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] Interesting Items 8-13 In this issue: 1. Soptic 2. Fed 3. Pebble 4. Gibson 5. Drilling 6. Coastal Zone 1. Soptic. One of Obama’s super PACs ran an ad last week accusing Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital of killing a guy’s wife by denying her health insurance. The ad interviews one of the seemingly endless lines of union droids supporting Obama, one Joe Soptic. It is suitably heart rending as this union vermin accuses Romney of killing his wife. Democrats afterwards are quite pleased with themselves over the gut wrenching charges made against the Republican presidential candidate. Not unexpectedly, nothing in the ad is true. As it turns out, Romney left Bain Capital in 1999 to run the Olympics in Salt Lake City . The steel plant that Soptic worked at finally went bankrupt and was closed down in 2001. Soptic was offered a buyout at the time which he reportedly refused. His wife was also working at the time and had health insurance via her employer. Five uneventful years pass. In 2006, she went to the hospital and was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. She passed away 22 days later. It is a truly sad story. Even sadder is the democrat and union effort to make political hay of the story. But they are democrats and union droids and apparently are unable to do anything else. This ad is one of the sleaziest things seen so far out of the Obama camp. It will not be the last one. There will be more and they will be worse. One of the things that federal election law requires is no coordination between the Obama Campaign and the super PACs supporting his reelection. As it turns out, Soptic was part of a nationwide campaign conference call in March and introduced by the Obama campaign spokeslady. The same lady denied knowing anything about him or his story. In a related story, Iowahawk wrote a hilarious piece accusing Romney of killing JonBenet Ramsey. Iowahawk and the Onion do great sarcastic political commentary; both of which are going to be necessary for maintenance of sanity during the political season this year. The dems also accused Romney’s Bain of trafficking in drug cartel money. It is only August and they are just getting warmed up. 2. Fed. A book written by Robert Hetzel, senior economist of the Federal Reserve of Richmond blames the Great Recession of 2008 – 2009 squarely on failures of the Federal Reserve. In his book, Hetzel notes that a moderate recession started in December 2007 in response to a real estate bubble (Community Reinvestment Act forcing loans to people who were unable to pay them back) and a sharp increase in energy prices. In mid-2008, the Federal Reserve stopped lowering their loan rates, effectively tightening the money supply right at the point when they should have been loosening it. To make matters worse, other national banks in the rest of the world did the same thing, pushing the entire worldwide economy into depression. If Hetzel is correct, the current festivities were not the fault of either the banks or Wall Street. And the solution to the problem was not more regulation or federal meddling in the marketplace. In short, the Federal Reserve blew it (again), just like they did during the Great Depression in the 1930s and during the Carter years. Of course they were helped immensely in their destructive ways by democrats in congress and in the White House. Milton Friedman was right, we need to replace the Fed; and do it with a simple desktop computer to keep the money supply flowing in a rational manner. Conservatives have long suspected that the Crash of 2008 was orchestrated so as to cause a financial panic just in time to skew the election in favor of democrats. Dick Gephardt (D, MO) bragged about how many House seats democrats would pick up in the mid 1990s with the stock market falling. Appears they managed to orchestrate such a crash in 2008. And if they can do it four years ago, they can most certainly do in again this fall to secure a second term for Obama. 3. Pebble. Last week, the scientific panel reviewing the EPA’s risk assessment on the proposed Pebble Mine north of Lake Iliamna in Alaska held their public meeting here in Anchorage . They took testimony from all the usual suspects on the left and in support of the assessment. The opposition questions were more interesting, though. For instance, since there is no mining plan in place, the EPA had to make a series of assumptions about the mine and the volume of materials that the mine would be moving around on a yearly basis. In order to maximize the danger and risk to the environment, the EPA assumed a mine that would move five times as much material on a yearly basis than anything currently operating anywhere in the world. While Pebble will eventually be a large mine, it will be moving no more on a daily basis than any of the other large mines. The EPA also failed to follow its own standards for analysis of risks to wildlife, fish and plant life. Panel members questioned this failure. By weeks’ end, congressional Republicans involved themselves asking questions about the EPA proceeding without any formal permitting being done by the mine. Of course our local McClatchy rag responded in breathless horror at the “politicization” of “science.” This may be good news, for if the EPA can get away with this, they can get away with anything. As they have already managed to irritate conservatives at all levels of government by their lawless acts over the last several years, there is a growing number of those conservatives prepared to drop the hammer on them in response. It is long past time to do so. Bring popcorn. 4. Gibson. Eric Holder’s (In)Justice Department finished their extortion / harassment of the non-union Gibson Guitar Corporation with the announcement that Gibson would be paying a $300,000 fine for ebony and rosewood seized in a pair of raids in 2009 and 2011. The second raid also shut down production in their Tennessee plant. In the plea agreement, Gibson acknowledged some of its imports may have violated Madagascar law on exported hardwood. The feds will keep and destroy the Madagascar wood. On the other hand, the wood from India seized in 2011 did not violate any laws and will be returned to Gibson. Gibson also agreed to pay $50,000 extortion money to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation aimed at preserving forests. Do(In)J agreed to no longer harass Gibson on imported wood from India unless India specifically provides clarification to its export laws, which tends to indicate that Gibson had them somewhat by the short hairs. The violation in the first batch of wood seized in the 2009 was at best a technical violation of the Lacey Act for importing finished vice unfinished blanks for their frets. Mary Katherine Ham writing in Hot Air Wednesday suggests that the second raid in 2011 and production shutdown may have been done as a vehicle to force a plea bargain against the 2009 raid without benefit of a trial. This (In)Justice Department is corrupt beyond all imagination and is badly in need of a thorough housecleaning and jailing of the public employees involved in the corruption. 5. Drilling. We saw a group of articles in the local fishwrapper claiming that opening drilling on federal lands would not significantly improve cash flow into governments, either through taxation or royalties. As there is no significant improvement in the ease of opening federal lands for drilling up here, the series of stories appears to be a battlespace preparation effort prior to the state primary late this month intended to help the anti-drilling forces out a bit. Additionally, we also had the “pleasure” of hosting the loathsome hairball calling himself Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for a three-day trip over the weekend. Salazar was up here to give us the “good news” on oil and natural gas lease sales in NPR-A and the outer continental shelf in the Beaufort, Chukchi Seas and in Bristol Bay . As to the notion that a government will not benefit substantially from increased drilling, one only has to point to the wonderfully growing economy in North Dakota and Texas . 6. Coastal Zone. On our August primary ballot, we here in Alaska have a ballot initiative setting up a Coastal Zone Management program. Alaska used to have one but it expired two years ago after a democrat-led senate majority killed renewal legislation passed unanimously out of the House. Efforts last session also failed. Coastal Zone management is intended to give local communities a voice in local development. Unfortunately, democrats want to give expand the festivities so as to give local communities an absolute veto over offshore drilling, mining and development. A number of green and leftist dominated villages on the North Slope have for years used their proximity to oil leases to extort jobs, money and other benefits from the producers. Democrats statewide want this Chicago-style palm greasing scheme to continue, as it keeps the money flowing into campaign coffers and also has the opportunity to actually shut down new drilling and production, which makes the greens happy and also keeps the money flowing. So either way they win if it passed. The initiative is opposed by all mining and oil and natural gas related companies. It is also opposed by conservatives statewide. We will see how this goes, as turnout for the primary is expected to be heavily conservative. It is also expected to be very small. We hope enough conservatives turn out to do the right thing. 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. 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