Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Decoy Dan
2. Gasline
3. Jamming
4. Mamdani
5. KSC
6. LGBTQWTF
7. Cigars
1. Decoy Dan. Decoy Dan from Petersburg hit the courts last week, winning reinstatement onto the Alaska primary ballot in August. Friday’s opinion by Alaska Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews concluded that the Division of Elections lacked authority to remove Decoy Dan from the ballot based on what they described as lack of good faith in his candidacy. The 32-page opinion concluded that the Division’s new Good Faith test was not supported in statute. Like all good liberals, Matthews noted that “The Division of Elections is tasked with administering elections in Alaska and determining whether person are eligible for public office,” meaning they have both the expertise and authority to make that determination. He then later writes:
“As noted, above, where an agency decision involved a question of law, the standard that applies is the substitution of judgment standard. Determining the qualifications foa candidate for federal office and interpreting the US Constitution are core legal questions within the unique expertise of the judiciary. Consequently, the Superior Court must independently evaluate the legal merits of the Division’s decisions without giving deference to the agency’s legal formulation.”
Essentially, he simply dismissed the reasonable basis standard acknowledged earlier while installing himself as uniquely qualified and chooses the substitution of judgment standards, applied by him having dismissed the expertise of the Department of Elections.
- The case will be appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court, another simpering group of lefties, who never saw a democrat that they ruled against. Those of us Little People fully expect them to pontificate a while and come down four square in favor of Decoy Dan and the greater Peltola campaign.
- What’s next? Expect the case to be appealed to federal court, though the likelihood of a positive ruling is expected to be low. OTOH, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) is considering the case, so they may choose to act. But doing so, they need to hurry, as ballots need to be printed by Jun 30 in order to make them available to overseas voters.
- Note that the case in front of Matthews did not involve any depositions or discovery, so he never saw or asked for any correspondence between Decoy Dan, Amber Lee and the Peltola campaign, communications which are known to exist. For her part, Lee is no longer in the country, having left on a “previously scheduled” family vacation in Ireland midweek last. Nice timing, that. Her testimony was neither requested nor demanded by Matthews before publishing his missive.
2. Gasline. As noted last week, gasline negotiations are now in conference committee, with the House and Senate trying to decide which version of the enabling legislation is acceptable. While most of these negotiations end up with something in the middle (House clean bill v Senate taxation bonanza), it is not in anyone’s best interest to pass something that increases production taxes on every single producer in Alaska. Should that come out of conference, I expect the Governor to veto it and call yet another special session. Meanwhile all the other producers are now in WTF-land, wondering much like Lando Calrissian how much Darth Vader is about to modify the previous deal. Not the best way to do business as a resource development state.
3. Jamming. Someone, likely the Russians is jamming GPS transmissions worldwide. The jamming has been traced to six Cosmos satellites, with the disruption focused on Europe. The problem has grown over the last five years. Most GPS transmission originates at high altitudes, above 19,000 km, meaning what gets to the surface is fairly week. The Cosmos constellation is much lower, making its impact much larger due to the inverse square law. The ostensible reason for jamming is to disrupt Ukrainian drone attacks, though Russians being Russians, any excuse will work. The area of disruption extends from France to Pakistan, with the disruption cutting strength of received signal up to 85%. At least one commercial aviation accident has been blamed on GPS jamming, though I would rather blame the accident on incompetence of the flight crew rather than the jamming. There are a lot of navaids available. If one goes down, you need to use the next two or five to keep yourself from going down.
4. Mamdani. The civil war in the democrat party broke out into the open last week with primary victories of three Mamdani-endorsed Democratic Socialist candidates in the statewide primary. Two of them bumped off incumbent democrat congress critters, one a committed anti-Trumper. Two of them will be in congress next January. The third still needs to go through a somewhat competitive election. For his part, Mamdani and his Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are feeling their oats, using the wins as a springboard for races nationwide. This also makes Mamdani the most powerful democrat in the nation today. How long that lasts is anyone’s guess. Looks like the strategy is to target democrat incumbents first, win those seats and expand their reach over time. This stuff plays very well with the economically illiterate youngsters, and the 11% turnout in the primary election allowed the DSA cadre of new immigrants to punch well above their weight. The wins aren’t an aberration. They are real, with the youngsters, particularly the new young immigrants and first-generation youngsters leading the way. At some level, we are seeing the success of the dumpster fire higher education has become, closely followed by the dumpster fire of the public schools. We may be seeing the beginning of the destruction of both the major political parties, with Republicans becoming MAGA and democrats becoming DSA. What happens to those who today refuse to play on either team remains to be seen, though I think MAGA has the best chance to appeal to them
5. KSC. We are starting to get some idea as to the launch rate necessary to support a permanent return to the moon. Last week, the NASA IG released a report concluding that the current launch infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral, KSC) and Wallops Island, VA will not be able to support flight rates expected in 2030, a mere 4 years from today. What flight rates are we talking about? KSC (the Cape) is currently operating at a historic 100 – 120 launches/year. This rate is mostly SpaceX Falcon 9 launches, increasing 2.5x over the last 5 years. Wallops Island is less used, at 5 – 10/year. By 2030, KSC launch rate is expected to double, approaching 270 launches/year. Most of the new activity will be large boosters Starship and New Glenn. The existing infrastructure, mainly roads and facilities, barely support the new flight rate today. The IG, being a government entity, pointed out the problem and of course, recommended additional money from congress. The various launch sites depicted in the graphic below are operated by the companies they are leased to, but there are legal limits to how much the companies can spend on the infrastructure connecting the facilities.
The Big Beautiful Bill signed last year recognized the problem, adding $250 million to the yearly infrastructure appropriation at the Cape. NASA IG recommends at least four times that amount. Who pays for this? I suggest it not be the taxpayer. Congress can easily pass legislation allowing the contractors (lease holders) to upgrade the connecting infrastructure to their pads. In order to ensure everyone plays well together, it should be done under Space Force supervision / referee, as they are now responsible for entire complex (Cape Canaveral Space Force Station), and SpaceX / Blue Origin will support no small number of DoD missions. NASA, like the contractors, is mostly a tenant on a military base. What are all the new flights out of KSC going to be doing? One thing would be going to the moon. SpaceX ? Last week NASA released a hint about future flight rates. NASA believes it will take 15 Starship flights to send Artemis 4 to the moon. Most of these will be refueling flights in LEO. By 2030, there will be at least 6 launch towers operational at the Cape.
6. LGTQWTF. I have been waiting a while for the notion that over-the-top LGBTQWTF activism bordering on enforced public support is starting to backfire. This pushback is showing up to a decline in public support for gay marriage. The most recent skirmish took place in SF, where three SF Giants players chose to display a Bible verse on their hats during pride night next to the rainbow-colored team logo demanded by the team and MLB. Gay outrage triggered an aborted attempt by MLB to sanction the players involved. The Commissioner’s Office backed right down when at least one US Senator opined they would reconsider MLB’s anti-trust exemption should the players be punished. They weren’t, and the issue quietly buried and quickly forgotten by the media. This comes close on the heels of the increasingly deadly trans / furry movement which for some reason has adopted political assassinations as a form of approved personal expression. As soon as these guys stopped wanting to simply be left alone, but publicly demanded that their personal lifestyle choices be celebrated by everyone, and enforced that demand with punishment of the non-celebrants, they gutted support for their cause. It will take a while to settle down, as the extremists have done more to damage their cause than any opponent could ever do, which couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.
7. Cigars. The zero-tolerance kneejerk response took down a high school lacrosse team in Ipswich, MA a couple weeks ago. The team had a pretty good season and were on track to play in the state high school division championship semifinal. Their violation of all that is Good and Righteous? The team participated in a tradition of smoking cigars following the end of the season. Yeah, a truly shocking act. Someone took a photo and it made its way to the school administration which was shocked, simply shocked at the wanton violation of good discipline and important, lifestyle defining school rules. They clutched their pearls mightily and suspended 9 of the team members. The team couldn’t field a team with the remaining players and forfeited the game. The school claimed rules are rules, defending their execution of zero tolerance. Anyone else notice that zero tolerance is enforced against fun stuff rather than illegal stuff? The team claimed the cigars were tobacco-free, supplied by one of the parents. Apparently, the school rule is a complete tobacco ban. Great, so the kids came up with a workaround with tobacco free cigars, which didn’t sufficiently work around the rule to the satisfaction of the enforcers. The principal initially told the team and parents they would be allowed to play, reversing himself a day or two later, 4 hours before the game. I kind of hope someone finds a lawyer and takes this schmuck to the cleaners, as it sounds like the kids didn’t violate the no tobacco rule. Maybe they can get their college paid for.
More later –
- AG