Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. DC Circuit
2. Swattings
3. Tesla
4. Coal Ash
5. Capture
6. Billionaires
1. DC Circuit. Well, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals stepped up over the last several weeks as the center of democrat resistance to all things Trump. Its judges have led the lawfare assault on Trump efforts to reign in the administrative state. For the most part, nothing has gotten to the appellate level, with the lower court judges doing all the dirty work for the democrats. Chucky Schumer bragged as much last week claiming that some 230+ Biden judicial appointees were in place doing their bidding. Silly me, I thought that judges were umpires rather than Russian Judges, installed to give Their Side a competitive advantage, at least that is what Chief Justice Roberts claimed so many years ago.
- Thus, the battle is joined, with DC Circuit judges installing themselves as arbiters of all things Trump writing nearly 100 nationwide temporary injunctions against administration actions. The most obnoxious participant last week was one Judge Boasberg, who decided that he was in charge of flights of gangsters out of the country. Boasberg is in charge of the DC Circuit, with a daughter fully connected to the anti-Trump resistance. He was also in the center of enabling the Russia Collusion hoax before the FISA Court and called for new legislation targeting the Jan 6 people for destruction because existing law did not allow sufficiently harsh sentences. In short, this boy has redefined the term “vermin.” In response to threats of impeachment from House Republicans, Chief Justice Roberts pointed out that impeachment was not the common response to various rulings from trial judges, an opinion that triggered much joy from the left and their media cheerleaders. One thing pointed out over the weekend is that these leftist judges were completely silent on the question of Biden’s open border, the import of millions of illegals / criminals, usually throwing out complaints by individuals and states on the basis of no standing. Now that Trump is rounding them up and ejecting them from the country, the black robed politicians have decided to act.
- Roberts’ problem is that Boasberg is not the problem. Rather the fetid swamp he has allowed the DC Circuit to become. Roberts deigns himself as the protector and defender of all things judicial. His problem is that he has allowed the DC Circuit to run wild with the Jan 6, Abortion Clinic obstruction and Russia Collusion trials, not to mention the Jack Smith prosecution against Trump in Chutkan’s court. This isn’t calling balls and strikes. This is allowing his minions to take down a future president while smiling sweetly pretending to look the other way.
- I spent a long time defending Roberts as an institutionalist, someone choosing to defend the federal courts against all enemies foreign and domestic. I officially end that today, as the boy today is little more than an inside player for the swamp. And as such needs to be publicly humiliated before he is removed from office. He actively refused to find O’BamaCare unconstitutional, going so far as to rewrite the law as a tax, something congress never passed, but the democrats wanted. He looked the other way while the DC Circuit ran roughshod over the civil rights of all Jan 6 people. And today he is allowing lawfare to proceed with little more than the goal of obstructing the Trump agenda in downsizing the federal government and deporting criminals. As such, his and his minions are now the problem rather than the solution. While Roberts could have been the solution, he has emphatically chosen not to be. As such, he is now the problem, which is OK, as congress can solve his silly little appellate court problem for him. Given a little bit of time and a growing string of judicial outrages, they may very well do so.
- This is a really dangerous course for Roberts, as one of the few things holding this nation together is the notion of an independent, nonpartisan judiciary. If he and his traveling clown circus of black robed partisan democrat political hacks have decided that partisanship uber alles trumps their historic mission, they have become a political problem that will be solved sooner rather than later. And make no mistake, that problem Will be solved.
2. Swattings. Lawfare in federal courts is not the only tool in the leftist toolbox these days, as they are gleefully embracing yet another little gem, that of swatting their political opposition. Swatting is a false report of mayhem, a shooting, kidnapping, hostage situation or some other urgent situation at the home of the target sufficient for law enforcement to roll out the SWAT team, in full battle dress, with loaded firearms drawn, presented at the ready. This is usually done in the middle of the night so as to maximize confusion and someone, hopefully the target, ends up getting shot. Last week, at least 15 conservative / right wing media personalities had their homes swatted. In some instances, the targets had pizzas arrive at the home just before or after the cops. The pizzas were also not ordered by them. Given that a lot of conservatives are armed, this sort of situation is set up to go sideways very quickly. By the Grace of God, none have as yet. The FBI and DHS are on the case, investigating the hoaxers. This appears to be an orchestrated effort by the left, not unlike torching all things Tesla, to abuse law enforcement against any American the left disagrees with. Given the proliferation of Red Flag laws in recent years, I would also expect them to be used and abused against their conservative targets in the very near future.
3. Tesla. The Two Minutes Hate targeting all things Tesla continued last week with vehicles, dealerships and charging stations being vandalized and torched. Idiot politicians like former democrat VP candidate and current MN Governor Tim Walz are now targeting its stock, with Walz gleefully pointing out falling Tesla stock prices, claiming that conservative outrage at this is entirely due to conservatives not being able to take a joke. Walz continues to demonstrate that he is the less capable member of the Kamal – Walz ticket, significantly underperforming the drunk at the top of the ticket. Why? The MN state pension fund is invested in Tesla. When Tesla’s valuation falls, so does the ability of the fund to cover its obligations. There was a time when Tesla was everything positive to the left, EV manufacturer, green corporation led by a democrat supporter saving the planet, best of all, an American corporation. The left loved it, purchasing a lot of vehicles and stock. Indeed, most blue state pension funds have Tesla holdings. All that ended when Musk decided he had enough abuse from the Harris – Biden regime and its strap hangers, including obstruction and lawfare, not to mention the wanton destruction of the US itself via uncontrolled spending and immigration. Things started changing when Musk was forced to purchase Twitter for billions over its valuation and turned it into a free speech platform. Anti Musk opposition progressed following his endorsement of Trump and finally his leadership of DOGE. As I noted last week, what is going on against Tesla is artificial, orchestrated, supported by about a quarter of all democrats, which sadly is enough people to keep it going for a while. It is being funded by democrat billionaires. Wanton acts of vandalism, yes, domestic terrorism are being coordinated on social media and at least one dedicated web site. The next big nationwide event is scheduled for April 5. We will see if it gets the same attention from the law enforcement community that Jan 6 protesters and little old ladies praying in front of abortion clinics did.
4. Coal Ash. We are well on our way to proving that burning coal for energy is a positive for the environment, as university researchers are starting to demonstrate that coal ash, the remains of coal use for energy and other industrial purposes, can be an industrial source for rare earth minerals. Coal ash has long been thought to be an industrial waste product, much like the long chain hydrocarbons left over from petroleum refining. The petroleum byproducts were turned into the petrochemical / plastics industry. Looks like coal ash is about to supplant the CCP as a source of rare earths, busting their carefully constructed monopoly. This discovery doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to make every effort to mine rare earths in North America, particularly in the American West and Alaska. We still need far more rare earths than this will provide.
5. Capture. Regulatory capture happens when regulated corporations end up controlling their regulators. Perhaps the best example these days comes out of the health and medical fields, though renewables are no slackers. Last week’s example comes courtesy of the American Heart Association (AHA) who came out loudly and forcefully in opposition to legislation making its way through the Texas Legislature barring soda and candy from purchase with food stamps. The Texas legislation is an attempt to address poor dietary choices by food stamp recipients (sugar). For some reason the supposedly medically based AHA thinks this would be a bad thing. In this, AHA is siding with Big Sugar, completely ignoring the very real medical problems associated with high carb (which in turn, means high sugar) diets. Sugar producers have held remarkable sway over legislation controlling their products for at least 120 years. It is a state of affairs they are good at, have trained their regulators to support, and expect to continue ad infinitum. It is also a state of affairs threatened by RFK Jr’s MAHA effort. AHA simply told us whose side they were on. Had this been based on the smallest bit of medical or nutrition science, AHA would be treating sugar as large of a threat to public health as they have been treating tobacco for half a century. By week’s end, they publicly reversed their position, coming out in support of the Texas legislation. I would think the public blowback was withering. Final thought on this is that opponents are smartly crafting their anti-legislation message in terms of liberty, the freedom of food stamp users to make their own decisions about the sorts of things food stamps can be used for. The danger with paying Danegeld is that the Dane will always be back for another payment. When the feds (or states) start picking and choosing what sorts of things can be purchased and what cannot, you open the door, set the precedent for governments to determine how to live our lives for ourselves down to the most minute detail. We already know how the left uses this power. Surely, we conservatives can figure out another approach, which is what the discussion over the legislation ought to be all about.
6 Billionaires. One of the touchstones of the Marxist left is that billionaires get to where they are by stealing from everyone else. This fuels their class warfare “get even with them-ism.” And their only recommended solution is to destroy the billionaires. Bernie Sanders, AOC and the rest of the Squad bang thig gong for all they’re worth incessantly. There is another side to the discussion, pointed out by Tim Worstall in his Substack a couple weeks ago, that Starvation is Caused by an Insufficiency of Billionaires. He posts a couple graphics at the beginning. The first is the countries experiencing hunger.
The second is a world map of billionaires. None of the countries with billionaires experiencing hunger (the US, Western nations, China, India and the Far East). Countries experiencing hunger (most of Africa) have very few. Causation isn’t correlation. It is not that the billionaires do anything about hunger. Rather, it is the policies that allow economic conditions to create billionaires also prevent starvation. Those nations with the most freedom in their marketplaces, the more capitalist they are, the less starvation they have. Billionaires become indicators rather than levers of power. The drawback to all this is that there is a crabs in a bucket reaction among humans that tend to pull the successful back down into poverty rather than pull yourself out. When married with an envy-based economic system like any flavor of socialism, or simple corruption (which always goes hand in hand with envy-based economic systems), it can ensure nobody other than the few very corrupt end up being successful, and everyone else remains mired in poverty forever. Think of it as a cautionary tale described by the Robert A Heinlein quote that I have associated with Interesting Items for years.
More later –
- AG