Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Trump
2. Peltola
3. Lisa
4. Protests
5. Correspondence
6. Elector
7. Pot
8. Rancher
9. Homes
1. Trump. The Trump hush money trial heated up nicely last week on several fronts. First and most importantly, Trump is pushing Judge Marchan and his unconstitutional gag order for all he is worth. As of this morning, Marchan has rebuked Trump 10 times complete with fines as a sanction. Marchan has to be careful here, for if he drops the hammer on Trump with either an overly large fine or jail time for contempt, Trump can bounce the sanction into federal court where it will be tossed, much like he did Judge Chutkan’s gag order in DC. As long as Marchan can put his ego aside and have Trump show up every Monday morning with his checkbook for a backside chewing, all is well and will work for the rest of the trial. As of this morning, it appears that Marchan is unable to do this, as he threatened Trump with jail should Trump continue his post-trial public comments. Marchan is in a trap of his own construction and it is difficult as of this writing to see how he gets out of it. Second point about the trial, is based on testimony this week that Trump is being tried for being extorted by his lawyer Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels. The two extortionists, who got $130,000 for their effort are neither charged nor tried, much less investigated. Note that paying someone to shut up is not illegal, and the claim that a payment made by Cohen in 2017 impacted the 2016 campaign is silly at best. Yet, it is where we are today. Judge Marchan repeatedly allowed former Biden Department of (In)Justice Number Three Michael Colangelo to claim that Trump was involved in federal election law violations. No such allegation has been made by anyone in the federal justice system. These claims will be the basis for overturing the verdict on appeal. Finally, former Trump press secretary Hope Hicks refuted Bragg’s claim that the payment was hush money intended to influence the campaign. Rather, it was paid to protect his wife Melania from campaign claims.
2. Peltola. I wrote a bit last week about the election campaign boiling around incumbent democrat House member Mary Peltola. In addition to her problem with abortion (a problem of her own making), we find that Peltola has been quite active in destroying resource development here in Alaska. Since most of this happens in the Bush, it will impact Alaska Natives the worst. Peltola rolled out legislation last week intending to codify the EPA’s preemptive veto of the proposed Pebble mine. The Bristol Bay Protection Act targets the Pebble Partnership. Peltola, who fancies herself a protector of The Salmon, was a staunch opponent to neighboring Donlin Mine (native owned and operated) near Dillingham before flipping to support of it a couple years ago. The legislation was drafted in January and introduced last week to provide cover for Peltola’s refusal to support other House legislation, the Alaska’s Right to Produce Act, legislative pushback against some of Dementia Hitler’s 63 Executive Orders aimed at Alaska oil and natural gas production. Peltola briefly attended a House Natural Resources Committee hearing with Deb Haaland in attendance and walked out shortly after the hearing began with the rest of the democrats. The legislation passed the House on a mostly party line vote with Peltola voting present, a trick learned from her mentor in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski. Meanwhile, she told her democrat colleagues to vote against the legislation, which all of them except one did. Peltola is quite the weasel, but at least she has a nice smile.
3. Lisa. Meanwhile in the US Senate, Alaska’s senior US Senator Lisa Murkowski celebrated the shutdown of another 13 million acres of NPR-A and the Ambler Road by introducing the Advancing Menopause and Mid-Life Women’s Health Act, authorized at $275 million over five years. The legislation has 16 other sponsors and co-sponsors, all women, 2 Republicans and 14 democrats. Dementia Hitler and his flying monkeys continue their busy work of shutting down all resource development here in Alaska, and this is the best Lisa can do? It must be really difficult to only represent (or pander) to half the voters in this state (women), while ignoring completely the concerns and needs of the other half (men). What a thoroughly worthless woman.
4. Protests. One of the observations late last week was that the pro-Hamas student protests were being funded by the Usual Suspects among democrat donors. There was an obvious lack of interest in where the money was coming from, leading to some noting that the funding was coming from sources within the US itself, an echo of the horror movie trope that the threatening phone call is coming from inside the house you are hiding inside. Over the weekend, Politico and Breitbart ran pieces tying pro-Hamas protest funding to major democrat donors including Soros, Rockefeller, Pritzker and the Tides Foundation. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation vehemently denied they were funding the protests, though did donate to Tides Foundation in the past. The Pritzkers are heir to the Hyatt Hotel empire. One Pritzker is also governor of Illinois. Given that these protests are part of the normal election year violence, it is not surprising that the funders are orchestrating them and the Blue City response to them. For example, the apparent crackdown on protesters midweek by local law enforcement nicely coincided with abysmal polling for the protests. Protests are damaging to democrats? Shut them down. Now. Note that DC Mayor Muriel Bowser refused to allow DC Police to clear protesters from the George Washington University campus after being requested by the administration.
5. Correspondence. A few weeks ago, here in Alaska, a District Judge found that correspondence courses funded by state money was unconstitutional under the Alaska constitution. The case was brought by the AEA / NEA and Lisa Murkowski’s attack dog, Scott Kendall. The judge stayed his order until June 30, allowing current obligations to be paid. This is a pretty big deal, as 24,000 students and their families are taking correspondence courses, mostly in connection with homeschooling. Therefore, the AEA / NEA lawsuit is very much a direct assault on homeschooling by the teacher’s unions, and they’ve finally found a judge to agree with them. The ruling set several things into motion. One was an attempt by the democrat-controlled state senate to pass legislation redefining things that can be included in correspondence courses. Their version was essentially written by the AEA / NEA, putting all education under their grimy little thumb. The second thing in motion is that the unions, their elected democrats now have nearly 50,000 angry, highly motivated, and newly committed voters, all parents, who don’t particularly like them, loaded for bear with an issue forced down their throats by the Alaska judiciary. It appears that Governor Dunleavy is fully involved, though he is not up for reelection. He would like a friendlier legislature, though. I expect both the state and a group of parents to appeal this ruling to the Alaska Supreme Court, where they will be slapped aside. They will then take the issue to federal court, using the 2022 Espinoza v Montana Department of Revenue to get the offending portion of the Alaska constitution found unconstitutional under the US Constitution. It’s always nice when both the teacher’s unions and the arrogant leftist skunks infesting the state judiciary to hand us an issue on a platter, intentionally angering nearly 50,000 on the right.
6. Elector. One of the techniques used by states to prepare for contested elections is to construct slates of alternate electors. The timeframe between election day, the first Tuesday in November and Jan 3 (new congress) is not sufficient to allow an extended process. Solution by Hawaii was to send two slates of electors to Congress. HI eventually certified a JFK win by 115 votes and the Kennedy Electors were the ones that cast their votes for the state. In 2020, the Trump campaign attempted to do this in several swing states with razor thin votes: GA, AZ, MI and WI. Democrats in all four states referred to the alternate slate of alternate electors as fake electors and gone after them via lawsuits. The most recent of these was in AZ, with a case filed by a democrat state Attorney General who won by less than 1,000 popular votes in a very sketchy election. The AZ indictments claim the Trump team was attempting to subvert the election by committing fraud. They went after 11 local Republicans and seven others from out of state. Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator. The GA and MI cases continue. WI was settled. Nobody has yet gotten to the point where any state judge finds that the 1960 precedent no longer applies. Should be an interesting appeal to the SCOTUS when this lawfare gets that far.
7. Pot. As we are well into the election campaign, pandering by Dementia Hitler and his campaign shifts into high gear. Last week saw two examples. First was a decision to put a hold on new FDA restrictions on menthol cigarettes. This panders to mainly blacks, who tend to favor menthol cigarettes. The FDA is targeting menthol with the same vigor they have been targeting flavored vaping liquids, though vaping restrictions tend to impact young voters worst. Note that the regime is not eliminating new FDA rules against menthol. Rather, they are simply holding them until after the general election. For the young and potheads, the regime announced the DEA would be reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, removing it from Schedule I (heroin and LSD) to Schedule III (ketamine and anabolic steroids). It will still be a controlled substance, but less dangerous. While this is an action decades overdue, from here it looks a lot like a deathbed conversion intended to purchase a few votes.
8. Rancher. An AZ rancher charged with killing an illegal was tried starting Mar 24. A jury hung 7-1 to acquit with the trial being declared a mistrial Apr 23. Prosecutors dropped the case last week announcing they would not retry the case. The rancher shot at a group of people crossing his ranch. Breitbart description of the case reads a lot like prosecutors trying to make an example of a property owner defending his property. Looks like the jury didn’t buy the claim.
9. Homes. One of the interesting recent trends are investment houses purchasing single family homes. 26% of single-family homes purchased last summer were purchased by institutional investors. These include JP Morgan, Blackstone and Goldman Sachs. They are also building new homes. The trend started kicking into high gear in 2019. This is pushing increases in home prices. Given the ongoing crash of commercial real estate, it is only a matter of time before these same investors start purchasing office buildings and converting them into apartments and condos.
More later –
- AG