Interesting Items 09/09

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

In this issue:

1. Brexit
2. Climate
3. Recall
4. Janus
5. Bars
6. Shelter
7. Guns
8. Flynn
9. Inequality

1. Brexit. British Parliament pushback against Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s effort to complete the British exit from the EU (Brexit) percolated along nicely last week.  Previously Johnson limited the time Parliament could remain in session.  So, they did their work and passed three pieces of legislation that would not allow a hard Brexit, not allow new elections, and not allow Johnson to take actions to exit the EU.  In doing so, at least 21 members of Johnson’s parliamentary majority sided with the anti-Brexiters.  In response, Johnson promptly tossed them out of his coalition.  His call for early elections essentially a vote of no confidence was rejected with the support of Corbin’s Labor.  This is interesting, as Johnson can conceivably call for a vote of no confidence on himself.  The final card he has up his sleeve is the requirement that the Queen assent to any law upon the advice of her ministers.  Johnson met with the Queen last weekend and if the Queen rejects the new laws at his advice, the Remainers are in deep serious trouble.  As of this writing, no decision has been made.  Johnson may very well have done the same thing to the Remainers that Trump has been doing to the democrats and media.  Trump has his back and he knows it,

 

2. Climate. The clown show that calls itself the democrat presidential campaign was given seven solid hours on CNN for a serial debate (no debate, just end to end campaign statements) on the imagined ravages of climate change (aka manmade global warming doe to CO2 emissions).  The candidates spent the entire time trying to one-up each other over who was going to ban what first and best.  Among the targets were soda straws, nuclear energy, coal, fracking, oil and natural gas.  Gonna be real difficult to heat anything if they do that.  Gonna be real difficult to drive or fly anywhere either, that is unless you are one of the elite insiders.  Their only saving grace was that almost nobody watched the show.  The ratings were uniformly abysmal.  Their problem is that there is no compromise on the road to utopia (a not so bad Hope and Crosby movie at the time).  Please remember that they actually mean this.

 

3. Recall. The Dunleavy recall signature gathering effort continued last week with over 45,000 signatures (nearly double what is necessary) submitted to the State of Alaska for certification.  The recall is an orchestrated astroturf effort by the unions, democrats, native regional corporations, all intended (in their words) to save Alaska from the ill effects of Dunleavy’s budget vetoes.  The University of Alaska and its supporters are intimately involved also.  Here’s the funny part:  Reservations for the campaign web sites were made last March, months before any of the Dunleavy vetoes were issued.  Tough to make a case that you are acting in reaction to A if you set up your campaign structure months before A takes place.  Alaska has become Wisconsin.  My worry is that the forces of greed and envy will be successful up here while they weren’t in Wisconsin.

 

4. Janus. Speaking of fun stuff coming to Alaska, the Dunleavy administration just issued an opinion applying Janus to state unions, the same unions that are gleefully backing the Dunleavy recall effort.  Their problem is that none of the public union contracts comply with either Janus or any of its precursors.  And everybody knows it.  So, the unions, who are now fighting for their lives, are simply playing for time until they can get the next democrat governor elected, who will drop this entirely.  Our resident labor Guru, Art Chance recommends that the State shove this thru the courts system as quickly as humanly possible, and use outside council, as everyone in the Department of Law who supports him in this in any way and prosecutes the case will be summarily terminated as soon as the new democrat governor is elected.  Note that absolutely none of this has anything to do with either the constitutionality of Alaska, contracts or Janus itself.  Rather it has everything to do with the ability of the state public employee unions to delay the final opinion until they can get the next democrat elected governor.

 

5. Bars. Bar Wars have come to Alaska.  Unlike Star Wars, this one features the use of the state alcohol regulatory apparatus to shut down entrepreneurial brewers who are seen by the bars and restaurants as wandering out of their lane, competing with bars for what the bar owners believe is the same clientele.  Proposed new rules before the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board will stop festivals, games, competitions, classes, presentations, parties (except private ones), and “other types of organized social gatherings that are advertised to the general public.”  Should the crony capitalists be successful, the breweries will lose the ability to hold first Friday art showings, beer brewing lessons, yoga classes followed by a pint, and even a game of cribbage.  You won’t be able to arm wrestle a friend for a pint either.  Bar and restaurant owners have historically made the case that extracurricular activities hosted at breweries and distilleries are beyond the scope of Alaska’s Title IV statues on alcohol.  Unfortunately, in recent years, they have greatly expanded the tortured attempts to expand those limits.  Sadly, they have been successful.  Their problem is that Alaskans have been voting with their feet and wallets.  Using the government to shut down the competition is not going to be all that successful.  Turning the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board into a mini nanny state isn’t going to work all that well either.

 

6. Shelter. So much for the tolerance of the LGTBQWTF community.  A story out of NRO describes the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter (VRRWS) fight against the woke tranny population in Vancouver.  Three weeks ago, the shelter found a dead rat nailed its front door.  This week, it was vandalized with filthy messages scrawled across its windows and walls.  Unlike most of the campus hate crimes, these appear to be actually real.  The VRRWS is the oldest rape relief center in Canada.  Some of the staff is paid.  Some is not.  Its mission is inspired by feminist philosophy, the belief that women are born as an oppressed class, which leads directly into their current fight with the tranny activists (only women can be oppressed).  This was not progressive enough for the city of Vancouver, who in March withdrew grant funding from VRRWS, to the tune of $30,000 for public education and outreach.  The tranny activists have been after them since 2016 on the basis that it only serves biological females.  The first state-sponsored tranny boycott started in 1995.  Crowd funding filled the hole between public and private donations since that time.  Being unsuccessful, the trannies are resorting to more direct methods.  No surprise, that.

 

7. Guns. Although a bit slow (as usual), there is a bit of pushback on the democrat cacophony demanding new gun control laws by conservatives.  And unlike the usual, some of the responses have been pretty good.  A sampler from PowerLine suggests the following:

• Increase mandatory sentencing for gun felons 1 – This one suggests that Republicans bring legislation to congress that increases mandatory sentencing on gun felons, those who are engaging in violent firearms crimes after being convicted for aggravated felonies. Reportage is rife with stories of violent felons violating terms of probation by owning firearms, yet they are not returned to prison.
• Increase mandatory sentencing for gun felons 2 – Homicide in the US plummeted over 60% over the same period that gun ownership soared. Why is this?  It is due to Reagan’s Armed Criminal Career Act (ACCA) which actually deterred violent criminals with stiff mandatory sentencing.  Problem is they were only mandatory between 1987 – 2005 when the SCOTUS Booker Opinion rendered them advisory only.  In recent years, the lack of mandatory sentencing decreased success of Reagan-era laws.
• Fix court loophole allowing violent felons back on the streets. Four years ago, the Johnson v US opinion ruled that “crime of violence” provision of the ACCA was unnecessarily vague.  This allowed thousands of the worst career gun felons and other violent individuals to get out of jail early or escape reasonable sentencing.
• Allow Good Guys to carry everywhere. No state has the right to deny an unambiguous constitutional right.  Perhaps it is time to extend it nationwide.
• Fast track death penalty for mass murderers. It now takes over 20 years to execute someone, essentially rendering capital punishment worthless as a deterrent.
• Declare war on sanctuary cities. The only thing worse than letting career criminals back on the streets is letting other counties’ career criminals to remain in country, which is precisely what sanctuary cities do.

 

8. Flynn. Before I begin this, I want to point out a new conservative source, the Epoch Times, a Falun Gong Chinese publication.  Have been seeing a stream of articles from them over the summer and for the most part they have been pretty good, and I am dialing them into my daily article crosscheck.  You might want to do the same.  Looks like Mueller’s gang of Weissman wannabes are up to their old tricks in his prosecution, that of withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense.  Attorney Sidney Powell accused prosecutors of hiding exculpatory evidence in their efforts against Flynn.  Powell accused them of continuing to suppress exculpatory evidence to this day.  She asked the court to order the prosecution preserve all evidence, including communications within the staff a Mueller’s office.  This is the first major filing by Powell, Flynn’s new defense attorney.  And she should know, having documented prosecutorial malfeasance by the very same group of dummies during previous actions against Ted Stevens.  Powell said the prosecutors recently produced exculpatory to the defense team without flagging it as exculpatory.  She goes on to note that this behavior is pervasive in DoJ and calls for the indictment to be dismissed.  In a separate filing, Powell asks the court to hold the current prosecutors in contempt and dismiss them.  She believes that the DoJ is concealing FIB notes of interviews between FIB Agents and Bruce Ohr.  The same prosecutors including the detestable Andrew Weissman worked with Ohr in 2016 – 2017.  Appears the fecal matter is about to hit the rotating machinery.  And it couldn’t happen to a more corrupt group of vermin.

 

9. Inequality. One of the hoary stereotypes used by pocket tyrants like Commissar Bernie Sanders and Fauxahontas Elizabeth Warren is income inequality.  They have gleefully pointed to rising income inequality over the last couple decades as a vehicle by which to attack capitalism.  In other words, the little guys are barely keeping their heads above water while their bosses are making out like thieves.  Solution?  Communism obviously.  But funny thing is happening over the last couple years under President Trump, a guy who is moving the economy as far away from crony capitalism as far and as fast as possible.  Sanders and Warren’s predictions are fast disappearing.   While the overall wages for all employees on non-farm payrolls has gone up 3.2% over the last year.  Looking closer, wages for production and non-supervisory employees has increased slightly faster than their supervisors and executives.  While there was an inequality spike under O’Bama, there has been relatively little change since 1960 in the income share received by the top 1% of US earners.  Additionally, the richest 1% of Americans today own only a slightly higher percentage of the nation’s overall wealth than the 1%-ers did in the early 1960s.  It appears that the research supporting the notion of a massive rise in income inequality by Saez and Piketty that leftist academics embrace was off by a factor of perhaps four.  Saez and Piketty were a significant input into O’Bama’s economics and budgetary decisions, which is why it didn’t work.

More later –

– AG