Interesting Items - Sep 5, 2011
Come visit us at our new web site: www.interestingitems.org Leave your thoughts, comments and opinions. We look forward to hearing from you. Interesting Items Alex Gimarc [email protected] Monday Sep 5, 2011 Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue: 1. Pebble 2. Solyndra 3. Speech 4. NLRB 5. Thomas 6. Clock 7. Pigs 8. Parade 1. Pebble. The latest round of anti-mining cruft thrown at proposed Pebble mine north of Lake Iliamna are a pair of ballot initiatives that would give local planning officials the final say on any project larger than 640 acres that would impact any salmon stream in the borough. These are blatantly unconstitutional as they impinge on the constitutional authority of the State of Alaska to make those decisions. The Pebble Partnership went to court in an attempt to get them pulled off the ballot and was rebuffed at both the district and state Supreme Court levels. Paul Jenkins of Anchorage Daily Planet wrote a devastating opinion piece over the weekend that took the liberal judiciary in this state to task for allowing the ballot initiatives to proceed. He correctly points out that the state courts have been uniformly hostile to ballot initiatives for years, yet are supportive of this one. It appears the courts are taking sides on this fight. If so, the legislature and the Parnell administration will have to step in to the fray next session. The second bit of bad news was that one of the members of the Pebble Partnership, Northern Dynasty of Vancouver, has put their stake in the mine up for sale. They do not have the resources to commit billions of dollars necessary to bring this project through the formidable gauntlet of permitting at the local, state and federal levels, and to fend off the blizzard of lawsuits awaiting them from anti-mining NIMBYs. We may very well end up with the ChiComs owning half of this mine. You can find Jenkins’ article here. It is worth the read: http://www.adn.com/2011/09/03/2048218/anti-pebble-ploy-a-cheesy-way.html 2. Solyndra. Yet another of Obama’s green jobs, renewable energy stars filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week. This one was Solyndra which was going to be in the business of manufacturing photovoltaic panels for green energy. In 2009, the company received over $535 million in stimulus funds courtesy of a fast-track, friendly approval process that was by some reports, orchestrated from the WH itself. The company also blew through over $1.2 billion in venture capital funding in less than a year. It announced layoffs of 1,100 people. Some are calling this fiasco Obama’s Enron, as there are some reports of possible political connection between corporate officers, investors and Obama. We will see if the WH plays the bankruptcy process like they did with GM and Chrysler to take care of their supporters at the expense of the legitimate investors and taxpayers. This one is going to be very, very ugly. And there is a lot more info to come out. 3. Speech. It is Good to be King. Unfortunately, when you are a president who heads up one of three co-equal branches of the federal government, it is difficult to wave your finger and get everyone else to jump to your beck and call. The Obama WH last week announced he was going give his jobs speech this Wednesday before a joint session of congress. For some reason, the WH hadn’t bothered to contact congress to coordinate the speech before the announcement. Speaker Boehner responded with a letter suggesting a couple alternative dates. After much whining, wailing and public gnashing of teeth about disrespect and the indignity of it all, the WH chose Thursday as the date of the speech, timed the hour before the Thursday night kickoff of the 2011 NFL season opener in Green Bay . Interesting original timing for the speech, as it was scheduled to coincide with a Republican presidential debate Wednesday night at the Reagan Library in California . The debate had been scheduled for months and was going to be the first one which Texas Governor Rick Perry was going to participate. I’m sure Obama’s campaign kickoff speech using congress as a prop wasn’t scheduled to disrupt coverage of the Republican debate. 4. NLRB. The union-dominated NLRB issued three decisions last week aimed directly at small businesses nationwide. The first and most onerous opinion allows the formation of micro-bargaining units. By law, a bargaining unit is defined as “… similarly situated workers who share a community of interests.” The new rule allows a union to peel off small groups of employees by job title and organize micro bargaining units. This would prevent cross-training of employees, making them and their skills more valuable to the current and future employers. It would also tie up businesses in formal bargaining for dozens of separate bargaining units, something no small business has the resources to support. The second decision would not allow employees opposed to organizing to immediately challenge a card check vote to organize a workplace. By law, the secret ballot of all employees is the way to organize legally. The union friendly NLRB redefined these rules on the fly and without any legal basis. The final decision would not allow employees or a rival union to challenge the ability of a union to represent employees immediately upon sale of an organized company. The democrats infesting the NLRB decided that the former union must have a reasonable time to see if they can succeed in the new company – whatever the heck that means. The NLRB today sits with only three people – two democrats and one Republican appointee. The term of the third democrat expired over the weekend. Some have suggested that the remaining Republican resign so that the NLRB no longer has a quorum of three members to push more of this job-destroying garbage through the system. It is worth consideration. 5. Thomas. Jeffrey Toobin wrote a preemptive piece on SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas last week, painting him as the intellectual leader of the conservative wing of the Court. The article is intended to fire up leftist calls for Thomas to recuse himself from sitting in judgment of ObamaCare when it hits the Court. Toobin gives Thomas credit for leading the Court to a new appreciation of the Second Amendment as an individual rather than a collective right. He fears that Thomas has been laying the same foundation for a resurrection of the Tenth Amendment and a return to the specified powers of congress from Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Such a return would destroy the large, activist government constructed since the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Toobin is the first leftist writer who is no longer calling Thomas an idiot. He has a very real and justified fear of Thomas and what he has been doing on the Bench for 20 years. You can find the Toobin New Yorker article here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/29/110829fa_fact_toobin 6. Clock. For your iPhone, Android and other smart phone users, the hot app among conservatives is the Obama Clock. It has a running countdown of time until the next inauguration, total national debt, unemployment, average price of gasoline, and housing values. The feeds come from national sources and the clock can be modified to track future presidents. It is not popular among ObamaBots for some reason. Here is a Daily Caller article on the app: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/31/obama-clock-climbs-iphone-reference-app-chart/ 7. Pigs. As part of the continuing campaign to yank the chain of leftists nationwide, a law previously signed by Texas Governor Rick Perry allowing hunters to shoot feral hogs from helicopters goes into effect this week. Texas has a problem with feral hogs. There are over two million of them in the state. They are smart and incredibly destructive. They also breed very, very fast. Finally, they are dangerous. On the other hand, if you can kill them, they make great eating. Lefties are portraying this as a terrible thing. Of course none of these clowns have ever seen the destruction by feral hogs to crops, property, other animals, etc. Here is a You Tube video of hunting feral hogs from a helicopter in Australia : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR4Y_GVqFmE 8. Parade. The Marathon County Labor Council in Wisconsin decided a week or so ago not to allow Republicans to participate in their Labor Day parade in Wausau . The rationale was that Republicans were not sufficiently supportive of the labor movement. Of course, the parade comes with no small level of support from the local government; typically police for traffic and crowd control. The Mayor of Wausau responded to the ban by telling the union parade organizers that they would have to pay for their own parade if it was no longer a public affair. The union council relented after considering paying the bill. Nice to see that local governments are starting to get it when dealing with the unions. 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. 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