Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Payback
2. Wind
3. Moraes
4. Override
5. Injunctions
6. Jobs
1. Payback. Trump administration payback for the Russia Collusion Hoax and O’Bama – Biden sponsored anti-Trump lawfare started ramping up nicely last week on multiple fronts.
- But before I go there, a few words in defense of payback, particularly in the political world. The short form is that payback is required in all forms of governance. In other words, the cost of doing something awful to a friend, neighbor, enemy, business or customer must be sufficient that the malefactor never considers trying it again. The law only exists to protect the guilty from being hunted down like dogs and killed. When the law is then applied as a vehicle of attack (assault) on a citizen or group of them, then expect that very same set of laws to be used against whomever chose poorly and begins the festivities. If this means that O’Bama and all his henchmen are dragged through the same judicial morass that they just finished dragging Trump, members of his administration, his family, and supporters (the Jan 6 people) through, so much the better. If one side chooses not to play, for whatever reason, it won’t be long before the aggressor gets into the censorship, debanking, jailing for life business like we saw during the Biden years. Better this way than Vigilance Committees, though in some instances they are one of the few remaining options. If things get bad enough, they are a viable option that will be used as they have in the past. Otherwise, something worse will be substituted.
- The first example of this is AG Bondi’s appointment of Ed Martin, the former Acting Federal Prosecutor for DC for a bit as a special counsel to investigate mortgage fraud by NY AG Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff (D, CA). James claimed homes in NY and VA while Schiff has lived in Maryland for over 23 years while representing Californians in the House and then in the Senate. Like most things Trump, this is World Class trolling, as Martin ran into a democrat- led buzzsaw in his quest for confirmation as US Attorney for DC. That buzzsaw dragged along Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) who announced he would oppose the nomination in committee, an announcement that ended his overly long mediocre political career. Martin withdrew his nomination and was appointed by Trump to a DoJ anti-lawfare task force. Schiff is a democrat member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and opposed Martin’s appointment. Both James and Schiff appear to have committed mortgage fraud by claiming two different properties as their primary residences on mortgage applications. Primary residences get better loan interest rates. This sort of fraud is a felony, punishable by up to 30 years in jail and $1 million fine. As both frauds were done in multiple states, this is a federal violation, though both NY and CA (home states) can bring state level cases if they desire. They probably won’t. The away states VA and MD may or may not participate. MD being a blue state, probably won’t. VA being purple, might. Blue states generally give democrats a pass on criminal acts while coming down on Republicans like the proverbial ton of bricks, even making up new law in the process. See Trump, Donald J v Letitia James for more information
- AG Bondi also empaneled a Grand Jury to look into the Russia Collusion Hoax last week. Where do you ask? Would you believe Florida? Talk about venue shopping, but then again, we are now playing by the democrats’ new rules. I hope they enjoy the ride. The Grand Jury will investigate alleged conspiracy to push the false Trump Russia Collusion story during the 2016 campaign and afterwards. So far, both Clapper and Brennan have lawyered up. O’Bama might. No word on Comey as yet. Declassification and release of information on the hoax continues to be dripped out as the Trump administration sets the stage to prosecute the hoaxers for their lies to congress under oath (perjury). While much of this may end up being tossed via the Statute of Limitations, not all of it will be. And the process for all of these clowns will end up being the punishment. As it should.
2. Wind. The Trump administration continued unwinding the skewed regulatory infrastructure forcing adoption of wind energy last week by terminating Wind Energy Leasing Area designations. The Department of the Interior action took aim at 3.5 million acres (over 14,000 km2) areas on the outer continental shelf designated as priority areas for wind energy development. None of the 11 areas are currently leased. Note that wind energy development designation effectively stops all other uses of those areas. The acreage includes the Gulf of Mexico (4 areas off Texas and Louisiana), Gulf of Maine (2 million acres off New England), North Carolina (3 areas), Oregon Coast (nearly 195,000 acres), and Morro Bay in Cali. The Interior announcement promised to safeguard coastal environments, local economies, and ensure power grids were not undermined by unreliable, subsidized energy sources. Note that local communities, tribes and fishermen have long been ignored as offshore wind has been shoved down the throats of an unwilling public. The designation essentially pulls the plug on every wind project that has yet to do sonar work preparatory to driving piles into the seafloor. Add this to EPA efforts to rescind the CO2 endangerment finding and Department of Energy climate assessment that suggests the economic impact of CO2 is less than expected and aggressive climate mitigation efforts may do more harm than good. The Trump administration is setting the stage for a return to rationality in the climate wars. As an aside: does anyone else notice that climate has all but disappeared as an issue over the last 6 months? While undoing this administratively is a great start, the ultimate goal is locking it in legislatively so that the next group of crazies put into office is unable to bring it back easily.
3. Moraes. We are about to see the collision of the irresistible force (Trump) with the immovable object (Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes). Moraes has become the face of Brazilian censorship, political lawfare, and enforcer of the Lula regime’s retention of power. He used the power of his office to force X / Twitter to censor political speech in Brazil and used threats of jailing all Starlink employees as leverage. He most recently placed formed Brazilian President Bolsonaro under house arrest for photos taken during an anti-government protest. Note that Bolsonaro lost his 2022 reelection in much the same way that Trump lost 2020. Moraes is reprising the role Merrick Garland played in actively hunting down Trump, Trump supporters, members of his first administration, Republicans and all other critics of the newly ensconced regime. Moraes has used the censorship tool vigorously going after what he calls disinformation. I don’t know precisely how the Brazilian legal system operates, but it does appear that Moraes has been acting as judge, jury and executioner, handing down edicts without benefit of trial. The Trump administration is starting to fight back, declaring Brazil a national security threat and imposing personal sanctions on Moraes. Department of the Treasury froze all Moraes US-based assets. Trump has also imposed tariffs on Brazil. The parallels between Biden and Brazilian President Lula are striking, as it is unclear who is actually running things in Brazil these days – Lula or Moraes? Either way, the battle is joined. Somehow, I don’t think either man will blink. We are about to see how much pain Brazil can endure before they decide they don’t much want Moraes running wild anymore. Remember that like with Trump in 2020, half the nation (or more) also supports Bolsonaro.
4. Override. Here in Alaska, we have the case of a legislative special session held last week. The governor called the session ostensibly to address education issues. They were ignored. Instead, the legislature met for about an hour, overrode a couple vetoes and gaveled out (suspended the session, so they can call themselves back). Last year, Alaskans elected 21 Republicans to the House. Two of them caucused with democrats giving democrats a single seat majority caucus. In the Senate, Republicans elected 9 Republicans. Five of them crossed the aisle to caucus with democrats in a 14-member majority caucus. During the special session, 10 members of the minority, all Republicans, 7 in the House and 3 in the Senate voted to override the Republican governor’s vetoes of an increase in education funding and refusal to provide the legislature oil and natural gas tax revenue information in a useable form, irritating democrats who like to gouge the producers with increased taxes. As it takes 45 of the 60 available votes to override, if any single member of the newly formed Republican Override Caucus refuses to vote to override, they don’t happen. This makes all of them individually culpable and liable for their cowardly choices. All the crossovers were elected based on actually being Republicans. Crossing over to caucus with the Other Side has been going on for a long time up here. Those that do and hand unearned majority control to democrats are generally punished in the following elections. Many of them get removed from the political gene pool. Some don’t. I would think the newly formed Republican Override Caucus would be high on the 2026 list as are those who handed control to democrats. Of course, defeating as many democrats as possible next year is always important. This has been going on for a long time, though handing a majority over to democrats tends to be punished more severely than crossovers that simply increase the size of an existing majority. It is a problem that also exists in the Texas legislature where RINOs negotiate with democrats before organization, choose to caucus with democrats, handing control to democrats. As I understand it, this has been a chronic problem in the Texas House.
5. Injunctions. One of the recent big SCOTUS wins was the June 27 CASA v Trump opinion limiting the use of universal injunctions by trial judges. Justice Alito warned that there were ways around the opinion for sufficiently creative activists in in black robes. One of these would be via the class action lawsuit, which should be reasonably well controlled due to standing rules in how the various classes are certified. Almost immediately Norm Eisen, one of the architects of the strategy to blanket the new administration with hundreds of lawsuits to obstruct their actions, crafted a class action case before a federal court in NH. This was aimed at birthright citizenship brought by 5 plaintiffs. It took little time for the district court judge to certify the plaintiffs as a class and include everyone else in the nation similarly impacted, which sent the entire mess back to SCOTUS to rule upon once again. As long as Chief Justice Roberts allows his charges in the lower courts to run wild, there will be little control over them unless and until congress acts, which they very well may end up doing.
6. Jobs. One of the interesting things about Trump World 2.0 is uncovering all the little democrat moles burrowed into the body politic like so many fattened ticks. Most recent example was the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dr Erika McEntarfer, who was fired for incompetence bordering on fraud. She was a Biden appointee who routinely published monthly job report numbers during the Biden regime that overstated the number of jobs created. These were just as routinely revised downward in the months to come. She did her best (or worst) work in the runup to the 2024 election, pumping up economic numbers and in turn Kamala’s election chances. Under Trump, the game is played the opposite direction with good jobs creation numbers magically revised downward a month or two later, demonstrating that Trump is intentionally crashing the economy. While Trump did rail against her for being a political hack, she was actually fired for being incompetent. The fact that he removed yet another democrat political operative from public office is a bonus. There is some upside with awful jobs numbers. First is that it puts pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. More pressure is better than less pressure in this regard. There is some speculation that the combined jobs numbers reflect removal of over 2 million illegals from the rolls. Finally, the new jobs numbers also reflect the removal of perhaps 150,000 federal employees from the workforce, also a positive.
More later –
- AG