Interesting Items 04/09

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

In this issue:

1. Secession
2. Caravan
3. CFPB
4. Mueller
5. ANC
6. Pruitt

1. Secession. One of the way to secede from the country as a state is to quit abiding from federal law.  California, with the gleeful support of the Ninth Circus is refusing to follow federal law and to work with the feds where it comes to illegals in country.  A state law passed a few years ago intentionally garbages up the voting pool by issuing state driver’s licenses to illegals.  As far as I can find out, these driver’s licenses make no distinction between illegals and actual citizens.  And driver’s licenses are used as the primary form of ID for elections, creating a problem, a huge one in California.  As of this writing, they have already issued over a million such driver’s licenses.  Further exacerbating the problem is legislation that went in place April 1 that automatically registers anyone with a new driver’s license to vote.  When we have a state government actively supporting, allowing, and looking the other way when illegals vote in local, state and federal elections, what recourse does the Trump administration have?   Lowell Ponte writing in the American Thinker last week suggests that congressional majorities refuse to seat any elected congress critter from California until they clean up their voting rolls and elections.  This also means that no presidential votes from California or the votes from its electors will be counted in the 2020 presidential election or future elections until they clean up their act.  Precedent for this comes with the expulsion of congress critters from Confederate states 170 years ago.  Of course, the courts will get themselves involved, making the case for an old fashioned house cleaning of the federal courts.  But if you want to act like Confederate states, perhaps it is time to start treating California and states of like mind, like Confederate states.  It’s been a while, but we’ve done this before and know how to do it.  https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/04/californias_illegal_alien_voting_law_is_secession.html

2. Caravan. Latest move in the immigration wars is a caravan organized in Honduras of 1,500 to as many 5,000 self-described “refugees” on their way through Mexico to the southern border.  The caravan organizers, open borders do-gooders, are doing this to take advantage of a provision of federal law that allows “refugees” to cross Mexico and enter the country without risk of being deported for being illegal.  The Trump administration has proposed closing this particular loophole.  This first started in 2014.  The O’Bama reaction to that one was to send government employees into Honduras and other Central American nations with registration and plane tickets, essentially playing the role of coyote.  President Trump has other plans for this.  First up is NAFTA which is in the middle of renegotiation.  The Mexican government does not particularly want to renegotiate it and is at some level being dragged kicking and scratching into the discussions.  There are those that rightfully believe that the Mexican government is supporting passage of these people as a vehicle to send a message to Trump during the negotiations.  Should they be playing this game, I believe they will be making a very large mistake, one that Trump will shove down their collective throats during subsequent negotiations.  For his part, Trump is going after the governments of Honduras and Mexico for supporting this yearly event.  His tweets have been particularly blunt.  His leverage against Honduras is foreign aid.  His leverage against Mexico is stopping or otherwise disrupting flow of money from illegals back home to Mexico.  As of this writing, Mexico appears to have blinked, at least a little bit, with the announcement that the caravan has been halted at least for a little while.  Some of the participants announced they will continue.  There is also speculation that the larger group is simply being split into multiple smaller groups to allow passage to continue without scrutiny because the smaller groups will be more difficult to track down, find, and halt.  The possibility also exists that Mexico is simply lying again, which based on its previous actions, would be no surprise.  President Trump is also talking about putting the National Guard on the border to patrol it.  This is triggering the expected reaction of abject horror from the Usual Suspects.  So far, the Oregon Governor has refused to allow National Guard forces in Oregon to participate.  California Governor Jerry Brown is making similar noises.  Going to be difficult to maintain a National Guard presence in Oregon without funding.  Alternately, DoD can simply nationalize the Guard in any state for the duration of the festivities.  Final action has been a demand for congressional action on legislation to close the loophole.  This will play out over the course of the next several months.  Trump is working in the heart of his political envelope while his opposition are hiding what they are doing and the reason for doing it.  I don’t expect Trump to blink first.  http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/04/trump-takes-on-the-caravan.php

3. CFPB. President Trump’s Budget Director Mick Mulvaney was put in charge of Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).  And he is in the process of shutting it down.  The CFPB was ostensibly set up as a consumer protection activity courtesy of the ghastly Dodd – Frank Bill.  Not unexpectedly as with everything connected with that pair of corruptocrats, the CFPB was set up as a slush fund, protection racket for democrats.  Dodd – Frank did everything humanly possible to protect the Bureau from congressional oversight, accountability, and funding.  Its funding comes directly from the Federal Reserve and whatever they can gouge out of banks and other financial institutions as part of their protection racket.  That money is used to hire additional democrats (Republicans can apply but are never hired), figure out new ways to gouge banks and other financial institutions, and pass that money along to democrat special interest groups like ACORN.  Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) was the woman who set it up, though congress refused to confirm her as its head.  She went to MA and ran against Scott Brown, turning him into a one-term Republican senator.  Warren is not a bit happy at Trump’s efforts to shut down the protection operation and slush fund.  She has been exchanging letters and articles in media with Trump’s Budget Director.  And she has been finally taking some incoming fire for simply making it up as she goes.  http://thehill.com/regulation/administration/381789-mulvaney-fires-back-after-warren-questions-cfpb-leadership

4. Mueller. One of the basic tenants of police work is to have approval before you start an investigation, conduct a raid, or seize evidence.  Normally this takes some sort of warrant, reasonable suspicion, etc.  In the case of the Special Prosecutor, this authorization comes from the Attorney General or whomever is overseeing the investigation.  For the Mueller investigation, this is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.  It turns out that Rosenstein wrote a second memo on August 2, 2017 authorizing Muller to investigate allegations that former Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort took money from the Ukrainian government.  The problem with this memo was that it was written a week after the FBI’s pre-dawn raid on Manafort’s home.  The memo was classified and appears to be written to justify what Mueller’s team already did.  In most courts, warrants written after the fact lead directly to all evidence seized being thrown out of court.  Apparently normal rules don’t apply to corruptocrats like Mueller, Rosenstein and their team.  https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/rosenstein-secretly-authorized-mueller-investigate-manafort-after-fbi

5. ANC. Local elections here in Anchorage last week.  This one had a couple twists – first by mail election and a ballot initiative to roll back a Municipal ordinance passed several years ago adding transgender to the shopping list of things not to discriminate against.  This ballot initiative was floated by the local Alaska Family Council, essentially the local religious activists.  The mayor was up for reelection, there were at least three School Board seats open, a ballot initiative that would allow negotiations to merge the local electric co-op with an electric utility owned by the Muni.  There were also a number of bonds.  The election was an object lesson in ballot initiatives, fundraising, advertising and turnout.  The gay rights community keeps an eye out for any push-back against their agenda at the ballot box.  And they respond with a boatload of money, over a million dollars for this election.  That money was used by local democrats and unions to boost turnout.  Both the mayor and his primary opponent opposed it.  Total vote was in the neighborhood of 80,000 ballots, which smashed a voting record for local elections.  The ballot initiative went down by perhaps 4,000 votes – 37,000 to 33,000.  The conservative lost by perhaps 13,000 votes – 38,500 to 25,500.  There were perhaps 4,000 additional votes split among seven other candidates.  Democrat turnout was decent, though there are fewer registered democrats up here than Republicans.  Republican turnout was pretty good, up over 7,000 from previous elections.  The problem was among the unaffiliated and undeclared / non-partisans, who voted in startlingly large numbers for the democrat mayor.  The Republican simply did not have sufficient media penetration and name recognition to tap into support of those people.  The other thing that happened was that the Municipal Clerk reported the number of votes along with the names of voters daily.  This allowed the anti’s to harass, harangue and otherwise pester the Usual Suspects on their side for not getting out and voting for nearly four solid weeks.  Looks like a lot of them turned out.  Lesson here is to be careful what you wish for when floating ballot propositions, as recent ones here in Alaska have not turned out well for conservatives or Republicans.  Indeed, this one, floated for all the best reasons and good intentions (the things that pave the Road to Hell), drew a million dollars that democrats used to jack up turnout and bury the message of the Republican candidate.   Hindsight, the only exact science, would have the proponents wait until the gay rights crowd goes a few steps too far enforcing not only compliance but active support and celebration of their worldview before floating something like this.  And the left is nothing but predictable, as they always, always overplay their hand.  So far, we have only a single complaint along those lines, a complaint successfully buried by local media during the campaign.  If there is not a problem, you will get buried under a dump truck load of cash.  Don’t pick that fight unless you can answer that money flow, because you will damage candidates who actively support your worldview.  https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/anchorage/2018/04/05/berkowitz-no-on-1-still-holding-the-latest-results-in-anchorages-city-election/

6. Pruitt. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt took significant incoming fire from media last week in what appears to be a well-coordinated series of hits all intended to drive him from office.  Charges include him renting rooms in a DC condo from friends who failed to charge him enough money.  Room rental was during the period of time between his appointment as EPA Administrator and when he finally found a more permanent place to stay.  As the friend was a lobbyist, media, greens and the democrat jackals (redundant) they support started braying about conflict of interest.  Pruitt spent roughly $6,100 over a six-month period.  The wife is a health care lobbyist and the husband works in energy but has not lobbied the EPA for anything over the last couple years.  After months of bashing Pruitt for spending too much money on travel and lodgings on his trips, the media is now blasting him for paying too little.  Apparently, you can’t win.  But when compared with travel by previous EPA Administrators and their staff, Pruitt is a piker.  FNC even went after him for pay raises given his appointees and supporters in the EPA.  Sounds like some O’Bama holdovers (Schumer and his democrat minority continue to obstruct Trump appointees by demanding a full 30 hours debate for appointments, something what would get them all confirmed well into the seventh year of a Trump administration) approved the pay raises.  Pruitt found about it and “corrected the problem.”  Why is the left, the green blob and democrats going after Pruitt?  He is the most effective and perhaps least corrupt EPA Administrator since the agency was created under Nixon.  He is systematically putting it back into its constitutional box, and the left doesn’t like their monster hobbled at all.  Pruitt’s most recent action was to roll back O’Bama’s ridiculous CAFÉ standards.  He is also revoking California’s ability to write air and water quality standards that reach across state lines, impacting what neighboring states do or don’t do with air and water.  https://hotair.com/archives/2018/03/31/scott-pruitts-housing-problem/

More later –

– AG