Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

Author: Owen

Bank CEO Wants to Collude with Government to Illegally Monitor Americans

Given the recent news of bank failures, one would think that bank managers would be spending their time checking their books, running scenarios, and shoring up their assets. Nope. They are trying to inject themselves into how you live your life.

The new classification was first proposed in 2021 by Amalgamated Bank, a 100-year-old U.S. bank that seeks to be a socially responsible financial-services provider. In a statement, Amalgamated’s CEO, Priscilla Sims Brown, said that it was unfortunate that “an important measure to help law enforcement deter criminal activity and gun violence has been placed on hold,” but that just as the ISO took a few months to come around to the value of the code, she’s confident “the industry will implement this commonsense way to keep our communities safe.” In a conversation with TIME in December 2022, Sims Brown explained why she thinks the code would be effective.

 

[…]

 

However, when you follow a repeated practice of high-dollar amounts after taking out a number of new credit cards, I think there would be cause for questions, and those questions could lead to the detection of crime.

And what the hell is a “congressional amendment?”

Are you a supporter of the Second Amendment?

 

Absolutely. And every other congressional amendment for that matter.

Feds Warn Florida’s Surgeon General

With all due respect, the federal agencies have lost their credibility on this issue.

ORLANDO, Fla. — U.S. health agencies have sent a letter to Florida’s surgeon general, warning him that his claims about COVID-19 vaccine risks are harmful to the public.

 

The letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was sent Friday to Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo. It was a response to a letter Ladapo had written the agencies last month, expressing concerns about what he described as adverse effects from mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Credit Card Companies Pause Effort to Track Gun Purchases

It’s just a pause, but the news is welcome. I don’t think Visa and Mastercard understand the American gun-owning consumer very well. They stand to lose a lot of revenue as we just use cash.

Visa and Mastercard paused their decision to start categorizing purchases at gun shops, a significant win for conservative groups and Second Amendment advocates who felt tracking gun shop purchases would inadvertently discriminate against legal firearms purchases.

The move is a setback for gun control groups. They say categorizing credit and debit card purchases might help authorities see potential red flags — like significant ammunition purchases — before a mass shooting could be carried out.

After Visa and Mastercard announced their plans to implement a separate merchant category code for gun shop purchases, the payment networks got significant pushback from the gun lobby as well as conservative politicians. A group of 24 GOP state attorneys general wrote a letter to the payment networks threatening legal action against them if they moved forward with their plan.

[…]

In a statement, Visa indicated that the legal pushback was partially the reason it paused the implementation.

“There is now significant confusion and legal uncertainty in the payments ecosystem, and the state actions disrupt the intent of global standards,” the company said.

Visa and Mastercard have said the gun shop categorization was a decision out of their control. The International Organization for Standardization, better known as ISO, is the group that categorizes merchant codes and Visa and Mastercard were just following their decision, the companies said. Gun control advocates lobbied for the change to ISO, not to Visa and Mastercard.

Another Bailout?

Decisions will be made soon.

Silicon Valley Bank was aptly named: It held the funds of hundreds of U.S. tech companies and was a crucial player in the valley’s economy. But on Friday, it became the second largest bank failure in U.S. history after a rapid run on its deposits. Some $175 billion in customer accounts were taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which is now tasked with returning money to the bank’s customers.

 

But more than 85% of the bank’s deposits were uninsured, according to estimates in a recent regulatory filing. That’s because FDIC deposit insurance is meant for everyday bank customers and maxes out at $250,000. Many Silicon Valley startups had millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars deposited at the bank—money they used to run their companies and pay employees. Right now, nobody’s sure how much of that cash is left.

 

The tech sector was already wading through a harsh macroeconomic climate, with layoffs abounding and stock prices sinking precipitously. Silicon Valley Bank’s downfall is likely to exacerbate those problems—and could threaten the wider economy. “It’s like a Lehman Brothers moment for Silicon Valley,” says one Silicon Valley startup founder whose company has millions of dollars tied up in SVB. “It feels like something that never should have happened, because it’s such a trustworthy entity.” The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are worried about losing customers over their ties to SVB.

Insured to $250k means exactly that. The taxpayers should not be on the hook for anything above that. Does it suck for the depositors? Absolutely. Is it tragic for the people who won’t get paid next week because the money is gone? I can’t imagine the stress. It sucks. It all sucks.

But terms are terms and contracts are contracts. We have to stop the madness of thinking that the American taxpayers will ride to the rescue every time bad things happen in the private sector. There is too much money in the economy chasing too few goods. Hence, inflation. While it sucks, the evaporation of billions of dollars out of the economy is a necessary evil to stymie the larger evil of inflation. I continue to contend that the best thing would be for the federal government to cancel much of the inflationary spending, but absent the political will to do that, the private sector will have to contract to let the air out of the inflationary bubble.

Warning to all. If you have more than $250k in a bank, you should spread your money into multiple banks or accept the risk.

Man Kills Sex Offender with Moose Antler

Well then...

Levi Axtell, 27, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Lawrence V. Scully, 77, who was beaten to death Wednesday at his home in Grand Marais.

 

A criminal complaint filed Friday said Axtell killed Scully with a shovel and a moose antler and then drove to the Cook County Sheriff’s office and confessed, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

We really should ban the big antlers. Small ones are okay.

Homeowners blockaded in Vilas County

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week.

After years of wrangling through a convoluted mess of contracts, bad record keeping, broken promises, state, local, federal, and tribal laws, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa has decided to blockade dozens of non-tribal families in the dead of winter. In a dramatic escalation, tribal officials are demanding $20 million in order to lift the blockade.

 

The root of the issue rests in the 19th-century Dawes Act when the federal government broke communal tribal lands into parcels to be allotted to tribal families as private property in exchange for U.S. citizenship. Some of those private parcels wound up in the hands of non-tribal people through sale, foreclosure, and other means by which private property changes hands. Now, more than a century later, those private parcels are owned by non-tribal families who are being blockaded.

 

The conflict is over the roads that traverse tribal land to reach those private parcels. The easement by which the homeowners were granted permission to use the roads expired about ten years ago and a protracted negotiation began. The relevant parties are the Lac du Flambeau tribe, two title companies, the Wisconsin Town of Lac du Flambeau, the U.S. government, and the state of Wisconsin.

 

At the risk of simplifying a very complex legal issue that is imbued with generations of justified distrust and unethical behavior, the disagreement really is straightforward. When the easements expired, the tribe wanted money to grant new easements. The tribe also wants temporary easements to give them the latitude to renegotiate the payments every time they expire. On the other side, the title companies and town wants permanent easements, and they want to pay less money than the tribe wants. Both sides appear to have had their moments of bad behavior and have been unable to resolve the impasse.

 

Complicating the issue is the fact that the roads in question have been largely built with money from federal taxpayers. According to congressman Tom Tiffany, who represents the area, the tribe has received about $213 million in federal funding since 2013 through the Tribal Transportation Program. Since the roads received federal funding, the general public is supposed to have access, but tribal authorities argue that tribal law supersedes such federal requirements.

 

On January 31, in a grotesque escalation, the tribe blockaded the four artery roads with concrete blocks and wire. About 60 homes are sealed off from the outside world except for emergencies. Even then, tribal authorities must be called to open to roadblocks ahead of time. Some residents have been forced to abandon their homes entirely while others are having to use snowmobiles and sleds to cross the frozen lakes to get supplies, medical care, work, and attend school. With the spring thaw looming, they are weeks away from losing that frozen lifeline.

 

To lift the blockade, the tribe is demanding $20 million for a 15-year easement. This is an exorbitant sum for a simple easement, but the tribe seems content to hold non-tribal homeowners hostage in order to extort the sum. For comparison, the most recent offer that the tribe rejected was for about $1.1 million plus all future state gas tax revenues from the town for perpetual access.

 

The most innocent party in this whole dispute is the one suffering the most — the homeowners. They bought their properties in good faith and have been dutifully paying their taxes to maintain the schools, emergency services, and, yes, roads. Yet their property values have been obliterated, their lives are being disrupted, and their safety is being endangered.

 

The situation has reached a crisis point and real leadership will be needed to resolve it. It is unacceptable that one group of Americans should be blockading another group of Americans as a negotiating tactic in a legal dispute. This is not about sovereignty or some noble cause. It is about cold, hard, cash. If the tribe will not immediately lift the blockade and return to the negotiating table, the governor must step in to protect the homeowners from being used as hostages.

 

Time will tell what a fair resolution looks like, but any deal derived from the duress of innocent homeowners is illegitimate and an affront to justice.

Unanimous House Votes to Declassify COVID Origin Docs

Good.

WASHINGTON — The House voted unanimously Friday to declassify U.S. intelligence information about the origins of COVID-19, a sweeping show of bipartisan support near the third anniversary of the start of the deadly pandemic.

 

The 419-0 vote was final congressional approval of the bill, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk. It’s unclear whether the president will sign the measure into law, and the White House said the matter was under review.

 

“I haven’t made that decision yet,” Biden said late Friday when asked whether he would sign the bill.

Silicon Bank Collapse

The Fed’s efforts to deflate the economy to stem inflation is working. Sort of. The problem is that there will be unforeseen consequences. A better way to cool inflation would be for the federal government to pull back hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars that are committed, but not yet spent, as part of the various spending sprees of the past five years.

Regulators shuttered SVB Friday and seized its deposits in the largest U.S. banking failure since the 2008 financial crisis and the second-largest ever. The company’s downward spiral began late Wednesday, when it surprised investors with news that it needed to raise $2.25 billion to shore up its balance sheet. What followed was the rapid collapse of a highly-respected bank that had grown alongside its technology clients.

 

Even now, as the dust begins to settle on the second bank wind-down announced this week, members of the VC community are lamenting the role that other investors played in SVB’s demise.

 

“This was a hysteria-induced bank run caused by VCs,” Ryan Falvey, a fintech investor of Restive Ventures, told CNBC. “This is going to go down as one of the ultimate cases of an industry cutting its nose off to spite its face.”

 

The episode is the latest fallout from the Federal Reserve’s actions to stem inflation with its most aggressive rate hiking campaign in four decades. The ramifications could be far-reaching, with concerns that startups may be unable to pay employees in coming days, venture investors may struggle to raise funds, and an already-battered sector could face a deeper malaise.

 

The roots of SVB’s collapse stem from dislocations spurred by higher rates. As startup clients withdrew deposits to keep their companies afloat in a chilly environment for IPOs and private fundraising, SVB found itself short on capital. It had been forced to sell all of its available-for-sale bonds at a $1.8 billion loss, the bank said late Wednesday.

“nearly all”

What an utter abuse of power and miscarriage of justice. “Nearly all” is not “all.” The standard and obligation of the prosecution is “all.”

On Tuesday, prosecutors said that “nearly all” of the Capitol security footage Carlson played was previously available to attorneys representing riot defendants.

Roger Roots, an attorney for New York Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola, wrote that the video Carlson played of the “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley, proves protesters went into the Senate Chamber on the invitation of US Capitol Police. Roots alleged that prosecutors “withheld” the footage from his client.

“This footage is plainly exculpatory; as it establishes that the Senate chamber was never violently breached, and – in fact – was treated respectfully by January 6 protestors,” Roots wrote. “To the extent protestors entered the chamber, they did so under the supervision of Capitol Police. The Senators on January 6 could have continued proceedings.”

The Conservative Protasiewicz?

Well, this is curious. It feels like a false flag operation.

Michael Madden and Dr. Mark Madden, her former stepsons, of Fox Point and Virginia respectively, don’t buy the reincarnation. They believe it’s a ruse to get liberal voters to put Protasiewicz on the state Supreme Court.

 

She told us that she was a conservative, and that she was pro-life, and that she was a Catholic,” Michael Madden, the son of Protasiewicz’s ex-husband, the now-deceased conservative Judge Patrick J. Madden, told Wisconsin Right Now in a two-hour interview. He lived with his father and Protasiewicz during their 9-month marriage in Fox Point. It dissolved in ugly recriminations in 1997.

 

“We would sit around these tables and she would mention these things,” Michael Madden said.

 

Michael Madden spoke at the Fox Point home where they all once lived before the brief and quickly disintegrating marriage ended in an extremely contentious divorce and annulment battle that we will reveal in part two.

 

Asked about her current views on abortion and other issues, Michael Madden warned voters, “She’s a chameleon who will do and say whatever is necessary to get what she wants. What she is being promised right now is this job on the Supreme Court if she will do the bidding of the machine.” In his view, because Janet Protasiewicz then is so different ideologically from Janet Protasiewicz of today, Madden believes it’s completely unclear how she would actually rule on the court.

U.S. Senate Votes to Block D.C.’s Criminal-Coddling Laws

Even Democrats would like to make it to work without being assaulted or robbed.

The Senate passed a Republican-led resolution on Wednesday to block a controversial Washington, DC, crime bill that opponents have criticized as weak on crime. The measure will next go to President Joe Biden, who has said he won’t veto it.

The effort to block the crime bill divided Democrats and highlighted the difficult balance the party is attempting to strike as Republicans accuse them of failing to tackle the issue of crime.

 

[…]

 

The final vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan with a tally of 81-14.

Michigan to Return to Forced Unionization

This could be a boon for Wisconsin if we had a governor who knew how to play it. Instead, I’m sure Indiana will appreciate the new manufacturing jobs.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan’s Democratic-led Legislature moved Wednesday to repeal the state’s “right-to-work” law that was passed more than a decade ago when Republicans controlled the Statehouse.

 

Repealing the law, which prohibits public and private unions from requiring that nonunion employees pay union dues even if the union bargains on their behalf, has been a top priority for Democrats since they took full control of the state government this year. Party leaders announced Tuesday that they planned bring the repeal to a vote in the state House on Wednesday.

 

The state House is also expected to vote Wednesday on restoring the state’s prevailing wage law, which requires contractors hired for state projects to pay union-level wages. The House Labor Committee advanced the bills early Wednesday along party lines.

 

Homeowners blockaded in Vilas County

We have a hostage situation going on in Vilas County. I wrote a little about it for the Washington County Daily News. Here’s a part:

After years of wrangling through a convoluted mess of contracts, bad record keeping, broken promises, state, local, federal, and tribal laws, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa has decided to blockade dozens of non-tribal families in the dead of winter. In a dramatic escalation, tribal officials are demanding $20 million in order to lift the blockade.

 

The root of the issue rests in the 19th-century Dawes Act when the federal government broke communal tribal lands into parcels to be allotted to tribal families as private property in exchange for U.S. citizenship. Some of those private parcels wound up in the hands of non-tribal people through sale, foreclosure, and other means by which private property changes hands. Now, more than a century later, those private parcels are owned by non-tribal families who are being blockaded.

 

[…]

 

On January 31, in a grotesque escalation, the tribe blockaded the four artery roads with concrete blocks and wire. About 60 homes are sealed off from the outside world except for emergencies. Even then, tribal authorities must be called to open to roadblocks ahead of time. Some residents have been forced to abandon their homes entirely while others are having to use snowmobiles and sleds to cross the frozen lakes to get supplies, medical care, work, and attend school. With the spring thaw looming, they are weeks away from losing that frozen lifeline.

 

To lift the blockade, the tribe is demanding $20 million for a 15-year easement. This is an exorbitant sum for a simple easement, but the tribe seems content to hold non-tribal homeowners hostage in order to extort the sum. For comparison, the most recent offer that the tribe rejected was for about $1.1 million plus all future state gas tax revenues from the town for perpetual access.

 

The most innocent party in this whole dispute is the one suffering the most — the homeowners. They bought their properties in good faith and have been dutifully paying their taxes to maintain the schools, emergency services, and, yes, roads. Yet their property values have been obliterated, their lives are being disrupted, and their safety is being endangered.

 

The situation has reached a crisis point and real leadership will be needed to resolve it. It is unacceptable that one group of Americans should be blockading another group of Americans as a negotiating tactic in a legal dispute. This is not about sovereignty or some noble cause. It is about cold, hard, cash. If the tribe will not immediately lift the blockade and return to the negotiating table, the governor must step in to protect the homeowners from being used as hostages.

Protasiewicz Slaps the Wrist of Another Violent Criminal

You know when people say that a judge is soft on crime? This is what they mean.

Alton Anthony Ithier was convicted on two counts of Child Abuse-Recklessly Cause Harm, a Class I felony. A Child Abuse-Intentionally Cause Harm charge was also read in. But Protasiewicz, who has a history of soft sentences, stayed any prison time for Ithier, meaning he would not have to serve it unless he messed up again. She gave him nine months in work-release jail and probation, court records show.

 

He has already reoffended, being convicted of second-offense OWI, court records show.

 

Read the criminal complaint here: Protasiewicz 2015CF2596(1)

According to the criminal complaint, a mother reported to City of Milwaukee Police that the father of her three children struck each child with a dog leash. The children were ages 10, 8, and 5.

Nevada Democrats Oust Socialists From Leadership

Perhaps it’s a positive sign. Or perhaps it’s a sign that the middle of the party has moved so far to the left that the socialists could no longer differentiate themselves.

Nevada Democrats have ousted a slate of democratic socialists who took over the state party two years ago, ending a troubled reign marked by divisions and infighting.

 

Judith Whitmer was booted as chair in a vote Saturday, with a new slate headed by state Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno assuming control of the party.

 

Monroe-Moreno, who is the first Black woman elected to lead Nevada Democrats, was backed by a slew of elected officials, as well as the so-called Reid Machine, the powerful organization first brought together by the late U.S. Sen. Harry Reid.

DOT Job is Not Working out for Buttigieg

Perhaps the role is so problematic for him because he sucks at it.

Instead, the job of Transportation secretary has been a set of compounding problems for Buttigieg, 41, who has been seen as one of the Democratic Party’s brightest stars.

Buttigieg has been blasted for taking too long to travel to East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a train derailment that has created serious environmental and health concerns for the community.

In January, he bore the brunt of criticism over a disastrous holiday travel season for Southwest Airlines, which resulted in thousands of people being stranded. And that same month, he was criticized over problems with the FAA, which had to ground flights for two hours for the first time in more than 20 years.

“I don’t think his story was supposed to go this way,” said one Democratic strategist. “I think he took the job thinking there wouldn’t be a lot of risk surrounding the role. I don’t think he understood how political this job would be and how he’d be a punching bag.”

Government Stewardship Programs Are Choking Wisconsin Communities

Again we find that, too often, environmental causes are used as the excuse to obliterate private property and individual rights – the underpinnings of a free society. This is a very good piece by Richard Moore about how government stewardship programs are choking the North Woods to death. Here’s a part:

The reason is pretty simple and straightforward: These purchases of land and easements have reached the point where they pose an existential threat to life in the Northwoods. This purchase alone would place more than 80 percent of the land in the town of Monico under government ownership and/or control, obliterating any chance the town would have to develop economically in the future. Just over 30 percent of all of Oneida County is owned by government—state, county, federal—and as the number of privately-held or controlled acres dwindles, so does any realistic chance to diversify and grow vibrant economies and robust, cohesive communities.

 

Speaking to the Oneida County board of supervisors this past week, Felzkowski put it this way:

 

The purchase of land north of Hwy. 64 has got to stop if we are ever going to see economic vitality up here. The towns can’t afford EMS services. Our schools have declining enrollment.

 

The senator offered up some shocking statistics to underscore how extensive and far-reaching these land control schemes have become. All totaled, Felzkowski said, about 5.9 million acres of land in Wisconsin are publicly held:

 

Those 5.9 million acres of land are larger than the state of Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island and is equal to the state of Vermont.

 

The counties of Forest, Florence, Langlade, Lincoln, Oneida and Vilas—some of the poorest counties in the state—have 1.3 million acres of public land, Felzkowski said:

 

Florence County is 45.7 percent publicly owned, or 32 acres per resident. Forest County is 59.7 percent publicly owned, or 42 acres per resident. Langlade County is 32.6 percent publicly owned, or 9 acres per resident. Oneida County is 30 percent publicly owned, which equates out to 6 acres per resident.

 

By contrast, Dane County is 3.8 percent public land, which is less than one half of 1 percent per resident, Felzkowski said.

 

[…]

 

When 80 percent of a town is owned by government, it’s effectively a government town. The private sector withers and dies, and the town withers and dies with it. The Northwoods would become a pristine but empty wilderness devoted entirely to wildlife and elite humans—the affluent bureaucrats and progressives who will, and have, used this as their private playgrounds.

 

For average families, there would be housing, no jobs, no schools, no room for them..

 

Scientists Say Wind Turbines are NOT Killing Whales

One of the many lessons of COVID is that we can’t trust government scientists. Their findings must be viewed with healthy skepticism. They have proven to be more than willing to say whatever the people paying them want them to say and being more than willing to lie to advance a political or societal agenda. Are the right? Maybe. Check the data.

Since December, more than 23 whales have washed up dead along the east coast of the United States, leading wind energy skeptics to lay blame on the pending installation of offshore wind projects. But some scientists with the federal government say that there is no evidence to support those claims.

 

[…]

 

Federal agencies that track whale populations and the threats to them have reached a different conclusion, noting that the increase in whale deaths predates offshore wind leasing and is attributable to other causes, such as collisions with ships.

 

“To date, no whale mortality has been attributed to offshore wind activities,” Lauren Gaches, a spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries, said in a late January media teleconference. On Feb. 21, the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission provided an update, reiterating that “despite several reports in the media, there is no evidence to link these strandings to offshore wind energy development.”

The Reverse Black Migration Continues

Huh… it’s almost as if black people like safe communities, good jobs, lower taxes, and a government that minds its own business. Who knew?

In a great reverse Black migration, Brookings data says four of the top five states for Black population gains since 2010 are Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida. Black people are driving U-Hauls to Texas, Georgia and Florida despite voter restrictions. A new Republican majority on North Carolina’s supreme court is reconsidering redistricting and voting restrictions ruled illegal by the court’s prior Democratic majority. Florida banned an Advanced Placement African American studies course. Texas and Florida are ending diversity, equity and inclusion in state agencies, and limiting the teaching of race in schools.

 

[…]

 

While Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida have gained 1.3 million Black residents since 1995, according to Brookings, New York, Illinois, California, and New Jersey are the top four states for losing Black people, to the tune of at least 1.5 million Black people. Recent stories in the New York Times and Washington Post, feature the massive declines in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

 

In those cities, the cost of living on top of the grinding structural racism in housing, schools, jobs and entrepreneurship, chews at Black people more than red meat Southern politics. The Democrats can talk all the Black Lives Matter they want, but the nitty gritty of a roof over the head and bread on the table is more important than a ranting Ron DeSantis in Florida, a curmudgeonly Greg Abbott in Texas, or a combative Brian Kemp in Georgia.

 

What matters is that Black unemployment is higher in California, Illinois, and New York than in Florida, Georgia, or Texas. What matters is that of the 12 most segregated cities for Black people, as measured by Brookings, 11 of them are north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

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