“The Petit Minou Lighthouse…” says left-leaning Wikipedia, “…was added in front of the fort to aid navigation through the Goulet de Brest strait.” That fort was “part of the massive fortification campaign of France under the direction of the Marquis de Vauban,” and that specific fortress was completed in 1697. “The waters offshore are notoriously treacherous, so in 1848, the Phare (lighthouse) du Petit Minou…” became “one of dozens of lighthouses dotting the craggy, and infamously stormy, Brittany shores.” The one threat was human, which explains the construction of the fort. The other threat was natural, which inspired the building of the lighthouse.
In each case, experience guided people to act in a manner that would mitigate the respective risks.
That stark, dark imagery from the Bing browser – a Microsoft brand in the Bill Gates empire – and Getty image – of the lighthouse – noting that Getty is one of the brands owned by The Carlyle Group, that is involved in manufactured home communities – are transformed by pairing it with a new report that is also in response to stormy, treacherous waters of a different kind.
In an exclusive to right-of-center Breitbart News, the Job Creators Network (JCN) Alfredo Ortiz: Biden’s First 100 Days Defined by War on Small Businesses. Ortiz said that Thursday will mark the 100th day of the Biden Administration. He thinks Wednesday night in his address to Congress, Biden will try to claim credit for Trump Administration “accomplishments” including winding down the war in Afghanistan and the rapid development of the COVID19 vaccines. Some cheer and others jeer both of those milestones.
The link on “revoking” is to a left-of-center CNN report on various Biden executive orders (EOs) and executive actions.
On that Ortiz’s point of making it harder to find skilled workers, a number of manufactured housing industry producers, including Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) members such as Adventure Homes, may agree. Getting workers in a post-COVID higher unemployment phase has been made harder, they say, due to unemployment payments that are so high it creates a disincentive to accept employment.
Stephen Miller was “Former Senior Advisor to the President of the United States,” says leftist Wikipedia. Miller’s assignment was “for policy and White House director of speechwriting to President Donald Trump.” Calling Miller “anti-immigration” and “far right,” the wiki also noted that Miller “was previously the communications director for then-Senator Jeff Sessions.” As is true of too many on the left, the wiki fails to note there that the 45th President was married to an immigrant, who became First Lady Melania Trump. President Trump often said that he wanted legal immigration based on merit, not illegal immigration that allowed for illegal human trafficking, drugs, rapes, murder, and other crimes to flow pell-mell across our nation’s borders. NCLS.org says that in 2019, 1.7 million legal work visas were issued. About 800,000 legal immigrants applied for naturalization to become U.S. citizens. An August 20, 2020 report by Pew Research says that “The United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world.” It is just another example of a mix of accurate and misleading claims jumbled together by those who opposed President Trump.
In a Saturday 4.25.2021 radio interview with Breitbart News, Miller said that the “Left has truly perfected the art of lawfare.” To counter that litigation-based ‘legal warfare’ was part of his reasoning for establishing “America First Legal,” a new nonpartisan but conservative policy-focused nonprofit aimed to counter the efforts of groups such as the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Americans for Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
It is in this fashion that the lessons of American politics, but also the inspiration of the Petit Minou Lighthouse and fortress could be applied.
Miller is president of America First Legal, is a nonprofit group designed to fight back against the left’s lawless actions, reported Breitbart — “particularly those of the Biden administration.”
Miller said that America First Legal will be fighting back against the kind of “relentlessly litigated” action by “activist left-wing lawyers, activist left-wing groups, and then brought into the courtrooms of activist left-wing judges.”
Industry pros with an attention to detail may recall that the MTO lawfirm – Munger, Tolles and Olson – which includes Warren Buffett’s longtime partner and Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger. It also includes Ronald “Ron” Olson, who sits on the Berkshire board. MTO has been called “radically progressive.” The quote below was been displayed on the MTO homepage for some time.
The new nonprofit group appears to be part of a broader post-White House effort being forged by Trump Administration loyalists, as well as by members of the Trump family. Another example is the planned launch of a Trump social media operation. More on that as it may relate to the manufactured housing industry and/or MHProNews and further below.
Due to such “lawfare,” Miller said that something that would have taken a previous administration a week to do with an executive order (EO) or other executive level action took Trump’s administration months and, in some cases, years.
The president of the new America First Legal used DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) as a prime example. Miller noted that former President Barack Obama did not face the same type of significant legal challenges after issuing his EO memo on DACA in 2012. That is despite the fact that candidate Obama had previously said that a president is not an emperor, and should not seek to do with executive order what should be done through Congress and the legislative process.
President Trump issued an executive action to rescind the arguably unlawful Obama-Biden era DACA policy in 2017. But that issue remained in court for four years.
“Imagine how different history would have been if either, A) Obama had spent four years in court and was never able to implement this memo or, B) Trump had been able to rescind it in a matter of days. That’s just one of a million examples,” America First Legal President Miller said. “The point being, as conservatives, we have been guilty of unilateral legal disarmament.”
Among the reports for the week that was further below are those that deal with what might be called unilateral disarmament by industry independents. That point noted, back to Miller’s thesis.
“And we have a situation where, if you have a president who’s politically to the left, he has a free runway to implement illegal, unconstitutional policies. If you have a president who’s politically to the right, then you don’t even have the ability to terminate your predecessor’s unlawful policies, and that fundamentally threatens our democracy because it means that some presidents have more authority than other presidents,” he explained.
Indeed, to underscore Miller’s point, dozens of Biden’s executive orders and executive actions in the first 100 days of what journalist-turned pundit Chris Plante has wryly dubbed the “Biden-Harris Junta” rapidly upended much of what the Trump-Pence Administration fought for years to achieve.
For example. In the foreign policy arena, Biden regime moves that favor Communist China, Iran, or other often anti-American nemesis have occurred.
In domestic political moves, killing the Keystone XL pipeline, stopping construction on the Trump-border wall, or ending several Trump Administration policies that had largely secured the southern border were abruptly halted by White House Resident Biden.
To counter such sweeping EO style moves was part of Miller’s explanation of why he launched America First Legal. He described the nonpartisan organization as being devoted to upholding America First principles, conservative values, and traditional American ideals in the court of law. The nonprofit plans to file lawsuits to uphold those principles when the Biden administration “lawlessly violates them,” Miller said, explaining the focus will remain on “executive overreach.”
“I’m doing this solely because it has to be done. This is, in short, the conservative response to the ACLU,” Miller said.
Breitbart’s Boyle noted the right has “never had anything like this before.” While some other conservative legal organizations might see that point differently, nevertheless, Miller’s group is aiming to carve out a specialized niche as part of the effort to counter the aggressive Biden-Harris regime moves.
Miller explained that the group is actively consulting and advising a number of GOP, conservative-led states and attorneys general who are litigating to stop the behavior from the Biden-Harris team that is both unlawful and unconstitutional.
More specifically, Breitbart said that America First Legal is acting “as outside counsel in a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s Catch and Release policy, representing Texas.”
The lawsuit, Miller explained, asks how the Biden administration can violate “its own COVID rules” to mass release infected illegal immigrants into the country and “at the same time violate federal law” that requires illegal immigrants to be sent home.
“So, this is a public health lawsuit in addition to an illegal immigration lawsuit, and we’re asking the court to direct and instruct DHS to send illegal border crossers back home, consistent with the public health regulations in place,” he said. He characterized it as a “vitally important” piece of litigation.
It should be noted that in recent day, President Trump made statements that included the points that:
- there should be robust antitrust action taken against the tech giants.
- He also stressed that no one should be compelled to take one of the COVID19 vaccines. Taking a vaccine should be voluntary.
Trump ally and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has recently said that in hindsight, he wished he had not shut the state down in response to the coronavirus outbreak. It appears that DeSantis is moving toward the position advocated by the Great Barrington Declaration. To the antitrust point, Florida is one of the states which are engaged in antitrust action.
Much of the above, as well as what follows, hits home on the point JCN’s Ortiz made. Several of the actions underway are harmful to the interest of Americans in general, and small businesses are among those who are negatively impacted.
Which tees up the following previously mentioned issue above about social media.
Mark Zuckerberg, Sen Bernie Sanders, Jack Dorsey, Robert F. Kennedy, President Donald Trump, et al – Limiting Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Reach
The list of those tech titans who have limited or censored the free speech rights of various media, businesses, public figures, and even the then siting President Donald Trump is extensive.
Senator Bernie Sanders, no friend of President Trump, decried the notion that a social media or tech company could censor the speech of a president. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey said he wasn’t entirely comfortable with having done so. Nevertheless, one of the most followed persons on Twitter – President Trump was censored and then shut down. Conservatives have noted that similar or more offensive speech by others have noted drawn a similarly harsh response by Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook – which also censored President Trump, or others.
This is largely, but not entirely a phenomenon that targets the American right. A few examples will illustrate.
- Prager U has been complaining about being shadow banning and otherwise limiting the free speech on YouTube for some years.
- The Epoch Times, hardly bomb-throwers on the right, have likewise been shut down on YouTube.
- LifeSiteNews, a Christian-Catholic type of publication site that often-criticized Pope Francis and other Catholic prelates, has also been given the social media squeeze on YouTube.
- So, a Jewish led organization, one that is pro-Falun Gong and anti-communist Chinese, and one that features Catholic as well as other Christian thought are among those that Google’s sister company of YouTube has shadow banned or outright banned.
But it is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s experiences of being shut down by the tech and social media titans that makes it clear that what is occurring is not just conservatives that are being deplatformed or otherwise limited. The freedom of reach and the freedom of speech of those that challenge what has become a de facto party line and that do so with facts, evidence, and reason are apparently in the crosshairs, regardless of political affiliations.
Kennedy is a self-declared lifelong Democrat. His father is the assassinated Senator Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy (D). His uncle was the assassinated President John F. “Jack” Kennedy (D). Efforts at silencing Kennedy, or Dr. Joseph Mercola, demonstrates the fine nuances of what are arguably occurring with respect to free speech, and artificial limits being placed on speech by private corporations. As leftist Glenn Greenwald put it, if you challenge the narrative of the WHO, the CDC, FDA, other others in the federal or NGO health professional positions, you may be silenced. Lost in the flurry of statements and advice that has at times contradicted prior advice is the point that these governmental and NGOs were supposed to help avoid a pandemic.
In the light of the above, it is perhaps no surprise that a few weeks ago MHProNews began to experience a more overt efforts at limiting us on social media. A post on LinkedIn post that linked to an MHProNews item was removed. The offending post? It was a Masthead column that dealt with the claim by a colorful attorney that made the case that President Trump had the right to use the legal principle of Quo Warranto to challenge the Trump-Biden election outcome.
In recent weeks, accessing our main Twitter account has also become problematic without notice. We have been unable to login to even discover why, and given other time demands, MHProNews has not yet dug further into that issue. Furthermore, there have long been reasons to believe that we were getting shadow banned on YouTube. An odd warning popped up for simply trying to post a comment like ones previously performed for years. There is more, but those examples are sufficient to make this point.
Greenwald’s concern that speech is being limited by those who hold a thoughtful and evidence-based position contrary to what the powers that be support has numerous examples. Be someone from the left or right, if some group or individual are using strong evidence to denounce problematic behavior, that speech is apparently at times being limited or shut down.
If there is a commonality to the examples noted, it may be that in each case they are using fact and evidence-supported reasoning to challenge a position that opposes those who are powers in the ever-more-clearly emerging ‘rigged system.’ Recall that the New York Post was censored by Twitter pre-election for running an evidence-based story about Joe Biden’s son Hunter, and his compromising financial ties to figures in Communist China, Moscow, and beyond.
One should also keep in mind the growing evidence that several of the tech giants were aided early on – and arguably since – by investments from American intelligence services. See that among the reports linked below.
The phrase “the system is rigged” is useful to some extent. But without examples, it is unsatisfying. But with apt examples, such as those shown above or others that follow in our reports for the week in review, a picture of what the ‘rigged system’ looks like can take shape. With that proper understanding of what is occurring, that can lead to potentially corrective action. Efforts such as Miller-led America First Legal, or the plans for a Trump-connected social media platform are examples of what that kind of concrete pushback can look like.
That makes the historic point of navigating those dangerous waters, cited above.
Similarly, some of the reports below for the week that was indicate manufactured housing specific examples of Danny Glover’s insightful quote: “It’s not only a monopoly of wealth; it’s a monopoly of information as well.” It is when facts, evidence, trends, and then applied common-sense reasoning are deployed that a picture emerges that shed a keen light that explains how our industry, as well as others, have witnessed independents being subverted by a rigged system.
It is to a significant degree that manipulating or thwarting capital access, and then cover that trail in a variety of ways (mis)using and/or limiting information that explains how our once far greater profession has been left at a level that is only about 1/4th of the production and sales levels that existed some 23 years ago.
During an affordable housing crisis, where there is too little housing product to meet the demand, the notion that manufactured housing is moving in reverse is an epic call for attention, understanding, and then action. As the AEI Housing Center research reports linked below noted, it is especially at entry level price points that the demands is greatest. These are reasons our industry should be soaring.
Reports, analysis, and commentary on those topics and more are found in several of the reports for the week that was that now follow.
Note: do not miss the programming notice about Cavco in our postscript for today.
With no further adieu, here are the headlines for the developments, revelations, reports, and analysis for the week that was from 4.18 to 4.25.2021.
What is New on MHLivingNews
The Latest from Washington, D.C. from MHARR
What is the Latest on the Masthead
What is New on the Daily Business News on MHProNews
Saturday 4.24.2021
Friday 4.23.2021
Thursday 4.22.2021
Wednesday 4.21.2021
Tuesday 4.20.2021
Monday 4.19.2021
Sunday 4.18.2021
Postscript
Programming Notes. As was previously announced, MHProNews reduced its publishing schedule last week, but plans to resume a normal schedule by mid-week.
Programming note 2: barring the unforeseen, there will be a special report Monday on Cavco Industries that as planned will feature insights from Joe Stegmayer.
Democrats have arguably adopted the Buffett Castle and Moat stratagem in politics, as the Masthead previously explained.
That noted, there is an emerging resistance to those in billionaires and big business leaders who have coopted much of the Democratic Party and some in the GOP ranks too. How these impact our profession are exemplified by others in reports that are for whatever reasons not routinely mentioned by most of our industry’s trade media, other than MHLivingNews and MHProNews. As left-leaning Edelman noted, there is a “raging infodemic.” That too fits Danny Glover’s contention, cited in the quote above.
A lighthouse is need to guide people through treacherous waters. Day-by-day, our twin pro-industry, pro-American trade media aim to be that lighthouse in an era where deception and misdirection are sadly all too common.
To learn more about the war against small businesses and how they impact workers and much of the population in direct or indirect ways, see the linked reports above and the related reports below the byline and notices.
Our thanks to you, our sources, and sponsors for making and keeping us the runaway number one source for authentic “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) (See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)
By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.
Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.
For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.
This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position, and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.
Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach
Related References:
The text/image boxes below are linked to other reports, which can be accessed by clicking on them.
