Interesting Items 05/01

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –

In this issue:

1. Sanctuary
2. Shooting
3. Taxes
4. ACLU
5. Whining
6. Walrus
7. Natural Gas
8. Cooking
9. Tariff

1. Sanctuary. An O’Bama bundler appointed to the federal bench issued the latest injunction against a Trump immigration Executive Order.  The judge, one William Orrick  was appointed by O’Bama in 2012.  Media was ecstatic as were his buds in SF.  The Executive Order was essentially Trumpian grandstanding, simply telling sanctuary cities (and states) that the Trump administration would follow the law which allows them to withhold various grants to law enforcement and other activities if the locale is no longer following federal law.  Apparently following the law is no longer legal, at least under this particular federal judge.  The ruling was also grandstanding and does not appear to carry any weight as the judge simply made up a violation requiring his action based once again on the words of Trump during the election campaign.  Looks like the opinion can safely be ignored.  Appellate judges can serve as long as they exhibit good behavior in office.  There are a bunch of O’Bama appointees acting otherwise as they use their offices to obstruct President Trump on immigration.  Happily, most of them are in the Ninth Circus, though the Fourth Circus is working hard to catch up.  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/26/judge-who-blocked-trump-sanctuary-city-big-obama-b/

 

2. Shooting. Last week on Earth Day, someone opened up on the University of Alabama Huntsville building housing climate skeptic John Christy.  The put 7 rounds into the building.  All rounds hit the 4^th floor which houses Christy’s office.  The shooting took place the day or night after the Earth Day march on campus.  The left continues its descent into religion, following the path blazed by the Muzzies, who believe that heretics / apostates can be killed.  https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/24/on-earth-day-shots-fired-at-building-housing-leading-climate-skeptic-scientists/

 

3. Taxes. One of the things we conservatives have been after for decades is defunding the left.  President Trump’s proposed tax reform package takes a stab at that by removing federal deductions for state and local taxes.  This means that high tax blue state residents no longer can deduct taxes paid to their expensive state and local governments.  This is a great start.  Perhaps we can also start going after university endowments, non-profits and the foundations, all free money repositories funding the democrat political machine.  The Trump proposal appears to be the most important tax reform since 1986.  This is going to be a fun summer.  http://dailysignal.com/2017/04/26/how-trumps-tax-plan-would-affect-high-tax-states-like-california-new-york/

 

4. ACLU. Residents of Homer, AK are in the process of recalling and removing three city council members.  The three conspired to turn Homer into a sanctuary city.  They offered up an anti-Trump screed disguised as a municipal ordinance.  It was significantly modified before it was brought forward in a council meeting and was defeated.  Unfortunately for the conspirators, they did most of their conspiring via e-mail and that traffic was captured and published.  Local residents disagreed with them, gathered signatures and floated a recall for the three.  The election is weeks away and promised to be just as much fun to watch as the signature gathering phase.  Last week the local chapter of the ACLU entered the fray with a lawsuit against the ballot initiative claiming that that it is not up to voters to determine if any of the three are unfit for office and the recall election is therefore unconstitutional.  The ACLU claims that the three were simply exercising their free speech rights.  Apparently the ACLU here in AK now supports the notion of one man, one vote, one time.  They would do well in Maduro’s Venezuela or Erdogan’s Turkey.  http://mustreadalaska.com/aclu-sue-homer-over-recall/

 

5. Whining. One of the things O’Bama did in December was use his phone and pen to close most of western Alaskan waters to oil and natural gas exploration.  He set up something called the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience area, a mere 112,000 square miles of Bering Sea and islands.  The excuse was to protect and defend the traditional native way of life, yada, yada, yada.  As an aside, take a look at the next item 6. Walrus for an example of that traditional way of life.  O’Bama’s move was lauded by elders of 40 tribes at the time.  It also completely ignored state government, the governor and his democrat infested administration.  The tribes and elders celebrated a new government teat to suckle off, as did local greens.  Most of the rest of us growled things about being sorry about what you wish for, getting what you want, and becoming TWANLOC.  As this action was a full two months after the election, we also expected it to be rolled back by Trump early in his administration.  We were fortunate that O’Bama continued to be lazy right up until his last few weeks in office.  Rather than designating the entire area as a national monument which would have been difficult to reverse, he did his designation via an Executive Order which can be reversed almost instantly.  And last week, Trump did precisely that, much to the consternation and upset of the tribal elders.  Their whining about not being consulted by the Trump administration was glorious to watch, if for no other reason than what comes around, goes around.  The Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience area lasted less than four months and it will not be missed.  President Trump also took steps to return other offshore areas in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas to oil and natural gas lease sales.  O’Bama closed almost all of them in his actions last December.  https://www.adn.com/arctic/2017/04/29/bering-sea-tribal-groups-slam-alaska-delegation-for-standing-by-as-trump-struck-order-giving-them-voice/

 

6. Walrus. One of the awful things that happen from time to time in Bush Alaska is the wanton slaughter of animals, generally walrus or caribou, generally by bored young men.  Last week four twenty-something young men from Point Hope pled guilty to illegally taking and wasting walrus at Cape Lisburne in 2015.  Alaska Natives can take walrus as long as they follow federal regulations on the hunt and harvest the meat.  Unfortunately, the real money in walrus are the ivory tusks, leading to a cottage industry in beheading walrus and wasting the rest of the carcass.  These guys shot four walruses, harvesting only the tusks Sept. 2015 at a walrus haulout.  The shooting stampeded the herd off the beach, and several were trampled to death.  The guys returned to the beach two days later and did the same thing, shooting four, stampeding the herd which trampled members of the herd.  Employees of a nearby radar site (DEW Line) took photos of the dead walrus a few days later, counting over 30 dead.  The plea agreement required $1,000 (a PFD check) for walrus conservation and 500 hours of community service.  What sort of community service you might ask?  How about subsistence hunting for local elders?  Right.  The tribal court sentences the same clowns who hunt walrus for their tusks to hunt for local elders.  Some punishment, that.  If these are traditional native ways, perhaps we should think twice before celebrating and accepting them, as they most certainly can use improvement.  https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2017/04/21/point-hope-men-sentenced-for-wasteful-walrus-hunt-that-caused-herd-to-stampede/

 

7. Natural Gas. Greens will not be happy until we are all back living in the trees.  Having conspired with the O’Bama and democrat attack on coal which used to power 50% of all electrical generation in the United States, they are turning their attentions to natural gas.  A combination of O’Bama rules, regulations, green lawfare and the flood of shale gas moved natural gas into the lead generation fuel, supplying 34% of American electricity.  Coal fell to 30%.  Wind and solar contributed less than 6% and 1% respectively.  The green attack is based on same old same old rationale, the notion that CO2 is somehow evil.  Their problem is that natural gas is the second cleanest electrical generation fuel widely used (nuclear is cleanest).  Our experience over the last few decades is that green attacks are most effective only when democrats hold power.  It will be up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen for a very long time.  Perhaps the Trump tax plan can also defund their non-profits and the public interest lawfare racket their business model is based upon.  https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/04/22/greens-make-natural-gas-their-next-target/

 

8.  Cooking. The Daily Caller has turned into one of my go-to investigative resources on environmental issues.  Last week they ran an article quoting and O’Bama administration official who described how it used intentionally misleading press releases on climate data as a way to manipulate public opinion.  An example was the 2014 National Climate Assessment showing hurricane activity increasing from 1980 (which was in turn blamed on manmade global warming due to CO2 emissions).  The agencies fudged the data in that report by choosing 1980 as a starting point.  This allowed them to ignore hurricane numbers decreasing in the decades before 1980.  Choose the right starting point for your graph, a suitably confusing set of labels on your X and Y axes, and the right chunk of data, and you can literally prove anything.  It is the press officers working with government employed scientists in NOAA and NASA that created the intentionally misleading press releases on climate.  Neither NASA nor NOAA responded to Daily Caller requests for comment.  Drain the swamp.  Sooner would be better than later.  Should we no longer have the ability to analyze what is coming at us climate-wise, at least we will no longer have government employees lying to us on the public dime.  http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/24/former-obama-official-says-climate-data-was-often-misleading-and-wrong/#ixzz4fGS3GICc

 

9. Tariff. President Trump last week announced he was thinking about a 20% tariff on Canadian soft wood lumber imports into the US.  To most observers and commenters, this came out of left field.  Trump’s love for tariffs as a tool in trade negotiation is well known, having threatened them throughout the election campaign.  And he started the renegotiation process for NAFTA.  But why Canada?  Why now?  As it turns out, Canada is subsidizing sales from over six different Canadian lumber companies at 12 – 24%.  This allows the companies to sell product here in the US significantly below break-even costs, allowing them to undercut American product.  This is not free trade at all, with or without NAFTA.  And the tariff is in line with what the Canadian government is subsidizing their lumber companies.  As we have seen in his first 100 days, the threat from Trump may be sufficient to get the behavior to change.  OTOH, it may not, which is what the Art of the Deal is all about.  Think of this as the opening bid, an attention getting step.  It is not a return to Smoot – Hawley.  It is the beginning of a negotiation.  Nice to see someone finally standing up for American jobs.  http://hotair.com/archives/2017/04/25/trump-tariff-canadian-lumber/

More later –

– AG