here is a story of the Windham School Board, but it can and is any town USA...

Windham School Board calls police on resident over 'no bid' contract

Kimberly Morin                                                                                             January 12, 2014

Yesterday this author was contacted about disturbing things that appear to be happening in Windham. The Windham School Board seems to be out of control and has resorted to calling the police on the public when they dare speak out of turn. Apparently the Windham School Board wants taxpayers and parents to simply sit down and shut up when they disagree with outrageous and useless spending.

Last week the Windham School Board was given a proposal for “behavioral management” energy conservation (you can read the proposal on page 17). They were given this proposal 48 hours before their meeting. This contract would cost the school district almost $577,000 and was a “no bid” contract. Clearly there was something more going on behind the scenes because why would the school board and business administrator push such a hefty contract with only a couple of days to research and review?

The Windham School Board has been known for not being transparent. In the past several months, they changed the rules so that residents are only able to speak at the beginning of a meeting or at the end. If a question comes up during the middle of a meeting after a presentation or proposal, the people paying for that proposal (taxpayers/parents) aren’t allowed to ask further questions. Essentially they are told to sit down and shut up while the board votes on these things. When the public speaks at the end (often past midnight), the board has already voted!

Last week during their meeting the board decided to invoke this rule and push it even further when they were voting on the outrageous proposal by Cenergistic (formerly Energy Education Inc.). Remember, the board only had the proposal for 48 hours before the meeting. A member of the board, Ken Eyring, asked that the proposal be moved to a further date so that they could truly research and review it before making a decision on such a huge amount of money to be spent. When a resident spoke out, the police were called.

You can see at point 1:19:00 in the video that Tom Murray (a resident who is sits on the Facilities Committee), speaks out against the proposal and a recess is instantly called. The board demanded the video be stopped and someone called the police. During the recess the police spoke with Murray out in the hall. No arrests were made. Clearly the Windham School Board doesn’t want to hear from residents on outrageously expensive decisions they are making that the taxpayers are on the hook for.

Calling the police on taxpayers seems to be a disturbing trend for school boards in New Hampshire. This isn’t the first time this scenario has happened. Most people have heard of the Billy Baer case, in which he just won against the Gilford School Board for being arrested for speaking out at one of their meetings. There was also the case in Dover in which the Dover School Board was apparently bullying one of the members and called the police on a man standing up for her. The school board claimed the man was carrying a concealed weapon when in reality he had a tape measure on his belt.

The Windham School Board is not only trying to shut the people who pay its bills up but they are doing this in a methodical bullying manner. They aren’t giving enough time for proposals to be reviewed and researched by the members of their board and they aren’t allowing for public input, not even from people who sit on committees in the town! Calling the police on taxpayers is not only outrageous but it shows that the Windham School Board needs to be looked at more closely to see why they want to keep their taxpaying residents quiet.

Board member Ken Eyring actually took the time to do some research on Cenergistic and their program only to discover that PSNH could perform the exact same function for free. Eyring also discovered some back history on Cenergistic which was formerly called Energy Education Inc. This company apparently likes to give kickbacks in the forms of cash and other gifts to superintendents and administrators in return for pushing their proposals and contracts.

Further investigation will be done in order to shed light what is really going on in Windham. That the board would call the police on a committee member is not only outrageous but leads one to believe that something is indeed going on they want to hide. Pushing an almost $600,000 contract onto the taxpayers of Windham without a reasonable review period is not only ridiculous but shows they don’t want anyone to review Cenergistic or alternatives that may be less expensive. Calling the police on anyone who dares to speak out about this truly shows the board has transparency issues that need to be addressed.
 

At the time of being posted by JustSaying..., the link on examiner.com for this article was still valid. This of course can change at anytime.  http://www.examiner.com/article/windham-school-board-calls-police-on-resident-over-no-bid-contract

Open letter to the Fergus Cullen and his GOP Establishment...

I had been hoping that you and your people would have figured it out by now, but I guess it needs to be explained to you, and others that have lost their way. Recently Presidential Candidate Rand Paul made the comment that NH cannot seem to get a Republican Governor elected. It is true, the last GOP Governor, left office 10 years ago. I did get to explain to Senator Paul that the reason is that the GOP continues to give us Democrat Lite candidates.

After the 2012 election, you wrote an opinion piece in the Union Leader. You said that you hoped that NH Republicans learned their lessons because many seats were lost. You concluded that the party must “modernize and adapt principles...” Can you please say that out loud? Because I am pretty sure that if you ‘adapt principles’, you have none. Adapt means to assimilate, comply, and conform. Principles are fundamental truths. You don’t change them. They are finite.

You went on to call out certain ‘factions’ of the Republican Party, who you described as “…the motley crew of insular Tea Partiers, Free Staters, birthers, Agenda 21 conspiracy theorists, and borderline anarchists calling themselves Libertarians…” I don’t know a lot about this “motley crew” but I do identify myself with the Tea Party. You seem to think that is a bad thing. Is it wrong to realize that today’s government has abandoned the principles that this nation was founded? Is it wrong to want our government officials to uphold the Constitution? To have a constitutionally limited government? For our leaders to practice fiscal responsibility? For our Nation to be sovereign, and beholding to no one including the United Nations? To believe in the free market, and a strong national defense.

If we had stayed on the path that had been carved out for us, we wouldn’t be in the mess that we are now in. But the establishment Republicans had to go all progressive and “modernize and adapt Principles...” and it is not working. Many of us have been watching promises made and broken. We know voting records, and understand pandering. We got so tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. So we stopped.

Standing up for principles, isn’t always easy, but more and more are doing it. Yes, we will continue to cling to our guns and to our God. We will write in a candidate or a dead president before adapting again.

You see Mr. Cullen, it’s a “devil you know” kind of thing. We have no expectations from the reigning party. It’s easier to get angry with the opposing party than to be frustrated with your own. I know that you don’t take this “motley crew” of the Republican Party seriously. That is a mistake. You cannot win another election without us. Just look at 2014 Senator and Gubernatorial races. Those candidates didn’t even support the NH Republican platform. You once said that the Republican Party should have learn their lesson from getting kicked by the mule. I say, you people should start wearing hard hats, because we will continue to drop cases of Tea on you.

Before you throw money into another candidate, why not make sure that they can actually put their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Those are our Principles.

Sincerely,
Kathy Dunton

Agenda's Out Shine Veterans Affairs, once again

I went to Frank Guinta’s 5th Town Hall Meeting in 2 months. I may have bones to pick with him right now, but I have to say there is no one who interacts with their constituents, better than Guinta. You can count all of Shea Porters Town Halls on... no hands. This Meeting was to be geared towards Veterans. He wanted to hear from them and answer their questions. That was the way it was promoted. There were 45 in attendance counting his people and the press. There were many older Veterans in attendance. NH has the third largest population of Veterans, in the nation. This was an opportunity for them to talk to their Congressman.

Guinta opened the meeting by talking about bills that have passed the House with bipartisan support. 85% of all the bills that have passed through the House since this Session began did so with bipartisan support. Among those were ‘The Keystone pipeline’, ‘A return to the 40-hour work week’, and something to do with ‘high energy costs’. Apparently NH has some of the highest energy costs in the country. He went on to share about some bills that he is co-sponsoring. A repeal of the Cadillac tax. This will hit municipalities hard first, then businesses in 2018. Another bill he is co-sponsoring would eliminate duplicating programs within government agencies. He mentioned that in his 2010-2012 term in Congress he discovered 70 programs that were duplicated~ in one government agency. (government efficiency, not.) It’s interesting that many of the bills he mentioned were to undo the damage that Obama has done in the last 6 years.

He shared that the entire NH delegation, Annie Kuster and he, Jean Shaheen, and Kelly Ayotte are all co-sponsoring legislation. Last year, the mismanagement of the Veterans Administration came to light, complete with false reporting and secrets lists. Veterans were dying while waiting for care while others waited months for medical services. In NH, many of our Vets must travel at least 3 hours to get medical treatment as we don’t have a full-service Veterans hospital in our state. If I remember correctly, Obama first learned about the Veterans plight on the news. He kick started a fix by allocating 10 million to build facilities, over a 3 year period and vowed to get to the bottom of this mess. This year, he cut the funding from his budget. The legislation that the NH Delegation is sponsoring is to make the funding permanent.

Because a Town Hall is designed for feedback from those in attendance and usually last about an hour, he opened up for questions. The first question was asked was not about Veterans Affairs. This guy asked him about 4-year-old FEC charges that were brought against him by the Democrat Party. I think this guy is a troll, because of the way that Guinta answered him. He said, “As I have explained to you on other occasions…I have been cleared by the Ethics Committee.” This wasn’t good enough for this guy, and he continued to chew up time that was supposed to be for the Vets. There was a couple of questions about the Medical ID cards that, when the idea was conceived, would allow Vets to go anywhere they choose for service. Unfortunately, not all Vets have received them, and one younger Vet in attendance, who currently needs physical therapy 3xs a weeks mentioned that he is still required to travel to Manchester for that service. He has received the card. In other words, not much has changed for these people in the last year.

The next question was from someone concerned about educational mandates that cost the districts serious money. While he apologized for the line of questions, he still took up precious time from the Vets. Guinta, who doesn’t shy away from issues, began to speak sympathetically to the mandates and when appropriate, Matt Mayberry, who hosted the event and had previously tried to reign things back to questions from Veterans, tried once again. Next Question from a woman who wanted to talk endlessly about the Letter that 47 Senators sent to Iran. Gee whiz. Really? Guinta, then attempted to answer her questions, but whatever he said wasn’t good enough. She wanted him to condemn Kelly Ayotte, who was one of the signers of the letter. He said he wouldn’t do that. Mayberry then had to close the meeting as the hour was up. Guinta, apologizing to those that didn’t get to ask all their questions, offered to stay after and talk to them one on one. And to his credit, he did so for almost a ½ hour.

This blogger has several things she wants to talk to the Congressman about. Mainly, when you hold the purse strings to things that our dictator is trying to control, stick to your damn principles! Stop caving. Stop going along, to get along. But this forum was not the time or the place. There will always be another time. Frank Guinta, is that guy, and although he may not vote the way I want, he doesn’t hide in DC. He makes himself available to his constituents, all the time.

In conclusion to this Town Hall. I am disappointed. Not with Guinta, but rather with people that have their own agenda’s that once again pushed our Veterans to the back of the line.