Attorney Mike Davis has some good constructive criticism surrounding the current construct and status of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Govt. {Direct Rumble Link}

As Mr. Davis notes the current allocated budget ($2 million) and staffing (5 persons) of the committee itself does not reflect a priority, and the demands of the regular House Judiciary Committee upon Jim Jordan (chairs both) means his time focused on the subcommittee is curtailed.

I’m not sure the issue is as dire as Davis notes; obviously we do not know the background work that might be taking place; but the lack of general urgency -in combination with the history of the GOP in congress- does lend credibility to the overall concerns.  WATCH:

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My own perspective on the challenge is somewhat conflicted.  On one hand the scale of addressing the issue of this size doesn’t fit the traditional model of legislative oversight. On the other hand, this entire process is the only one available that conforms to the role of government oversight.

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Fox News host Tucker Carlson became public enemy #1 as a result of him showing some of the CCTV footage from the January 6, 2021, protests in Washington DC.  Collectively both parties in Washington DC and their stenographers in the mainstream media spent the last day in hysteric criticism of Tucker Carlson.

The need for control is a reaction to fear, and Mr. Carlson seems to understand that sunlight always brings forth the greatest demands for control.  In his opening segment tonight, Mr. Carlson took on the critics directly.  WATCH:

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Tucker Carlson has kicked a hornet’s nest by broadcasting the January 6, 2021, footage on his television show and outlining the violent insurrection narrative as a false premise.  Given the nature of the entire apparatus of government and media that is now united against him, it will be interesting to see if Carlson’s TV show survives.

Standing in front of the cameras earlier this afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted Fox News and Tucker Carlson specifically for misrepresenting the events that McConnell says he experienced. “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict (January 6th) in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”  WATCH:

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It’s a local Florida story and multi-faceted. However, for the bigger national audience the issue that should be considered is that Ron DeSantis and the Florida Republican party took $9+ million in campaign contributions from state energy providers, then approved the biggest electricity rate hikes in Florida history.

Additionally, and more obscure in the outcome, the Public Service Commission (Public Utility Commission, or PUC), after being filled with DeSantis appointees, informed the electricity providers they no longer needed to report the number of residents who were disconnected from utility service due to nonpayment.

One could make the intellectual and political argument, the scale of disconnection -which is quite alarming- would be averse to the interests of Governor DeSantis seeking a higher office.

Like much of the country, electricity rates in Florida have skyrocketed with the increase in natural gas prices.  However, unlike much of the country, most Florida residents have only one option for electrical utility power.  The rate of disconnection in Florida amid lower income and working families is far greater than almost any other state.  Florida is quickly becoming a class-driven society with haves and have-nots.

FLORIDA –  […] In November 2021, Florida’s Public Service Commission (PUC) issued a memorandum allowing  electric utilities to stop disclosing their shutoff data. The memorandum, which reversed the commission’s September 2020 decision to collect the data to track the pandemic’s effects on utility customers, came after DeSantis stacked the board with his appointees. The move came less than a month after commission members approved the largest electric rate hike in Florida’s history, resulting in a 20 percent increase in costs to residential ratepayers.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivers testimony today before the Senate Banking and Finance Committee.  During his statements Powell says, “The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.” Powell continued, “If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.“… “We will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting.” …  “Although inflation has been moderating in recent months, the process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy.”

Everything about the testimony to the Senate, and almost everything within the questioning as presented, ignores the key and central component that inflation is being driven by energy policy.   The scale of the pretending around this issue is jaw dropping.

Western governments, including the U.S. through Joe Biden, have limited and curtailed the production and exploitation of Oil, Coal and Natural Gas.  At the core of the inflation within those same governments, this is the issue at hand.  Energy prices have skyrocketed, driving the cost of everything through the roof.  The central banks are raising interest rates in an attempt to shrink the economy to match the drop in energy production.   This is their monetary policy (interest rates) attempting to support economic policy (Green New Deal / Build Back Better).

There are no lines for consumers in the U.S and Europe of people buying durable goods, electronics or shopping for non-essential items.  Prices on the products within the durable goods economy are not being driven by excess consumer demand.  There are not 25% more people buying lemons and milk than this time last year.  The prices for goods in general, and for essential goods specifically, have risen as an outcome of the input costs around energy skyrocketing.

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As promised, Fox News host Tucker Carlson began publicizing the closed-circuit TV footage from Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.  In the introduction to the footage, Mr Carlson outlines the process and limitations that his producers encountered.

Tucker Carlson states no one from the House of Representatives placed any restrictions on the footage as reviewed. Additionally, Carlson notes that no one at Fox News leadership had any input into the review that his team undertook.  As he describes, much of the 40,000 hours of footage was innocuous, empty rooms with CCTV camera footage showing very little.  However, the footage that did show events, does not support the “violent insurrectionist” narrative as promoted by the J6 committee.  WATCH:

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Additional footage and continued segment below.

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Ugh, it makes me sick to see these schemes as they are constructed and yet feel helpless to stop them from organizing.  Remember which media outlets push the PR campaigns of the U.S. Govt.  (1) CNN drives Dept of State; (2) Washington Post drives CIA; and (3) NYT/Politico advance the interests of the domestic intelligence apparatus.

With that in mind, here comes the Intelligence Community laying the groundwork for reauthorization of the FISA-702 surveillance system on American citizens.

They are so damned transparent in their agenda, the stenographers have even dropped “FISA,” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as the term within the construct.  Now they are just calling it “702 reauthorization.”

(VIA POLITICO) – The intelligence community has a critical congressional ally in its bid to reauthorize a sweeping warrantless surveillance program. However, even he thinks its officials aren’t making a convincing enough case.

“One of the things the community’s got to do a better job of is explaining, in practical non-classified terms, how valuable this tool is,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a recent brief interview. “And they’ve not done that as well as they should.”

Warner sits at the heart of what will be a months-long, knockout debate about whether to reauthorize the warrantless surveillance program, known as Section 702, by the end-of-year deadline. The program is designed to gather the electronic communications of foreigners abroad, but has the potential to sweep up those of Americans.

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Coming out of the pandemic related disruption, the larger story of U.S. manufacturing has been an odd blend of good data and bad data depending on the sector.  While some manufacturing was growing as a result of clearing supply chains, other sectors of manufacturing remained soft.

In total, the full supply chain rebound should have completed around the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter of 2022.

However, simultaneous with the correction within the supply chain(s), consumer purchase activity began contracting.

The consumer pullback led to very weak holiday sales last year, and a combination of increased inventories of finished goods.

Keep in mind that Maersk overseas shipping noted significant drops in orders for the movement of material in the third quarter of last year.  Considering the lag, the previously noted inventory buildup in combination with the drops in unit sales of durable goods, would generally mean lower manufacturing purchase order activity Q4 (’22) and Q1 (’23).   This reality is reflected in the actual data as reported by The Wall Street Journal:

(Via WSJ) – […] New orders for manufactured goods contracted for the sixth straight month through February, according to surveys by the Institute for Supply Management. Manufacturing output is down 1.7% from its postpandemic peak in May 2022, according to a three-month moving average of Federal Reserve data. And the Commerce Department’s measure of civilian capital equipment orders, excluding aircraft—the building blocks of business—was down 3.4% in January from its recent high in November 2021, after adjusting for inflation.

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The latest YouGov poll [raw data here] shows why FL Gov Ron DeSantis is about to make the biggest political mistake of his career by launching a challenge against Donald Trump.

If you listen to the professional media pundits who give, and attempt to sway, opinion – and if you listen to the statements from the professional Republican class that wants to remove Donald Trump from the party, you will hear this general talking point:

“The Republican Party needs to appeal to a younger, more ethnically diverse audience to maximize the ‘big tent’ size of the party.”…

There are many current variations of this talking point, but generally speaking this ‘big tent new Republican Party‘ message is what you hear from the Karl Rove, Nikki Haley, Chris Sununu, Mitch McConnell, Ronna McDaniel and the entirety of the cocktail class Republican circuit.  It is a common talking point amid all the professional pundits.

However, to point out the nonsense of their argument, if we take them at their word, what we find in almost every Republican poll demographic Donald Trump’s biggest base of support is younger, less wealthy, working class voters of every ethnicity.  As outlined in the YouGov Poll cited, Donald Trump literally brings to the GOP exactly what they claim to want.  Yet these professional Republican voices use their talking point to frame a narrative against Trump.

Check out the data against the GOPe talking point.  As we have previously discussed, the younger the voter the more support for Donald Trump.  The support for Donald Trump also increases with Hispanic voters.  It is only in the very wealthy white voters where you find support increasing for Ron DeSantis; this is the exact opposite of what the professional pundits claim in print and broadcast media.

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Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced today that he will not seek the Republican nomination for 2024. [Video Here]

[Transcript] – FORMER GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN: I was struggling, because my heart was telling me to run. My head was telling me, no, that just does not make sense for a whole host of reasons. And my gut was flipping back and forth. So it really came down to, if I wasn’t 100 percent convinced, then I shouldn’t do it.

ROBERT COSTA: You were torn?

FORMER GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN: I was torn.

ROBERT COSTA: Toughest decision of your political career?

FORMER GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN: Absolutely, toughest decision I ever made.

ROBERT COSTA: Politically, by staying out of the race, it’s a smaller field, may be tougher for Trump to get the nomination?

FORMER GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN: I didn’t want to have a pileup of a bunch of people fighting.  Right now, you have Trump and DeSantis at the top of the field soaking up all the oxygen, getting all the attention, and then a whole lot of the rest of us in single digits. And the more of them you have, the less chance you have for somebody rising up.

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