53percenter's Blog

Joe Biden wants you to be miserable when you vote. This is not an unusual wish for out-of-office politicians. Miserable people tend to vote against the incumbent.

Earlier this year, Joe Biden faced daunting odds. The economy was stronger than it had ever been, ISIS had been defeated, North Korea had been silenced, Iran had been cowed, bad trade deals had been renegotiated, and the border wall was being built. People were happy.

Then the China virus hit. It was a godsend to Democrats. It’s real. It can kill you. And best of all, it has stopped Trump’s huge rallies.

Naturally, Democrats want the virus to appear as deadly as possible for as long as possible. They’ve done a terrific job of it. They (including their supporters in the press and the bureaucracy) have kept the China virus in the headlines for the past five months by exaggerating its effects (overstating the numbers of infections and deaths), maximizing its inconvenience (shutting down businesses, schools, and sports), and mandating a constant visual reminder of the ever-present danger (masks for everybody all the time).

Things were going well for them, politically speaking, until the unruly wing of the Democrat Party saw an opportunity in the death of George Floyd and decided to flex their muscles. No one realized how weak the mainstream Democrat Party had become, or how powerful Black Lives Matter and Antifa had become, until they destroyed downtown Minneapolis.

Until then, they had done little more than make nuisances of themselves. Antifa had pulled down statues, broken windows, and disrupted traffic. Black Lives Matter had marched through cities shouting: “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!” and “Pigs in a blanket. Fry ‘em like bacon!” Small stuff with little lasting damage, so far as Democrats were concerned. They decided to countenance the violence and threats with silence. And that was when they missed their best chance to distance themselves from all the mayhem that would follow.

The riots that started in Minneapolis quickly spread to Seattle, Chicago, New York, Portland, and dozens of other Democrat-run cities. Local authorities didn’t know how to react. After all, the rioters were presumptive Democrat voters.

Public Domain

Democrat mayors and governors decided to dance with the devil. They would side with the rioters and try to minimize all the damage they did – political, not physical damage — with words. They declared the riots to be “mostly peaceful protests.” They described the anarchy as an expression of “love.” And they announced that any intervention by the Feds would itself be an unprovoked act of aggression. (I am reminded of a story Abraham Lincoln related in his Cooper Union speech: “A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!’”) 

In this third month of the siege of American cities, nary a word of criticism has passed Democrat lips. Liberal media continue to characterize the riots as righteous exercises of our First Amendment if they mention them at all. In a conversation with Joe Biden, President Obama described the mayhem as “…an extraordinary mobilization across the country.”

Black Lives Matter and Antifa seem to have thoroughly cowed the Democrat Party. Whatever they wish, Democrats shall do. You want us to defund the police? Sure. Paint BLM “murals” on city streets? Hand me a roller. Don’t want us to prosecute rioters? Wouldn’t think of it. Looting is payback for long-overdue reparations? Well, yeah. Okay.

Democrats must surely worry about the optics of bowing to the rioters’ will. But they worry even more about what might happen if they should refuse to do as BLM and Antifa demand. War might break out between the unruly and ruling wings of the Democrat Party, and that could cause them to lose not just the presidency, but possibly both houses of Congress as well. They calculate that their better option is to pay lip service to the gangs and keep the chaos out of the news. Make the pandemic the big story. That’ll keep the voters terrified.

Mark Twain once observed: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Some of us will recall familiar strains from a half century ago. In 1968 we were beset by a pandemic (the Hong Kong flu), saw riots engulf the nation (incited by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.), and held a presidential election between Vice President Hubert Humphrey and former Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon campaigned on the theme of “law and order,” and he won. 

Joe Biden wants you to be miserable when you vote. This is not an unusual wish for out-of-office politicians. Miserable people tend to vote against the incumbent.

Earlier this year, Joe Biden faced daunting odds. The economy was stronger than it had ever been, ISIS had been defeated, North Korea had been silenced, Iran had been cowed, bad trade deals had been renegotiated, and the border wall was being built. People were happy.

Then the China virus hit. It was a godsend to Democrats. It’s real. It can kill you. And best of all, it has stopped Trump’s huge rallies.

Naturally, Democrats want the virus to appear as deadly as possible for as long as possible. They’ve done a terrific job of it. They (including their supporters in the press and the bureaucracy) have kept the China virus in the headlines for the past five months by exaggerating its effects (overstating the numbers of infections and deaths), maximizing its inconvenience (shutting down businesses, schools, and sports), and mandating a constant visual reminder of the ever-present danger (masks for everybody all the time).

Things were going well for them, politically speaking, until the unruly wing of the Democrat Party saw an opportunity in the death of George Floyd and decided to flex their muscles. No one realized how weak the mainstream Democrat Party had become, or how powerful Black Lives Matter and Antifa had become, until they destroyed downtown Minneapolis.

Until then, they had done little more than make nuisances of themselves. Antifa had pulled down statues, broken windows, and disrupted traffic. Black Lives Matter had marched through cities shouting: “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!” and “Pigs in a blanket. Fry ‘em like bacon!” Small stuff with little lasting damage, so far as Democrats were concerned. They decided to countenance the violence and threats with silence. And that was when they missed their best chance to distance themselves from all the mayhem that would follow.

The riots that started in Minneapolis quickly spread to Seattle, Chicago, New York, Portland, and dozens of other Democrat-run cities. Local authorities didn’t know how to react. After all, the rioters were presumptive Democrat voters.

Public Domain

Democrat mayors and governors decided to dance with the devil. They would side with the rioters and try to minimize all the damage they did – political, not physical damage — with words. They declared the riots to be “mostly peaceful protests.” They described the anarchy as an expression of “love.” And they announced that any intervention by the Feds would itself be an unprovoked act of aggression. (I am reminded of a story Abraham Lincoln related in his Cooper Union speech: “A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!’”) 

In this third month of the siege of American cities, nary a word of criticism has passed Democrat lips. Liberal media continue to characterize the riots as righteous exercises of our First Amendment if they mention them at all. In a conversation with Joe Biden, President Obama described the mayhem as “…an extraordinary mobilization across the country.”

Black Lives Matter and Antifa seem to have thoroughly cowed the Democrat Party. Whatever they wish, Democrats shall do. You want us to defund the police? Sure. Paint BLM “murals” on city streets? Hand me a roller. Don’t want us to prosecute rioters? Wouldn’t think of it. Looting is payback for long-overdue reparations? Well, yeah. Okay.

Democrats must surely worry about the optics of bowing to the rioters’ will. But they worry even more about what might happen if they should refuse to do as BLM and Antifa demand. War might break out between the unruly and ruling wings of the Democrat Party, and that could cause them to lose not just the presidency, but possibly both houses of Congress as well. They calculate that their better option is to pay lip service to the gangs and keep the chaos out of the news. Make the pandemic the big story. That’ll keep the voters terrified.

Mark Twain once observed: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Some of us will recall familiar strains from a half century ago. In 1968 we were beset by a pandemic (the Hong Kong flu), saw riots engulf the nation (incited by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.), and held a presidential election between Vice President Hubert Humphrey and former Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon campaigned on the theme of “law and order,” and he won. 

This story takes place in Texas of all places: In October 2019, Americans learned about Jeffrey Younger’s desperate fight to block his ex-wife from turning their then seven-year-old son into a girl. A jury tried to hand sole custody and decision-making over to the boy’s mother, but a judge stepped in and gave both parents an equal say, with a different judge to render a verdict over any disagreements the parents could not resolve. That second judge has now given sole decision-making power to the mother, who wants to turn her son into a girl. To add insult to injury, the judge is making the father pay.

To realize how disturbing this case is, there are several things you need to know. Younger has argued that, when the boy is in his company, all he wants to do is be a boy. Younger makes the point that, just because James likes Frozen, that does not mean he wants to be a princess for life. Anne Georgulas, however, has gone the “therapeutic” route and inundated the jury and the new judge with evidence from therapists.

Few people have paid attention to the identity of these therapists, but their avocation is key to what’s being done to this little boy. Keep in mind the saying that, to a hammer, everything is a nail. Back in the 1980s, we witnessed scores of lives being destroyed as monomaniacal, mentally-ill therapists trained little children to believe that their pre-schools were satanic worship centers.

Georgulas, whether because she has serious issues of her own or because she wanted to be a “responsible,” virtue-signaling mother, took her child to a “Gender Affirming Care Program” at Children’s Health in Dallas. This program is not in the business of recognizing that young children try on different identities and cycle through different interests. Instead, it is dedicated to using therapy and radical hormone treatments to push the dangerous fantasy that people can “become” the opposite sex:

GENECIS provides comprehensive, gender-affirming care to transgender and gender-diverse youth in a supportive and safe environment so they may live fulfilling lives within their families and communities.

[snip]

We support youth of all gender expressions and identities, and provide evidence-based, gender-affirming care in a supportive and safe environment. Gender identity is unique for every child and may be different from the sex assigned to them at birth. Our care is individualized and developed through collaboration with patients and their families.

In this regard, it’s important to understand that this is all bunk. There is no evidence to support any reality behind gender dysphoria, any more than there is evidence to say that emaciated girls with anorexia are fat because they think they are. Just recently, a major study had to be walked back because its claims about so-called “transgenderism” were unfounded.

As for Rebekka Ouer, the child’s therapist, her whole practice is centered on affirming the so-called LGBT spectrum, as if the sexual desires of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals (a behavior) are the same as traumatized people’s body dysmorphia (a denial of biological reality). It’s not unreasonable that someone like that would work with a little boy whose mother is determined to make him the daughter she never had. (Understand that I am not accusing Ouer of malpractice or being evil. Between the bias of her professional background and Georgulas’s determination, Ouer never stood a chance.)

And where does this all end up? With Younger being told to shut up and pay his ex-wife $5,000 a month to have his son turned into a girl:

Yesterday, a Dallas judge took away Jeffrey Younger’s say in his son James’ medical, psychological, and psychiatric care, giving that power to James’ mother, who wants to “transition” him into a “girl.”

[snip]

Yesterday, Judge Mary Brown, who was appointed to the case in January, granted Georgulas’ requests to force Mr. Younger to pay for counseling for James and Jude and attend family counseling. 

[snip]

According to the “Save James” Facebook page, Judge Brown’s order will also allow Georgulas to enroll James in school as “Luna.”

In a sane society, one gently tries to counsel a confused person back into alignment with his or her biological sex and, perhaps, uses hormones consistent with that biological sex. In an insane society, judges side with mothers who want to pretend that a healthy little boy is, instead, a girl. It’s time to stop the madness and Make America Normal Again.

Image: Children boys play, by Insights Unspoken; Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 2.0

This story takes place in Texas of all places: In October 2019, Americans learned about Jeffrey Younger’s desperate fight to block his ex-wife from turning their then seven-year-old son into a girl. A jury tried to hand sole custody and decision-making over to the boy’s mother, but a judge stepped in and gave both parents an equal say, with a different judge to render a verdict over any disagreements the parents could not resolve. That second judge has now given sole decision-making power to the mother, who wants to turn her son into a girl. To add insult to injury, the judge is making the father pay.

To realize how disturbing this case is, there are several things you need to know. Younger has argued that, when the boy is in his company, all he wants to do is be a boy. Younger makes the point that, just because James likes Frozen, that does not mean he wants to be a princess for life. Anne Georgulas, however, has gone the “therapeutic” route and inundated the jury and the new judge with evidence from therapists.

Few people have paid attention to the identity of these therapists, but their avocation is key to what’s being done to this little boy. Keep in mind the saying that, to a hammer, everything is a nail. Back in the 1980s, we witnessed scores of lives being destroyed as monomaniacal, mentally-ill therapists trained little children to believe that their pre-schools were satanic worship centers.

Georgulas, whether because she has serious issues of her own or because she wanted to be a “responsible,” virtue-signaling mother, took her child to a “Gender Affirming Care Program” at Children’s Health in Dallas. This program is not in the business of recognizing that young children try on different identities and cycle through different interests. Instead, it is dedicated to using therapy and radical hormone treatments to push the dangerous fantasy that people can “become” the opposite sex:

GENECIS provides comprehensive, gender-affirming care to transgender and gender-diverse youth in a supportive and safe environment so they may live fulfilling lives within their families and communities.

[snip]

We support youth of all gender expressions and identities, and provide evidence-based, gender-affirming care in a supportive and safe environment. Gender identity is unique for every child and may be different from the sex assigned to them at birth. Our care is individualized and developed through collaboration with patients and their families.

In this regard, it’s important to understand that this is all bunk. There is no evidence to support any reality behind gender dysphoria, any more than there is evidence to say that emaciated girls with anorexia are fat because they think they are. Just recently, a major study had to be walked back because its claims about so-called “transgenderism” were unfounded.

As for Rebekka Ouer, the child’s therapist, her whole practice is centered on affirming the so-called LGBT spectrum, as if the sexual desires of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals (a behavior) are the same as traumatized people’s body dysmorphia (a denial of biological reality). It’s not unreasonable that someone like that would work with a little boy whose mother is determined to make him the daughter she never had. (Understand that I am not accusing Ouer of malpractice or being evil. Between the bias of her professional background and Georgulas’s determination, Ouer never stood a chance.)

And where does this all end up? With Younger being told to shut up and pay his ex-wife $5,000 a month to have his son turned into a girl:

Yesterday, a Dallas judge took away Jeffrey Younger’s say in his son James’ medical, psychological, and psychiatric care, giving that power to James’ mother, who wants to “transition” him into a “girl.”

[snip]

Yesterday, Judge Mary Brown, who was appointed to the case in January, granted Georgulas’ requests to force Mr. Younger to pay for counseling for James and Jude and attend family counseling. 

[snip]

According to the “Save James” Facebook page, Judge Brown’s order will also allow Georgulas to enroll James in school as “Luna.”

In a sane society, one gently tries to counsel a confused person back into alignment with his or her biological sex and, perhaps, uses hormones consistent with that biological sex. In an insane society, judges side with mothers who want to pretend that a healthy little boy is, instead, a girl. It’s time to stop the madness and Make America Normal Again.

Image: Children boys play, by Insights Unspoken; Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 2.0

Should Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win election in November, the radical far-left, Marxist  elements dominating and controlling today’s Democrat party have a sinister plan to use the 25th Amendment to make Kamala Harris president of the United States.  This article predicts that the speed with which this happens will be mind-boggling to millions of Americans.  How this could and most likely will occur is described herein.

As Attorney General William Barr recently stated, the radical left “has a lust for power.”  ”That’s what turns them on — they are not concerned about the lives of ordinary Americans.”  Nothing, absolutely nothing, should be ruled out regarding the lengths to which radical leftists will go to effectively shred America’s constitution to gain governing power and control over the daily lives of Americans.

Most certainly, freedom-loving Americans do not want a radical far-left politician like Kamala Harris becoming commander-in-chief of America’s military forces.  According to GovTrack.us, Harris was voted the most liberal U.S. senator in 2019, outranking senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren!  Thus, if Kamala Harris ever becomes president, for sure, there will be a litany of radical far-left, Marxist policies and actions emanating from the White House and a radical far-left administration.

Given all the above, exactly how could Vice President Harris become President Harris soon after inauguration in January 2021?  The answer is relatively simple and requires use of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The basic purpose of the 25th Amendment is to clarify the procedure and authority for the Vice President to assume the office of president in the event that the president dies, resigns, or otherwise is removed from office.  Thus, if President Biden takes action himself to resign or declare himself unable to carry out the duties of his office, Kamala Harris becomes “acting president,” most likely for the remainder of Biden’s four-year term of office.

However, if President Biden refuses to resign or declare that he cannot carry out the duties of his office, then the language contained in Section Four of the 25th Amendment allows as follows:            

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thus, if President Biden does not voluntarily resign or declare himself unfit for the presidency, he can be forced to leave office simply by agreement among a small number of like-minded radical leftist bureaucrats (Cabinet members, etc.) and the vice president.

The above realistic possibility (nay — probability) should shock freedom-loving Americans to the core and be a strong motivator to ensure that President Donald J. Trump and other conservative candidates win election in November.

If Mr. Trump is not re-elected, the American people will be subjected to the dictates and whims of controlling, radical far-left politicians on a scale the likes of which the nation and population have never experienced.  This must not be allowed to happen.

Paul S. Gardiner is an avid lover of America and a Vietnam veteran.  He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Alabama, and the United States Army War College.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

Should Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win election in November, the radical far-left, Marxist  elements dominating and controlling today’s Democrat party have a sinister plan to use the 25th Amendment to make Kamala Harris president of the United States.  This article predicts that the speed with which this happens will be mind-boggling to millions of Americans.  How this could and most likely will occur is described herein.

As Attorney General William Barr recently stated, the radical left “has a lust for power.”  ”That’s what turns them on — they are not concerned about the lives of ordinary Americans.”  Nothing, absolutely nothing, should be ruled out regarding the lengths to which radical leftists will go to effectively shred America’s constitution to gain governing power and control over the daily lives of Americans.

Most certainly, freedom-loving Americans do not want a radical far-left politician like Kamala Harris becoming commander-in-chief of America’s military forces.  According to GovTrack.us, Harris was voted the most liberal U.S. senator in 2019, outranking senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren!  Thus, if Kamala Harris ever becomes president, for sure, there will be a litany of radical far-left, Marxist policies and actions emanating from the White House and a radical far-left administration.

Given all the above, exactly how could Vice President Harris become President Harris soon after inauguration in January 2021?  The answer is relatively simple and requires use of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The basic purpose of the 25th Amendment is to clarify the procedure and authority for the Vice President to assume the office of president in the event that the president dies, resigns, or otherwise is removed from office.  Thus, if President Biden takes action himself to resign or declare himself unable to carry out the duties of his office, Kamala Harris becomes “acting president,” most likely for the remainder of Biden’s four-year term of office.

However, if President Biden refuses to resign or declare that he cannot carry out the duties of his office, then the language contained in Section Four of the 25th Amendment allows as follows:            

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thus, if President Biden does not voluntarily resign or declare himself unfit for the presidency, he can be forced to leave office simply by agreement among a small number of like-minded radical leftist bureaucrats (Cabinet members, etc.) and the vice president.

The above realistic possibility (nay — probability) should shock freedom-loving Americans to the core and be a strong motivator to ensure that President Donald J. Trump and other conservative candidates win election in November.

If Mr. Trump is not re-elected, the American people will be subjected to the dictates and whims of controlling, radical far-left politicians on a scale the likes of which the nation and population have never experienced.  This must not be allowed to happen.

Paul S. Gardiner is an avid lover of America and a Vietnam veteran.  He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Alabama, and the United States Army War College.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

First, Minneapolis officials let rioters burn down and otherwise destroy nearly 100 businesses over the course of several nights. They told police to stand down. Since then, they have refused to let the owners remove the twisted wreckage of their demolished businesses without a permit. A permit they would not grant unless the owners of the now defunct shops, service outlets and eateries prepaid the second half of their 2020 property taxes. And contractors cannot provide an estimate of how much it will cost to rebuild their businesses until the debris is removed. St. Paul, the Minneapple’s sister city, has waived the tax requirement.

Don Blyly, owner of a bookstore destroyed in the riots, told the Minneapolis StarTribune: “Minneapolis has not been particularly friendly toward business for some time.” This is a candidate for Understatement of the Year, akin to saying that “Joe Biden hasn’t been the most eloquent person on the face of the Earth lately.” Blyly prepaid $8,847 in second half taxes a week ago, yet still hasn’t received his permit. Minneapolis officials lamely cited a state law for their intransigence. However, the law clearly leaves enforcement up to the counties, and Hennepin County officials say they made it clear to the city of Minneapolis earlier this summer that they would not enforce the requirement for any riot-damaged or destroyed properties.

Large stretches of Lake Street and other areas of the city have been reduced to piles of rubble. Piles of rubble that are still there, ugly, depressing and filled with hazardous materials. Basim Sabri is the owner of several properties on or near Lake Street. He told the StarTribune: “You can’t just allow a bunch of rubble and hazardous material to sit in the middle of Lake Street. People could get hurt. Where are our City Council members? What are they doing? Have they seen it?” They are too busy virtue-signaling and hiring private security for their own protection to tend to the needs of their city’s business community, Mr. Sabri.

On average, the paper reported, the owners of properties destroyed or significantly damaged owe $25,000 in taxes for the second half of 2020. Moreover, most of these owners will also have to pay $35,000 to $100,000 to have their sites cleared of debris. For many, their businesses were their only source of income. Already hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, the riots have left them unable to comply with the city’s mandates. Unsurprisingly, owners say the lack of progress has discouraged reinvestment and is forcing customers—and businesses—to look elsewhere.

To recap, businesses pay property taxes in large part to secure the services of the police and the fire department. City officials took the business owners’ first half 2020 taxes but then refused to let the police and fire department protect their businesses. Talk about a breach of contract. They didn’t demand any payment or recompense from the thugs and criminals who looted and plundered the businesses, but did demand payment of second half taxes from the businesses they let be destroyed, before they would “let” them clean up the mess the thugs and city created. Try to wrap your mind around that.

Shortly after the paper published the article, the city waived the pre-paid second half 2020 tax requirement. Mayor Jacob Frey announced the change and said, “I recently learned about the predicament and took quick action to fix it. For the sake of our businesses, we need to be removing every last possible barrier to recovery and reopening.” He recently learned about “the predicament?” That seems odd, him being the city’s mayor and all. Plus, Andrew Johnson is the one City Council member who has been sympathetic to the business owners’ plight. Frey issued a statement saying that he consulted with Johnson before deciding to waive the collection of property taxes as part of the debris removal process. Johnson has been lobbying city (and county) officials to address the issue and rectify the situation since June. And this is the first the feckless Frey had heard about it?

The wealthy are fleeing New York due to exorbitantly high taxes and a drastic increase in crime. The state’s clueless governor attempts to woo them back by offering to buy them a drink. Businesses are leaving New York, Illinois and California for the same reasons.  Now Minneapolis has joined the list of leftist-run states and cities seemingly determined to erode their tax bases to appease the frenzied mob.

Better raise taxes on the remaining businesses, right, Mayor Frey?

Image credit: CBS screen shot from shareable YouTube video

First, Minneapolis officials let rioters burn down and otherwise destroy nearly 100 businesses over the course of several nights. They told police to stand down. Since then, they have refused to let the owners remove the twisted wreckage of their demolished businesses without a permit. A permit they would not grant unless the owners of the now defunct shops, service outlets and eateries prepaid the second half of their 2020 property taxes. And contractors cannot provide an estimate of how much it will cost to rebuild their businesses until the debris is removed. St. Paul, the Minneapple’s sister city, has waived the tax requirement.

Don Blyly, owner of a bookstore destroyed in the riots, told the Minneapolis StarTribune: “Minneapolis has not been particularly friendly toward business for some time.” This is a candidate for Understatement of the Year, akin to saying that “Joe Biden hasn’t been the most eloquent person on the face of the Earth lately.” Blyly prepaid $8,847 in second half taxes a week ago, yet still hasn’t received his permit. Minneapolis officials lamely cited a state law for their intransigence. However, the law clearly leaves enforcement up to the counties, and Hennepin County officials say they made it clear to the city of Minneapolis earlier this summer that they would not enforce the requirement for any riot-damaged or destroyed properties.

Large stretches of Lake Street and other areas of the city have been reduced to piles of rubble. Piles of rubble that are still there, ugly, depressing and filled with hazardous materials. Basim Sabri is the owner of several properties on or near Lake Street. He told the StarTribune: “You can’t just allow a bunch of rubble and hazardous material to sit in the middle of Lake Street. People could get hurt. Where are our City Council members? What are they doing? Have they seen it?” They are too busy virtue-signaling and hiring private security for their own protection to tend to the needs of their city’s business community, Mr. Sabri.

On average, the paper reported, the owners of properties destroyed or significantly damaged owe $25,000 in taxes for the second half of 2020. Moreover, most of these owners will also have to pay $35,000 to $100,000 to have their sites cleared of debris. For many, their businesses were their only source of income. Already hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, the riots have left them unable to comply with the city’s mandates. Unsurprisingly, owners say the lack of progress has discouraged reinvestment and is forcing customers—and businesses—to look elsewhere.

To recap, businesses pay property taxes in large part to secure the services of the police and the fire department. City officials took the business owners’ first half 2020 taxes but then refused to let the police and fire department protect their businesses. Talk about a breach of contract. They didn’t demand any payment or recompense from the thugs and criminals who looted and plundered the businesses, but did demand payment of second half taxes from the businesses they let be destroyed, before they would “let” them clean up the mess the thugs and city created. Try to wrap your mind around that.

Shortly after the paper published the article, the city waived the pre-paid second half 2020 tax requirement. Mayor Jacob Frey announced the change and said, “I recently learned about the predicament and took quick action to fix it. For the sake of our businesses, we need to be removing every last possible barrier to recovery and reopening.” He recently learned about “the predicament?” That seems odd, him being the city’s mayor and all. Plus, Andrew Johnson is the one City Council member who has been sympathetic to the business owners’ plight. Frey issued a statement saying that he consulted with Johnson before deciding to waive the collection of property taxes as part of the debris removal process. Johnson has been lobbying city (and county) officials to address the issue and rectify the situation since June. And this is the first the feckless Frey had heard about it?

The wealthy are fleeing New York due to exorbitantly high taxes and a drastic increase in crime. The state’s clueless governor attempts to woo them back by offering to buy them a drink. Businesses are leaving New York, Illinois and California for the same reasons.  Now Minneapolis has joined the list of leftist-run states and cities seemingly determined to erode their tax bases to appease the frenzied mob.

Better raise taxes on the remaining businesses, right, Mayor Frey?

Image credit: CBS screen shot from shareable YouTube video

This is an outrageous instance of misplaced compassion.  Brooke Singman of Fox News reports:

A federal judge on Thursday, citing the coronavirus pandemic, ordered the release, of a Rhode Island man who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for participating in a plot to behead conservative blogger Pamela Geller on behalf of the Islamic State.

U.S. District Judge for Massachusetts William Young on Thursday announced the release of 29-year-old Nicholas Rovinski, whose lawyers this week argued that due to his medical conditions, which include cerebral palsy and hypertension, he is vulnerable to serious illness from COVID-19.

Where is the compassion for Pamela?  (American Thinker readers know Pamela very well, for she has been a frequent contributor to our site and is a leading critic of violent jihad and those who promote it.)

Fox News video screen grab (cropped).

Her efforts to sponsor an exhibition of Mohammed cartoons in Dallas led to the plot to behead her.  At the exhibit, a jhadist attack led to two jihadis being killed by law enforcement.

Does Judge Young, a Reagan appointee who was born in 1940, 80 years ago, think jihad killers give up their goals after imprisonment?  Has he no compassion for someone threatened with the same sort of barbaric execution that ISIS — on whose behalf Rovinski plotted — regularly carried out?

Judge Young did not temporarily free Rovinski for the duration of the pandemic; he terminated the sentence to time served:

Young reduced Rovinski’s sentence to time served, and ordered him to spend the next 10 years in home confinement with electronic monitoring, with the first six months in “strict home confinement.”

Perhaps Judge Young thinks he is adequately protecting Pamela with home confinement, including six months of “strict home confinement,” a term that suggests that the remaining nine and a half years will be lenient home confinement.  Would Judge Young be comfortable if he or his loved ones were under religious threat of beheading, and the avowed perpetrator was free to communicate with others to re-engage in a plot to behead them?

Judge Young also insisted that no appeal could delay the release:

Young also denied prosecutors’ request to delay Rovinski’s release for 30 days while they consider an appeal. Prosecutors argued that the decision is an outcome “most would find hard to fathom under the circumstances, especially in the absence of any concrete rationale for the result.”

“We disagree with the court’s decision to now nullify that sentence — after only five years — based on COVID concerns,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in an emailed statement to the Associated Press.

“We realize that Rovinski has certain medical issues, but this does not justify releasing to ‘home confinement’ — after serving a mere third of his sentence — someone who willfully conspired to kill people for ISIS,” he wrote.

Pamela Geller must now live in fear.  On her site, Gellerreport.com, she writes:  

How does Judge William Young know that Nicholas Rovinski won’t try to murder me again? He doesn’t. But he clearly doesn’t care. The “compassion” in Rovinski’s “compassionate release” is all for the perpetrator, not for his intended victim or others he might have killed in his jihad as well. Does Judge William Young not realize the gravity, the seriousness, the implications of freeing someone who plotted a beheading for a cartoon or piece of art that violated Islamic law? Does he not realize, or not care about, the freedom of speech? Maybe he doesn’t. After all, it is under attack on numerous fronts today. Maybe William Young is one of those people who believe in the spurious concept of “hate speech,” which is an entirely subjective thing, essentially a weapon of the powerful to smear and silence those who lack power.

The First Amendment is our most precious freedom — Rovinski should be serving life without the possibility of parole. Instead, he is on the streets again, as if he did nothing. The electronic monitoring is a joke, as is the home confinement. Last year a Muslim wearing an electronic tag killed a man in his deradicalization class and went out to wage jihad on the London Bridge. If Nicholas Rovinski participates in another plot to murder me, will Judge William Young be prosecuted?

Pray for Pamela’s safety, for the federal judiciary is indifferent to her peril.

This is an outrageous instance of misplaced compassion.  Brooke Singman of Fox News reports:

A federal judge on Thursday, citing the coronavirus pandemic, ordered the release, of a Rhode Island man who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for participating in a plot to behead conservative blogger Pamela Geller on behalf of the Islamic State.

U.S. District Judge for Massachusetts William Young on Thursday announced the release of 29-year-old Nicholas Rovinski, whose lawyers this week argued that due to his medical conditions, which include cerebral palsy and hypertension, he is vulnerable to serious illness from COVID-19.

Where is the compassion for Pamela?  (American Thinker readers know Pamela very well, for she has been a frequent contributor to our site and is a leading critic of violent jihad and those who promote it.)

Fox News video screen grab (cropped).

Her efforts to sponsor an exhibition of Mohammed cartoons in Dallas led to the plot to behead her.  At the exhibit, a jhadist attack led to two jihadis being killed by law enforcement.

Does Judge Young, a Reagan appointee who was born in 1940, 80 years ago, think jihad killers give up their goals after imprisonment?  Has he no compassion for someone threatened with the same sort of barbaric execution that ISIS — on whose behalf Rovinski plotted — regularly carried out?

Judge Young did not temporarily free Rovinski for the duration of the pandemic; he terminated the sentence to time served:

Young reduced Rovinski’s sentence to time served, and ordered him to spend the next 10 years in home confinement with electronic monitoring, with the first six months in “strict home confinement.”

Perhaps Judge Young thinks he is adequately protecting Pamela with home confinement, including six months of “strict home confinement,” a term that suggests that the remaining nine and a half years will be lenient home confinement.  Would Judge Young be comfortable if he or his loved ones were under religious threat of beheading, and the avowed perpetrator was free to communicate with others to re-engage in a plot to behead them?

Judge Young also insisted that no appeal could delay the release:

Young also denied prosecutors’ request to delay Rovinski’s release for 30 days while they consider an appeal. Prosecutors argued that the decision is an outcome “most would find hard to fathom under the circumstances, especially in the absence of any concrete rationale for the result.”

“We disagree with the court’s decision to now nullify that sentence — after only five years — based on COVID concerns,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in an emailed statement to the Associated Press.

“We realize that Rovinski has certain medical issues, but this does not justify releasing to ‘home confinement’ — after serving a mere third of his sentence — someone who willfully conspired to kill people for ISIS,” he wrote.

Pamela Geller must now live in fear.  On her site, Gellerreport.com, she writes:  

How does Judge William Young know that Nicholas Rovinski won’t try to murder me again? He doesn’t. But he clearly doesn’t care. The “compassion” in Rovinski’s “compassionate release” is all for the perpetrator, not for his intended victim or others he might have killed in his jihad as well. Does Judge William Young not realize the gravity, the seriousness, the implications of freeing someone who plotted a beheading for a cartoon or piece of art that violated Islamic law? Does he not realize, or not care about, the freedom of speech? Maybe he doesn’t. After all, it is under attack on numerous fronts today. Maybe William Young is one of those people who believe in the spurious concept of “hate speech,” which is an entirely subjective thing, essentially a weapon of the powerful to smear and silence those who lack power.

The First Amendment is our most precious freedom — Rovinski should be serving life without the possibility of parole. Instead, he is on the streets again, as if he did nothing. The electronic monitoring is a joke, as is the home confinement. Last year a Muslim wearing an electronic tag killed a man in his deradicalization class and went out to wage jihad on the London Bridge. If Nicholas Rovinski participates in another plot to murder me, will Judge William Young be prosecuted?

Pray for Pamela’s safety, for the federal judiciary is indifferent to her peril.

The one thing to know about Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is that whenever she has a tiny bit of power, she abuses it.

In introducing Harris on Wednesday, former Vice President Joe Biden said that she was a fighter for the “little guy.” But he gave no examples — because there are none.

There are plenty of examples of Harris fighting against the “little guy.”

The most egregious example is her malicious prosecution of filmmaker and anti-abortion activist David Daleiden, who made undercover videos of Planned Parenthood employees discussing how to make money from the sale of tissue from aborted fetuses.

It was the first and only time undercover journalists had been prosecuted under an obscure California law.

Worse, Harris acted after meeting with Planned Parenthood, which was apparently upset that Daleiden had caught their employees in the act. The abortion group also wanted the videos suppressed. Daleiden says that when the state executed its search warrant on his home, its purpose was to seize unpublished videos to make sure the were never released.

Harris, he said, colluded with a powerful left-wing interest group to abuse the First Amendment and punish him for exposing it.

So much for fighting for the “little guy.”

Harris abused the powers of her office to target a conservative political opponent. It was part of a pattern. She attempted to force Americans for Prosperity, a 501(c)4 group supported by the Koch brothers, to reveal its donors to the state, though they are already known to the federal Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Harris tried to do at the state level what the IRS scandal had done throughout the country: bully and intimidate a conservative group.

A district judge agreed that allowing Harris to accept the donor lists would allow “harassment” and could suppress the group’s constitutionally-protected liberties. That judgment was overturned by the Ninth Circuit, and the case is pending before the Supreme Court.

What remains noteworthy about the case is Harris’s behavior: singling out a conservative, pro-business group for legal intimidation. Ironically, the 501(c)4 rules protected the NAACP during the civil rights struggle.

Once she arrived in the U.S. Senate, Harris continued her abusive behavior. She developed a habit of badgering witnesses and then turning her questioning into viral YouTube videos to raise campaign cash.

Occasionally, this tactic backfired, as when she grilled Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing about whether he had discussed the Russia “collusion” investigation. But she had no evidence; even the left-wing California media panned her performance.

The most egregious example came in 2018, when Harris used a confirmation hearing for Ronald Vitiello, who had been nominated to lead the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, to compare ICE to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

In an outrageous exchange, Harris accused ICE — which exists to enforce federal immigration laws the Senate itself has passed — of being like racist vigilantes who lynched black Americans. She had no evidence, only “perceptions.”

Far from fighting for the “little guy,” Harris has been accused of protecting abusers — most notably, declining to prosecute priests for sexual abuse,when she was San Francisco’s district attorney. She was the only DA from a major city to refrain.

In the days since former Vice President Joe Biden picked Harris to be his running mate, conservatives have had a field day mocking the New York Times for calling her a “pragmatic moderate.” Harris is no pragmatist, no record of working across party lines. She was rated by the non-partisan GovTrack as the #1 most left-wing member of the Senate, further left than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The main basis for claiming she is a “moderate” appears to be that she is a former prosector.

But so, too, is Kim Foxx, the George Soros-funded radical notorious for dropping the charges against Jussie Smollett in Chicago after he faked a hate crime and blamed it on Trump supporters. There is nothing intrinsically “conservative” or “moderate” about being a prosecutor, even if the current politics of the Democratic Party and Black Lives Matter are hostile to law enforcement. Harris, like many Democrats in politics, saw the prosecutor’s job as a political stepping stone.

When Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) took Harris to task at the second Democratic debate last year, it was not just because Harris had taken a tough approach to marijuana offenders, but because she had laughed later about having smoked pot herself. The attack resonated because it was an example of Harris abusing her power. She was willing to put thousands of people in jail for breaking a law she did not believe in herself because doing so would burnish her political credentials.

Another basis for claiming Harris is a “moderate” is that she is a creation of the Democratic Party political establishment. She got her start in politics from her association with California State Assembly leader and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown She won her Senate seat in 2016 with the help of the Bay Area liberal gentry and national Democratic leaders, including then-President Barack Obama. After the 2016 election, Harris tapped into Hillary Clinton’s donor network.

But the “woke” Democratic Party establishment is no longer politically “moderate.” As Shadi Hamid noted in the Wall Street Journal in 2018, it was the Democratic establishment that became most politically extreme after Donald Trump won in 2016, embracing “Russia collusion” conspiracy theories and the like. The establishment — of both parties — will adopt any outward political stance to protect its power. And Kamala Harris has a career-long habit of abusing hers.

Harris represents a clear and present danger to liberty in an era when the Democratic Party is siding with violent mobs and vowing to sweep away all obstacles to its power if it wins the November elections. Harris actually joined protests outside the White House on May 30, the same day that demonstrators there assaulted a Breitbart News journalist and others. Back home in California, antisemitic Black Lives Matter mobs were rioting through the heart of Los Angeles.

Biden is promising that he will “fundamentally transform” the country, which he says need “revolutionary institutional changes.” Harris, too, said Wednesday that she intends to overhaul a system afflicted by “systemic” racial injustice. And Obama called for eliminating the Senate filibuster to allow Democrats to do whatever they want. If Harris would be, as many suspect, running a Biden administration from “day one,” the freedom of every American citizen would be at risk.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.