Interesting Items Alaskan piple line threatened Alex Gimarc [email protected] Monday April 4, 2011 Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue: 1. Wisconsin 2. Energy 3. Syria 4. UCLA 5. Award 6. Colorado 7. ACES 8. AARP 1. Wisconsin . Several items out of Wisconsin last week of interest. First and most important is the election of a state Supreme Court judge. The incumbent is thought not to be sufficiently friendly to the unions, and a win by the pro-green candidate is thought to turn a 4-3 majority into a screaming activist, leftist court that will do everything humanly possible to support public employee unions at the expense of the taxpayers. The election was Tuesday night, and as I am writing this on Wednesday morning, it is too close to call, well within the margin of democrat fraud. While normally bad news, this is not all that bad of an outcome, as the unions and democrats poured everything but the kitchen sink into defeating the incumbent, Prosser. And the best they could do was a 50-50 split. Judge Sumi also reentered the fray, publishing three additional versions of her Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) aimed at keeping the state from publishing and enforcing the new labor law. Two of those versions were so screwed up that they did not cover the appropriate state agencies. Both her objectivity and competence are now in play, as it is difficult to screw up multiple court orders on the same topic in a very short period of time like she has done without putting her professionalism into question. Unions in Wisconsin floated a letter to businesses in the state that reminds everyone of the old mobster protection racket. The state AFL/CIO wrote a letter to businesses in the state “encouraging” them to post the letter in their front windows as proof that they supported the union effort. The letter states that there is no neutrality in this fight, for if you choose to remain neutral, the union will view this as opposition and will urge its members to boycott the business targeted. Finally, a 27-year old kindergarten teacher was identified as the lady who e-mailed death threats to Republican legislators during the fight last month. While she was indicted, the democrat District Attorney chose not to arrest her. No reason was given for the failure to arrest. Things in Wisconsin are just heating up. 2. Energy. As national gas prices pass $4/gal on their way to $5/gal, Obama felt the need to make a major address on energy last week. He said all the right things (if you are a green), and ended with a call for a move to green energy and green jobs. The call for green energy and green jobs ignores the economic disaster both are, having been instrumental in bankrupting Spain . Meanwhile, his permitorium continues in the Gulf of Mexico and for all offshore drilling. The EPA continues to levy new, ridiculous rules on existing refineries and continues its regulatory assault on fracing. So on the one hand; he says he supports drilling and responsible development of our own resources, while his leftist true believers in the Executive agencies do everything humanly possible to shut down all new production here in the US . Obama’s new BFF (Best Friend Forever), Brazil has gone from a net oil importer to self sufficient over the last three decades. And this move has not been via their ethanol program. It has been done via the old fashioned way, via Drill Baby, Drill. Steven Hayward writing in the Wall Street Journal wrote that Brazil went from importing 77% of all their energy in 1980 to not importing anything by 2009. The difference was an aggressive offshore drilling program. Drill Baby, Drill works. And it will work here also. We here in the US can be energy self sufficient in very short order. All we have to do is to get the greens, the regulators and the democrats out of the way. 3. Syria . The civic unrest in the Middle East rolled into Syria last week with mass demonstrations in several cities. Given that Syria is one of the vehicles used by Iran to funnel weapons into the hands of Islamists, one would think that this is an excellent opportunity for the US and / or Israel to stir the pot, as a revolt in Syria will go a long way toward undermining the plans of the Mullahs in Iran and their Hezbollah puppets now in charge of Lebanon. Sadly, the Obamaoids are more interesting in bombing Libya than they are in supporting protestors and revolutionaries in Syria . Hillary even referred to Assad as a “reformer”, demonstrating once again how unqualified she is for public office. There are reports that Israeli intelligence, Mossad is working with the protestors in Syria . For the record, Syria has a long history of reacting brutally to any challenge to its Baathist regime. This is not going to end well. 4. UCLA. It is now a career-ending choice as an academic to question the actions of environmental regulators and point out that their decisions are not based on verifiable data or observations. The most recent story comes out of CA, where the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is busily writing new rules and regulations for particulate emissions. As expected, these new rules and regulations are highly damaging to businesses, existing vehicles, and do not have a lot to do with any increase in health, safety or improvement in air quality. A UCLA researcher found that there was no connection between particulate levels and claimed 2000 premature deaths each year due to those particulates. Additionally, he found that the scientist who made the claim was not properly trained in the field, having received his degree from an online diploma mill. The UCLA researcher presented his findings to the CARB and requested they reconsider the new regulations. UCLA promptly fired him after 34 years as a tenured member of the faculty. This firing blew up nicely for UCLA, which has to defend its attack on academic freedom to democrats in the California Assembly. One must not commit Truth in public or question the greens; else you will lose your job. 5. Award. Allahpundit writing in Hot Air, Friday reported that Obama received an award for transparency in government a while ago. The award was made in private, without any media in attendance. Yet another example of the sort of stuff we get out of the most transparent administration ever. 6. Colorado . Doug Powers writing in Michelle Malkin Friday reported that over 12,000 illegals registered to vote in 2010, and over 5,000 of them voted (likely all for democrats). Colorado elected a new governor and new US Senator in 2010. Democrats won both seats. Neither election was within the 5,000 vote window. But we have voting rolls that have been corrupted by illegals and must be cleaned up. The report came out of the Colorado Secretary of State’s office and was transmitted to congress where House democrats immediately downplayed it. This sort of corruption of the voting rolls is a Cloward – Piven strategy of registering everything that moves and overloading state election officials with garbage so that corrupt democrats (redundant) in office can make up election rules on the fly like they did in Minnesota (Franken, 2008) and Florida (Gore, 2000) to elect democrats who did not win the popular vote. 7. ACES. The Alaska House moved legislation to roll back upper level tax rates on the Palin-era Alaska ’s Clear and Equitable Share (ACES) tax rate increase on oil producers last week. ACES was passed during the VECO scandals as a way to get even with the oil producers. It did not anticipate oil prices over $90/bbl at which point the State of Alaska confiscates over 90% of all dollars made on a barrel of oil shipped down the pipeline. This has all but shut down new production wells in Prudhoe Bay , with only a single new well being drilled over the last two years. None of this is unexpected if you understand basic free markets. The more expensive you make it to do business in a location – for whatever reason – the less private activity you will get. And we here in Alaska are well on our way to killing the golden goose. The Bill was transmitted to the democrat majority in the State Senate, setting up a heck of a fight between the Governor and the democrat-led majority coalition. We are a couple weeks from end of session and the fight will take an ugly turn. This is serious stuff, as the pipeline will be shut down if the flow rate falls to the vicinity of 500,000 bbl/day. And if it is shut down, it must be dismantled. Oil provides over 90% of all tax revenues to run the state. Leftists are starting to prattle on about ending our “addiction” to oil. Yet the North Slope, NPR-A, the Beaufort Sea, the Chukchi Sea, ANWR and newly discovered oil shale deposits have the potential to fill it should they be produced in a timely manner. Democrats in the state senate are doing everything possible to make sure that never happens. This is going to be a heck of a fight. 8. AARP. Crony capitalism is simply another term to describe fascism, an economic regime where private ownership is allowed but regulated completely to the point where the government gets to pick winners and losers. ObamaCare is one vehicle to enforce complete government control over our lives and the marketplace; in this case, the marketplace for medical care. Allahpundit writing in Hot Air Thursday wrote that AARP stands to make over a billion dollars via implementation of ObamaCare. The legislation completely eliminates Medicare Advantage, an option that allowed seniors to make up the difference between what Medicare pays out and what the medical service costs. AARP offers a commercial product that does the same thing called Medigap and stands to get up to seven million new Medigap customers as they are chased off Medicare Advantage. These new customers will bring in an estimated $55 - $166 million in 2014 alone and up to a billion new dollars into the AARP over the next decade; all of which nicely explains AARP support for ObamaCare. Follow the money. Always follow the money. More later - - AG "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776. Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations: Our Home Page http://interestingitems.org/ Archives can be found at http://home.gci.net/~agimarc The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/ MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com Subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/ Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/ -- To join RichsRants, send email to: [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/richsrants?hl=en
