NRA’s Texas Bankruptcy Ploy Is No Slam-Dunk

January 19th, 2021

In a follow-up to last week’s story about the NRA declaring bankruptcy and reincorporating in Texas, John Richardson of No Lawyers—Only Guns and Money sent me a link to this piece, in which bankruptcy lawyer Adam Levitin analyses the gambit, and brings up several potential pitfalls in carrying it off.

This is going to be one heck of an interesting case. There are already so many glaring issues (or should I say “targets”?): venue, good faith filing, disclosures, the automatic stay the trustee question, fiduciary duties to pursue claims against insiders, executory employment contracts, the fate of Wayne LaPierre, and the generally overlooked governance provisions of the Bankruptcy Code. I’ll take quick aim at these all below.

Venue. Right off the bat, there’s a question of what the heck the NRA is doing filing in Dallas. The answer is that the NRA is engaged in one of the most blatant forum shopping maneuvers I’ve seen. The NRA is a New York non-profit corporation with its headquarters in Virginia. The NRA is claiming Dallas venue on the basis of an affiliate’s previous filing in the district. In other words, venue is only proper for the NRA if the venue is proper for the affiliate.Therefore, the propriety of the affiliate’s venue is what matters.

The affiliate is a sole-member Texas LLC called Sea Girt LLC that was only created 52 days ago, on November 24, 2020. Sea Girt’s bankruptcy petition indicates that it has less than 49 employees, under $50,000 in assets and between $50,000 and $100,000 in liabilities. Note that the petition form does not have an option of listing “zero” employees. Sea Girt’s petition does not include a completed Form 204, which would list is largest non-insider unsecured creditors. But I’m going dollars to donuts that Sea Girt does not have any outside creditors other than perhaps its law firm, and that it does not actually carry on any business.

Now the bankruptcy venue statute prescribes the appropriate venue as being the district in which the “domicile…of the entity that is the subject of such case [has] been located for one hundred and eighty days immediately preceding such commencement, or for a longer portion of such one-hundred-and-eighty-day period than the domicile … of such person were located in any other district.” So even though Sea Girt LLC has not been in existence for 180 days, the statute still provides for a Texas venue. But the venue here is so obviously contrived and the NRA has no particular connect to Texas, so I expect there to be an attempt to have the case transferred to SDNY.

Good faith filing. A second immediate issue seems to be whether the NRA (and Sea Girt) filed in good faith. Every circuit including the 5th) has a good faith filing doctrine. The doctrine in a nutshell is that if a bankruptcy case does not have a “valid reorganizational purpose,” it should be dismissed “for cause.” Attempting to evade liability in litigation is not a “valid reorganizational purpose,” and the NRA’s press release seemed to me a version of the press release in SGL Carbon, the leading 3rd Circuit good faith filing doctrine case. In SGL Carbon, the debtor foolishly said that it was filing for bankruptcy just to stiff a competitor that had an antitrust suit against it and assured its other creditors that they would be paid in full. That sounds an awful lot like “dumping New York” while saying that all valid claims will be paid in full. (My students might recall me cautioning them that a debtor’s attorneys should insist that they get to sign off on all press releases and communications related to the bankruptcy for just this reason…) Now, the NRA isn’t looking to avoid paying NY. Instead, it is looking to escape NY’s jurisdiction. But that seems a distinction without a difference. It isn’t hoping to use bankruptcy to reorganize its finances, but to get out of the lion cage.

Snip.

Disclosure. Filing for bankruptcy is a bit like entering a fishbowl. Everything is on display. First, creditors are entitled to conduct an “examination of the debtor” under oath at the initial meeting of the creditors (the “341 meeting.”) Additionally, an individual creditor may under Bankruptcy Rule 2004 undertake an examination of the debtor. (And that includes creditors who are creditors by virtue of by claims–that could include gun-control groups among others.) There’s certainly room there for questions that get to the reasons for filing, namely whether there was any financial reason for filing.

Automatic Stay? Another issue is whether the bankruptcy filing will in any way stop the NY AG’s action to dissolve the NRA. At the very least, the automatic stay should not. There is an exception in section 362(b)(4) from the stay for regulatory actions that are not seeking money from the debtor, and the NYAG suit seems squarely in that exception. It’s possible that the NRA will seek a supplementary injunction from the bankruptcy court, however.

Trustee or Conversion. While I would expect a venue motion or a motion to dismiss the case, I would also expect a motion for appointment of a trustee or conversion to chapter 7 (which would trigger a trustee). The NRA seems like a classic case for this—there are credible allegations of serious financial impropriety involving the current management (namely executive VP Wayne LaPierre). That both fits into the “fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, or gross mismanagement” route for a trustee’s appointment, or into the “best interests of the creditors” route. Two key things if a trustee is appointed. First, the trustee will hold the NRA’s attorney-client privilege, not Mr. LaPierre. Mr. LaPierre will not be able to claim privilege for any conversations he had with the NRA’s attorneys. Second, a trustee has every incentive to pursue all of the NRA bankruptcy estate’s claims, including against Mr. LaPierre. That brings us to the next topic, the debtor in possession’s fiduciary duties.

Fiduciary duties. The NRA as debtor in possession is a fiduciary for all of its creditors. That means, among other things, that if the NRA has potential claims against Mr. LaPierre or others, including fraudulent transfer claims, it must pursue them. Mr. LaPierre as EVP cannot decide whether to litigate against himself. If he’s too conflicted, that will mean that the court will either have to appoint a trustee or let a creditors’ committee pursue the claims.

Snip.

The fate of Wayne LaPierre. Putting aside Mr. LaPierre’s employment contract, he’s got another problem. The NY AG suit isn’t just against the NRA. It’s also against Mr. LaPierre and some of his lieutenants. LaPierre and his lieutenants have not filed for bankruptcy, and even if the NRA is able to convert to a Texas corporation, the NYAG’s suit against Mr. LaPierre can still proceed. The NYAG is seeking restitution from LaPierre as well as a bar from his ever soliciting funds for a nonprofit in NY (not just for a NY nonprofit). Moreover, if NY is successful, it might well create problems for LaPierre serving as an officer of a nonprofit in another state. All of which is to say that the NRA fleeing to Texas doesn’t address Mr. LaPierre’s problems.

Once again, LaPierre is the millstone dragging down the NRA. The best outcome would be for the NRA to successfully reincorporate in Texas…but without LaPierre and his cronies bleeding the organization dry.

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Posted in Guns, Texas | 2 Comments »

“How I Switched From Never-Trump To Never-Biden”

January 18th, 2021

If I were still doing BidenWatch, this piece would be a top link. It’s the story of why a hardcore anti-Trumper switched to being anti-Biden. The hook is that the writer is an ex-cocaine addict, and thus has an ideal vantage to talk about what the media is hiding from us about Hunter Biden:

At this exact moment I was still a zealous 100% anti-Trumper, willing to vote for anybody but Trump, even the Easter Bunny. Further, I thought that poor old Rudy Giuliani had completely lost his marbles. He was running around in the Ukraine acting all crazy. Looking for what? Maybe the Abominable Snowman?

And right here, at this exact moment one year ago, is when my faith in Biden, as the “anybody” in “anybody but Trump”, cracked.

As I was joking with my friend, and reading all this stuff about Hunter’s multiple trips to rehab, his binges, his dating his brother’s widow, his getting a stripper pregnant while dating his brother’s widow, and cheering it all on in locker-room style… that’s when the penny dropped.

From my own experience, there is no such thing as a functioning cocaine addict. The worse it gets, the faster it gets worse. One cannot function like that — at all. You lose stuff and break phones constantly. You’re always scrambling around trying to swindle some cash somehow, from this person and that; and then you’re trying to chase around your dealer; and then you’re getting your spot organized, so you can hide out and get high; plus you’re getting whatever else you might need.

Then you spend maybe 3–5 days getting deliriously high. Then a couple days deliriously tired and sleeping. You’re always moving in and out of hotels, and always losing stuff in the process. Plus, all the physical ailments — the puking, the paranoia, the eating, and the not eating. Wash, rinse and repeat. This is why crack houses looks like crack houses. Hunter is lucky to be alive, but there is no chance he’s been doing any work. None at all.

I lived this life so I know it, and it occurred to me right then — and this being about one year ago — that if Hunter’s addiction is worse than mine was, then he couldn’t bag a ham sandwich on a good day, and even when he could, he would be busy doing other things anyway. So there is no way he did any work whatsoever for Burisma. It is mathematically impossible. So, then, the question to me was, does it overlap? And, yes it does. His spiral started with his expulsion from the Navy in 2013, and carried on until 2019.

Snip.

Hunter’s Addiction Timeline Versus Bursima

Hunter served on the Burisma board from April 2014 until April 2019.

Here is what was going on in his life at that time:
Feb 2014 — discharged from Navy for cocaine use
Jun 2015 — Beau Biden’s funeral
Jul 2015 — checks in to Caron Treatment Centers
Aug 2015 — his name is among those leaked in Ashley Madison data breach
Oct 2015 — Kathleen Biden files divorce
Feb 2016 — checks in to Kolmac Outpatient Recovery Center
Aug 2016 — begins dating his dead brother’s widow
Oct 2016 — checks in to Grace Grove
Jan 2018 — gets stripper pregnant

I have no doubt, in my own heart, that Hunter couldn’t function in any way amid circumstance like these, and I think this timeline establishes that pretty clearly.

He looks at Hunter’s resume:

Every job on there was either a hook-up from his dad (MBNA, Dept Commerce, Amtrak, Navy) or has a huge conflict of interest embedded in it (Oldaker, Biden & Belair, Rosemont Seneca, and Burisma). The Amtrak job is a total handout. Hunter is 50 years old and he has never held any of these jobs for that long — i.e. it is job after job after job. So, then, Burisma paid him $80,000 a month for what?
Lying Through His Dentures

The media have gone so easy on Biden, dancing around Burisma. George Stephanopoulos, who ran Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992 and subsequently became White House communications director, didn’t come near this one at that “Wag the Dog” debate the other night. My mom asks me tougher questions these days, “Christian, what did you have for dinner?” The entire press corps have given Biden a 6 month “get out of jail free card” on this obvious hot spot, and that’s precisely because they know it is a hot spot.

And then come the Joe Biden evasions:

This is what flipped me to Trump:

Question: Hunter Biden, your son, was getting paid a lot of money to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy company facing serious corruption charges. You were the Vice President, running point on the Ukraine. The Average Joe hears that and says ‘that sounds fishy.’ What’s your understanding of what your son was doing?

Answer: I don’t know what my son was doing. I know he was on the board. I found out he was on the board after he was on the board. And that was it.
[Ok, like my mom couldn’t give you at least some thumbnail sketch of what I do for a living? Of course she can. Hunter “worked” at Burisma for 5 years, and he has no clue at all what he did? This is a barefaced lie.]

Re-direct Question: Well you’ve had a lot of time, isn’t this something you want to get to the bottom of?

Answer: No, because I trust my son.
[This is where he lost me forever. There is a joke told in rehab: what’s the difference between a drug addict and an alcoholic? The drug addict will help you look for your wallet. I pawned my ex-wife’s jewelry and told her I was having it cleaned. You shouldn’t have trusted me any further than you could have thrown me back then. He doesn’t trust his son — that’s total BS. And if he does trust his son, after 30 years of drug addiction, then he’s the dumbest man on the planet. But the American public absolutely should not be asked to trust a drug addict. Period. This answer is manipulative, evasive and totally dishonest.]

Re-direct Question: That doesn’t pass the smell test, like when you’re Vice President, isn’t there a higher standard? Don’t you need to know?

Answer: No! Unless there was something that is on its face wrong. There’s nothing that was on its face wrong.
[Another barefaced lie. Everything is wrong on its face here. As Vice President, he was assigned to the Ukraine. His son, meanwhile, has a huge conflict of interest in a job with a Ukrainian oil company that pays him way too much, and that he is unqualified for, and that he absolutely cannot perform due to the disability of his drug addiction. Everything is wrong with that.]

Answer-continued: Look, if you wanna talk about problems, let’s talk about Trump’s family. I’m mean come on! This is, you guys are amazing… [sneer]
[His here deflection implies this: ‘ok, yes, fine, we are corrupt, but so are they!’ His anger betrays his guilt. The reason there is no answer, is that there can be no answer. Joe Biden has been bought and sold.]

Hunter’s Never Ending Spending

Why is divorce so expensive? Because it is worth it.

Why is a drug habit so expensive? Because you have to buy all the drugs, plus you have to buy all the other things you need, which in Hunter’s case is often hotels and professional company, plus there is the cost of all the crashed cars, broken mobile phones, lost property, late fees, etc that drug addict leave in their wake. Meanwhile, all your normal household expenses continue to accrue. Bottom line: being a drug addict sucks money out of your bank account like a bathtub with four drains.

Hunter has a divorce and a drug habit, and then some…

His itemized expenses in the last 3 years:
— a long-standing drug habit
— a divorce from a wife with whom he had three kids (2017)
— a $450,000 tax lean that he satisfied in 6 days (2020)
— a paternity settlement (2020)
— a $2.5 million home purchase in LA (2019)
— a recent marriage (2020)
— a fifth child on the way (2020)

A quick question… where is all this money coming from?

He concludes:

Drug addicts are not fit for work, and if Joe Biden putting his son to work while he was in downward spiral is what gets him busted, well then, it would be just desserts. If Biden was any kind of father, he should have cut his son off a long time ago and said, “Call me back when you get sober kiddo.”

Trump might be a jerk, but he doesn’t treat his kids like that. Trump may be a jerk but he never sold American influence for a price.

Apparently the media prefers a soulless fraud with a nice pair of dentures and a pressed suit who says oh so often “I care about you.” In the last election, a bombastic showman played the media like a fiddle to steal the show, and in this election the media is stealing America back, so they can return it to the hands of its rightful owner, a hollow hooker with a good smile who will sell it to which ever foreign interest is willing to pay the highest price for the night.

Read the whole thing, and especially take a look at that eye-opening picture of one of Hunter’s hotel rooms…

(Hat tip: Octothorpe Drakonidae on Gab.)

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Posted in Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy | 7 Comments »

Austin Update For January 17, 2021

January 17th, 2021

Austin news has been accumulating in heaps in drifts like trash strewn from a homeless encampment in a public park. So let’s grab a shovel:

  • First up: the case of the missing $6 million:

    More than $6 million in taxpayer money flowed to Austin nonprofits affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but taxpayers might never learn the identities of the organizations that got the money or get a chance to dig into their stated need for assistance.

    Citing a little-known state law that government transparency experts are only now learning exists, the city has refused to turn over a list of the 365 nonprofits that were granted the funds.

    The $6 million was funneled through the city from the federal government and distributed out of the Austin Nonprofit and Civic Health Organizations Relief fund, more commonly known as the ANCHOR fund.

    On Oct. 19, the American-Statesman requested a list from the city of the fund’s award recipients. On Nov. 16, the city denied the newspaper’s request, saying in a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that it thought the information was exempt from public disclosure and requested that Paxton’s office affirm that determination.

    The law invoked by the city’s legal department, House Bill 3175, went on the books after the 2019 Texas legislative session.

    Filed by state Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, the bill made confidential the name and other identifying information of individuals and businesses that apply for state or federal disaster recovery funds. The definition of disaster, as spelled out in the law, includes such things as floods, earthquakes and hostile military action. It also includes epidemics, such as the COVID-19 crisis.

    The disclosure of federal relief dollars is not exempted from public records if the money is awarded by the federal government. For example, news organizations, including the Statesman, have obtained through public records the names of businesses that received financial assistance through the federal Paycheck Protection Program.

    But under the new state law, Austin was able to withhold the identities of businesses that received assistance from the ANCHOR fund because the money, although originally from the federal government, went to the city before it was distributed to the nonprofits.

    I just naturally assume the money was handed out as graft to members of the Homeless Industrial Complex, Greg Casar’s leftwing cronies, and various antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riot instigators (I’m sure there’s a lot of overlap between those categories).

  • Speaking of the homeless, Austin’s homeless situation continues to get even more out-of-hand. “It’s not uncommon to walk out the door and find a pile of human feces on the patio behind us.”
  • A close, personal look at the problem:

  • If you live in Austin, you have until tomorrow (Monday, January 18) to sign the petition to reinstate the homeless camping ban. Go here to sign the petition.
  • There’s also a petition drive to recall various City Council members who reinstated the homeless ban. But you have to live in their respective districts to sign the petition.
  • I know you’re going to be shocked, shocked to find out that the City of Austin give preferential treatment to leftwing businessesin the form of property tax breaks…including one for Mayor Steve Adler’s own law firm.
  • Matt Mackowiak and Brad Johnson discuss the Austin homeless problem.

    • As the cherry on top, the City of Austin’s Stage 5 Wuhan coronavirus restrictions are still in effect through February 16…

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »

    Welcome to Texas, NRA! Leave Wayne Behind.

    January 16th, 2021

    This news broke Friday night:

    The National Rifle Association announced Friday that it has filed for bankruptcy and will move out of New York and restructure the organization as a nonprofit in Texas.

    The nation’s leading gun rights advocacy group said that the move to Texas will enable the group to “exit what it believes is a corrupt political and regulatory environment in New York.”

    “By exiting New York, where the NRA has been incorporated for approximately 150 years, the NRA abandons a state where elected officials have weaponized the legal and regulatory powers they wield to penalize the Association and its members for purely political purposes,” the NRA said in a statement.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the NRA in August, alleging that senior leaders of the group misused tens of millions of dollars, diverting the funds for personal use and other illegal purposes.

    The NRA denied the allegations and filed a lawsuit of its own against James, accusing her of violating the group’s free speech rights and requesting that her investigation be blocked. The move to Texas and restructuring of the group could prevent the New York attorney general from seeking the dissolution of the group.

    The group filed Chapter 11 petitions in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas, listing assets and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million.

    There are a lot of good reasons for the NRA to move from New York to Texas apart from the lawsuit (though that’s a pretty big one), but it won’t be restored to a fully functioning organization until Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre is gone.

    The NRA has been in crisis for over a year because LaPierre has engaged in what appears to be systematic looting through contracts to media company Ackerman McQueen and other entities that seem very, very chummy with LaPierre:

    This 100-page document…contains unprecedented disclosures of where the money categorized as expenditures for “fund-raising” and “public relations” actually went. For example, it was revealed for the first time the Mercury Group, an Ack-Mac subsidiary run by LaPierre’s closest confidant, Tony Makris, received $5.8 million from NRA in that year; another Makris-run company, Under Wild Skies, got $2.6 million. Meanwhile, NRA has nearly exhausted its $25 million credit line (secured by a mortgage on its headquarters building), liquidated $2 million from an investment fund, borrowed close to $4 million from its officers’ life insurance policy and extracted about $5 million in office rent and overhead from the NRA Foundation.

    This, in the same year that NRA’s 10 highest-paid executives received compensation aggregating over $8 million.

    Unfortunately, the NRA is structured so that LaPierre has more institutional power than the NRA’s elected President, something Oliver North found out. The NRA needs LaPierre out and a forensic audit to uncover past abuses before gun owners give it another dime. I’ve let my membership lapse because of the crooked self-dealing on display by LaPierre and his cronies, and I suspect there are millions of other gun owners like me. Instead I joined Gun Owners of America, because I know my membership fees won’t be going to line Wayne’s pockets.

    No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money has been following every twist and turn of the NRA/LaPierre problems for years, so go over there and start reading if you want all the deep background on the situation.

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    Posted in Guns, Texas | 8 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for January 15, 2021

    January 15th, 2021

    Austin actually enjoyed a rare snowstorm this week. As opposed to those who follow the mainstream media, who enjoy snowstorms 24/7/365…

  • President Trump is declassifying “a foot high stack of documents” related to Russiagate and Obamagate. Good.
  • In the “stop panicking” category: “Statehouse wins position GOP to dominate redistricting“:

    An abysmal showing by Democrats in state legislative races on Tuesday not only denied them victories in Sun Belt and Rust Belt states that would have positioned them to advance their policy agenda — it also put the party at a disadvantage ahead of the redistricting that will determine the balance of power for the next decade.

    The results could domino through politics in America, helping the GOP draw favorable congressional and state legislative maps by ensuring Democrats remain the minority party in key state legislatures. Ultimately, it could mean more Republicans in Washington — and in state capitals.

    By Wednesday night, Democrats had not flipped a single statehouse chamber in its favor. And it remained completely blocked from the map-making process in several key states — including Texas, North Carolina and Florida, which could have a combined 82 congressional seats by 2022 — where the GOP retained control of the state legislatures.

    After months of record-breaking fundraising by their candidates and a constellation of outside groups, Democrats fell far short of their goals and failed to build upon their 2018 successes to capture state chambers they had been targeting for years. And they may have President Donald Trump to blame.

    “It’s clear that Trump isn’t an anchor for the Republican legislative candidates. He’s a buoy,” said Christina Polizzi, a spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, on Wednesday. “He overperformed media expectations, Democratic and Republican expectations, and lifted legislative candidates with him.”

    Snip.

    The biggest disappointment came in the seat-rich state of Texas, Democrats needed nine seats to reclaim the majority after flipping a dozen in the midterms. Though some races remain uncalled, so far Democrats were able to unseat one incumbent and Republicans offset that with another pickup.

    Now Texas Republicans, retaining control of the Senate and the governor’s mansion, will have total authority over the drawing of as many as 39 congressional districts in the state. Democrats fear Republicans will pack and crack the rapidly diversifying suburbs to dilute unfriendly voters. Despite targeting 10 districts, Democrats failed to flip a single targeted seat in 2020 on the current map, which was drawn by the GOP roughly a decade ago.

    There are plenty of things to worry about with Democrats control (by the skin of their teeth) the White House, the Senate and the House, but federalism provides strong state power as a counterbalance to the federal government.

  • “10 Times Democrats Urged Violence Against Trump And His Supporters.”
  • “MIT Professor Who Received $19M in Federal Grants Arrested for Concealing Ties to China.”

    A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and researcher who has received almost $20 million from the Department of Energy was arrested Thursday after he allegedly failed to disclose ties to the People’s Republic of China.

    Mechanical engineering professor Gang Chen faces charges of wire fraud, failing to file a foreign bank account report, and making a false statement in a tax return, the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston revealed Thursday.

    Prosecutors allege the 56-year-old professor, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China, has held a number of positions on behalf of the PRC with the goal of promoting China’s technological and scientific capabilities.

    They claim he shared his expertise directly with Chinese government officials “often in exchange for financial compensation,” including serving as an “overseas expert” at the request of the Chinese consulate in New York and a member of at least two PRC Talent Programs.

    The Department of Energy has given Chen $19 million for research since 2013.

  • The Second Impeachment Farce doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on.

    The president didn’t mention violence on Wednesday, much less provoke or incite it. He said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

    District law defines a riot as “a public disturbance . . . which by tumultuous and violent conduct or the threat thereof creates grave danger of damage or injury to property or persons.” When Mr. Trump spoke, there was no “public disturbance,” only a rally. The “disturbance” came later at the Capitol by a small minority who entered the perimeter and broke the law. They should be prosecuted.

    Actually, I think it’s been firmly established that the entry into the capitol occurred even before Trump stopped speaking.

  • Did you notice that Iran seized a South Korean flagged tanker in the Persian Gulf? South Korea has, in turn, deployed a destroyer to the Gulf.
  • Also not so much in the news: Israel launched its biggest airstrike in years against Iranian positions in Syria.

    A senior U.S. intelligence official with knowledge of the attack told The Associated Press that the airstrikes were carried out with intelligence provided by the United States and targeted a series of warehouses in Syria that were being used as a part of the pipeline to store and stage Iranian weapons.

    The official said the warehouses also served as a pipeline for components that supports Iran’s nuclear program.

    Maybe the Islamic Republic of Iran expects that they can just ask the Biden Administration for highly enriched uranium directly…

  • Total crude oil imported from Saudi Arabia last week: Zero.
  • How big tech erases conservatives from the Internet:

    Two companies, Google and Apple, each control about half of the smartphone market. So when the two companies made a move against Parler, the conservative social media alternative, it effectively erased its app from existence. Joining the party was a third member of the FAANG Big Tech consortium, Amazon, which deplatformed Parler from Amazon Web Services.

    AWS controls a third of the cloud marketplace. Microsoft and Google are in 2nd and 3rd place.

    Blocking an app doesn’t permanently kill a social networking service, though it places it at a structural disadvantage, but Apple and Google can flag sites as unsafe through their browsers.

  • “Twitter Admits They Lied About the Current Conservative Purge.”

    Originally, the social media giant and former favorite platform of President Trump claimed that it was simply a matter of accounts not verifying their information. Twitter claimed that until those accounts did so, they would simply not show upon follower accounts.

    Well, the tune has been changed. As most suspected from the beginning, there is actually a widespread deletion of conservative accounts goings on under the guise of them being QAnon related. This has supposedly hit over 70,000 accounts so far.

    Let me explain how this works. Basically any small amount that propagated the idea that the election was stolen is going to be lumped in as QAnon and targeted.

    I don’t believe in QAnon conspiracies. I do believe the election was stolen.

  • Speaking of which, Twitter and Facebook lost a combined $51 billion in market value following their banning of Donald Trump from their platforms.
  • “The world’s biggest gun forum was booted off the Internet because they can be.” In other news, Go-Daddy sucks. I hope AR15.com files a very expensive lawsuit against them.
  • Looks like Twitter didn’t quite erase Trump’s tweet history:

  • Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ((D)umbass-NY) wants to create a Ministry of Truth to censor the media. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • On Trump’s appeal to hardcore Trump fans:

    There is a large segment of American society, maybe 15-20%, that has not had a president who represents their basic worldview for decades. These folks tend to be white, exurban or rural, believe in religious tradition and cultural conservatism without being regular church-goers, very patriotic, very pro-military, hostile to immigration and free trade, skeptical of big business, big government, and establishment experts, and in favor of entitlement programs and the safety net…

    Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan appealed to this demographic to a large extent. Beyond that, the only major national figure I can think of in my lifetime who more or less represented them was George Wallace.

    So along comes Trump who appeals to this constituency almost perfectly. Sure, he’s a rich New Yorker, but his outer-borough accent and mentality, scorned by the elite, reminds people that their own regional accents are also scorned by the elite.

    This constituency used to be divided between Republicans and Democrats, which is one reason they lacked influence on presidential nominees, but they have shifted to be heavily Republican, which gave them a lot of influence on the nominating process in 2020 [I think he means 2016 here. -LP], and they chose Trump.

    Trump, to almost everyone’s surprise, wins. So how do big government, big business, elite experts and so on, i.e., the establishment, react, from his fans’ perspective? Without even giving Trump a chance, they decree that he is illegitimate, that he needs to be resisted, and that his voters are beyond redemption; “this is 1932 in Germany” was not a rare reaction.

    So, from these voters’ perspective, the one time in their lifetimes and much longer a president comes around who really speaks to their worldview, the establishment tries to destroy him. Rather than the anti-Trump sentiment persuading them, it makes them stronger supporters, people who see Trump as their weapon against an establishment that disparages them.

    He’s more right than wrong.

  • “Why The Left Can Be Violent Morons And Destroy Stuff And You Can’t.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Related:

  • Intel ousts CEO Bob Swan and replaces him with Intel veteran Pat Gelsinger. Intel has stumbled so badly over the last few years that replacing Swan (who has a finance background) is probably overdue. Gelsinger spent 30 years at Intel, some as CTO, so maybe he has a good chance of ironing out their process problems.
  • Speaking of semiconductors, there’s a global chip shortage going on, with auto makers among the hardest hit. And it’s not from TSMC’s cutting-edge fabs, it’s from older, larger geometry fabs. And dependence on Chinese chips plays a role as well.
  • Democrats ❤ Communism:

  • The ongoing chronicles of Andrew Cuomo, idiot:

  • The Air Force is testing swarm munitions.
  • Depressing, detailed story of how good high school kids became pill-popping drug addicts.
  • Portland police are taking longer than ever to respond to 911 calls? Just because the ruling democrats hate them and won’t back them up, refuse to charge habitual lawbreakings, and engendered a wave of retirements? Imagine that. (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
  • Burning in Hell watch: Lisa Montgomery, who strangled a pregnant mom to death and cut out her unborn baby to parade around as her own, was executed.
  • California elementary school requires kids to rank their ‘power and privilege’ and “assess their racial and sexual identities.”

  • Speaking of the insane doings of school administrators, a New Jersey high school evacuated the school because someone brought in a piece of Fiestaware.
  • “Texas Solicitor General Resigns and Former Scalia Clerk Appointed…Judd Stone will succeed Kyle Hawkins.” Stone previously worked for Ted Cruz. (Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)
  • “Lincoln Project Co-Founder John Weaver Accused by Multiple Young Men of Grooming for Sex.” Creepy, but at least it’s young men…
  • The Beard has left the building.
  • Dwight has up two documentaries on punk rock, for those interested in such.
  • Quintin Tarantino at three different budget levels.
  • Have you always wanted to be a faceless drone in a science fiction dystopia? There’s a Kickstarter for that.
  • “Millions Kicked Out Of Heaven Following Enforcement Of New Diversity Quota.”
  • Quant Fund or Metal Band? (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Your cute dog video for the week:

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    Posted in Austin, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 4 Comments »

    Everyone Pushing For A Trump Impeachment Can Fuck Off

    January 14th, 2021

    Sorry my headline language is so salty this week, but some ideas are so stupid they require profanity.

    This applies to the idiot Democrats pushing the second impeachment, though baseline Dem idiocy is already baked into their cake. My real ire is reserved for the functionaries of Conservatism Inc. who have signed on to this bullshit.

    Donald Trump leaves office in SIX! FUCKING! DAYS! Instead of letting time take its course, the vainglorious fuckwits of our corrupt kleptocracy have decided that the previously rarely employed machinery of constitutional impeachment must be deployed for the ultimate exercise in masturbatory virtual signaling.

    Mitch McConnell has stated that he will not agree to an emergency senate hearing, so there is no way Impeachment Farce 2: Virtue Signaling Boogaloo will get Trump out of office one second sooner than his constitutionally defined four years. Plus the idea that a second impeachment trial can be completed after he’s left office to disqualify him from ever holding office again is a constitutional crock.

    Keep in mind, I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool Trump acolyte. I was for Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican primaries, I don’t think Trump has been a perfect President, I don’t think he’s been sent by God, I don’t think he’s made much measurable progress in draining the swamp, and I didn’t think the January 6th shenanigans was a good idea even before it went south.

    But the idea that clown show was an “insurrection” is risible bullshit. Like the Ukraine call, the Democratic Media Complex must assert that some particular bit of Trumpian communication that rubbed them the wrong way counts as a high crime.

    And now the conserving conservatism crowd are running around proclaiming how this was the last straw and they must impeach a guy out of office next week because they’re just so mad at how that villain Trump has soiled their sacred honor, and how they can’t wait to return to the former glory of their back-slapping cruise mingles without the worry that some of the peasants in steerage might get tired of their non-stop failure to deliver on their promises of conservative governance. (I may be paraphrasing their arguments a wee tad.)

    This is why they can’t allow any examination of evidence of fraud in the 2020 election: Because it would require them actually take a stand. And we can’t have that, can we?

    Fuck each and every single Republican pushing for this cubed farce of an impeachment.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans | 7 Comments »

    PSA: TPPF’s Policy Orientation for the Texas 2021 Legislative Session Starts Today

    January 13th, 2021

    The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s policy orientation session for the 87th Texas Legislature starts today. Tickets for the live event are sold out, but you can still register to livestream the event here.

    The event grid can be found here. Keynote speakers include Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Texas Representative Chip Roy, journalist Kimberley Strassel and Kevin Robert, as well as usual TPPF stalwarts like Chuck Devore, Vance Ginn and James Quintero.

    A couple of the more interesting panels I will try to catch: the plenary “Election 2020: What Happened and What Does it Mean for the Future?” at 4:30 PM today, “The Reasons Behind the Homelessness Explosion” at 9:45 AM on Friday (might have to catch a recording of that), and “Closing Keynote Luncheon: A Fresh Take: New Members Look Ahead to Congress 2021” with newly minted Texas representatives August Pfluger, Beth Van Duyne, and Tony Gonzales (three of whom you may remember from this ad) as well as California Representative Michelle Steel at 12:30 PM on Friday.

    I attended TPPF’s orientation back in 2013, and it’s worth participating in if you’re interested in state politics.

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Democrats’ Tower Of Self-Reinforcing Bullshit

    January 12th, 2021

    The left has long had a tendency to push propaganda over truth, but the Trump years have seen a dramatic increase in willfully repeated falsehoods to push the Democratic Media Complex’s favored “narratives” over obvious truths everyone can see with their own two eyes.

    First there was the Russian collusion hoax, a self-serving fiction democrats concocted both to jam Trump at the line of scrimmage and give them an excuse for explaining how they managed to lose an election everyone said they had in the bag. There followed more lies to support the initial lie, then the impeachment farce that failed to make a dent.

    And all the while, underneath the surface, social justice warriors were spinning out falsehood after falsehood to support their favored narratives. “Hands Up Don’t Shot” was a lie from the git-go. The idea that sex is a social construct was and is a lie, as is the idea that someone can change their sex merely by declaring they have. Not to mention the risible #BlackLivesMatter bullshit that “silence is violence” and the ridiculous idea that everyone who voted for Trump was a “white supremacist.”

    Then came to 2020 #BlackLivesMatter/Antifa riots the Democratic Media Complex did their very best to ignore or spin as “mostly peaceful” despite burning down hundreds of businesses and looting thousands.

    Then they stole the 2020 Presidential election by massive fraud is six urban counties and got very upset when people tried to point this out.

    Finally, the events of January 6 drove them to new heights of hyperbole. Want to call it inadvisable? Absolutely. A mob? Fair enough. A riot? Sure. Criminal? Some of it, by definition.

    But what it was not was an “insurrection” or “coup.” Trust me, if a significant fraction of president Trump’s 75+ million supporters wanted to stage an armed coup, you’d know it. Or, more to the point, the likes of Nancy Pelosi, George Soros and Jack Dorsey wouldn’t know it, because they’d hang lifeless from the ends of gibbets.

    For a party that failed to flip a single statehouse chamber in November, Democrats are freebasing dangerous levels of their own bullshit in ratcheting up the rhetorical hysteria.

    You don’t get high on your own supply because the moment you start deluding yourself, reality has a nasty way of smacking you upside the head.

    And if Democrats think that removing Donald “Emmanuel Goldstein” Trump from the White House means they get to immediately return to their old grifts without consequences (and add a bunch of new woke social justice grifts on top of them to boot), they have another think coming. Kurt Schlichter:

    Have you noticed that everything is a lie and a scam? Everything.

    See, the problem starts when our elite realized that it could break the norms and betray the principles that we all thought we were all abiding by without accountability, at least for a little while. The Establishment realized that it can simply not enforce the norms, and then there will be a lag time while the normals continue on as if the norms were still in effect. It’s inertia – this is why you get these sad sack RINOs lecturing us on how we’re subverting the institutions when what we are really doing is pointing out that the institutions have subverted themselves.

    It’s willful blindness to the corruption because the weakhearts don’t want to admit there is corruption because that would then require them to act. It’s easier to live on scraps.

    The biggest gap in this country isn’t between enlightened social justice warriors and the backward racist redneck freaks of JesusLand, it’s between those who want to continue sticking their snouts into troughs of taxpayer money, feel their own grifts are sacred birthrights above reproach and have different laws apply to them than the peasants, and those who have been made aware of the scam.

    We’re not going back to sleep, no matter how hard you call us deplorables, racists or insurrectionists.

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | 8 Comments »

    Joe Rogan and Doctor Mark Gordon on California’s Lockdown Madness

    January 11th, 2021

    At some point I’m going to finish a full-blown Texas Vs. California update. But like every other blog post I’ve got in the works, it’s taking longer than usual to complete. So instead, here’s California-to-Texas refugee Joe Rogan interviewing fellow California-to-Texas refugee Dr. Mark Gordon, who specializes in recovering from traumatic brain injury and has a line of neutracuiticals about the many problems of California and how badly they’ve handled the lockdown.

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    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Texas, video | 1 Comment »

    The Great Purge Begins

    January 10th, 2021

    Friday big tech monopolies started their purge of conservative voices at the very top, by banning President Donald Trump from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch and others in a coordinated attempt to silence him at the end of his first term as President.

    As Ann Althouse noted, there was nothing about President Trump’s speech (or his tweets, for that matter) that incited violence.

    But Trump wasn’t the end of it. As Ed Driscoll noted over on Instapundit, “TODAY, SILICON VALLEY SETTLES ALL FAMILY BUSINESS:”

    Google suspends right-wing app ‘Parler’ from Google Play Store.

    Earlier: Apple Has Threatened To Ban Parler From The App Store.

    UPDATE: Steve Bannon’s podcast shuttered by YouTube over false 2020 election claims.

    And by “false voting fraud claims” they mean “mostly true voting fraud claims.”

    That’s not all:

    Among the people who have been booted:

    Salem Media’s Kevin McCullough, who posted questions about the votes moving backwards in the Georgia run-offs and posted Trump’s video from his rally.

    The Team Trump account was axed too.

    Techno Fog who broke court documents on the Russia hoax.

    Tracy Beanz who also did yeoman’s work on Russia hoax.

    Influencers on the right suddenly over the last couple of days were also finding their Twitter followers dropping off precipitously. Not just a few people but a lot of influencers, even smaller not well-known people.

    Lots of people are having followers purged, including myself, though I’ve only lost some 100-odd. Can;t say whether this is a purge of inactive accounts or not.

    Facebook also banned the #WalkAway campaign and Brandon Straka:

    There are probably a lot more bannings I’ve missed.

    Social media has become a clear and present danger to American freedoms:

    In case you haven’t been paying attention, the battle over personal data, free speech and the free flow of information between the American people and the tech giants is heating up. As the Googles and Facebooks of the world take an unconstitutional role in deciding what speech and information should be online, it’s becoming clear much more is at stake than first meets the eye.

    It’s also becoming apparent that there are some voices on the Right who are either deeply naïve and ignorant about what is at stake or they are in fact paid collaborators of the tech companies.

    Also some discussion of the threat of the singularity, which is still more science fiction than actual at this point. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    Tucker Carlson summarizes:

    Some conservatives are leaving Twitter in protest.

    As for myself, I’m just going to keep talking about the things they don’t want to talk about on Twitter (like Biden family corruption and fraud in the 2020 presidential election) until they kick me off.

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    Posted in Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, video | 5 Comments »

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