by Alex Gimarc                                Mon., October 26, 2009

Interesting Items 10/26 –

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

In this issue:

1. Kinston
2. Pay Czar
3. Lawsuits
4. Critical Habitat

1. Kinston. The Obama Holder (In)Justice Dep artment overruled voters in Kinston NC last week by overturning a ballot initiative passed by over two thirds of the local voters that removed p arty affiliation from ballots for local elections. Kinston is a predominately black city that is still covered by the antiquated Voting Rights Law that requires Dep artment of (In)Justice approval of any and everything involved in local elections. The ruling went so far as to note that p arty identification was absolutely necessary so that voters could elect candidates of their choice, who also happen to be democrats and predominately black. This continues the politicization of the (In)Justice Dep artment under Obama and Holder that they first demonstrated by tossing out the convictions of two Black Panther P arty members in Philadelphia for voter intimidation at a predominately black precinct in last November. It appears that the 2010 election will be for All the Marbles as the leftists desperately attempt to retain their congressional majorities. They will do any and everything possible to retain those majorities – including serial voting fraud, intimidation, whipping up racial violence, and trying to trigger the most violent act possible just before the election to use as a vehicle to ensure their reelections. While this one may not be for all of them, it may very well be for most of them and the Obama administration is doing everything possible to ensure the success of their candidates. They are no longer bounded by either the law or the constitution. As such, they are tyrants steadily, unflinchingly infesting the body politic and encroaching upon our liberty and freedom. And they must be stopped.

2. Pay Czar. Last week, Obama’s unelected and unaccountable Pay Czar, Kenneth Feinberg announced significant pay and benefit cuts for 175 executives at banks, investment firms and auto manufacturers that were either bailed out or took TARP funds. By weeks’ end, he was working to extend those cuts to other executives and board members in corporations not covered by TARP. The basic question is this: Where in the Constitution does ANY administration have the authority to set or modify compensation for any individual who does not work directly for the US government? And even if the individual works for the feds, congress must set that compensation by law when it appropriates the funds. Feinberg is not the only one doing this, for Fed Chairman Ben Bernake proposed a similar set of pay and compensation guidelines for every institution regulated by the Federal Reserve, up to and including US subsidiaries of foreign banks and other financial institutions. The obvious question is to ask precisely where the Fed gets its authority to regulate compensation. Nobody knows. And to date, nobody is in court suing the feds, as they fear the regulatory payback against their institutions for standing up for their contractual and constitutional rights. Note that no small number of banking and investment institutions did not want to take TARP dollars and were strong-armed into accepting the term sheets by former Treasury Secretary Paulsen and Bernake a year ago. Now that forced acceptance is being used as a vehicle to remove the top management and replace it with people who are cronies or friends of the Obama administration – sort of the typical Chicago-style housecleaning and jobs for supporters program. These companies are going to be run into the ground, while enriching the Obama supporters put in charge of them – not unlike what the Clinton administration did with appointees to run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the mid-1990s. The bad news is going to be that we are going to end up paying for it many times over. By weeks’ end, it appears that the proposed limitations are full of loopholes sufficiently large that nobody will see an actual pay or benefit cut. Still the basic question remains: What gives these people the right to do this? And if they are successful with this, what are they going to come after next?

3. Lawsuits. Ilya Shapiro writing on a Cato Institute blog last Wednesday described an opinion by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that would let a class action lawsuit alleging manmade global warming caused by carbon dioxide and other emissions raised temperatures along the Gulf Coast, contributing to Hurricane Katrina’s strength and causing increased property damage as it lawn-mowed New Orleans and southern Mississippi and Alabama in 2005. Targets in the class action lawsuit include local oil and natural gas producers, refineries, power companies, and other current targets of jackpot justice. I expect the lawyers involved hope to extort consent agreements from the targets as they open up yet another avenue for large paychecks to the trial lawyers. The three judges involved in allowing the case to proceed were described as the worst currently sitting on the Fifth Circus. The writer believes that the case will be thrown out should the defendants request an en banc hearing by the entire Fifth Circus on the grounds that the plaintiffs do not have standing to bring such a class action lawsuit. Perhaps there is another course of action. Given that the first basic objective of a trial is the finding of fact, and given that the current global warming hysteria is based on a card house of lies, fudged data, secret algorithms, circular logic, and poorly placed or non-existent data collection locations, it may be time to take this entire mess to trial; st art from ground zero – the fact that ground temperature data collection sites here in the US are almost universally placed in unsuitable locations, and build from there. During discovery for instance, the defendants could uncover Mann’s “Hockey Stick” cherry picked data and secret algorithms that give the same result when run against randomly generated datasets. Take this entire mess to court. Take it before a jury. Force the global wamrists to prove that the last twelve years of measured global cooling has actually been a warming period. Force them to prove that manmade carbon dioxide over the last century has heated up this planet. Force them to explain why the Medieval Warm Period when the Vikings colonized Greenland was not only warmer than the recent recovery out of the Little Ice Age but had no connection to manmade global warming at all. This could be a whole lot of fun, and the expert research for the defense would be provided gratis for the most p art. Fight this fight. Give the greens and the lawyers that are feeding off their hysteria what they want, and crush them in court in front of a jury of their peers.

4. Critical Habitat. The Obama administration continued their war on Alaska last week with the announcement of a new critical habitat along the northern coast of Alaska. The intend on locking up over 200,000 square miles of shoreline and offshore continental shelf in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas in a belt measuring between 5-20 miles wide. The Endangered Species Act requires the designation of critical habitat once any species is listed as threatened or endangered. This area is also prime location for offshore oil and natural gas exploration, with potentially as much oil and natural gas as has been found in the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. The excuse for this designation is melting Arctic Ocean ice due to manmade global warming will kill off the polar bear, whose population has increased by a factor of five since the 1960s when hunting for them was shut down. What ought the State of Alaska to do? I would suggest slugging this out in court, right here in the State of Alaska. Force the feds to prove that the polar bear is endangered or threatened. Force the greens that are predicting that Arctic Ocean ice is going to all disappear in 50 years to prove it. Force a discussion of Arctic Ocean ice coverage during the warming periods of the last 5,000 years. Force a discussion of Arctic Ocean ice over the last four ice age cycles measuring back 440,000 years. Every single one of these cycles had an interglacial period, where local temperatures were higher than what we are experiencing today. Note that polar bears have been around for that period of time and seem to have come through it without any help. This announcement is bad policy, based upon fraudulent science, hysteria and scaremongering. It is time for the State of Alaska to step up to the plate and defend itself by all means possible.

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.