Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Shock and Awe
2. MN House
3. Casino
4. Lisa
5. BATFE
6. Fire
1. Shock and Awe. Other than the week following the general election, I can’t recall a recent week that has been as much fun as watching the Trump administration roll through Team Biden like General Schwartzkopf rolled through Saddam during the First Gulf War. A few thoughts for your consideration:
- As of this morning, President Trump has signed over 300 Executive Orders (EOs) / Official Actions. The current list is available on the White House web site. These are interesting reading. They have been carefully crafted, well thought out. They have also been bundled. A couple pertaining to Alaska were particularly outstanding. The first and longest one essentially rolls back all Biden resource development actions. It was prepared with the participation and support of Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, newly elected Representative Nick Begich, and junior US Senator Dan Sullivan. Lisa Murkowski was conspicuous by her non-participation, though she did issue a press release supporting it. The second EO renamed Mount Denali back to McKinley, and the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. There is a great meme making the rounds about Mexico renaming the Gulf of California.
- Now, not all of these EO’s will stand judicial scrutiny. Indeed, some are specifically written to pick a fight in federal court, as the ban on birthright citizenship was. The political left rose to the bait, found themselves a federal judge who issued an injunction a couple days after the EO was signed. This will make it to the SCOTUS and an expected SOCTUS reversal is not nearly the slam dunk win that the left and the media thinks it will be.
- Trump also pardoned / commuted sentences of all 1,500+ Jan 6 political prisoners. Reaction of Trump-hating federal judges in DC has been predicably hostile, with at least one of them refusing to dismiss charges against two with prejudice, meaning a future democrat regime can revisit the charges. Federal Prisons officials also started moving political prisoners from federal prison to federal prison in anticipation of the pardons, making return home as difficult as possible. Some are still being detained.
- Trump also pardoned all 23 – 26 abortion protesters arrested, tried and convicted under the FACE act, usually for praying outside abortion clinics. The (In)Justice Department halted all prosecutions under the FACE Act.
- The biggest initial act was to completely shut down all DEI activity in the federal government. DEI shops were shut down on day one and their people put on leave pending termination. Many agencies like the BATFE started renaming positions and hiding the former people in newly renamed positions. The DEI shutdown EO also anticipated this stunt, threatening immediate termination of those in hiding, their supervisors, and termination of those who knew about the action but didn’t come forward. Trump also nominated former LtCol Matthew Lohmeier for Undersecretary of the Air Force. Lohmeier was fired for criticizing DEI on a podcast promoting a book he wrote while serving as commander of a Space Force unit. Now he is going to help run the show. The 4-Star who fired him is now Space Force Commander and may not be in charge for much longer.
- Trump also learned how to use federal law against embedded democrats. Under current federal law, newly installed leadership can’t reassign civil service until 120 days being installed in office. Senate democrats are slow-rolling confirmation hearings, making Trump nominees wait weeks for hearings. Trump is using this against democrats by appointing currently employed people as acting directors. As they are currently employed, they are not limited by the 120-day rules. Trump knows who the friendlies are, and they are cleaning house with gusto while the nominees await their hearings.
- Trump pulled security clearances of the 51 Deep State intel officials who signed the Oct 2020 letter calling the Hunter laptop Russian disinformation. To be fair, while they did not actually lie in the letter, they lied like intel people saying it had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation. In a related story, the Pentagon removed the portrait of former JCS Chairman Mark Milley.
- Both Trump’s inauguration address and a video speech given to the WEF meeting in Davos were pure Trump. Both were short and blunt. During his WEF remarks, he specifically called out Bank of America CEO and Chase for debanking conservatives. Both lied about debanking afterwards. USAA also participated in the festivities by debanking John Eastman over his work contesting the 2020 election.
- Trump engaged in some not-so-subtle persuasion during his inauguration. First, he wore a purple tie rather than his normal red one. This purple time had embedded red and blue diamonds, which looked purple from a distance. Second, he had the US Naval Academy Glee Club march through the rotunda singing at least three verses of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the old Civil War standard of the Republican North. I originally thought it was a signal that he viewed this term as a reprise of the Civil War in level of seriousness. A Valued Correspondent disagreed, calling an attention getting message aimed directly at democrats in the room. I can’t argue. Either way, the message was sent. We will see if anyone on the left was smart enough to receive and understand it.
2. MN House. Republicans did pretty good in MN in November, eking out a 67-67 tie in the House of the state legislature. It was quickly found that one of the democrats had cheated (no surprise, that) and he quickly resigned. This left democrats with insufficient membership to organize the House, so they concocted a plan to not organize. First step was to hold a secret, democrat only swearing in over the weekend. The democrat Secretary of State performed the honors. Then they decided not to show up on Tuesday when the House was supposed to convene to deny Republicans a quorum. Republicans convened anyway, organized and elected a Speaker, the first black speaker in MN history. Democrats sued and sent the argument to the state Supreme Court, with 7 elected democrats on the Bench. The black robed activists rewrote the state constitution to redefine a quorum as 68 rather than 67, meaning that as long as democrats don’t show up for work, while taking a paycheck, they can keep Republicans from doing business. They plan on staying out until a special election can be held in March to replace the felonious democrat legislator. All of this is being loudly supported by MN elected democrats and democrat-friendly media. PowerLine is the best place I have found to cover this little passion play.
3. Casino. Anchorage has long been corrupt, but that corruption is usually more genteel, not as blatant as we elsewhere. The current veto-proof leftist majority on the Assembly was elected by virtue of mail-in voting, which for a variety of reasons, conservatives haven’t yet been able to crack. They elected one of their own as mayor in April, mostly on the promise to halt the loud, ugly war between the last mayor and the Assembly. And what do you know, as soon as they have an agreeable signature in City Hall, the noise quiets right down. One of the other things the Assembly has been doing over the last several years is creating “government to government” relations with the 72-member Eklutna tribe in Eklutna, some 20 miles north of Anchorage. These grifters have been wanting to tap into the lucrative native casino business for years, but sadly (or happily depending on your point of view), Indian Country doesn’t exist anywhere in Alaska other than a single reservation, Metlakatla Indian Community on Annette Island in Southeast, though democrats and rent seeking Alaskan Natives have been doing their level best to create them without the benefit of congressional action since Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s. Newly ensconced Mayor LaFrance signed several letters with the Eklutna tribe approving the opening of the casino. The Harris – Biden Bureau of Indian Affairs was also complicit in fast tracking their approval that would normally take years. The casino opened a week or so ago operating out a couple of double-wide trailers with port-a-potties providing conveniences. The lawsuits have already started flying. We will see how far they get, as the State of Alaska has not weighed in yet. It will be most interesting to see who is getting paid off. I predict most of the Assembly and Mayor LaFrance are in line as any number of promises have been made. Should be fun to watch.
4. Lisa. Senior US Senator Lisa Murkowski tapped into her inner vindictive harpy and voted against the nomination of SECDEF Pete Hegseth last week. VP Vance broke the 50-50 tie in the senate and the nomination was confirmed. Lisa’s excuse for the no vote was Hegseth’s less than stellar personal life around the time of and just after his divorce. Note to Lisa: personal life for anyone following a divorce is less than stellar. This is a standard Lisa never held any Biden appointee to as she voted to confirm all of them without question. This prompted significant pushback from statewide Republicans with censure resolutions for Lisa and Republicans in the state legislature who are caucusing with democrats after being elected into Republican majorities. The public disgust with Lisa is substantial, with Lisa articles in Must Read Alaska getting 3-4x the comments that most other articles get. Lisa doesn’t look like she is having a good time these days. Our job is to make the next four years just as miserable for her as she is attempting to make them for Trump.
5. BATFE. One of the little games BATFE has been playing with firearms merchants (Federal Firearms License FFL holders), particularly the little guys, is a zero-tolerance policy with their paperwork. Historically, a FFL holder was required to willfully violate paperwork provisions to lose their license. Harris – Biden in 2021 redefined “willful” to allow the feds to revoke FFLs for typos, inadvertent errors, and minor violations. They called this predatory enforcement “zero tolerance” and used the new policy as a hammer against firearms merchants, particularly those without the capability to fight this in federal court. In the first year, FFL revocations increased 500% over the previous year, and three times as many licenses revoked in 2022 than 2021. A gun store sued the BATFE in federal court to stop its illegal conduct. Rather than lose the case, Harris – Biden reversed the policy Jan 16. The case was dismissed from federal court shortly afterwards. The House will get itself involved in this with legislation intended to keep the BATFE from pulling this particular stunt again.
6. Fire. When you choose to embrace renewables, you also choose to embrace energy storage, costs which are usually ignored by the advocates but understood by those who actually are in the business of providing baseload electricity. One of the ways to do this is to start banking batteries. Tesla seems to be the leader in this field so far. A fire broke out at the Moss Landing energy storage facility in Monterey County, CA. This was one of the largest energy storage facilities using batteries in the world. The fire raged for days. The problem with the facility was it used lithium – ion (Li-ion) batteries, the most common technology. Li-ion batteries have the same problem at storage facilities that they have in EVs, once they light, they are very, very difficult to put out. This fire was not the first one at the facility in recent years. Renewables advocates are upset that opponents will use the fire as an excuse to stop a move toward renewables. Rather, they ought to use it as an argument to stop hiring incompetents to manage your energy future. Remember that the difference between any energy storage device and a bomb is how quickly the stored energy is released.
More later –
- AG