Interesting Items 6/08 by "Alex Gimarc" [email protected] Wednesday, June 10, 2009 9:46 AM
Monday, June 8, 2009 Interesting Items 6/08 - Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy - In this issue: 1. APOC 2. Tiller 3. Iranian Nukes 4. GA Voters 1. APOC. The Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) released the results of an investigation into money laundering by green opponents of the Pebble Mine last year. The greens floated a pair of ballot initiatives; both cloaked in all the warm, friendly, gentle, focus-group tested words of protecting Alaska ’s clean water and salmon from the evils of mining here in the state. One was thrown out. One went to the voters in our August 2008 primary where it was soundly rejected. Since that attempt, the anti-mining folks have continued running their ads in all media venues at a low level and are expected to be back with similar ballot initiatives every two years until they win voter approval of their lies and misrepresentations. The Pebble Partnership and the Resource Development Council suspected that the anti-Pebble groups were grossly under-reporting the amount of money spent in the campaign to pass the initiative and files a complaint with APOC. APOC staff investigated the complaint and found that the anti-Pebble groups, more specifically lodge owner Bob Gilliam, had laundered over two million dollars through a variety of national environmental and similar shell organizations in a successful attempt to bypass campaign finance limits here in Alaska . The way the law up here works (and I disagree with its spending limits), is that any amount of completely unreported money can be spent on an initiative until the point that it is approved for the ballot. Once approved, there are significant limits in what can be spent during the actual campaign. The report now goes to the APOC itself for consideration and possible fines. The anti-Pebble people are running around claiming that they have done nothing wrong and that the report is in error – which is what you would expect them to do. But watching the campaign last summer, there was simply too much high quality media purchased on the anti side of the campaign for the campaign finance limits not to be completely ignored. This is yet another example of the folly of campaign finance legislation, as Big Green and the unions have myriad paths around any spending limits. They have the specially trained lawyers and lots of experience. A far superior approach would be to place no limits on money amounts to be spent but have universal, near real time disclosure of the source of the money. That way, should Bob Gilliam or any other well connected, wealthy lodge owner want to float a NIMBY ballot initiative, we will all know who is behind it and why. Congratulations to the Pebble Partnership and the Renewable Resources Council for successfully bringing this complaint. ADN, Sat. 2. Tiller. Kansas aborto-doc George Tiller was killed at his church in Kansas a week ago. The murderer (the shooter) is thought to be a fan of Randall Terry’s Project Rescue. The suspect also has a history of arrests on various weapons and explosives charges over the course of the last decade or so. Tiller was infamous in the pro-life community for being the creator of the ghastly dilation and extraction (D & X) procedure for aborting third trimester babies. The baby is removed from the mother so that most of the head is left in the womb. Scissors are inserted into the back of the neck to open a hole which a suction device is inserted to remove the brain and kill the baby. Tiller was one of only two or three aborto-docs in the nation that used the procedure. Given that my 23-year old was born three months early and is with us every day, I shudder at the thought of the tens of thousands of lives that Tiller snuffed out at $5,000 a pop. He bragged of doing over 60,000 of them. You do the math. A real cynic could note that the shooter had simply traveled the road that Tiller blazed; performing a late term abortion of his own, but that would be justifying murder. I am reminded of the months in Dallas following the Kennedy assassination, where Lee Harvey Oswald was gunned down by Jack Ruby in the Dallas police station parking garage. They had a difficult time seating a jury for Ruby’s trial, with many, many potential jurors in tears in court during the interviews thanking Ruby for pulling the trigger. Evil in a way begets evil, and Tiller was an evil man indeed. Ann Coulter wrote a devastating column late in the week on Tiller’s political connections, and how he used campaign contributions to democrats in Kansas to defend his business from a variety of investigations, complaints, and legislative action over the years. Tiller donated hundreds of thousand in protection monies to various democrat candidates for state offices in Kansas for years. Beneficiaries included the state attorney general who dropped an investigation into his business shortly after being elected; Kansas Governor Kathleen Sibelius (who is now HHS Secretary); even Bill Clinton received $25,000 in 1997 as thanks for federal Marshall ’s protection for 30 months. Coulter then goes into the numbers of deaths since Roe was handed down, and notes that for the 49 million young that were aborted since that decision took abortion out of the political process, only five aborto-docs have been murdered, which is not quite the pro-life jihad the drive-by media and the Obama administration would have you believe is underway. We all expect that the feds and Planned Parenthood will use Tiller’s murder as a vehicle to remove yet another slice of the right to protest, to write, to speak out against, and to oppose abortion. Should they successfully do so, they simply set the stage for other killings, as they remove the ability of both sides to work this issue out in the political world. 3. Iranian Nukes. President Teleprompter in a BBC interview Tuesday said that Iran had a legitimate right to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful energy purposes. Put aside the fact that he seems to think everyone in the Middle East has the right to build nuclear energy plants but we here in the US are to be sentenced to a future that only includes windmills and solar panels. He put a sunset on his support for Iranian nuclear energy, as they would have to demonstrate that they are not using the technology to pursue nuclear weapons. Fat chance, that. Given that Iranian scientists are thought to have been part of the NORK nuclear program from its beginning, and that the NORKs fired off another test a couple weeks ago, I would expect the answer to that limitation from the Iranians to be a simple “no”, or perhaps a test shot somewhere in Iran . The message was intended to be a warning to head off an Israeli decapitation strike against Iran . Obama continues to play the appeasement card, which will (once the NORKs and Iranians figure out how to process uranium into sufficiently high quality) only be viewed with weakness and give both nations a green light to do whatever they feel like doing. Israel is on their own to pull this off. If the NORKs start exporting nuclear weapons for cash, expect them to start going off at unexpected locations. Yet another example of change you can believe in; or perhaps change you can’t believe. 4. GA Voters. Last week, Eric Holder’s Department of (In)Justice refused to approve plans to clean up state voting rolls in Georgia . The plan included strict voter verification rules and would go through existing voter rolls and remove questionable registrations. The proposed rules had been approved by two federal district courts. Georgia found over 2,000 names on their voting rolls with addresses that could not be verified and were preparing to remove them. Per a provision in the voting rights law from decades ago, certain states particularly in the south need to ask permission from Justice before they do anything to clean up the voter rolls. Holder’s (In)Justice decision on this one demonstrate the level of politicization of the mechanics of voting here in the US that the left is willing to do to keep them in power forever. In a related story, (In)Justice also denied a request from Missouri to conduct a similar voting roll cleanup in thirteen counties that had more registered voters than residents. Malkin, Fri. 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: The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/ MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com District 28 http://www.dist28.com/ subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/ and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/ COMING SOON Flag Day Tea Party June 14, 2009 http://www.teapartyday.com/ Independence Day Tea Party July 4, 2009 http://www.teapartyday.com/ March on Washington Washington DC Sept 12 Tea Party 3,467 registered http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/2009/05/912-tea-party-3467-and-growing.html * Shout Out * To any one organizing a Tea Party. Reply with your details (when where, etc) to this email with "TP" in the subject to be further posted to others on the Internet. You are welcome to join the [email protected] Rich Martin . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To join RichsRants, send email to: [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/richsrants?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
