Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Wasilla
- Reparations
- Manafort
- Census
- Gerrymandering
- Noise
- Wasilla. For our summer entertainment here in Alaska, Governor Dunleavy called the Alaska legislature into its second special session, this time at a middle school in Wasilla, north of Anchorage. The reason for the special session is that the legislature cleverly severed the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) from the operating budget passed and signed by Dunleavy last weekend. Of course, he also vetoed some $444 million from it before signing. More about that next week. The reason for severing the PFD was that Dunleavy ran on restoring the full PFD by the statutory formula. The legislature quickly figured out under the last governor that it was much easier to grab the PFD to fund exorbitant spending than it is to cut that spending. This session, Dunleavy proposed a budget that would balance, pay the full statutory PFD amount (well in excess of $3,000), and get spending in line with revenues, which would require a cut of $1.6 billion. Neither house of the legislature – Republican Senate or the democrat-led House majority – took the time to work with the Governor’s office on these cuts, opting instead to play games with the PFD. In essence, they are daring Dunleavy to veto the PFD, as he cannot authorize more spending. The only two pieces of this year’s spending puzzle left are the PFD and funding of the capital budget, hence the special session call. But there is a problem in legislator land, as the House Speaker doesn’t much want to show up in Wasilla. He even opined after the session was called, that he was concerned for his safety and that of his caucus. Senate Majority Leader (Republican) Cathy Giessel got on board with him and the legislature leadership decided that while the Governor can call a special session, he can’t specify its location, something at odds with Alaska law, and they weren’t going to show up in Wasilla for the session. Both sides are now in the proverbial Mexican standoff deciding who will blink first. Historically, the way this sort of thing is solved is that the legislature shows up at the designated location, gavels in, holds a vote on their desired location (Anchorage or Juneau), and gavels out. The entire thing historically happens in minutes. It has been done before. Why not this time around? My guess is that they simply do not have the votes to move the session elsewhere, requiring the current passion play. I am really disappointed in Cathy, as I have known her for a long time. Helped put her in office. Now she has “grown” in office, making Alaska AFL/CIO head Vince Beltrami very, very happy. She is up for reelection next year and may very well see a primary challenge. It is always unfortunate when the people you put into office forget why they were elected. http://mustreadalaska.com/mat-su-delegation-says-moving-special-session-illegal/
- Reparations. Like most conservatives, my kneejerk reaction to democrat calls for reparations for slavery is some variation of “Not only no, but h#$$ no!” Rationale against is mostly against once again scraping the poorly formed scab off racial harmony, giving democrats yet another vehicle to inflame passions among blacks in order to turn them out for the 2020 election. But that might not be the most productive reaction. Two things happened last week that may have changed my mind. First was a Scott Adams Periscope podcast in which he strongly supports having the conversation. If Adams thinks that conversation is a productive thing to have, given his persuasion expertise, I am not one to argue. My concern is the direction that conversation may end up taking, as one of the reasons the 16th Amendment (Income Tax) was floated was because many Americans thought at the time that it would never pass, right up until it did. The other reason for changing my mind is what happened at the reparations hearings last Wednesday in front of the House Judiciary Committee. One of those testifying, former NFL safety Burgess Owens pointed out that if anyone should be paying reparations, it ought to be the democrat party, which he described as the source of “Every bad thing that’s happened to my race over the years…” You can point to the democrat party’s support for slavery, its use of the KKK as its terrorist military arm for over a century, its support for Jim Crow laws, segregation, Planned Parenthood and its abattoirs, and finally, the damage the Great Society has done to the Black family structure for the last half century. That is a conversation that would be an incredible amount of fun to have. And as things get warmed up, we can smartly go to members of the religion that captured and sold those slaves – Islam, the religion that is still doing it. The religion that has never stopped it. The religion that demands it continue. Cognitive dissonance in this one will be very strong, something Calypso Louie Farrakhan will have a hard time dealing with. Deciding who gets to pay for what will also be most festive. For instance, putative democrat presidential front-runner Kamala Harris has slave holders in her family tree according to news reports this morning. You guys want to have a discussion? Perhaps it is time to bring it on and get everything out in public. https://pjmedia.com/trending/owens-on-reparations-how-about-the-democratic-party-pay-for-all-the-misery-it-brought-to-my-race/
- Manafort. John Solomon, writing in The Hill last week broke news that the document that the FIB and intelligence community used as the basis to prosecute Paul Manafort was known to be a fraud. This is important, for if the document they based their search warrants and court actions upon was known to be fraudulent, then all subsequent court actions based on that starting point – and every single action against Manafort by Mueller’s gang of merry men and NY state prosecutor Cyrus Vance – are the fruit of the poisonous tree, and therefore inadmissible, which means the whole bloody thing can and should be thrown out. The entire action against Trump is based on lies, two known fraudulent documents – the Steele dossier, and in Manafort’s case, the “black cash ledger” which surfaced in Ukraine in the summer of 2016. FIB search warrant affidavits portrayed the ledger as one reason it resurrected a criminal case against Manafort dropped in 2014. Ukraine’s top anticorruption prosecutor warned State Department law enforcement and multiple FIB agents that the ledger was likely a fraud. It was not Manafort’s document. Like the Steele dossier, it was never authenticated. And it should have never been used to bring accusations against anyone. Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner was a regular informer for the State Department who told the US Government almost immediately after the NYT published a story about the ledger in August 2016 that information in it was false. Manafort was accused of taking large amounts of cash across three borders in the ledger, yet all his payments were in fact wire transfers. The FIB operating manual describes probable cause as something that which the FIB must demonstrate a basis for knowledge and belief that the facts are true. But neither the FIB nor Mueller’s office cited the actual document in court. Rather they cited media reports about it. And Vance’s action against Manafort is derivative, based entirely on work with Mueller’s staff. Mueller’s prosecutors never introduced the ledger to jurors in Manafort’s trial. Yet another example of just how corrupt law enforcement is under Mueller, Comey, Vance, their FIB and (In)Justice was from the very beginning. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/449206-fbi-warned-early-and-often-that-manafort-file-might-be-fake-used-it-anyway
- Census. Chief Justice John Roberts sided with SCOTUS liberals last week in a 5 – 4 opinion sending the census question back to the trial court for reconsideration. The census question is a simple “Are you a US citizen?” Like he did rewriting the individual mandate in O’BamaCare into a tax, Roberts this time around decided that the Secretary of Commerce didn’t have good enough reasons to include the question. Roberts wrote:
“Altogether, the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the secretary gave for his decision.’
The citizenship question is hugely important as it does directly tie to allocation of seats in the House of Representatives. Liberals want every human being counted. Those of us on the political right want the constitutional enumeration and allocation based on US citizens. Constitutional enumeration would result in California losing up to six congressional seats and votes in the Electoral College. Roberts’ opinion was roundly blasted by Justice Thomas, accusing Roberts of micromanaging and questioning something that is right in line of what every single Cabinet member gets to do on a daily basis in their department. Timing of this ruling was cleverly chosen to not allow a resolution until after printing deadline for census forms. That date may be this week. It might be October. I have yet to see a definitive deadline. President Trump got involved and suggested that the census can simply be delayed until the resolution of the question. I expect the Trump administration to go back to district court with new language in their rationale. Perhaps they will use the enumeration rationale. They should. And appeal it back to the SCOTUS and dare Roberts to make it up yet again. While this question may not make it on this census, eventually it will. https://www.breitbart.com/news/high-court-keeps-citizenship-question-off-census-for-now/
- Gerrymandering. In a stunning rebuke to the left, in another 5 – 4 opinion, the SCOTUS slapped down leftist attempts to hire federal judges to draw lines of election districts in the states. The use of Gerrymandering is as old as the Republic itself, being used for political gain by the party in power for all that time. The SCOTUS opinion said that the courts are the wrong place to settle those disputes. Over the last few decades, the left has used the federal courts to override the actions of legislatures in drawing legislative and congressional district lines, usually with a racial excuse. That cottage industry just got shut down. Federal courts in five states decided that redistricting plans under one party’s rule (usually Republican) went too far and that there were ways to identify and manage excessively partisan districts. These opinions stretch back all the way to Jimmy Carter appointed judges. This opinion reverses rulings in MD, MI, NC and OH, where the federal courts ordered new maps drawn and ended proceedings in WI where a retrial was scheduled for this summer. The left will likely try to take this to the state courts instead. https://www.breitbart.com/news/supreme-court-redistricting-decision-could-reshape-politics/
- Noise. One of the arguments against Big Wind has been the low frequency noise, always ignored and excused, that the big machines make while rotating. A study out of Flinders University in South Oz found that low frequency pulsing from a wind farm was audible about 16% of the time in homes up to 3.5 km from a turbine including 24% of the time at night. Neighbor complaints about wind turbine noise have long described it as pulsating, thumping and rumbling sounds, all of which have been steadfastly denied and ignored by governments and companies involved. The noise is technically known as amplitude modulation and relates to a change in noise level occurring once a second as the blades rotate. Field data was gathered at nine homes within 8.8 km of the turbines. Microphones recorded noise between 2012 – 2015. There have been few studies into the overall health impact of wind turbines. While there was one done in 2014 in Oz which involved an eight-week study on six people in eight homes, there has been little interest in expanding the studies. Why is this? It is because wind turbines have been selected by the Powers That Be as the benighted solution to CO2 emissions and energy generation. Because they are the designated solution., they must have no environmental issues. People near wind farms have reported dizziness, headaches insomnia and other health issues in localized spots in their homes. One person with hearing impairment was 100% accurate in detecting when the turbines were turning. There is a direct correlation between external dB(A) and the power output of the wind farms. When the dB(A) level exceeds 20 dB, there is a corresponding ID of noise in nearby observations. None of the nearby homes identified audible infrasound. Clearly, there is some real environmental impact to wind farms. Does anyone care? Or are the neighbors simply grist for the Great Renewables Mill? http://joannenova.com.au/2019/06/finally-world-first-study-on-nine-houses-shows-wind-towers-make-pulsing-noise-for-3-5-km/
More later –
– AG