Month: December 2018

Don’t mess with United States Marines — even if they’ve been out of the service for a while.

That’s the lesson that one would-be robber found out the hard way in Pennsylvania, after he made the mistake of pointing a gun at a retired combat veteran.

According to WJAC News, a man entered a bar in Altoona in the early morning hours on Tuesday. His plan was to rob the place, but he didn’t count on the bartender being a retired Marine who was not in the mood to be a victim.

Instead of handing over cash, the veteran — who is not being identified — fought the criminal and disarmed him. Then the Marine bashed the thug with his own gun.

“Police said the two got into a struggle, and one round was fired from the gun. Neither of them was hit by the bullet, but police said they believe the suspect has obvious facial injuries from being hit with the gun,” WJAC reported.

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Incredible video from the bar’s surveillance cameras captured the incident, and shows the veteran making a courageous lunge for control of the gun. It may have been an extremely bold move, but it worked.

A second angle from the security footage shows the Marine holding the criminal at gunpoint in front of, appropriately enough, a “USA” poster on the side of the bar.

However, the failed robber did manage to flee on foot.

“According to police, the would-be robber got away and fled on foot northbound across Maple Ave. A blood trail led police to the backyard of a home on not far from the bar,” the local news station reported.

The gun used in the crime was recovered, and police said it came back as stolen from several months ago.

“Police said the man was last seen wearing a blue winter jacket, blue winter hat, jeans and a gray/red plaid scarf that covered most of his face. Police said he is 5 feet 7 inches tall and 180 pounds with an Afro-style hair cut,” the station continued.

There are a few important points from this incident. The first is that while it worked, taking on an armed person who was demanding cash was a very risky move. The fact that several rounds were fired in the struggle shows how quickly this tactic could have gone sour, but thankfully the veteran walked away unscathed.

RELATED: Carjacker Ends Up in Literal Gun Fight After Jumping into the Wrong Car

Which brings us to the second point: The bartender here would have had many more options had he been legally armed. Interestingly, Pennslyvania is one of the few states that does permit concealed carry in bars, which would have made this a viable option. At the same time, the thug’s stolen gun was already illegal, making it clear that once again, criminals don’t follow laws.

Self defense is a human right, whether it takes place at home, in the street, or behind a bar. Luckily, the good guy got to go home, and hopefully the criminal will be in handcuffs soon.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Does the United States have the money for a border wall? Opponents of President Donald Trump — both Democrat and Republican — insist not, but the numbers tell a different story.

On Friday, CNS News Editor-in-Chief Terence P. Jeffrey pointed out a staggering statistic: Despite constant foot-dragging in Congress, the sum requested by Trump for the southern border security wall is just a drop in the bucket compared to how much the nation spends on food stamps.

“The federal government spent more money on the food stamp program in October, which was the first month of fiscal 2019, than President Donald Trump now wants the Congress to approve for the border wall for the entirety of fiscal 2019,” he wrote.

Sure enough, information from the Department of the Treasury confirmed that the federal government spent $5,892,000,000 on food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

And that was just for one month.

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“In November, according to the statement for that month, the federal government spent another $5,428,000,000 on the food stamp program, bringing the total so far for fiscal 2019 (after only two months) to $11,320,000,000 — or an average of $5,660,000,000 per month,” Jeffrey explained.

All told, over $68 billion was spent on the food stamp program during all of fiscal year 2018.

But the amount Trump requested to fund the border wall? About $5.7 billion for the entire year, or the equivalent of one month of SNAP payments.

“That is $181,643,000 less than the federal government spent on the food stamp program in the month of October alone and about one twelfth (or 8.3 percent) of the amount the government spent on the food stamp program for all of fiscal 2018,” Jeffrey wrote.

Beginning in fiscal year 2010, the SNAP program has cost at least $65 billion annually, or an average of $5.4 billion or more monthly, according to federal government data.

These facts fly in the face of lawmakers who have repeatedly insisted that America can’t afford the wall project to safeguard the border.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called $5 billion for the wall “exorbitant” on Wednesday.

“(T)he president held out for $5 billion for his wall, at the exorbitant cost of $31 million per mile, straight from the American taxpayer’s pocket,” he declared.

Schumer did not specify how much money was acceptable when it came to securing the nation he swore an oath to protect.

RELATED: Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Asylum Rules After Conservative Justice Flips

Money certainly doesn’t seem to be an issue for other liberals, including newly elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

When asked by reporters including CNN’s Jake Tapper to explain how America would fund her shockingly expensive college-for-all and Medicare-for-all demands, she brushed the question aside and implied that we could afford it if we wanted to.

It’s also worth pointing out that in many cases, widespread illegal immigration leads to more people on welfare, thus creating a vicious cycle. Not long ago, California became the state with the highest poverty rate in America. There’s no disputing that “sanctuary city” policies and unrestricted immigration played a major role in this situation.

As yet another excuse used by political elitists falls apart, it’s worth asking what their actual goals are.

Why are so many politicians, particularly Democrats, almost fanatical in their opposition to effective border security methods like a wall, and so focused on ramping immigration — both legal and illegal — to record levels?

The answer, most likely, is future votes. If so, that would mean that politicians are now putting their careers above law enforcement and border security, while lying about what we can afford.

That should make every American take pause.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump, declaring that his proposed rule change for border asylum will be thrown out as invalid.

Trump previously tried to restrict who can officially request asylum after entering the United States. His plan would have limited asylum for people who crossed the border illegally, and required that anybody who wanted to make this claim enter the country at an official port of entry.

According to Reuters, Chief Justice John Roberts, a generally conservative judge nominated by President George W. Bush, cast the key vote — and it was against Trump’s policy.

“Roberts, who last month rebuked Trump over his criticism of the judiciary, joined liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor against the administration,” the news wire stated.

“Trump’s two high court appointees, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, joined the two other conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, in dissent,” Reuters continued.

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The president’s push to limit who can seek asylum was triggered by the recent rush of migrants who come north via “caravans” through Central America and Mexico. Some of those caravan members recently clashed with U.S. Border Patrol after trying to enter the country illegally.

Unsurprisingly, liberals cheered the court’s decision and held it up as a major win against Trump.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to leave the asylum ban blocked will save lives and keep vulnerable families and children from persecution. We are pleased the court refused to allow the administration to short-circuit the usual appellate process,” declared Lee Gelernt from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Seeking asylum has been used recently as a sort of “back door” tactic for entering and staying in the United States.

While originally intended for people who are clearly fleeing a specific persecution — Jews escaping Nazi Germany is a classic example — many migrants have been vaguely claiming hardship because their home country has high crime and general instability.

“On Wednesday, a different judge blocked another of Trump’s asylum-related orders, this one aimed at restricting asylum claims by people citing gang or domestic violence in their home countries,” Reuters explained.

The use of asylum has also been a controversial topic because many Hispanic caravan migrants admit when interviewed that they want to enter the United States for economic or job reasons, not because they’re fleeing targeted persecution back home.

While the Supreme Court decision is certainly not the end of the border debate, it is definitely a disappointing result for Trump and many conservatives.

The ruling also raises more questions. One of the biggest centers on official ports of entry. If refugees truly qualify for asylum because of persecution, then what is the problem with asking them to show up at an official border checkpoint to begin that process?

RELATED: Federal Government Spent More on Food Stamps in 1 Month Than Trump Wants for 1 Year on Wall

Despite the frequent narratives, most conservatives are not against immigration, they’d just prefer it if people showing up followed the rules and used the front door instead of sneaking through the back window.

What the court ruling has essentially done is encourage more illegal border crossing. Asylum can now be used as a backup tactic– ignore ports of entry, cross the border illegally, and just declare asylum if you happen to get caught. It will be interesting to see how this change plays out in the coming months.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Reports of the impending massacre of Kurdish forces in Syria and the resuscitation of ISIS following the U.S. pullout of Special Forces from Syria – like those of Mark Twain’s death – appear to be greatly exaggerated.  Consider these responses from countries in the region, nations whose safety and vital interests are far more acutely impacted by events in Syria than our own.

Reuters reports:

Turkey will take over the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria as the United States withdraws its troops, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, in the latest upheaval wrought by Washington’s abrupt policy shift.

For Turkey, the step removes a source of friction with the United States.  Erdogan has long castigated his NATO ally over its support for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters against Islamic State.  Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group and an offshoot of the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), fighting for Kurdish autonomy across the border on Turkish soil.

In a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said Turkey would mobilize to fight remaining Islamic State forces in Syria and temporarily delay plans to attack Kurdish fighters in the northeast of Syria – shifts both precipitated by the American decision to withdraw.

Turkey is not the only regional power that hates and fears ISIS.  And the Kurds are not without allies besides the United States.

Kurdish PKK forces (photo credit: KurdishStruggle).

Middle East Monitor reminded us a month ago that Saudi Arabia and the UAE already have forces in Syria fighting ISIS while protecting the Kurds:

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sent military forces to areas controlled by the Kurdish YPG group in north-east Syria, Turkey’s Yenisafak newspaper reported.

The paper said the forces will be stationed with US-led coalition troops and will support its tasks with huge military enforcements as well as heavy and light weapons.

Quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the newspaper reported that a convoy of troops belonging to an Arab Gulf state recently arrived in the contact area between the Kurdish PKK/YPG and Daesh in the Deir Ez-Zor countryside.

This comes at a time when Ankara is preparing to launch an expanded military operation with the Free Syrian Army against the Kurdish PKK group in the northeast of Syria.

So the Syrian withdrawal has forestalled a potentially explosive conflict between two allies already at each other’s throats.  This should count as an immediate Trump foreign policy achievement, but don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone in the swamp to acknowledge that.  Neither Turkey nor the Saudis want a direct conflict between their forces, so they are likely to keep each other in check on the Kurds, and focus on the joint project of eradicating ISIS.

Also stepping up is Israel:

Israel will escalate its fight against Iranian-aligned forces in Syria after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday. …

“We will continue to act very aggressively against Iran’s efforts to entrench in Syria,” Netanyahu said in televised remarks, referring to an Israeli air campaign in Syria against Iranian deployments and arms transfers to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, carried out with Moscow often turning a blind eye.

“We do not intend to reduce our efforts.  We will intensify them, and I know that we do so with the full support and backing of the United States.”

Trump cited what he described as victory over Islamic State militants in Syria as warranting the U.S. withdrawal.  Israel has long tried to persuade Washington that Iran and its Shi’ite Muslim militias, sent to reinforce Damascus, pose the greater threat.

“Daesh (Islamic State) has indeed been defeated in Syria, and this is greatly thanks to America,” Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said in a statement to Reuters.

But Israel is naturally concerned that Iran will be emboldened:

Some Israeli officials have said U.S. President Donald Trump’s move, announced on Wednesday, could help Iran by removing a U.S. garrison that stems the movement of Iranian forces and weaponry into Syria from Iraq.

Israel also worries that its main ally’s exit could reduce its diplomatic leverage with Russia, the Syrian government’s big-power backer.

Israel is most concerned with Iran’s efforts to establish a land bridge through Iraq (de facto handed over to Iran as a Shiite ally by the naïve insistence on popular democracy and Obama’s pullout of U.S. forces many times the size of the U.S. forces in Syria).  But Israel now has Saudi Arabia and the UAE, armed with the latest weapons form the U.S. arsenal (as is Israel), as allies with a huge interest in preventing this.  

Of course, there are risks.  U.S. forces are no longer serving as “tripwire” hostages, so Iran may be emboldened.  But is that the best use of American lives – especially the lives of our voluntary military forces?  Young Americans sign up to defend the United States, not to serve as hostages.   

The “bipartisan foreign policy establishment” absolutely hates Trump’s withdrawal, based on the consensus that the USA must sacrifice blood and treasure wherever evildoers threaten the peace.  This consensus was forged in the wake of World War II, when the U.S. alone had the wherewithal to stand up and militarily act to guarantee the freedom of our allies and innocent countries under threat.  At that historical moment, it was communism that was aggressively expanding its domains.  In today’s world, violent jihad and China (along with its semi-vassal state North Korea) are the premier threats.  But the U.S. is no longer the sole economic colossus able to stanch the tide of tyranny.

President Trump is in the process of adjusting U.S. foreign policy to the era in which the U.S. is a global economic competitor hobbled by our role as defender of free nations, who get to freeload.  This is an unmistakable necessity, for we are locked into an economic decline relative to our competitors if we bear a vastly disproportionate burden of defense.

I share some of the concerns of the critics of the withdrawal, but I also appreciate how necessary it is to protect our own most vital interests and to persuade or force our allies to bear an appropriate share of the burden.

Reports of the impending massacre of Kurdish forces in Syria and the resuscitation of ISIS following the U.S. pullout of Special Forces from Syria – like those of Mark Twain’s death – appear to be greatly exaggerated.  Consider these responses from countries in the region, nations whose safety and vital interests are far more acutely impacted by events in Syria than our own.

Reuters reports:

Turkey will take over the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria as the United States withdraws its troops, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, in the latest upheaval wrought by Washington’s abrupt policy shift.

For Turkey, the step removes a source of friction with the United States.  Erdogan has long castigated his NATO ally over its support for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters against Islamic State.  Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group and an offshoot of the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), fighting for Kurdish autonomy across the border on Turkish soil.

In a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said Turkey would mobilize to fight remaining Islamic State forces in Syria and temporarily delay plans to attack Kurdish fighters in the northeast of Syria – shifts both precipitated by the American decision to withdraw.

Turkey is not the only regional power that hates and fears ISIS.  And the Kurds are not without allies besides the United States.

Kurdish PKK forces (photo credit: KurdishStruggle).

Middle East Monitor reminded us a month ago that Saudi Arabia and the UAE already have forces in Syria fighting ISIS while protecting the Kurds:

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sent military forces to areas controlled by the Kurdish YPG group in north-east Syria, Turkey’s Yenisafak newspaper reported.

The paper said the forces will be stationed with US-led coalition troops and will support its tasks with huge military enforcements as well as heavy and light weapons.

Quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the newspaper reported that a convoy of troops belonging to an Arab Gulf state recently arrived in the contact area between the Kurdish PKK/YPG and Daesh in the Deir Ez-Zor countryside.

This comes at a time when Ankara is preparing to launch an expanded military operation with the Free Syrian Army against the Kurdish PKK group in the northeast of Syria.

So the Syrian withdrawal has forestalled a potentially explosive conflict between two allies already at each other’s throats.  This should count as an immediate Trump foreign policy achievement, but don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone in the swamp to acknowledge that.  Neither Turkey nor the Saudis want a direct conflict between their forces, so they are likely to keep each other in check on the Kurds, and focus on the joint project of eradicating ISIS.

Also stepping up is Israel:

Israel will escalate its fight against Iranian-aligned forces in Syria after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday. …

“We will continue to act very aggressively against Iran’s efforts to entrench in Syria,” Netanyahu said in televised remarks, referring to an Israeli air campaign in Syria against Iranian deployments and arms transfers to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, carried out with Moscow often turning a blind eye.

“We do not intend to reduce our efforts.  We will intensify them, and I know that we do so with the full support and backing of the United States.”

Trump cited what he described as victory over Islamic State militants in Syria as warranting the U.S. withdrawal.  Israel has long tried to persuade Washington that Iran and its Shi’ite Muslim militias, sent to reinforce Damascus, pose the greater threat.

“Daesh (Islamic State) has indeed been defeated in Syria, and this is greatly thanks to America,” Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said in a statement to Reuters.

But Israel is naturally concerned that Iran will be emboldened:

Some Israeli officials have said U.S. President Donald Trump’s move, announced on Wednesday, could help Iran by removing a U.S. garrison that stems the movement of Iranian forces and weaponry into Syria from Iraq.

Israel also worries that its main ally’s exit could reduce its diplomatic leverage with Russia, the Syrian government’s big-power backer.

Israel is most concerned with Iran’s efforts to establish a land bridge through Iraq (de facto handed over to Iran as a Shiite ally by the naïve insistence on popular democracy and Obama’s pullout of U.S. forces many times the size of the U.S. forces in Syria).  But Israel now has Saudi Arabia and the UAE, armed with the latest weapons form the U.S. arsenal (as is Israel), as allies with a huge interest in preventing this.  

Of course, there are risks.  U.S. forces are no longer serving as “tripwire” hostages, so Iran may be emboldened.  But is that the best use of American lives – especially the lives of our voluntary military forces?  Young Americans sign up to defend the United States, not to serve as hostages.   

The “bipartisan foreign policy establishment” absolutely hates Trump’s withdrawal, based on the consensus that the USA must sacrifice blood and treasure wherever evildoers threaten the peace.  This consensus was forged in the wake of World War II, when the U.S. alone had the wherewithal to stand up and militarily act to guarantee the freedom of our allies and innocent countries under threat.  At that historical moment, it was communism that was aggressively expanding its domains.  In today’s world, violent jihad and China (along with its semi-vassal state North Korea) are the premier threats.  But the U.S. is no longer the sole economic colossus able to stanch the tide of tyranny.

President Trump is in the process of adjusting U.S. foreign policy to the era in which the U.S. is a global economic competitor hobbled by our role as defender of free nations, who get to freeload.  This is an unmistakable necessity, for we are locked into an economic decline relative to our competitors if we bear a vastly disproportionate burden of defense.

I share some of the concerns of the critics of the withdrawal, but I also appreciate how necessary it is to protect our own most vital interests and to persuade or force our allies to bear an appropriate share of the burden.

Now that the government is going to be partially shut down over the spiteful Democrats and their refusal to fund the border wall that is essential to curtail illegal immigration, a paraplegic veteran’s GoFundMe page that allows individual donors to kick money into the kitty to fund the wall continues to grow.

As of this writing on Saturday morning, the ““We The People Will Fund The Wall” campaign has surpassed $14 million and continues to climb as patriotic Americans continue to make a symbolic gesture against a corrupt Congress and its corporate paymasters who rely on a limitless supply of illegal aliens for cheap labor and to keep wages suppressed.

Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage started the GoFundMe account with the expressed intent of “giving the people the power.”

You can throw a few bucks toward the effort HERE.

Consumer sentiment rose in December to a level so high for 2018 only two other periods have beat it in the past fifty-eight years, according to the University of Michigan.

“If the current expansion lasts past mid-2019, as is likely based on current data, it will become the longest expansion ever recorded,” the Friday University of Michigan release stated.

U.S. Consumer sentiment hits top three highest periods of the past 58 years according to University of Michigan pic.twitter.com/goaFGB4LZL

— Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) December 22, 2018

December consumer sentiment hit 98.3 percent, according to University of Michigan numbers released Friday. The number represents a 2.5 percent increase since last year and the highest level since the year 2000.

Only two periods of time, 1964-65 and 1997-2000, were higher than it was in 2018, which has hit a Sentiment Index average of 98.4. The University of Michigan explained the two prior period highs “correspond[ed] to the two longest prior expansions since the mid 1800’s.”

“While the plunge in stock prices has recently garnered the most attention in the national press, consumers have focused more on their concerns about income and job prospects,” the release stated. 70 percent of those surveyed “anticipated no increase in unemployment in the year ahead.”

Only 12 percent expressed concern over falling stock prices as a primary economic concern. The release went on to state, “it has been news of changing job and income prospects that have been of the greatest concern to consumers.”

Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook

In an extraordinary investigative piece on how ballot-harvesting works by Steve Miller, published on Real Clear Investigations, we learn an amazing amount of information about how ballot-harvesting works and why it’s so closely connected to election fraud, skewing elections in directions they normally wouldn’t go.  The must-read piece is focused on how Texas is dealing with the seedy issue, enforcing the law, prosecuting more than twice as many cases of electoral fraud as California, even hampered as Texas is by weak penalties for violators.  But a little detail stands out much deeper into the piece: ballot-harvesting, which is at the root of considerable fraud of all kinds, is a practice specifically borrowed from Latin America, with an impressive Latino analyst, K.B. Forbes, who has electoral experience in both countries, citing Mexico.  Here’s the passage:

The practice has its roots in Latin America, said K.B. Forbes, a political consultant and Hispanic activist who has served as an elections observer in Sonora, Mexico.  ”In the Latin culture, they have colonias, which is ‘little colony,’ literally,” he said.  ”In these, they sometimes have the equivalent of a precinct boss, and that’s how people move up.  The [politiqueras] deliver the vote and when the candidate moves in, the theory is that they get a good post inside the government.”

That brings up California, where ballot-harvesting is perfectly legal, and normal voters have to wonder how the heck that happened.  Ballot-harvesting has been a disaster for Republicans in California, with all conservatives now shut out from any representation in once red Orange County.  Most congressional elections there showed Republican candidates in the lead on election night in the last midterm, but all of them flipped to Democrats as the Democrat-led ballot-harvesting brought in votes and votes and votes from supposed precincts, harvested by their political operatives, until the result went the other way.  (This, by the way, didn’t happen in districts where Democrats held a small lead.  Nothing flipped in their cases, and ballots did not keep rolling in.)

If ballot-harvesting is a practice imported from Mexican politics, what does that say about California politics, whose legislators would embrace Mexican electoral practices over the U.S. standard?  As I mentioned earlier, Mexico has been called “a perfect dicatorship” by none other than Nobel Prize-winning literary lion Mario Vargas Llosa, owing to the continuous power of the Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional (or PRI), which, up until a decade or two ago, had a hammerlock monopoly on Mexican politics, winning every single election in what was then a one-party state.  That’s a system so bad that people emigrated illegally from that country to get away from it.  Now, the cultural practice is right there waiting for them in California, albeit, virtually nowhere else.

And like the PRI’s Mexican electoral practice of ballot-harvesting, it’s noteworthy that the ruling Democrats of California also are famous for doling out the goodies to the loyal voters.  They’ve promised amazing things to California’s illegal alien population, with the latest thing free heath care.  California’s insurance commissioner, the respected non-partisan Steve Poizner, was, conveniently, ballot-harvested out of office after an election-night lead several days after the midterms by utterly leftist Democrat Ricardo Lara, who openly declared his support and big plans for free health care for illegals.  He’s tried it before in the Legislature, and now he’s going to do it through the Executive.  California’s incoming governor, of course, is all in for the goody-slinging.  In Mexico, they used to pass out bags of beans for votes.  In California, the prizes are considerably higher, and they go well beyond free health care.  I’ve already noted the weird similarities between how California is run and PRI-style politics here.

Any wonder California is going way out of its way to welcome illegal aliens?  ”You’re all welcome here,” as Gov. Jerry Brown famously said.  California already hosts a quarter of the nation’s illegals, and with middle-class families now moving out due to high living costs and punitive taxation, the California PRI likes new bodies coming in who have a lot of needs, which keeps the congressional seats numerous and the federal funds flowing.

It all makes a normal person wonder about the weird closeness of California officials and their Mexican counterparts, too.  Newsom has already paid a visit to Mexico to discuss the caravan with the Mexican government in Mexico City (not Tijuana, where he would have gotten an earful from the generally conservative and more dissident-oriented Tijuana locals), and he has declared he plans to withdraw National Guard troops from the U.S. border.  With his party now embracing the PRI’s style of governance and having some unnaturally close ties to Mexican officials (I’ve seen it myself at Los Angeles functions as a guest of the Mexican government), it looks like a growing merger of Mexican and California politics.

Mexico knows how bad the system is, and its citizens did rebel against it with a Trump-like leftist president, Andrés Manuel López-Obrador, who won on a vow to end corruption.  One can safely take that as a sign that Mexicans are trying to move away from that kind of politics, which would include ballot-harvesting.  California, on the other hand, is moving toward it, embracing what Mexico is trying to reject.  That speaks pretty poorly for the sorry state of affairs in California.  It’s great only for the rulers and those they patronize, until the money runs out.

Until then, clarification about California’s Mexico borrowings needs to stand as an incentive to other states about what not to do.

Image credit: Carlos Manuel Citalán Marroquín, via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

In an extraordinary investigative piece on how ballot-harvesting works by Steve Miller, published on Real Clear Investigations, we learn an amazing amount of information about how ballot-harvesting works and why it’s so closely connected to election fraud, skewing elections in directions they normally wouldn’t go.  The must-read piece is focused on how Texas is dealing with the seedy issue, enforcing the law, prosecuting more than twice as many cases of electoral fraud as California, even hampered as Texas is by weak penalties for violators.  But a little detail stands out much deeper into the piece: ballot-harvesting, which is at the root of considerable fraud of all kinds, is a practice specifically borrowed from Latin America, with an impressive Latino analyst, K.B. Forbes, who has electoral experience in both countries, citing Mexico.  Here’s the passage:

The practice has its roots in Latin America, said K.B. Forbes, a political consultant and Hispanic activist who has served as an elections observer in Sonora, Mexico.  ”In the Latin culture, they have colonias, which is ‘little colony,’ literally,” he said.  ”In these, they sometimes have the equivalent of a precinct boss, and that’s how people move up.  The [politiqueras] deliver the vote and when the candidate moves in, the theory is that they get a good post inside the government.”

That brings up California, where ballot-harvesting is perfectly legal, and normal voters have to wonder how the heck that happened.  Ballot-harvesting has been a disaster for Republicans in California, with all conservatives now shut out from any representation in once red Orange County.  Most congressional elections there showed Republican candidates in the lead on election night in the last midterm, but all of them flipped to Democrats as the Democrat-led ballot-harvesting brought in votes and votes and votes from supposed precincts, harvested by their political operatives, until the result went the other way.  (This, by the way, didn’t happen in districts where Democrats held a small lead.  Nothing flipped in their cases, and ballots did not keep rolling in.)

If ballot-harvesting is a practice imported from Mexican politics, what does that say about California politics, whose legislators would embrace Mexican electoral practices over the U.S. standard?  As I mentioned earlier, Mexico has been called “a perfect dicatorship” by none other than Nobel Prize-winning literary lion Mario Vargas Llosa, owing to the continuous power of the Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional (or PRI), which, up until a decade or two ago, had a hammerlock monopoly on Mexican politics, winning every single election in what was then a one-party state.  That’s a system so bad that people emigrated illegally from that country to get away from it.  Now, the cultural practice is right there waiting for them in California, albeit, virtually nowhere else.

And like the PRI’s Mexican electoral practice of ballot-harvesting, it’s noteworthy that the ruling Democrats of California also are famous for doling out the goodies to the loyal voters.  They’ve promised amazing things to California’s illegal alien population, with the latest thing free heath care.  California’s insurance commissioner, the respected non-partisan Steve Poizner, was, conveniently, ballot-harvested out of office after an election-night lead several days after the midterms by utterly leftist Democrat Ricardo Lara, who openly declared his support and big plans for free health care for illegals.  He’s tried it before in the Legislature, and now he’s going to do it through the Executive.  California’s incoming governor, of course, is all in for the goody-slinging.  In Mexico, they used to pass out bags of beans for votes.  In California, the prizes are considerably higher, and they go well beyond free health care.  I’ve already noted the weird similarities between how California is run and PRI-style politics here.

Any wonder California is going way out of its way to welcome illegal aliens?  ”You’re all welcome here,” as Gov. Jerry Brown famously said.  California already hosts a quarter of the nation’s illegals, and with middle-class families now moving out due to high living costs and punitive taxation, the California PRI likes new bodies coming in who have a lot of needs, which keeps the congressional seats numerous and the federal funds flowing.

It all makes a normal person wonder about the weird closeness of California officials and their Mexican counterparts, too.  Newsom has already paid a visit to Mexico to discuss the caravan with the Mexican government in Mexico City (not Tijuana, where he would have gotten an earful from the generally conservative and more dissident-oriented Tijuana locals), and he has declared he plans to withdraw National Guard troops from the U.S. border.  With his party now embracing the PRI’s style of governance and having some unnaturally close ties to Mexican officials (I’ve seen it myself at Los Angeles functions as a guest of the Mexican government), it looks like a growing merger of Mexican and California politics.

Mexico knows how bad the system is, and its citizens did rebel against it with a Trump-like leftist president, Andrés Manuel López-Obrador, who won on a vow to end corruption.  One can safely take that as a sign that Mexicans are trying to move away from that kind of politics, which would include ballot-harvesting.  California, on the other hand, is moving toward it, embracing what Mexico is trying to reject.  That speaks pretty poorly for the sorry state of affairs in California.  It’s great only for the rulers and those they patronize, until the money runs out.

Until then, clarification about California’s Mexico borrowings needs to stand as an incentive to other states about what not to do.

Image credit: Carlos Manuel Citalán Marroquín, via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.