Interesting Items 02/18

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

In this issue:

  1. Amazon
  2. AK House
  3. Budget
  4. Kelly
  5. Emergency
  6. Garcetti
  7. Kennedy

  1. Amazon. The leftist group that created and now supports newly elected NY congress critter Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez stepped in it last week when she managed to run her mouth and chase Amazon out of NYC.  Amazon was to receive some $3 billion in tax incentives to locate their Headquarters 2 (HQ2) in NYC.  This in turn would create 25,000 – 40,000 new, high paying local jobs.  The graft, corruption and democrat money-laundering machine was all cranked up and ready to reap years of campaign donations from the newly minted enterprise.  AOC spoke against the giveaway as corporate welfare, which did bring some public scrutiny to the back room dealing between NY democrats and Amazon.  After Amazon announced it was leaving, she exulted about having that $3 billion in freshly minted free money to spend on things she wanted to spend it on.  AOC, with her economics degree Boston University is the perfect example of the sort of product we are getting out of the universities these days.  And it should terrify all of us.  While AOC gave the enterprise a push, it wasn’t the only or even the biggest push.  Fox News reports that newly minted NY Legislature Senate Majority Leader appointed fellow democrat State Senator Michael Gianaris, who represents the Queens area the new operation was planned for, to sit on a panel that has veto power over the entire plan.  This is not out of the ordinary for NY politics, as a single state legislator, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, managed to kill a stadium planned for the west side of Manhattan.  Looks like Amazon didn’t want to participate in a rigged game unless it was rigged in their favor (and who can blame them?).  The Fox News article on the move goes on to paint a picture of NY democrats overplaying their hand and putting themselves in political risk.  I won’t believe it until I see them start to lose actual elections.  The new democrat majority in the Assembly had themselves quite a month following the 2018 election.  They pass an infanticide abortion bill, one that already forced prosecutors to drop murder charges against a guy who killed a woman and her unborn child in Queens.  The second murder charge of killing the unborn child was dropped due to the celebrated infanticide legislation.  They also voted to give college tuition assistance to illegal immigrants.  Now they pony up and kill the Amazon project.  The blue on blue fratricide is going to be fun to watch, as the NY democrats who put together the deal try to place the entire blame on AOC and her backers, and I guarantee they know who are backing and funding her.  And those backers and funders aren’t from the political right.  This will be a lot of fun to watch.  AOC is simply doing what all good socialists do, sticking it to the man.  Her problem is that she has not yet realized she is The Man.  I predict she will be primaried.  And that primary fight will be between an artificially created political rock star against the entrenched NY democrat political machine.  At this point, I have no idea which side wins, but  hope they spend a boatload of money fighting it out.  https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/political-malpractice-forced-amazon-out-of-nyc-and-it-wasnt-just-ocasio-cortez

 

  1. AK House. There are 40 total members of the Alaska House of Representatives. Republicans hold 23 of these seats.  Democrats and a democrat claiming to be an independent hold 17 of these seats.  The problem is faithless Republicans, two of which joined the democrat majority the last two years, and a third who refused to vote for a Republican Speaker this year.  Organizational meetings normally take place in November shortly after the election results are final.  Ours was delayed a bit as one of the members won a single vote victory in Fairbanks.  By the time the legislative session began, nobody had a 21-seat majority.  The third Republican, Gary Knopp from the Kenai Peninsula demanded a bipartisan majority, in essence demanding his Republican caucus members once again cede power to democrats.  The Mexican standoff went on for a record 31 days until two more Republicans crossed the aisle to join the democrats and vote for a former democrat (who changed his voter registration last week to undeclared) as Speaker.  In return, they claim to have control of committees that control spending.  I know both of the crossers.  One of them is my Representative.  He will be primaried next year.  Gary Knopp, who ran unopposed, jerked his caucus around, lied to his constituents, will also be primaried.  Who knows, perhaps one of the two who organized with the democrats the last two years will be indicted for voting fraud in her primary in east last August Anchorage.  The question is why are faithless legislators typically Republicans up here these days?  On a happier note, the Republican House members who crossed now own the budget, as we finally have a Republican governor who just dropped a balanced budget on the legislature.  I do expect a some of that budget to be passed.  And the pieces that aren’t are going to firmly tied to the Republicans in the House who refuse to play along, whether they crossed over to organize with democrats or not.  It will be nice to get everyone on record in time for the 2020 campaign.  https://www.adn.com/politics/alaska-legislature/2019/02/16/alaska-house-with-new-look-coalition-expects-to-open-budget-discussions-monday/

 

  1. Budget. Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy dropped his first budget on the legislature last week.  It was the first budget in years that does not require additional spending out of the Constitutional Budget Reserve to balance.  It is roughly $1.6 billion below the last Walker budget.  And the screams are deafening.  If you listen to the critics, we are defunding public education, Medicaid, Bush Alaska, the cities, and every single disadvantaged Alaskan.  Of course, it is not nearly that bad, and all the initial arguments are identical to those used up here for decades.  And why not?  They’ve always worked, at least up to now.  Dunleavy’s Budget Director is Donna Arduin who successfully fought the budget wars in Michigan and Illinois since 1991.  She knows how to craft balanced budgets.  Her work under John Engler in Michigan helped carve $5 billion out of his budget.  Unfortunately, it also carved his approval polls down to 13%.  She worked under Governor Schwarzenegger in California for a year.  She worked to craft budget cuts in Illinois that were never passed.  The usual media suspects up here are attacking her as both an outsider and a heartless budgeteer.  An informational hearing with House members last week went about as expected with Rep. Daniel Ortiz, a self-identified independent who always organizes with democrats, asking her on multiple occasions “Do you understand ….”  Toward the end, she had enough, and told him “Rep. Ortiz, I would appreciate it if you would stop asking if I understand things.  It is a little pejorative.”  This promptly shut down the festivities and Ortiz apologized later in the hearing.  This is going to be a knockdown, drag out fight, that will identify the real fiscal conservatives and the fake ones.  And it couldn’t happen sooner.  https://www.adn.com/opinions/2019/02/11/an-honest-budget-sustainable-predictable-affordable/

 

  1. Kelly. Former NASA Astronaut and gun grabbing mouthpiece Mark Kelly announced he would be seeking the democrat nomination for US Senate to run against appointed US Senator Martha McSally.  Kelly will be a formidable candidate and will get slavish support from local, statewide and national media.  Kelly thrust himself into the political world following the shooting of his wife, Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011.  He adopted the gun control side of the argument and made the national rounds fighting for yet another round of ineffective gun control laws.  Who can argue with a NASA astronaut defending his wife who just got shot?  He is already positioning himself as an apolitical figure who can and will work with both sides in a cooperative spirit even in today’s hyper partisan environment, essentially the identical campaign McSally’s opponent won with in 2018, when Kyrsten Sinema defeated her.  Sinema ran a brilliant campaign, running circles around a very stiff, stilted, controlled McSally.  Sinema had fun.  McSally didn’t.  I don’t know how much fun Kelly will have, though I do expect him to enlist the entirety of democrat persuasion expertise in his run.  For her part, McSally couldn’t get a quarter million Arizona Republicans who voted for governor to vote for her in 2018.  She was that poor of a candidate.  As it sits today, I expect McSally to get beat, badly, handing yet another US Senate seat to a democrat.  Arizona Republicans best put on their Big Boy pants, as this has the potential to get very ugly very quickly unless they start right now teaching McSally how to run a campaign, and no, that expertise does not come out of the McCain world that McSally embraced so tightly two years ago.  https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2019/02/12/arizona-us-senate-astronaut-mark-kelly-announces-run-congressional-bid-gabby-giffords/2845417002/

 

  1. Emergency. President Trump signed the 1,100+ page continuing resolution that funds Homeland Security and contains around $1.5 billion in funding for wall construction on the southern border.  At the same time, he declared a national emergency that will allow him to reprogram already allocated anti-drug and military construction dollars to complete wall construction he wanted to complete this year.  This emergency declaration was met with the expected shock and dismay out of the media, democrats and never Trumpers.  Never forget that the Republican congress intentionally screwed Trump on wall funding, putting it off until the House majority was replaced by democrats.  The continuing resolution funding DHS was an intentional slight, the back of the congressional hand to both Trump and his supporters, though Richard Shelby (R, AL) promised Trump that he had all the money contained in the legislation that Trump needs.  He also promised that all the poison pills inserted by House democrats were defused.  We will see.  In his announcement, Trump went through a litany of the expected court fight from the Ninth Circus to the SCOTUS.  The only problem is that while this is making its way through the system, Trump will be building the wall and there will be photos and video that will make the rounds of that construction.  Trump is going to get this construction done.  And it will help get him reelected in 2020, much to the dismay of the entire Orange Man Bad world.  https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2019/02/17/rep-kevin-mccarthy-says-trump-has-authority-to-declare-emergency/

 

  1. Garcetti. LA Mayor Eric Garcetti cancelled plans to rebuild three natural gas fired electrical generation plants last week.  He made his decision despite warnings that the three plants are critical to keeping the lights on in LA.  Looks like the Green New Deal is going to get an early test run in LA.  Good luck with that.  Garcetti’s term of office is up in 2022.  The first of the three plants will be retired in 2024.  Nothing like making an idiotic decision and leaving office years before it takes place.  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/02/11/mayor-eric-garcetti-declares-green-new-deal-in-l-a-cancels-natural-gas-officials-doubt-keeping-the-lights-on/

  1. Kennedy. Kathleen Kennedy is an American film producer.  She co-founded Amblin Entertainment with Stephen Spielberg and her husband Frank Marshall.  She produced ET, the Jurassic Park franchise, and was second only to Spielberg in domestic box office receipts as of Jan 2018.  She became co-chair of Lucasfilm and was promoted to president of Disney in 2012 when Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney.  One little problem with this, Kennedy was never a fan of the Star Wars franchise and has been busily undermining it and killing it off.  An analysis done by Captain Capitalism last week makes the case that Kennedy wiped out 95% of the Star Wars franchise value, around $3.7 billion ($7 billion if you include the first three movies).  And she did it by bringing virtue signaling, SJW politics into the new movies, jamming her politics into the movie-going public’s entertainment.  The article has a nice photo of Kennedy and three other women wearing t-shirts with the logo “The Force Is Female.”  Cute.  https://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-kathleen-kennedy-and-politics-cost.html

More later –

– AG

 

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