Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Fires
2. Felon
3. Snail Darter
4. Tax
5. Offshore
6. Honduras
7. Repetition
1. Fires. The big news this week are the ongoing fires in Southern California, particularly the Los Angeles basin. As of this morning, 24 dead, 105,000 under evacuation orders in the LA basin, another 87,000 in evacuation warning zones, and at least 12,300 structures burned or damaged. None of these fires are under control as yet. As of this writing, we are still in the Fog of War as to what is going on and what happened, but the finger pointing, placing of blame has cranked up nicely, mostly aimed at local and state democrats. The government they have installed, operated and gleefully been cheerleading underwent a complete system failure / breakdown, a breakdown that everyone has a part of from the property owners to the governor of the state. A few, however poorly formed thoughts follow.
- DEI plays a huge part in this, as it guarantees people are hired for physical characteristics rather than expertise. For example, the leadership of the LA Fire Department are four lesbians, three of them white, three of them named some variation of Kristin. Is this the reason LA burned? Maybe. Maybe not. OTOH, when you spend any time and energy on doing things other than your primary mission (fire control), chasing the ephemeral goal of DEI, that is time, energy and most importantly brain power not spent on controlling fires. Additionally, embracing DEI guarantees incompetence, and incompetence is deadly in the first responder world.
- Upon taking office, LA Mayor Karen Bass proposed spending upwards of $1.5 billion on the Homelessness Industrial Complex. One of the ways she paid for it was an immediate $17 million cut in LAFD funding. That cut was to be followed by another $45+ million for this budget cycle. Priorities. Priorities.
- Greens have a lot to answer for this, as their grubby little fingers dabbled in everything from water availability to ensuring fuel for future fires was plentiful and ready to burn. When you shut down fire control measures, you ensure terrible fires, just like they did at Yellowstone in 1988. I hope they are proud of themselves.
- One local reservoir was closed for maintenance with no effort to refill it based on a really ugly forecast. Fire damage in that part of town was devastating.
- California got a lot of rain last year. Most of that water was allowed to run off. Cali voters a decade or so ago voted for a ballot initiative to build more water impoundment and other distribution infrastructure. No dams, lakes or aqueducts were constructed since the ballot initiative passed. Meanwhile, all the Usual Suspects are blaming the fires on climate change even though the hills around the LA basin were burning when I lived there 60 years ago.
- Much water from Central Cali has been diverted from farming and the LA basin to guarantee continuing water flow down the Sacramento River to ensure the delta smelt, an endangered fish survived. Nobody has seen one of these for at least a decade.
- Finally, the homeowners are going to want to rebuild. The existing permitting process will ensure that rebuild will take 5 – 10 years, further enraging homeowners. While Governor Newsom issued an executive order exempting rebuilds from the existing permitting structure, nobody knows how far builders will be allowed to wander from government approved solutions. Remember, the political left uses and abuses the permitting process to create neighborhoods in their own image. This image does not necessarily map well with what homeowners want. Not all homes burned. Concrete homes did really well. As an aside, concrete doesn’t do all that well in earthquake country, so you have to pick your poison. Metal roofs did well. Homes with clear zones around the walls also did well. There are things you can do to minimize potential fire damage. Whether homeowners are allowed to pursue these solutions is another thing entirely.
2. Felon. NY Judge Merchan sentenced President Trump for his hush money conviction Friday. The political left got to call Trump a convicted felon, at least until the appeal gauntlet is completed. Merchan sentenced Trump to unconditional discharge, no jail, no fine. He ended the hearing wishing Trump Godspeed, demonstrating the entire trial was a sham. Trump’s attempt to get the SCOTUS to delay sentencing was ignored when Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Comey – Barrett sided with the liberals rejecting the request. Barrett is fast becoming the worst Trump SCOTUS nominee from his first term. I hope he does better this upcoming term.
3. Snail Darter. One of the first public fights following passage of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973 was that of the snail darter and the proposed Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River. Construction on the dam began in 1967. Locals including greens, farmers, Cherokee and other malcontents were appalled at flooding and futzed around for ways to stop the dam. Following passage of the ESA, they were handed their hammer on a silver platter. A zoology professor at the University of Tennessee and students were snorkeling in the river. The prof claimed to have discovered a previously unknown fish in the river, a smallish bait fish that he named the snail darter. The feds bought into the fraud, declaring the fish endangered and halted construction of the dam. The problem was that the dam was necessary for flood control and congress exempted the dam and the fish in legislation Jimmy Carter signed. The dam went online in 1979. Fast forward to 2015 and a former TVA biologist discovered what appeared to be snail darters in a river on the border of AL and MS, far from the Tellico Dam. DNA analysis concluded that the fish was actually a common small fish called the stargazing darter. In other words, the snail darter never existed. Before I proceed, note that the process was corrupted from the very beginning, when an anti-dam advocate, an academic, used his position to create an endangered species out of whole cloth. Today, the game played by USF&WS and the greens continues as they carve out as many species as they can, even going so far as to call small, isolated populations of plants and animals subspecies, which are also candidates for protection. Here in Alaska, Cook Inlet has a small population of belugas numbering 150 – 200 whales. USF&WS classified them as endangered a couple decades ago even though it is common elsewhere in Alaska with a population over 10,000. How many other endangered species listings are as fraudulent as the snail darter was?
4. Tax. Ever creative In their effort to gouge their residents the maximum amount possible, NY came up with something they call the congestion tax. This is ostensibly used to make it painfully expensive for residents not to use mass transit in NYC. The problem with this is that refusal to properly police the subway system, prosecuting citizens who stand up to potential muggers (Daniel Penny), and allowing illegals to torch sleeping women have made the subway system sufficiently dangerous that people are not using it as much as they used to, opting for surface transportation. More people in vehicles equal more vehicles on the road. When you look into passage of the congestion tax, you find out that ride sharing businesses like Uber and Lyft spent millions lobbying for passage of the tax 2015 – 2019. Both companies supported various local and state candidates with campaign donations. How do they profit from this? They profit via NYC lifting a cap on the number of for hire vehicles that can be on the road at any time. The new tax on for-hire rides is $1.50/ride, cheaper than the $9 daily fee for private vehicles and the $2.90 fee charged subway and bus riders. Looks like the judiciary is not the only corrupt part of doing business in NYC.
5. Offshore. Dementia Hitler’s flying monkeys were busy last week, this time closing another 625 million acres of federal waters from oil and natural gas exploration and production. While most of the new acreage was aimed at the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico (America), it did pick up some more off Alaska. The withdrawal was justified under all the usual green claptrap. Technique here is important, especially when President Trump considers his options. The withdrawal was done under auspices of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which allows a president to withdraw lands from future exploration. The problem is that the law has no provision for any future president to reverse the decision, not unlike the one-way ratchet installed by congress under the Antiquities Act of 1906 where presidents can designate National Monuments at the drop of a hat without any future presidential pushback. Worse, we have an opinion by an O’Bama nominated federal judge here in Alaska that claims a president can’t reverse the action. That opinion was never appealed. I suggest (predict?) Trump do a couple things. First, issue an EO to reverse Biden’s action. Second, force the greens to file the lawsuits, and fight in court. Finally, get congressional action to reverse the action, either stand-alone legislation to fix both the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the Antiquities Act so that it is no longer a one-way ratchet or via the Congressional Review Act that should be very busy over the next 6 – 12 months. Democrats have been abusing both pieces of legislation for decades. Time to shut this little game down.
6. Honduras. Some world leaders haven’t figured out yet that the US is about to be under new management and are pushing back at Trump demands for their participation. Last week we had the Honduran president threatening base closure over Trump’s mass deportation plan of illegals. Her position is that if these start, then they will have to revisit the issue of US military presence in Honduras. The US is a joint tenant at a Honduran military base with over 500 US military members operating out of Palmerola / Soto Cano Air Base since 1983. Presidente Castro (there’s that name again), wrapped her comments in her best diplomatese, though the threat wasn’t far below the surface. She also noted that the US didn’t pay any fee for using the base. Of course, she also ignored foreign aid Honduras has been receiving for decades. Honduras received over $630 million over the first three years of Harris – Biden. Do you suppose she forgot how to count? This sort of public pushback is a positive sign as it means they are at least listening, as well they should, and will shortly be negotiating whether they want to do so or not. Honduras joins Great Britian, reconsidering our joint security arrangement should the US continue to push action on the groomer gangs, and Canada chafing at the threat of tariffs should they decide not to assist with controlling their own borders. Let the negotiations begin.
7. Repetition. One persuasion trick used by the political left and democrats to sell their hoaxes and other frauds on the body politic is repetition. They repeated the Fine People hoax ad nauseum, and everyone on the left ended up believing it. They added to it over time with new hoaxes, with up to 50 of them active at any one time. The thing that sold all those hoaxes was hearing the media hammer away at the hoax and Trump on nightly news broadcasts for the last eight years. Looks like Trump figured out the game and has a solution to it. His solution is to flood the zone, a football term when an offense sends more receivers into a zone of the defense than there are defenders available to cover them. This guarantees someone is uncovered. Trump is flooding the zone with actions and will continue to do so for at least the next 6 – 12 months. What happened to all criticism of his nominees for cabinet and other positions? It all disappeared completely when he started talking about Governor Trudeau, Canada as the 51st State, Greenland, the Panama Canal and the Gulf of America. Watching the media and the democrats fall all over themselves chasing these various things is a bit like watching a cat chasing a laser pointer red dot. This is intentional. And it is working.
More later –
- AG