Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Tariffs
2. Military
3. Boasberg
4. Roberts
5. Fine
6. SAVE
7. Fluoride
8. JPL
1. Tariffs. The Trump reconstruction of trade between the US and the rest of the world proceeded nicely last week with the focus shifting to China and to a lesser degree, the EU. The week before, he levied across the board 10% tariff on the rest of the world and put off implementation 90 days pending negotiations with other nations for reciprocal trade agreements. One of the important things to remember is that there are lot of ways for trading partners to muck around, protect their industrial bases while sticking it to the US. These include but are not limited to tariffs, import duties, limits on what can and cannot be imported or exported. For instance, the CCP has turned theft of intellectual property across the board into a fine art. They are using Amazon as a vehicle to wipe out American small businesses targeted by their factories. As of this morning, the Trump administration claims that 130 nations have come to the table to negotiate reciprocal trade agreements, a substantial percentage of the 195 sovereign nations that exist in the world today. The big deal is who is not coming to the table: China, the EU, and to a lesser degree, Canada. Kevin O’Leary believes Canada will be at the table shortly after their parliamentary elections are over April 28. We will see. The EU is going to fight, as the Mandarins in Brussels have decided they want to fight for at least a little while. Last but not least, we have China, which is the ultimate target of this. They have decided to fight to the death. The question is whose economy will the fight kill first? The festivities resulted in perhaps three days of turbulence in the Stock Market last week, with two days of a crash followed by a third day of a rebound. Democrats were quite pleased during the first two days, gleefully reporting the beginning of the Trump Recession.
The third day, not so much. How will this end? I believe that the CCP has already lost. They only have a few options, all of them bad. One option would be to form a trading consortium with their allies. Their problem is that they don’t have allies, as you can only bully and cheat your neighbors so many times before they decide to take another path. CCP attempts to put together such a consortium have been unsuccessful, though the EU Mandarins (their Mandarins like the CCP Mandarins. What a surprise (/sarc)) are at least pretending to listen. The CCP’s other option will be to hard ball it and try to wait out Trump. Hard balling will help the US as he forges new agreements with our trading partners and move everything the US has been doing in China to other locations. They can play games with the $1 – 2 trillion of US debt they are thought to hold. Sell the debt and crash the US economy, hopefully in the runup to the 2026 congressional elections. Can they wait that long? Unlikely. Final option would be to go full Soviet and attempt an invasion of Taiwan. I couldn’t think of a better way to ensure they are cut out of any and all future agreements, but that’s just me. One word of warning, though I do think we will win the current festivities, it should be a bumpy ride as we disengage from China and the CCP. Like all things Trump, it will also be loud and use their new, special, focus-grouped word, “chaotic.” Given all the other things he is doing with the economy like rolling back regulations and stopping the war on fossil fuel (solving the energy issue), the outcome should be pretty good as our economy picks up as the negative impact of a trade war with China becomes apparent.
2. Military. Cleanup of the politicized active-duty officer corps continued last week with firing of a pair of female commanders. The first was USN Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, the only woman on NATO’s military committee. She was fired over public comments supporting diversity. The second was US Space Force Col Susan Meyers, Commander of Pituffik Space Base (the former Thule AFB) following last week’s visit to Greenland and the base by VP Vance and his wife. Meyers was silly enough to send out a smarmy little e-mail to her charges noting that the administration’s current position on Greenland did not reflect either her view or that of the base. She was promptly relieved. These two DEI True Believers are the tip of a woke iceberg installed in the military since O’Bama took office Jan 2009, 16 long years ago. Remember that O’Bama conducted a purge of the officer corps shortly after being inaugurated and proceeded to politicize those who remained and the new inductees to the maximum extent possible. It takes about 16 years for an officer to get to field rank (Major, LtCol, Colonel and the Navy equivalent). A certain number of them are on the fast track to General Officer promotions. The two ladies relieved last week most certainly were. One had already made it to Flag rank. They aren’t going to be the last to self-identify themselves out of the military gene pool due to their personal political beliefs. Rooting out those remaining is going to take a while.
3. Boasberg. DC Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Justice James Boasberg had himself quite a week, as SCOTUS vacated his Temporary Restraining Order against deporting Tren de Aragua gang bangers under the Alien Enemies Act. The 5-4 opinion found that he had no jurisdiction in DC to try a case with gang bangers incarcerated in Texas. Justice Barrett joined the rest of the SCOTUS women in opposition. Expect the opinion to be used to fend off any number of current anti-Trump lawfare suits where Norm Eisen’s acolytes have been judge shopping. The opinion also derailed at least temporarily Boasberg’s attempt to lay a perjury trap for DoJ lawyers fighting his edicts. When DoJ ignored his initial order to turn the extradition flights around because they were in international airspace, Boasberg ordered an array of information from DoJ, all intended to demonstrate they knowingly ignored him. This effort went silent for a week, though I expect he and his minions are trying to figure a way around it so as to jail some DoJ for contempt of court. This isn’t over. He remains both angry and one of the more virulent TDS sufferers on the federal bench.
4. Roberts. Washington DC is a Company Town, where the government populated and led by democrats is the company. The rest of us occasionally get to shop at the company store, as long as whatever we purchase enriches the democrats. The lawfare edifice so carefully erected by democrats can be put at the feet of chief architect Norm Eisen. Eisen is a senior fellow at Brooking Institution, chef WH ethics lawyer under O’Bama 2009 – 2011, and founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). CREW filed over 180 lawsuits against Trump and his associates since 2016. He doesn’t target democrats. Leftist billionaires including Soros, have dumped millions into CREW turning it into a partisan legal weapon. Eisen’s 2019 The Democracy Playbook describes how to use the media, organized civil unrest, and legal pressure to remove elected political leaders from office (how to book on planning and executing color revolutions). Clearly, a powerful force on the lawfare front. Turns out that in the company town that is Washington DC, Eisen is also connected to Chief Justice John Roberts. Eisen writes that he and Roberts spent a week in the Czech Republic working on “American rule of law” issues. Eisen was so proud of the visit that he bragged about it and made it clear that Roberts is a close friend that happened to fly overseas and stay at Eisen’s 150-room chateau to collaborate on transatlantic political projects. If this is true and the two men are indeed close, Roberts is hopelessly compromised and will do his level best to craft as many anti-Trump SCOTUS opinions as humanly possible as the lawfare cases filed since January make their way to SCOTUS. Be warned.
5. Fine. The latest threat out of the EU against free speech is a billion dollar fine aimed at X / Twitter for violations of Europe’s Digital Services Act. The 2022 Act was supposedly passed to limit “illegal and harmful content” on major internet platforms. The definition of both illegal and harmful is directly tied to whose ox is being gored. As the only remaining international free speech platform in the world, X / Twitter is a juicy, inviting target. The EU has been investigating, with formal proceedings started in 2023. This would be the first enforcement action under the Act. They take exception with X / Twitter’s blue check and content moderation policies, claiming it is turning it into a hate speech and disinformation machine. Under the Act, a company can be fined up to 6% of its global revenue. Having found them guilty, the EU is simply doing the math of figuring out what the penalty will be and going through the motions of an investigation. Prediction: If they pull this stunt, I expect Trump will leave NATO. Remember that Trump never threatens.
6. SAVE. The House passed Chip Roy’s SAVE Act last week 220 – 208, with four democrats voting to send it on to the Senate. I received the first frantic anti-SAVE text message aimed at lobbying Lisa Murkowski to vote against it within a day of the vote. The Act requires proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. While voting is a state matter, the feds can and do set standards for federal elections. Democrats trotted out all the old arguments in opposition, mostly some variation of the argument that blacks and single women are too stupid to figure out how to get IDs. While I understand the concern, as it explains why they are voting democrat, it is no reason to continue to enable stupidity. Support for this legislation polls in the 70-30% range, making it more difficult for senate democrats and RINOs to successfully kill it. For the record, the only reason to oppose this is to enable election / voting fraud.
7. Fluoride. One of the troubling changes falling out of RFK Jr and his takeover of HHS is his publicly stated opposition to fluoride in water. He is set to remove HHS’ recommendation in support of fluoride following Utah’s ban on it in drinking water. It is here that I will state my disagreement, as it really pains me to end up on the same side as the left on this. Fluorine is a halide, chemically similar to chlorine. We are up to our ears in chlorine all the time, as it is used extensively to control bacteria and algae growth in water. We also consume chlorine extensively as it is part of normal table salt (NaCl). Chlorine and sodium is nasty stuff in its pure form. Chlorine was used in WWI as poison gas. Fluoride has been in the water starting 1945. It became a public health policy in 1951. The recommendation was based on parts of the country (Texas and Colorado) that had high natural levels of fluoride in the water. These levels led to stained teeth that didn’t get cavities. Over the years, there has been public pushback against its use, though the opposition was mostly marginal in size. That opposition metastasized following collapse of credibility of the public health apparat following the debacle what was their response to COVID. The general public predictably asked if the public health apparat and the government lied about liberally everything associated with COVID and their response to it, what else are they lying about? Something? Everything? And they arrived at the conclusion that they were lying about everything. I disagree with the conclusion. I get it. I know fluoride works, having grown up long enough in Texas to be exposed to its positive impact. I think this is a mistake, an unforced error.
8. JPL. One of the techniques to retain the toxic cancer that is DEI has been to rename positions and hope the Trump administration wouldn’t notice. One of these was the chief DEI officer at NASA’s JPL. Her position was renamed into the Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success. JPL cut 900 earlier, while renaming her position. Last week, pressure built to the point where she was finally let go. The lady was a True Believer in all things DEI, including promoting NASA’s Space Workforce 2030 which focused on hiring women and minorities.
More later –
- AG