Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Habitat
- Income Tax
- Coup
- Tapes
- Protesters
- Linnell
- DNC
- Models
- Fraud
- Habitat. With an ear toward improved resource development here in Alaska (/sarc), three green warriors started gathering signatures on what they call a salmon habitat protection initiative. The initiative is intended to so garbage up and obstruct the permitting and approval process that nobody will be able to mine, log, drill, build a road, or other any infrastructure before insuring no fish at any place or time will be harmed. As there are fish everywhere up here, this is a logical impossibility. Should the initiative get on the ballot, it will be a huge player in the 2018 elections. https://www.adn.com/politics/2017/05/17/new-alaska-habitat-protection-initiative-would-turn-tables-on-miners-development/
- Income Tax. We here in Alaska are fending off an attempt to institute an income tax as a solution to our $2.3 b budget gap. The proposal previously came out of the Governor’s office, though this session, he is hiding behind the skirts of Homer Representative Paul Seaton, one of the RINOs who crossed the aisle to caucus with democrats taking over the House. This tax is mostly a non-starter as a significant percentage of Alaskans, particularly in the Bush make virtue of living off the grid, not having an income, but always standing with their hands out, demanding money from the state to fund their lifestyle choices. The state senate has a veto-proof majority of conservatives. The House has a coalition of 18 dems, 3 RINOs, and 2 “independents.” They also have the Governor’s mansion. The Senate brought it up last week and voted it down16 – 4. We are now in a special session, with the budget warriors around $700 million apart, around the projected yearly money from an income tax. Expect the government shutdown in a week or so. Expect the pink slips to state employees. Expect more heart-rending tales than you can shake a stick at. It is up to the rest of us to keep the senate majority in play and supported, as they will be blasted nine ways from Sunday while the fight continues.
- Coup. A number of conservative writers chimed in last week calling the current anti-Trump festivities a slow-motion coup. Scott Adams referred to it as a slow-motion assassination. While nominally aimed at Trump, its real target is the squish Republicans like McCain, Graham, Flake, et al. The Scott Adams piece described the aftermath, for if they left was successful taking out Trump, the next democrat president wouldn’t last two years. For myself, I remember the left taking out Nixon, though I believed the media reports at the time. Upon reflection, that was as much a political hit (and Hillary Rodham was a staffer for a while until she got fired for lying and breaking the law – what a surprise). And I will never, ever allow that to happen again. If the left wants to play, let’s play. And if it is for everything, I am good with that, consent of the governed and all that. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/160770453201/the-slow-motion-assassination-of-president-trump
- Tapes. The leftist media made a lot of hay a couple weeks ago with President Trump’s threat to newly fired former FBI Director James Comey that he better hope there are no tapes of his conversations with Trump the next time he leaks anything to the media. Last week Comey or someone close to him leaked to the media the little factoid that Comey was a personal journal kind of guy, and kept detailed notes of his meetings with President Trump. The media did all the expected anti-Trump pyrotechnics, but nobody, but nobody picked up on Trump’s threat. That threat wouldn’t have been made unless Trump knew who was leaking to the media and that Comey was among the big players. At this point, I would call this a Good Firing, as Comey outlived his usefulness and ability to be trusted by the President. OTOH, the media seems to like him just fine. Would be a bummer if any tapes were leaked confirming Trump’s viewpoint. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/12/donald-trump-warns-james-comey-leaks-hethreatens-cancel-press/
- Protesters. President Trump had Turkish President Erdogan in town last week. Erdogan is in the final stages of turning what was a republic for a century into an Islamist state, becoming a despot in his own eyes. I don’t know how the talks went, but do know that he did see Armenian protesters outside the Turkish embassy. And Erdogan did what any self-respecting despot would do, turned his goons loose on the protesters and beat them up. US law enforcement stopped the mayhem. Afterwards, the American Ambassador to Turkey was summoned in Ankara as the Erdogan Turks demanded to know why US law enforcement stopped the mayhem. Turkey after nearly a century of being a friend is no longer a friend. It should no longer be a member of NATO. Erdogan has adopted the Islamist view of the world and as such self-selected out of the world of civilized nations. Do not forget that early in his infestation of the presidency, Erdogan refused to allow the US 4 Infantry Division to invade Iraq from the north during the Second Gulf War. Erdogan has self-identified as a problem that needs to be solved. The only card he holds today is control of the Incirlik Air Base. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/22/turkey-angry-at-u-s-for-stopping-erdogans-goons-from-beating-up-d-c-protesters/
- Linnell. One of the things our democrat backed “independent” Governor Bill Walker has been doing is filling his Boards and Commissions with Native separatists. The latest is one Karen Linnell, who Walker appointed to the Alaska Board of Game. She is an Alaska Native, member of the Ahtna Regional Corporation who has been busily fighting all her neighbors in central Alaska for priority rights to the taking of fish and game. Because of her “good works”, Bill Walker’s Native pandering administration appointed her to the Board of Game. Comes time to confirm the nomination, and the Alaska Outdoor Council jumps in to oppose her nomination because of her very clear conflict of interest. About three weeks after her appointment to the BOG, Linnell signs a Memorandum of Agreement with the Department of the Interior to form a partnership between the Ahtna Resource Commission to provide a quota of moose for Alaska Native villages in the Ahtna region. Being a signatory of such agreement by definition identifies her as something other than an honest broker on game issues. Instead, the AOC charges that she adopts what is in effect a racial quota for tribal members in the Ahtna region. Of course, Linnell denies everything, smiling sweetly for the camera. Our problem here in Alaska is that the 1980 ANILCA built what is essential a racial preference for the taking of fish and game. Congress didn’t have the cojones to actually write an unconstitutional racial preference at the time. Instead they couched it in terms of a “rural priority.” Using the O’Bamaoid definition of disparate impact, that priority becomes a racial preference as most of the people in Bush Alaska are Alaska Natives. Using the 1980 law, Interior swooped in and grabbed control of hunting and fishing on federal lands, over 60% of Alaska, something they do not do anywhere else in the nation. So, you end up with multiple competing priorities for multiple user groups rather than treating all Alaskans equally. Once you set up racial preferences, for whatever reason, you set up endless, and eventually quite destructive to the body politic, racial conflict. And Linnell and the Walker administration, democrats all, are playing for everything they can take. For their part, the Legislature confirmed her nomination, much to the disgust of hunters statewide. https://craigmedred.news/2017/05/16/of-moose-politics/
- DNC. With all the media manufactured sturm und drang surrounding Russians helping Trump get elected and the firing of FBI Director James Comey, the media has been burying news about a pair of class-action lawsuits against the DNC. The first was brought by Bernie Sanders supporters and is about the corrupted process the DNC used to deny Sanders the democrat nomination for president. The second is the failure to pay its campaign workers for overtime. The first lawsuit charges that then-DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman – Schultz violated DNC charter, did not act as an honest broker, and helped tip the process in favor of Hilly. Last week, the DNC made a motion to dismiss based on several highly imaginative assertions (h/t Legal Insurrection). Give and take between DNC lawyers and the presiding judge were entertaining. The crux of the Motion to Dismiss asserts a Judge is not in a position to determine how the democrat party conducts its nominating process. The party views itself as having authority to favor a candidate without any legal repercussions. The Judge was skeptical, citing the party’s impartiality clause. DNC lawyers insisted that “impartial” cannot be defined, describing it as a political promise that cannot be guaranteed. DNC lawyers were unaware of DNC procedures to support state parties as they conduct primary elections and campaigns. DNC lawyers took the position that they were not obligated to conduct a fair primary, but they insist they did one in 2016 anyway. The second lawsuit charges that DNC failed to pay overtime wages to 50 national field organizers working their 2016 convention in Philadelphia. The same party that adopted a platform plank calling for a $15/hour national minimum wage paid their organizers a flat salary of $3,000/month for 80-hour work weeks, or about $9.34/hr for their time. The Host Committee used leftover money to pay nearly a million dollars in bonuses to staff and volunteers including $310,000 for the executive director. It is indeed good to be king. http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/05/is-msm-distracting-from-two-huge-class-action-lawsuits-against-dnc/
- Models. Fun story out of Jo Nova last week about the accuracy of climate models, in this case, the accuracy of models predicting Antarctic sea ice coverage. It turns out that 42 of 49 climate models are wrong about Antarctic sea ice coverage on the ocean surrounding the continent. The errors are significant as none of the models got the amount of new sea ice right. Only seven of the models got the direction (an increase in coverage) correct. All the new CO2 must be trapping heat over the continent, so why is there more ice? IPCC predictions based on the faulty models have an average decrease in summer ice coverage between 16 – 67% by the end of the century. The same predictions have winder coverage decreasing by 8 – 30% over the same time span. It is these models upon which species (polar bears) are being listed as endangered due to lack of Arctic Ocean ice over the last 30 years. Excuses out of the scientists are all over the map. One favorite is the new notion that warmer temperatures in and around Antarctica are causing more ice to grow. The southern hemisphere must be a unique part of the earth, as it is the only place on the planet that has more ice being created as the temperature increases. These are your (and mine) tax dollars at work. http://notrickszone.com/2016/12/08/new-paper-debunks-ad-hoc-explanation-that-antarctic-sea-ice-has-been-growing-since-80s-due-to-human-activity/comment-page-1/#sthash.M87oxKnx.VYk7Ljfa.dpbs
- Fraud. President Trump went after the heart of democrat election strategy last week signing an EO establishing an election integrity (The Hill used scare quotes around the phrase) commission to investigate voter fraud. The commission will be exploring claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 elections. If it can simply clean up the voting roles democrats garbaged up following passage of Bill Clinton’s Motor Voter Law in 1993, it will make great strides forward. One of the initial observations out of the head of the commission is that there are around 7.5 million voters registered in two states (NY and Florida being favorites). Anything that can help control voting fraud will go a long way toward breaking democrat political power, even in the blue cities. Think of this as the functional equivalent of Trump waving a crucifix in front of a vampire. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/332974-trump-signs-order-launching-voter-fraud-investigation
More later –
– AG