Miscellaneous

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape

You don’t spit into the wind

You don’t mess around with Donald J. Trump

And you never want to fight the Fed

If there’s one thing the Chinese can count on from their government, it’s theft.  For millennia the unelected despots of China have robbed their people of their money.  The communists are doing it today.  There are four state banks in China, and there is no other place that is allowed to take money on deposit.

These banks pay virtually no interest, and no deposit in any bank controlled by communists is safe.  If the government needs to, it’ll just take it.  All this money is being used right now in service of whatever goal the communists choose.  There is no independent business purpose for these banks.  They are just agents of the party.

There is a lot of wealth in China right now.  For thousands of years the ethnic Han have labored mightily, and to good effect.  They are a hard working people, disciplined and smart.  They make a lot of money, and they want to get it out of China.  And there’s only one place they want to put it  —   into the safety and security of the US dollar, the world’s currency.

If you think federal reserve chairman Powell is going overboard with his pledge to print as much money as it takes to avoid a depression  —   think again.  He knows exactly what he’s doing, and why.  In order to stand strong against the Chinese communists this country must have a strong economy.  It’s a question of national security and national sovereignty.  Going into debt, under these circumstances, and for national security reasons, is our only way out of the hole Covid-19 put us in.  Only once our economy is up and running can we take on the communist government of China.

It is strictly against the law for the people of China to export their money.  But these are very clever people, and they’re finding ways to get their money to America.  In that they are joined by the nervous rich all over the world, from the countless countries all over the globe where the economy is in big trouble, and the future looks bleak.

These enormous inflows of capital allow us to expand our currency without inflation.  And the good people of China are doing their part.  They are secure in knowing that their money is safe here in America, if they can ever get here.

It’s time for the people of this country to get ready to accept the influx of residents of Hong Kong that will come once the communists extinguish what little freedom they have.  It’s just a matter of time, and it could come any time.

There are 71/2 million people in Hong Kong, and I believe we should be ready to take half of them.  They would be the most talented and wealthy political  refugees in the world.  They are capitalists, and entrepreneurs, and this country will be more wealthy with them.

And like all the refugees who came before them, from German Jews to Hungarian freedom fighters, they will be more patriotic than most of the people born here.

(This post appears in today’sAmerican Thinker.  

I had an interesting conference call today with the leaders of Wolf-PAC, which seeks an Article V convention to propose a campaign finance reform amendment.  I took them to task a bit on their failure to pass their resolution in any state in the last four years.  They have a lot more money than the BBA Task Force ever had, they have a real staff, they have thousands of volunteers, and their issue is just as popular, if not more so, than a balanced budget amendment.

After a lively exchange, the nature of the problem they’ve been having became clear.  It’s George Soros.  He, or his organizations, became actively involved in opposing any and all Article V efforts in 2015.  They singlehandedly stopped the BBA in Montana in 2015, and they were behind the rescission efforts in Maryland, Delaware and New Mexico.  Just as the BBA Task Force was getting some momentum, these three Democratic states, that had passed their BBA resolutions in the late 1970’s, passed resolutions rescinding the BBA.

There is no way Wolf-PAC should have failed for four straight years.  The people I talked to today understand the whole process, they have worked their butts off, and they’ve come up with nothing.

Common Cause has been their most prominent opponent.  Yes, the “good government” group is controlled by Dr. Evil, George Soros.  Though Common Cause is a big proponent of transparency, they hide the identity of their big donors.  They don’t want people to realize they’re a front for Soros.  What a bunch of whores.

Soros and his Common Cause puppets need to be exposed, and it is my intention to do it.  If they are not exposed, no Article V effort is going to get anywhere.  It can’t be on this blog, its reach is too limited.  I need to be on the radio again.  I’ll ask all of you to listen in.

In 1982 I was going door to door, asking for votes for my state senate campaign.  A guy asked me how I felt about capital punishment, and I said I was for it.  Then he asked, “What are you going to do about it?”

I promised to introduce a bill, which I did at the beginning of the 1983 session.  It had quite an impact.  Alaska’s leading paper at the time, the conservative Anchorage Times, put out a banner headline on page one, publicizing the bill.  There was a groundswell of support from across the state.  Polls showed it had the support of 60% of the voters

This was the first capital punishment bill since statehood, in 1959.  High profile hearings were held, not just in Juneau, but in Anchorage, in the chambers of the Alaska Supreme Court.  People on both sides of the issue felt very strongly about it.

The bill never went anywhere, which is what I knew would happen.  And some of my new colleagues were upset with me.  They didn’t like being forced to take a stand on such a controversial issue, and accused me of showboating.

I explained why I did it.  A voter asked me how I felt, and then challenged me to do something about it.  It was that simple.

If you want to influence a state legislator, don’t show up at the capital to lobby them once the session starts.  Instead, get voters in their district to ask them about your issue when they’re campaigning.  Right now there are thousands and thousands of legislative candidates running all across the country, and they’re eager to please their voters.  If a voter asks a candidate to support a certain piece of legislation, now is the time to do it, while they’re seeking votes, not after they’ve been elected.

The ideal voter you want for your cause is a supervoter, who votes in every primary, general and local election, going back multiple elections.  The longer they’ve voted, the older they are.  The older they are the more likely they follow local elections and state legislative districts, and quite possibly be personally acquainted with a candidate.

In many states, with small populations, legislative races are won with a few thousand votes.  Every vote counts, and legislative candidates are eager to please.  If you can get two or three voters to contact a candidate, and urge him to commit to voting for a piece of legislation, you will probably get a commitment.

This is all relatively easy to do, with volunteers, using inexpensive and the readily available phone numbers of the desired supervoters in key districts.

It’s Politics 101.

 

 

When I retired from the legislature in 1991 I got a call from Mike Carey, the editorial page editor of Alaska’s most important newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News.  It was a liberal paper, and they wanted a local conservative voice.  So for the next eight years I wrote a  column for the ADN every other week.  In some ways, it made me the most visible conservative in the state.

The next year I got a call from Tom Tierney who owned the local conservative talk show station, KENI 650.  He was airing Limbaugh and other national conservatives, and wanted a local conservative host.  So I was on from 4:00 to 6:00, “Fritz ’til Six”, every weekday afternoon until I left Alaska in 2000.  It was fun, and I found to my amazement that I had more political influence as a talk show host than I ever did in the legislature.  For instance, when opposition from the Commissioner of Public Safety was preventing passage of a concealed carry bill, I got my listeners to inundate Juneau with phone calls.  The Governor got the message, overruled his Commissioner, and we got the bill.

In 2016 I was in California, trying to help the Ted Cruz campaign, and discovered that Donald Trump opposed the transfer of federal public lands to the states.  I told the Cruz people to exploit this in Nevada.   They didn’t get the word out enough, but they were able to win Elko County, the home of the Sagebrush Rebellion.

Alaska’s precinct caucuses were the following week, Super Tuesday, and I knew this issue would kill Trump’s chances there.  The Transfer of Public Lands is a big issue up north, since the feds own 61% of the state.  I did a number of things to spread the message, the most effective of which was to appear on my old radio station, KENI.

Mike Porcaro now holds my old time slot, so I called up Mike and arranged an appearance on Friday afternoon, drive time.  I came out hard against Trump, an arrogant New Yorker who didn’t trust us with our own land.  The caucuses were the following Tuesday.  Contrary to all expectations, Cruz beat Trump in those caucuses.  My appearance on the Mike Porcaro show made the difference.

Cruz won his native Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, but was swept by Trump in the rest of the country.  Except for Alaska.  That’s talk radio for you.

I’ll be giving Mike a call, and hope to be appearing back on KENI soon.  When I’m scheduled, I’ll notify readers of this blog, and ask them to go to the KENI 650 website, log in, and listen to the show on your computer or cell phone.

KENI is now owned by iHeart radio, a chain with 850 stations.  They have a sophisticated system to track who is listening on the web, and where they’re from.  If enough people from out of state call, it will get their attention at KENI, and when I eventually ask to host a two hour show on Saturdays, they’ll understand it’s meant for a national audience.

If the show goes well, it can be picked up and broadcast by any of its iHeart sister stations, all over the country.  Could be the start of something big.

I eventually lost my column at the Daily News.  I was given no explanation, but a couple years later Mike Carey and I had lunch together, and he told me what happened.  Senator Ted Stevens was visiting the editors of the Daily News, and as he was leaving the chief editor asked him if there was anything they could do for him.  He said, yes, fire Pettyjohn.  So they did.

Ted and I really didn’t like each other.