These days, we see the result of Prop 47 with vastly worsened crime in California. One example is the preventable murder of Santa Maria resident Marilyn Pharis in 2015 by an illegal alien who had been arrested at least six times but was not deported because of the law.
Below, Marilyn Pharis was beaten with a hammer, sexually assaulted and murdered in her home by two men, one a Mexican illegal.
On Monday, Tucker Carlson reviewed the history of the law and its philosophy which he connects to the support of rich liberals who donated big to fund the dangerous proposition because of their feelings of guilt or desire for chaos as appears to be the case with George Soros.
Spare audio:
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: In cities across this country, left-wing extremists are becoming, of all things, prosecutors. They’re getting elected on an agenda that favors criminals over decent people and undermines the rule of law.
How is this happening? Is there suddenly a national groundswell of support for crime and lawlessness? No. No, there’s not. Most Americans believe in order; they always have. What’s happening is an end-run around democracy. A small group of left-wing megadonors is drowning local elections with tidal waves of cash. As it turns out, that works, and it’s not very hard to do. We’ve already told you, in some detail, about how Hungarian-born billionaire, George Soros got a pro-crime radical, called Larry Krasner, elected district attorney in Philadelphia. Violence in that city immediately, and predictably, went up.
That’s what happens when you stop enforcing the law: people die. And, in Philadelphia, they have. By any measure, the Larry Krasner experiment has been an ugly disaster and, yet — and this tells you everything about where we are right now — many progressives see Philadelphia and what Krasner has done there as a model for the rest of the country. They’d like to bring it to your town and they’re trying to do that.
Last month, a longtime left-wing activist called Chesa Boudin was elected DA in San Francisco. Boudin ran on the promise to make an already filthy and disorderly city even dirtier and more chaotic. He pledged to effectively legalize prostitution, public urination, and living on the sidewalk. He dismissed the prosecution of criminal gang members as, quote, “explicitly racist,” though he didn’t explain how. He promised to do away with cash bail entirely. Just in case anyone missed the point of all of this, supporters at Boudin’s election party chanted, “F the police.” Even in America’s most flamboyantly liberal city, this was too much for a lot of people. When you tear down the justice system, only the criminals thrive. Everyone knows that. Yet, in the end, Chesa Boudin was elected anyway, if only by a narrow margin.
How’d he do that? Well, with the committed backing of Silicon Valley’s ruling class. Boudin won the support of people like Kaitlyn Krieger. She’s the wife of Instagram’s co-founder. Krieger, who is a living parody of a silly, out-of-touch rich lady, gave Boudin $27,000. Now, it’s hard to imagine Krieger would have done that if there was a possibility she might have to live with the consequences of it. But, of course, there was never any chance of that. Krieger is a billionaire. She can live behind gates protected by her own police force, if she wants, and maybe she does.
The same is true for people like Elizabeth Simons, the daughter of hedge fund billionaire, James Simons. Simons gave Chesa Boudin $25,000. If you sense a trend here, that’s because there is a trend here. Scratch the surface and you’ll find that the destruction of California has been paid for by the very rich, the guilt-wracked heirs of inherited fortunes have guilt-racked heirs of inherited fortunes have long been a major force in left-wing politics, of course. The more they despise themselves, the more left wing they tend to be. What’s new is the burgeoning coastal billionaire class.
Now, people who amass fortunes incrementally over time through hard work and innovation typically have conservative political instincts. But people who’ve made huge piles of quick cash in finance or technology usually do not. People like that understand they’ve hit the lottery. They can’t say that out loud, of course. They have to pretend that they earned it all fair and square, really.
But deep down, they know that’s a crock. They’re winners in an awful scam. They know that and they feel bad about it. So, to salve their consciences, they fund radical causes designed to destroy the very society that made them rich — sending money to Chesa Boudin is the equivalent of paying a secular indulgence. You pay the price in the end.
This is how California got Proposition 47 passed in 2014. Prop 47 downgraded a long list of felonies to misdemeanors, including any theft of under $950. Since it became law, crime has surged in California. On the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, for example, violent crime has more than doubled. Murders, assaults, robberies and rapes have jumped by 115 percent.
The city of San Francisco, meanwhile, now has more property crime than any place its size in this country. Why? Well, because criminals understand the rules. They know they can’t be punished. Authorities in Sacramento say that members of shoplifting rings bring calculators into stores to make sure their thefts come in under $950. The law allows them to steal with impunity.
It’s grotesque, and it’s incredibly destructive. How did it happen? You know the answer. The moneyed left bought the election.
George Soros put in almost $2 million behind Proposition 47.
B. Wayne Hughes Junior, son of a billionaire storage tycoon, gave another $1.2 million. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings chipped in a quarter million, as did venture capitalist Nick Pritzker. Former Facebook president Sean Parker gave $100,000 to the effort. Cari Tuna, wife of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, gave $150,000.
Moskovitz went to Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg, a fact that allowed him to become a billionaire while still in his 20s. Moskovitz and his wife are now reportedly worth more than $12 billion. Now, if that sounds like a lot, possibly even an obscene amount for a 35-year-old who’s never really done anything, Moskovitz agrees with you or pretends to agree, anyway.
“Cari and I are stewards of this capital,” he told Business Insider a few years ago. “It’s pooled up right around us now, but it belongs to the world.” Of course, just because all that money belongs to the world doesn’t mean the world gets to decide how it is spent. Dustin and Cari Moskovitz make that call. Like so many in our ruling class, they could care less about what happens to ordinary people in the normal parts of America.
Thanks to the projects they fund, the country’s streets are dirtier and more dangerous. But within the gated tranquility of their world, the Moskovitzes feel like incredibly good people — empathetic, virtuous, enlightened people. And that’s what matters. In fact, it’s all that matters.
Meanwhile, it is human nature for people to prefer the company of others who speak their language, share their values and understand their jokes.
Tucker Carlson discussed the topic of diversity recently with Heritage Foundation scholar David Azzerad:
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: Elections in this country used to be based on issues, or that was the common agreement anyway. But what would happen to a country in which power is allocated on the basis of qualities you couldn’t control? Things you were born with. Your skin color, your gender, your genetics. That would be called identity politics.
The Heritage Foundation’s David Azerrad has been studying this question, and he joins us tonight with the answer. David, thank you very much for coming on. So what happens to a country that is run with identity politics?
DAVID AZERRAD: In the short term, it kind of works because the majority group doesn’t play along with it, and kind of keeps quiet and does the public self-flagellation to atone for the sins of the father.
But in the long run, it’s untenable. How much longer until whites say, “Why don’t we get to have an identity?” And the day that happens, then you get some form of Yugoslavia or Rwanda, you get Balkanization and you get ethnic tribalism, groups fighting against one another.
So it’s tenable in the short term. I just don’t see how you can still have a country in the long run with identity politics. And the great paradox is, it may well create namely white nationalism, what they claim to oppose today.
CARLSON: What if there’s any question, and I think that’s really something to fear, just to be really clear because of the results. So have you ever seen — so Stacey Abrams, but it’s not — I don’t mean to pick on Stacey Abrams, she represents much larger group of people who tell us the same thing, which is, “This works. We must embrace it.”
The question is, does it work? Have you — you studied this question extensively, you’re a scholar. Is there a country in which this way of looking at the world has produced a stable nation?
AZERRAD: I mean, you hit on it in your previous remarks. Diversity is not a strength in politics. I mean, a strength in politics is unity. I mean, if you want to have a strong united country, you want the citizens to be united. Now, we’ll have a free country. You don’t want everyone to be the same. You need to make an allowance for pluralism.
But it is not good to promote division. I am fine having hyphenated Americans, what bothers me is if you emphasize the part that comes before the American part. I think you can recognize hyphenated Americans. But you emphasize the commonalities, the shared history, the shared devotion to Republican principals, the love the country, and if there is one thing that identity politics is very strong on is making you hate your country, making you despise your past, making you hate your fellow countrymen.
CARLSON: Last question, if you and I hate each other over qualities we were born with and can’t change, how is our division ever reconciled? How do we fix the problem between us?
AZERRAD: I don’t think it can be. That’s why I prefer the left we used to have in America, and Bernie Sanders is kind of the last gasp of it that looked at class divisions, and you still get pretty contentious politics with class divisions. But there is upward and downward mobility. You can’t immediately tell which class you belong to. You can still have a country with progressive class-based politics. You cannot have a country with identity politics, and I should add, open borders.
CARLSON: David Azerrad, very smart analysis. Thank you for that.
Whatever happened to liberals with sensible ideas about the limits to growth on our little planet? They [...]]]>
The new issue of The Social Contract is online and has an interesting topic: “When Liberals Were For Sensible Policies – on the Environment, Immigration, and the National Interest.” Be sure to check out the many excellent articles.
Whatever happened to liberals with sensible ideas about the limits to growth on our little planet? They certainly are an endangered species today when the far left Democrats demand open borders to America even as the world edges toward eight billion residents — it’s crazy.
Can you recognize the liberal luminaries of the past and present pictured on the cover? From the top going clockwise they are: Edward O. Wilson, David Brower, Garrett Hardin, Gov. Richard Lamm, George F. Kennan, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, and Rep. Barbara Jordan.
My article begins with a somewhat nostalgic reminiscence of Latin American revolutionaries of earlier decades who chose to fight for their own countries rather than illegally immigrate to the US to steal jobs and benefits. Even commie dictators are worth our attention, since bad examples definitely have a place in today’s environment where college students are trained to believe in the socialist model — hey kids, how about an educational semester in Venezuela? Be sure to pack a lunch.
]]>Liberal Policy Switches – From Latin American governance to environmental protection, the reversals are dizzying, By Brenda Walker, The Social Contract, Winter 2019
Is consistency a desirable trait in deeply felt values that form policy positions? You would think so, but the leftward political contingent appears to be unburdened by such moral steadiness, preferring instead the pursuit of power by any means necessary. A major example of inconstancy has been the immigration issue, where lefties once supported nation states around the world, but now side with the hated globalist corporations in pursuing a borderless planet. Go figure.
Confession: I’m beginning to miss Fidel Castro. He may have been a mass-murdering commie dictator, but he at least chose to fight for his own country rather than immigrating for the easy freebies in America. He had a reputation of being a decent baseball player with a wicked curveball, so he had a shot at an illustrious career among the evil capitalists. Harper’s magazine reported in 1989 that he had turned down an offer to play for the Giants. That claim has doubters in some quarters, but the Internet certainly has plenty of photos showing Fidel playing ball.
In contrast, the choice to stay and fight for one’s homeland is rarely made today. The earlier Latin American tradition of revolution against tyranny is just plain gone, with the modern ease of transportation and iPhones to make travel easier for illegal aliens. Are you a Latin American wishing for “a better life” immediately? Just hop a north-bound train or join a well-funded caravan to invade the United States to steal jobs, education, and welfare. Illegal immigration is the acceptable ticket to personal betterment in the modern twenty-first century — according to the left-bent mind at least.
It’s obvious that liberals are fine with that change. The idea of Hispanic national self-determination through political and revolutionary struggle has disappeared from public consciousness. And while liberals love to fling the “racism” charge against Americans who reject open borders, it is genuinely racist to believe brown people must be rescued from their own nations via immigration to the United States. The rescue fantasy is usually a flashing neon light of liberal virtue signaling. (Plus, the fact that most amnestied Hispanic illegals eventually vote Democrat may be a reason the D-party panders to them.)
It is not cruel to limit immigration to America. In fact, ending it entirely would have a positive effect on the Third World. If there were no comfy welfare state to which to immigrate, local people across the planet would get serious about building reform at home.
Looking at the recent past, it’s curious how strongly felt beliefs of left-wingers are so apt to change over time, sometimes doing a 180 to fit the political winds (or the preferences of funders).
A few decades back, leftist revolutionaries were the totally cool icons among Democrat elites in America, to whom Fidel Castro and other Latin insurgents were great heroes. The late Tom Wolfe described “Radical Chic” where wealthy New York liberals celebrated revolutionaries like the Black Panthers and Castro.
Radical chic has more recently expanded into “terrorist chic” among the open-borders left, because murderous jihadists might want to immigrate here and vote Democrat. Muslims with vague unscreenable backgrounds were certainly no problem for the Obama administration. In 2016, his administration announced it would admit 30 percent more refugees in the next year, with the target total being 110,000. The Obama White House brought in 10,000 Syrians in 2016 despite the obvious danger of admitting persons with no background files.
Times have definitely changed. Liberals once espoused the idea of homegrown reform where brown people took their destinies into their own hands through armed revolution and political activity.
And the struggle was real. In 1987, Foreign Affairs began an article titled “Revolution in Central America?” by noting: “On President Reagan’s first inauguration day [1980], revolution appeared to be spreading across Central America. The Sandinistas were consolidating their hold over Nicaragua and guerrillas in El Salvador and Guatemala were on the move.” (Continues)
New York Post opinion writer Karol Markowicz wants to end that silence, and she appeared on Fox News on Tuesday to discuss, following her earlier op-ed.
One bit of good news on the one-way violence is that the Trump supporters who got no protection from the San Jose police as they were being pelted with eggs and beaten up can now sue the department.
Members of Congress are certainly on the front lines for incoming violent terrorism, but regular citizens are also victims of the liberal mob.
Below, an older man with a MAGA hat was pepper-sprayed by masked antifa thugs in Berkeley as police refused to intervene.
Here’s Markowicz’ opinion piece questioning leftist violence and providing an incomplete list of victims:
]]>When will Democrats condemn the left’s growing turn to violence?, By Karol Markowicz, New York Post, July 29, 2018
Last week, a man was indicted for threatening to kill Republican Rep. Diane Black. “They were serious enough threats that the grand jury did take action,” Black said in an interview with Fox News.
It’s been barely a year since the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise during congressional baseball practice, and the story of the threats to Black was barely a blip in our news.
The shooting last June should have been a wake-up call for our political discourse, but we’ve only been on a further slide since then.
This month, Black’s fellow GOP congressman Jason Lewis says his daughters were threatened. A man threatened to chop up Sen. Rand Paul’s family with an ax.
Another was arrested outside the campaign office of Rep. Lee Zeldin for threatening to kill supporters of President Trump. And the Nebraska GOP office had bricks thrown through its windows and graffiti painted on its wall.
Last week, a guy was beaten up in Oakland after a crowd thought he was a member of the Proud Boys, a right-wing pro-Trump men’s rights group.
In September, I wrote about the perils of Nazi-punching, and how the online glee about a white supremacist being punched was misplaced and dangerous. One of my concerns was that the violence being cheered wouldn’t end with Nazis. It didn’t.
A telling incident took place this month when a group of Proud Boys wearing MAGA hats got into a fight at an LA bar. This LA Times quote from Josh Androsky, who led the fight against the Boys, is a stunner: “The Proud Boys say they’re not Nazis, and duh, they’re not from 1945, they’re not 100 years old. But in America, there’s a fun little thing, which is a catch-all term for right-wing racist hate groups, and it’s Nazi.”
He added: “The First Amendment protects the right to peaceably assemble. There’s no such thing as a peaceable assembly of Nazis. Just by virtue of their ideology, they are causing harm.”
Absurd. Even actual 100-year-old Nazis are protected by the First Amendment. Where are the prominent liberals to tell their supporters that, no, they can’t actually punch anyone they disagree with?
Before the election, there was a lot of concern that Donald Trump would lose and his supporters would take to the streets. Quartz magazine quoted Trump supporters who threatened “revolution” if he lost. An LA Times op-ed by Doyle McManus found Trump fans saying there’d be a “civil war.”
Since the election, there have been similar pieces about what Trump supporters would do if he were to get impeached or if he lost in 2020.
But there’s been very little exploration of the continuing violent outbursts by people unhappy that Donald Trump is president. The inevitable march from confronting cabinet members in restaurants to confronting ordinary supporters of the president continues apace.
Where is the Democratic leadership? What would their response be if the party ID were reversed? And why isn’t the media hounding them for answers?
(Continues)
The big name opponent was amnesty super-hack Rep Luis Gutierrez and he declared “All the food you eat, all the vegetables you eat [...]]]>
Fearless Ann Coulter entered Bill Maher’s liberal lion’s den on Friday to discuss her new book Adios America. It was a fair fight — three illogical liberals versus one immigration fact reciter.
The big name opponent was amnesty super-hack Rep Luis Gutierrez and he declared “All the food you eat, all the vegetables you eat — they are all picked by foreign labor.”
Classic!
To which Coulter answered, “There are machines that pick strawberries.”
Hint to Ann: there are many smart machines coming on that will soon make humans obsolete for millions of jobs, so the need for immigrant workers is ZERO.
The howling audience reminded me of Coulter’s excellent book Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America. Their noisy shouting made it hard to hear everything Coulter said, which was of course the idea.
A few good lines were discernible:
ANN COULTER: The point at issue is should america’s immigration policy be used to benefit the people already here or should it be benefiting Pakistani pushcart operators, illiterate in their own language — never mind ours — who come here, go on welfare, commit terrorism, engage in crimes. Why wouldn’t you look across the world like a sports team does to get the creme de la creme?
She also agreed with a black woman, former MSNBC host Joy Reid, who said that a new slave class is being imported via immigration for cheap labor, with Coulter noting her book “is far more of an attack on Republicans, on big business, on the Chamber of Commerce.”
]]>It was expected. California is now a one-party state, run by and for liberal Democrats and their favorite clients. There is no opposition party to block a policy that is clearly [...]]]>
In California, the Democrat Governor Jerry Brown has done the evil deed of signing into law legislation licensing foreign lawbreakers lurking in the state.
It was expected. California is now a one-party state, run by and for liberal Democrats and their favorite clients. There is no opposition party to block a policy that is clearly contrary to public safety and order.
Protecting public safety is supposed to be a top responsibility of government, but not so much for California liberals.
Libs maintain that licensing lawbreaking foreigners will make roadways safer because the aliens will have to get insurance. Actually in 2003 New Mexico enacted DLs for illegal aliens in the hope that they would become responsible drivers and purchase car insurance. The experiment failed of course, and NM remains one of the most uninsured states.
Also many illegal aliens don’t read English, which makes them more dangerous drivers, obviously. Sure they can recognize a Stop sign, but anything more complex will be a blur to them.
Naturally the AP has an upbeat presentation including a lawbreaking success ending:
]]>California gives immigrants driver’s licenses, Associated Press, October 3, 2013
LOS ANGELES (AP) — California on Thursday joined the growing list of states that allow immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally to obtain driver’s licenses — a measure supported not only by Latino activists but by police chiefs and insurance authorities.
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill in front of a cheering crowd of immigrants and their supporters, predicting other parts of the country will follow the example set by the nation’s most populous state.
The licenses, which are expected to become available no later than January 2015, will carry a special designation on the front and a notice stating that the document is not official federal identification and cannot be used to prove eligibility for employment or public benefits.
“This is only the first step,” Brown said outside City Hall in Los Angeles. “When a million people without their documents drive legally and with respect in the state of California, the rest of this country will have to stand up and take notice. No longer are undocumented people in the shadows.”
Ten other states have enacted measures to give driver’s licenses to immigrants in the country illegally, many of them in the past year, according to the National Immigration Law Center.
Some of those states issue only one kind of license. But laws in many states, including Oregon and Colorado, create distinctions between the license given to immigrants and the one issued to other drivers.
Some immigrant advocates initially raised concerns that a different license in California would contribute to racial profiling. The new law bans discrimination based on the license and states that the license cannot be used as a basis for arresting someone for being in the U.S. illegally.
State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said he believes the marker is insignificant in relation to what the license will do for immigrants.
“Those distinctions mean little to hard-working people who simply want to drive to work or drive their kids to school or soccer practice without fear,” he said.
State officials estimate 1.4 million drivers will apply for licenses under the law. The measure, written by Democratic Assemblyman Luis Alejo, will grant licenses to anyone who passes the written and road tests, regardless of immigration status.
State and local officials touted the importance of getting immigrants properly trained and tested so that they know how to drive and are familiar with the rules of the road in California.
“That’s what this bill is about, making the streets of this state safer,” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. The bill had the backing of the state’s Police Chiefs Association and insurance authorities.
It isn’t clear whether entities such as local government offices, libraries or banks will accept the license as identification.
Over the past two decades, immigrant advocates have pushed to get licenses in California. The effort took on more urgency in recent years as immigrants caught driving without a license began seeing their cars impounded and wound up being screened by federal immigration authorities for deportation.
For years, former state lawmaker and current Los Angeles City Councilman Gil Cedillo introduced the license bill, but the measure failed to get enough votes or was vetoed or repealed.
The bill is one of several immigrant-friendly measures passed by the Legislature this year, including overtime pay for domestic workers and an effort to scale back collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials.
Brown has enjoyed strong support among Latino voters, whose numbers are growing in California. On the steps of City Hall, scores of immigrant rights activists chanted “champion” in Spanish at the mention of his name.
He urged lawmakers to move forward on more sweeping immigration reform on Capitol Hill, where an overhaul has stalled.
Ismael Salvador, a 63-year-old factory worker from El Salvador, turned out to see the bill-signing. He said the change will radically alter the lives of his two daughters, who are in the country illegally.
One risks driving every morning to her job as a lunch truck cook, and the other cleans houses and relies on rides because she is afraid to get behind the wheel, he said.