by Alex Gimarc                                Mon., January 21, 2008

Interesting Items 1/21 -

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Economy
2. Thermostats
3. Bridge Collapse
4. Abortions
5. Chicago Lawyer
6. Documents

1. Economy. When the NYSE falls 900 points in three weeks something is afoot. Perhaps the anticipation of congress back in session. Last week had the economy step up to the front as a campaign issue. The candidates did the predictable things with the democrats talking about extending unemployment benefits and handing out more food stamps and the Republicans st arting to talk about tax cuts for businesses. The drive-bys were in full voice demanding a stimulus package out of congress. President Bush obliged with a package of $145 billion in tax cuts for small and other businesses. At best, they will get nothing done this year and the markets will correct themselves. A real cynic might observe that it has taken the new democrat congress a mere year to st art deflating the economy. If I were running for office against a democrat or RINO I would seriously consider making that case. But both sides have had a hand in this, as nobody – but nobody is properly addressing the energy situation which is one of the big movers behind higher prices. The Bush administration and congress have pushed corn-based ethanol as a solution to the oil shortage. This in turn has driven up prices across the board for foods. Democrats and their cronies in the regulatory sector, the trial lawyers and the greens have all but halted new construction of coal fired electric plants, with over twenty being cancelled last year. Although there are over 33 licenses for new nuclear power plants in process, nobody has turned a spade of dirt in the construction of a new plant. There was a statistic out of Laura Ingraham Friday had the US now importing 13% of our gasoline. This means that we no longer have the refining capacity – all due to licensing, regulatory, greens and trial lawyer obstructionism – to produce our own fuel. Finally, there is no effort by anyone in the congressional majority to produce more oil or natural gas; no effort to drill new wells; no effort to open more lands to exploration; no action to make it easier for the energy producers to bring more product to market. They are too busy banning the light bulb and writing new regulations vehicle MPG. If you want to stimulate the economy, perhaps a five-year holiday from environmental lawsuits, and a streamlining of the regulatory gauntlet would be in order. Sadly, not a single presidential candidate on either side of the political divide outside of Fred Thompson is talking about this.

2. Thermostats. The latest idea out of California is an attempt for the State of California to take control of the thermostat in your home. Of course this is just an “emergency” measure, intended to only be used when energy gets tight. However, in California due to overregulation, trial lawyers, greens, and democrat politicians in charge of the legislature for many a year, nothing gets built and there will always be an energy shortage. The proposal out of the California Energy Commission requires all new construction to install new thermostats that have an FM radio link to the state that will allow the state of California to set temperatures on those thermostats to whatever they want to set it to when energy gets tight. Older homes and businesses will be retrofit with the new thermostats as time goes on should the proposal pass. This is the Nanny State at its very worst. Should Californians put up with this, they will have jumped off the deep end far enough so as to all but unrecoverable. CNS News, 1/11.

3. Bridge Collapse. The bridge collapse in Minneapolis last August was used by Big Government types to bash the Bush administration, call for more spending on mass transit, and used as an excuse to jack up federal taxes on gasoline to fund more federal spending on infrastructure. Pontification by leftists and big government types was deafening. We now have the structural analysis of the collapse and find that the design itself was flawed and the bridge doomed from the st art. There was a period of time after WWII that bridge designs used lighter structural members. This was one of those bridge designs. That period did not last very long, as there were some immediate problems with structurally unsound new bridges. The Minneapolis Bridge had connector plates called gusset plates that ended up only half as thick as they should have been. And once the first plate failed, the rest of the plates unzipped as they were unable to stop the body of the bridge in motion. It unzipped just like the structure in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center unzipped as the top of the building st arted moving downward. Lesson here is obvious and already known – do good designs. The political lesson is also obvious: Regardless of what happens, the leftist reaction will be to raise taxes and increase spending. CQ, Weds.

4. Abortions. There is Good News out of the abortion wars: Abortions here in the US are down 25% from their post-Roe high in the 1990s. At their high, one in three pregnant women got abortions. Today, that number is down to one in every five. Today there are 1.2 million abortions being performed per year. It appears we are st arting to win the he arts and minds discussion. We are also st arting to defund Planned Parenthood. While this is good news, it is only a st art. We can and should do better.

5. Chicago Lawyer. Jay Grodner, the Chicago area lawyer who keyed the paint job of a Marine Sergeant on his way to Iraq, causing over $2,400 damage to the vehicle had his day in court. The Sergeant was not present, having been shipped out. However, the Band of Brothers stood in for him in court. Grodner was a half hour late, and was arrested on the spot when he showed up. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor – which was a gift, as the dollar amount of the damage was sufficient for a felony. He had to pay the repair cost, will serve one year’s probation, and was fined $600 payable to the Semper Fi Fund (Marine Corps fund for the wounded). As it turned out, the judge himself was a Marine, having served for a few years in the 1960s. Grodner’s attempt to slow roll the proceedings until the Sergeant was shipped out came up short. Congratulations to all involved. Malkin, Sat.

6. Documents. Judicial Watch released the first batch of presidential papers from Senator Clinton’s Health Care Task Force in 1993. The contents were well discussed in Captain’s Qu arters last Friday and Saturday. Captain Ed observed that the released papers demonstrate very well why the Clintons are fighting so hard to keep them from seeing the light of day. These are damning to the Clintons, the White House War Room, sitting US Senators (Jay Rockefeller (D, WV)), the DNC, and the media. One memo rather late in the process was skeptical of the ability to take as much control over a previously free portion of the economy in a time of peace. Another set of memos by Rockefeller called for the WH to use the media to conduct a smear campaign against opponents of the plan – literally calling for the Clintons to use the power of the federal government to destroy people who disagreed with them – which was the foundation of one of the Counts of Impeachment against Clinton in 1998. He suggested that news organizations were ready, wiling and anxious to begin smearing opponents. A February memo called for creation of a database of interest groups who might be in opposition. This probably morphed into the database populated by the information gleaned from the 900+ FBI files that were given the WH early in the Clinton’s time there, the database that is still being used as a source of opposition research information to personally destroy political opponents. Another memo proposed using the DNC for intelligence collection and public relations purposes. Paraphrased from CQ, the Clinton WH, less than a month after the inauguration, proposed to complete politicize the entire process of selling the Health Care Task Force proposal, complete with spinning up all the usual suspects on the left to support the effort. They were not going to move this thru the legislative process via normal techniques. They were going to run it like a political campaign, with congressional vote to pass being the functional equivalent of the election. The memos demonstrate that the War Room was not stood up in response to Monica. It was set up and operating on day one. A Hillary Clinton administration will do much the same – only better, having learned from their mistakes during the 1990s. They will be sneakier, nastier, and play with sharper elbows. Do we really want to go through that again?

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.