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Just returned from Orlando.
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Now that Biden seems to have sewed up the nomination will more money be poured down the drain? We will find out in several months and after many more gaffs.
But then, can you imagine a Jewish candidate for the presidency campaigning with those who hate Jews?
The Democrat Party must undertake a meaningful and believable re-make to recover from their nomination process and it could take time.
Some things to contemplate before you vote:
a) The top two Democrat leaders can be called: Schumer The Brooklyn Bully and Pelosi The Ripper.
b) The Democrat Party seems to have no rational philosophy they embrace other than the fear of losing power.
The minute it became evident Sanders was going to take them over the cliff they switched to Biden and ditched the radicals. The question for them is will offended radicals come out and vote for Biden?
c) Biden is 79, obviously less swift than even he used to be and he was never more than a 20 MPH politician.
d) What happens to Biden, if and when more comes out about his involvement with his son?
e) Name me anything Biden actually was right about and led by way of legislation..
f) If either Biden or Sanders were elected would the Corona-virus go away?
f) Before the Corona-virus, we were adding jobs at an amazing pace and the economy was doing fine. As the economy surely slows in the 1st and 2d quarter, Trump is not to blame but , rest assured, the mass media will blame him.
g) Do you honestly believe Biden or Sanders would have responded to the outbreak of the virus any better than Trump has?
h) As for Sanders, he is not only a radical thinker but an ideologue who will fight to the bitter end and in the process will be pointing out/alluding to Biden's incompetence. Potentially, by the time election comes around, Biden could be wounded by Sanders.
i) Finally, it appears blacks are still willing to eat Clyburn's rancid "chitlins" and reject Trump's "What have you go to lose?" message.
Stay tuned!
Meanwhile, Robert F. Smith tells it like it is!
Democratic Donors Have Their Candidate
With Obama’s blessing, the party establishment, including its big money, has gone all in on Biden.
By Dan Palmer
Joe Biden declares victory in Los Angeles, March 3.
Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images
When Joe Biden was declared the big winner in South Carolina, you could hear Democratic donors from Manhattan to Malibu crying for joy. Buoyed by glowing, round-the-clock media coverage of his weekend blowout, Mr. Biden made an impressive showing on Super Tuesday. With the former vice president resurgent, the Democratic establishment now has an unexpected final chance to crush Bernie Sanders’s socialist revolution.
Mr. Sanders achieved early front-runner status by making the wealthy into boogeymen. Pushed to the wall by a rising tide of anti-wealth sentiment, elite Democratic donors feared losing control of their party to a socialist who didn’t need them and, worse, would make them his permanent scapegoat. The patronage system built over generations, which assured them power and fortune, was at risk of forced liquidation.
The Democratic donor class had thrown money at a succession of candidates they judged better bets. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg were each trumpeted, proclaimed by the establishment’s media organs as the next Barack Obama. Then, to the horror of their backers, most failed to connect with voters and exited early. Donors became dispirited.
Michael Bloomberg’s entrance was a potential safe harbor—and an attractive one, given the prospect that donors could have influence without having to open their wallets. But that notion was dispelled the moment Elizabeth Warren eviscerated him on the debate stage.
With no viable options left, donors became quietly resigned to a Sanders loss to President Trump in November. They could thrive economically in a second Trump term, but they couldn’t survive politically if a socialist took over their party apparatus. Backing Mr. Biden became the last option to consolidate their resources and recover their slipping grip on political power.
Everyone recognized the obvious problem: He was on his third run for president but had never won a primary. He’d been obliterated in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Then, the miracle. Rep. Jim Clyburn’s endorsement propelled Mr. Biden to pull off a back-from-the-dead triumph in South Carolina.
Mr. Clyburn used his political capital to make clear Mr. Biden needed a campaign “overhaul.” The candidate agreed. With this go-ahead, the money men kicked their efforts into high gear trying to put his Humpty Dumpty operation back together again.
The choreography of the establishment consolidating its resources quickly became visible. Mr. Biden hauled in $5 million in the 24 hours after South Carolina. Then came withdrawal announcements from Mr. Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar. By the time Mr. Buttigieg offered his endorsement, Mr. Biden’s finance team had recruited dozens of Mayor Pete’s “bundlers.” Top Obama confidantes made it known “the signal” had been sent to back the former vice president.
Alongside these on-the-ground moves, some media analysts estimated Mr. Biden enjoyed as much as $72 million in earned media “air cover.” The press’s goodwill filled the void while the Biden campaign rushed to fill its coffers for the contests beyond Super Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Mr. Biden received another political blessing. Mr. Bloomberg exited the race after his $570 million campaign netted an embarrassingly low haul of delegates. He then immediately endorsed Mr. Biden, who will undoubtedly be the beneficiary of the former New York mayor’s deep pockets.
With no billionaire primary candidates left to kick around, Mr. Sanders has turned his ire against Mr. Biden’s contributors. Taking the stage in Minnesota Monday night, Mr. Sanders reprimanded his audience when they booed Mr. Biden’s name. The former vice president was a longtime friend and “decent guy whose just wrong on the issues,” Mr. Sanders said. Then he went after Mr. Biden’s donors: “Does anybody think that we’re going to bring about the change we need in America when you are indebted to 60 billionaires?”
An unwieldy field has been narrowed to a two-man race. The millionaires and billionaires, the type of people Mr. Sanders said “shouldn’t exist,” are backing Mr. Biden, who, unlike Mr. Bloomberg, has a significant national following. Now he’ll have the money he needs to go up against Mr. Sanders’s well-funded and organized movement, which took in a gargantuan haul of $46.5 million in February.
This is the moment my Democratic donor friends have dreamed of since Hillary Clinton lost. The battle for the soul of their party will be fought on the terms that both they and Mr. Sanders want: big-money power brokers versus a small-dollar socialist mob. Since 2015, Bernie Sanders has been a threat to the political relevance of the Democratic donor class. Now, they’re out for revenge and hoping to bankrupt the socialist revolution once and for all.
Mr. Palmer is a Republican strategist, activist and fundraiser and founder of Palmer Investments Inc.
Jim Clyburn Saves the Democrats
He didn’t just endorse Biden when his campaign was in trouble. He showed him how to revive it.
By Peggy Noonan
No one has seen anything like it. It will live in our political lore. There’ll be some bright 32-year-old kid running a campaign in 2056 and his guy will be down three in a row and the elders will take him to the Marriott bar and tell him, “Ya gotta get out, handwriting’s on the wall,” and he’ll nod, slump-shouldered. Then he’ll get this steely look, this young-wild-James-Carville look, and he’ll say, “Joe Biden was over in ’20. Nothing is written.”
There were many elements to what happened. Democrats love to say they’re not members of any organized political party, they’re Democrats; they love to say Democrats fall in love while Republicans fall in line. That’s their self conception and their story line and it’s mostly malarkey, as someone would say. You don’t get these staggered endorsements and coordinated statements without organization, power centers and money lines.
But this is about the human part, the historic part, the speech Rep. Jim Clyburn gave that saved Mr. Biden. It was Wednesday morning. Feb. 26, in the College Center at Trident Technical College on Rivers Avenue in North Charleston, S.C. Mr. Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, spoke without text or notes, just a man at a mic with a blank wall behind him.
He spoke of his late wife, Emily. They met as students at South Carolina State after both were arrested at a civil-rights demonstration. “I met her in jail on that day.” Their marriage lasted 58 years. “I remember her telling about her experiences, walking 2½ miles to school every morning, 2½ back home every afternoon.” She lived on a small farm. “She learned how to drive in a pickup truck. She came to South Carolina State in that pickup truck, with her luggage on the bed.”
Her father walked town to town in the off season, 15 miles a day, to cut pulp wood. “We talked about what our parents sacrificed for us and what we owed to our children and all other children similarly situated.” They often talked about American leaders. “There’s nobody who Emily loved as a leader of this country more than she loved Joe Biden, and we talked about Joe all the time.”
He’d wrestled with whether to make a public endorsement. Then a friend died. He arrived early to the funeral and walked around talking to people he hadn’t seen in a while. “There was an elderly lady in her upper 80s sitting on the front pew of the church, just a few seats away from the coffin. And she looked at me and she beckoned to me. Didn’t say a word, just beckoned.” He joined her. “She said, ‘Lean down, I need to ask you a question.’ And I leaned down. She said, ‘You don’t have to say it out loud, but you just whisper into my ear. Who are you gonna vote for next Saturday? I been waiting to hear from you. I need to hear from you. This community wants to hear from you.’ I decided then and there that I would not stay silent.”
He quoted Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote that “he was coming to the conclusion that the people of ill will in our society was making a much better use of time than the people of good will, and he feared that he would [have] regret—not just for the vitriolic words and deeds of bad people but for the appalling silence from good people.”
He said, “South Carolina should be voting for Joe Biden, and here’s why.” Because the purpose of politics isn’t lofty and abstract but simpler, plainer: “Making the greatness of this country accessible and affordable for all. We don’t need to make this country great again—this country is great, that’s not what our challenge is.” The challenge is making greatness available to everybody. Are people able to get education, health care, housing? “Nobody with whom I’ve ever worked in public life is any more committed” to that goal “than Joe Biden.”
They got to know each other “doing TV stuff together,” he said. “I know Joe. . . . But most importantly, Joe knows us.” They used to talk a lot about Brown v. Board of Education, which consolidated five lawsuits against school segregation. One was from Joe’s Delaware. They went over it a lot. “That’s how well I know this man. I know his heart. I know who he is. I know what he is.”
Mr. Clyburn said that during his day in jail, “I was never fearful of the future. As I stand before you today I am fearful of the future of this country. I’m fearful for my daughters.” We have to “restore this country’s dignity, this country’s respect—that is what is at stake this year.” And there is “no one better suited, better prepared,” for the fight “than my good friend, my late wife’s great friend, Joe Biden.”
It was beautiful.
He wasn’t just giving Mr. Biden an endorsement, he was giving him a template: This is what to talk about, this is your subject matter.
It was a speech about the price you’ll pay to stand where you stand. In outlining his life he was saying: I didn’t talk the talk; I walked the walk, and on that basis I claim something called authority.
But what would the impact be? America is in a crisis not only of leadership but of followership. Leaders in all areas—business, the church, politics, other institutions—don’t know if they have the clout anymore to guide and advise their constituencies, they don’t know if they have the heft, the sway. Surely Mr. Clyburn wondered too.
And what followed was astounding, a throwback. What needed saying had been said, and spread. Three days later South Carolina didn’t endorse Joe Biden, it gave him a wave that wouldn’t break, that swept across the South and beyond.
After Super Tuesday, some progressives on social media clearly resented the black vote and the Biden wave. I detected in a few of them a whiff of “Who are these old Southern black ladies to be calling the shots?” It took me aback.
You couldn’t carry their sandals, sonnyboys.
A shooter came to Charleston a few years ago and they were in the Bible study. He kills, and they go to the bail hearing and, in the great incandescent moment of the last decade, say “I forgive you.”
They make everything happen; they’re the ones who’ve long made the prudential judgments on which way the party will go.
For half a century it has been telling them, “We feel your pain, we’re going to save you.” On Tuesday, after coolly surveying the facts and the field, they said to the Democratic Party, “Honey, you’re confused. We see your pain and we’re gonna save you.”
And they did. It was something—a turning of the tables, a doing what others up North and out West couldn’t quite do, and that was saying, “We are not socialists, we’re Democrats.”
The party should thank its lucky stars. It should kiss those ladies’ hands.
Top US Entrepreneur Calls for Greater Black-Jewish Solidarity, Noting Shared ‘Birthright Burden’
Robert F. Smith. Photo: Screenshot.
Prominent entrepreneur and philanthropist Robert F. Smith called on Tuesday for greater solidarity between blacks and Jews in the US.
Speaking at a World Values Network gala at Carnegie Hall in New York City, the 57-year-old Smith — founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners — said, “Much is made of the divisions and anger in our society today. Many of us are rightly concerned about the divide between the African American and Jewish communities.”
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“I am here to say that anyone who propagates this fear and division simply doesn’t understand our common experience and common bond,” he continued. “The Jewish people and the African American people share a birthright burden. We are wanderers in search of a place to call home, to plant roots, to build community.”
“We can begin to heal our world when we acknowledge the similarities in the burdens we carry — and work together to liberate them,” Smith declared.
Smith recalled, “The Jewish community’s leadership in the civil rights movement is one of history’s most neglected truths.”
Last year, Smith made headlines when he announced he would pay off the entire student loan debt of Morehouse College’s 2019 graduating class.
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Meanwhile this from a esteemed doctor friend, and fellow memo reader:
Chicago Leaders Defend Freeing Illegal Alien to Sexually Assault Toddler
Progressive Policy Drives Rising Crime in New York
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Dick
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Meanwhile this from a esteemed doctor friend, and fellow memo reader:
Two op eds from Salena Zito:+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In Pennsylvania, natural gas industry prepares for battle
CANNONSBURG- My latest from Western Pennsylvania where the natural gas industry says it has had it with being used as weapon by the elites and ideologues & lets them know in no uncertain terms they are no longer sitting on the sidelines watching their labor force and industry bashed any longer & are prepared for battle
And:
The silent Democratic majority is finally crying out for moderation
“Sometimes a good man beats a lot of money and a lot of followers on Twitter. And sometimes that evidence is right in front of you if you bother to look.”
That’s how Democrat Steve McMahon sums up the Super Tuesday primary result in his home state of Virginia, which enthusiastically went for Joe Biden even after polls predicted Bernie Sanders would emerge the winner.
In fact, out of 14 states, former Vice President Biden won 10 — including upsets in Texas, Minnesota and even Elizabeth Warren’s home state of Massachusetts, despite having almost no TV or radio ad presence there. It was a resounding romp that proved social-media posts are no replacement for plain-old talking to real people if you want to know what’s actually going on.
After weeks of pundits declaring Biden’s presidential campaign dead, he is now the frontrunner with 664 delegates to Sanders’ 573.
Just one week earlier, the media had anointed Sanders the presumptive nominee after he scored a tie in Iowa, a marginal win in New Hampshire and a single big victory in Nevada. Never mind that African-American voters, a significant and moderating voting bloc within the Democratic electorate, had barely been represented in any of those early contests. Bernie was deemed unstoppable. And if you were just looking at Twitter, it was easy to see why.
“In the Twitter primary, there’s no question that Joe Biden was finishing third or fourth,” said McMahon, a longtime Democratic strategist based in Northern Virginia. “But we don’t have a Twitter primary, we have real primaries, where real people with real families and real issues go and cast real votes.
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Below is an op ed link from a friend and fellow memo reader. I e mailed back: "United Israel stands, divided Israel falls."
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Ain't over til it's over!
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We’ve been in court for years over Hillary Clinton’s emails — as you know, we are persistent for justice.
The great news is that U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth has granted our request to depose the former secretary of state about her emails and Benghazi attack documents. The court also ordered the deposition of Clinton’s former Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, and two other State Department officials.
Additionally, the court granted our request to subpoena Google for relevant documents and records associated with Clinton’s emails during her tenure at the State Department.
The ruling comes in our lawsuit seeking records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack” (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)).
Remember, it was Judicial Watch that discovered in 2014 that the “talking points” that provided the basis for Susan Rice’s false statements were created by the Obama White House. This FOIA lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.
In December 2018, Judge Lamberth first ordered discovery into whether Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server was intended to stymie FOIA; whether the State Department’s intent to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive to our request. The court also authorized discovery into whether the Benghazi controversy motivated the cover-up of Clinton’s email. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.” The State and Justice Departments continued to defend Clinton’s and the agency’s email conduct.
Judge Lamberth has now overruled Clinton’s and the State and Justice Department’s objections to limited additional discovery by first noting:
Discovery up until this point has brought to light a noteworthy amount of relevant information, but Judicial Watch requests an additional round of discovery, and understandably so. With each passing round of discovery, the Court is left with more questions than answers.
Additionally, Judge Lamberth said that he is troubled by the fact that both the State Department and Department of Justice want to close discovery in this case:
[T]here is still more to learn. Even though many important questions remain unanswered, the Justice Department inexplicably still takes the position that the Court should close discovery and rule on dispositive motions. The Court is especially troubled by this. To argue that the Court now has enough information to determine whether State conducted an adequate search is preposterous, especially when considering State’s deficient representations regarding the existence of additional Clinton emails. Instead, the Court will authorize a new round of discovery
With respect to Clinton, the court found that her prior testimony, mostly through written sworn answers, was not sufficient:
The Court has considered the numerous times in which Secretary Clinton said she could not recall or remember certain details in her prior interrogatory answers. In a deposition, it is more likely that plaintiff’s counsel could use documents and other testimony to attempt to refresh her recollection. And so, to avoid the unsatisfying and inefficient outcome of multiple rounds of fruitless interrogatories and move this almost six-year-old case closer to its conclusion, Judicial Watch will be permitted to clarify and further explore Secretary Clinton’s answers in person and immediately after she gives them. The Court agrees with Judicial Watch – it is time to hear directly from Secretary Clinton.
We uncovered the Clinton email scandal and we’re pleased that the court authorized us to depose Mrs. Clinton directly on her email conduct and how it impacted the people’s ‘right to know’ under FOIA. The deposition must take place by May 16, so stay tuned.
Government’s Record-Keeping Failures Risks Lives, Costs Billions
The Clinton email fiasco is but one instance of federal records mismanagement – that costs billions and could risk lives. Here’s a key whistleblower report from our Corruption Chronicles blog.
The U.S. government’s failure to properly keep records not only compromises accountability and transparency, it has cost American taxpayers billions of dollars and in some cases their lives. A whistleblower and former federal contractor with firsthand knowledge of the matter told Judicial Watch that the epidemic of poor records management across all federal agencies constitutes the biggest government accountability and transparency scandal of our lifetime. His name is Don Lueders, a computer software engineer who spent 20 years at several top software companies developing costly applications to help the government properly manage records.
However, billions of dollars in records management applications that could help solve the problem have never been used and the crisis continues. Government agencies purchase the programs, Lueders says, but never actually utilizes them. “The government buys software because it gives the impression that they’re doing records management,” Lueders told Judicial Watch during a recent interview. “But they don’t use it.” He refers to the government’s longtime record-keeping system as “information chaos” that requires a congressional investigation.
Many of the government’s record management failures have been exposed by Judicial Watch in cases that involve key federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ), among others. In fact, a recent news article on Uncle Sam’s widespread records management deficiencies mentions two cases that Judicial Watch litigated. One involves a scandal in which the Obama IRS selectively audited conservative groups that opposed the administration’s policies. The other involves Hillary Clinton’s now famous illegal use of a private email server while she was Obama’s Secretary of State.
For years Judicial Watch’s work has helped uncover the underlying problems associated with the government’s dreadful record-keeping system, which is incredibly handy in coverups. Many of the cases required a dragged-out litigious process to obtain records that should be readily available under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A recent example involves the unsecure server Clinton used to transmit classified information as the president’s chief foreign affairs adviser. Judicial Watch has been embroiled in a years-long legal battle with the government for the records and just a few weeks ago, more than a dozen new Clinton emails not previously produced as per a federal court order magically appeared. A DOJ attorney could not explain to a federal judge how the FBI suddenly found the new stash of Clinton emails, which were originally to be provided by the State Department.
Some record-keeping failures have more serious consequences as the story mentioned earlier points out. For instance, the man who shot and killed more than two dozen people at a Texas church a few years ago used guns he would not have been able to buy if the Air Force had managed its records efficiently. “On six occasions, military officials failed to send Devin Kelley’s records to the FBI while the Air Force investigated, court-martialed, and imprisoned him for abusing his wife and stepson,” the article states. “Had the FBI received the records, the killer would have been barred from buying the weapons used in the massacre.” Similar records management failures have also received widespread media attention. Remember that in 2015 an astounding 21.5 million records were stolen from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal government’s chief human resources agency and personnel policy manager.
This is not a partisan issue, but rather a pervasive government wide emergency that Lueders says has been going on for almost a quarter century regardless of who occupies the White House. “We’re wasting billions and people are dying,” he said, stressing that democracy can’t exist without accountability and transparency.
Chicago Leaders Defend Freeing Illegal Alien to Sexually Assault Toddler
Judicial Watch has done much to expose and combat the physical dangers Americans experience at the hands of aliens in this country illegally and protected by lawless sanctuary city policies. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports:
Police and elected officials in Chicago have the audacity to vigorously defend their dangerous sanctuary policy after a previously deported illegal immigrant felon that they released from jail sexually assaulted a 3-year-old girl. The Mexican man, 34-year-old Christopher Puente, has a lengthy criminal history that includes two felony convictions, yet Chicago Police freed him into the community after his latest arrest for theft. It didn’t matter to those in charge of serving and protecting Windy City residents that the violent illegal alien had served time for forced-entry burglary and forgery or that he was recently charged with battery against a woman.
To honor Chicago’s outrageous sanctuary measure, authorities ignored an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer and instead released the aggravated felon. A few weeks ago, Puente sexually assaulted a toddler at a Cook County fast-food restaurant. He lured the girl into a bathroom stall of the River North eatery and sexually assaulted her, according to a local newspaper report that attributes the information to Cook County prosecutors. The girl’s father was in an adjacent stall helping her brother use the toilet. When he heard his daughter cry and saw her legs dangling, the father tried to open the locked stall where Puente held her and eventually pulled her out under the door. The illegal immigrant remained locked in the stall, according to prosecutors, but eventually escaped. The next day he was arrested for trespassing nearby and was singled out as the girl’s attacker. Puente confessed and provided authorities with disturbing details of the crime. A judge has ordered him held without bail for predatory sexual criminal assault.
Outraged federal authorities have reissued an immigration detainer with Cook County Jail. Had the first detainer been honored by Chicago authorities Puente would have been deported after his last arrest in mid-2019. “How many more victims must there be before lawmakers realize that sanctuary policies do not protect the innocent?” asked Robert Guadian, field office director of ICE’s Chicago Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). “Puente should have been in ICE custody last year and removed to his home country. Instead, irresponsible lawmaking allowed him to walk free and prey on our most vulnerable.” The agency is perpetually frustrated because detainers are continually rejected by Chicago-area law enforcement agencies. In Fiscal Year 2019, Cook County declined more than 1,000 detainers, according to figures provided by ICE.
Officials have no intention of changing their sanctuary policy. In fact, they made it a point to publicly defend it after Puente’s latest horrific crime. In the aftermath of the toddler’s sexual assault, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Police issued media statements reiterating that they will not cooperate with the feds. Lightfoot trashed ICE, saying “they’re critical because we have said very clearly we are a welcoming city, a sanctuary city. Chicago Police Department will not cooperate with ICE on any immigration-related business. And that’s affected their ability to conduct immigration raids across the city. But that’s exactly our intention. We have to make sure our police department is seen as a legitimate force in all our communities.” In its statement, which was published in various local media outlets, the city’s law enforcement agency wrote this: “The Chicago Police Department remains committed to protecting all Chicago residents regardless of their immigration status. Our pledge to restrict ICE access to our information systems and our refusal to cooperate with ICE immigration enforcement measures has not changed.”
Chicago has long protected even the most violent of illegal immigrants. A few years ago, the city even launched a $1.3 million legal defense fund to help illegal aliens facing deportation. When the public fund was created, a Chicago alderman admitted he probably has illegal aliens working in his city office. The lawmaker, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, said this in a local news report: “Donald Trump, we are sending you a message, you will not tear apart our families, we will stay together. We will defend and protect our communities.” The money to defend illegal immigrants for violating the nation’s federal statutes comes from Chicago property tax rebate funds. At the time, an African-American alderman who represents Chicago’s South Side went along with the measure to help the city’s illegal immigrants, but made it clear that the struggling communities she represents should have priority. “I’d like to see the administration put the same amount of effort into creating a legal representation fund for all of those young black boys and black girls that are racially profiled in this city or are shot by the police unnecessarily or to support programs like CeaseFire to quell some of the violence in our community,” said Alderman Pat Dowell. “When the mayor talks about wanting to keep the immigrant communities safe, secure and supported, those are the same needs that other communities have…”
Progressive Policy Drives Rising Crime in New York
In one of his rulings, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis observed that local jurisdictions can be “laboratories of democracy” by engaging in social experiments to discover what works best.
We’re seeing this at play in a perverse way in certain parts of the country, particularly New York City, which has become a petri dish for every Leftist nostrum. Our chief investigative reporter, Micah Morrison, has the details in his Investigative Bulletin.
Judicial Watch has been documenting rising social disorder in New York City at the hands of Mayor Bill de Blasio and radical activists in Albany and Washington. Last year, Democrats rammed through the state legislature a reform package that eliminated cash bail for a wide range of offenses—from assault, arson and child abuse to manslaughter, robbery and riot—and removed judicial discretion in holding suspects. Advocates for the measure correctly note that bail often discriminates against the poor—if you can’t afford bail, you sit in jail. But bail also offered a way to hold repeat offenders, including violent ones, behind bars until trial.
The reform legislation took effect January 1 and crime rates jumped. Numbers just in for the first two months of 2020 show a 35 percent increase in robberies and a 64 percent increase in stolen cars compared to the same period in 2019, the New York Post reports. Shootings, up 19 percent. Burglaries, up 21 percent.
Subway robberies are up sharply, with an increase of more than 100 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. NYPD insiders say subway robberies are largely driven by repeat juvenile offenders targeting other kids. A subway security official tells Judicial Watch that crime underground is widespread. In the city’s school system—the biggest in the country—parents speak with anguish about assaults on their children. And anti-Semitic hate crimes are significantly up in the city with America’s largest Jewish population.
All this has contributed to a growing sense of unease in New York. The politics of bail reform pit New York’s rising progressive forces against a cadre of Democrats who recognize a looming disaster when they see it. At a contentious town hall meeting last month in Forest Hills, Queens, de Blasio rejected complaints about links between rising crime and bail reform as “right-wing propaganda,” but he supports fixes to the law being pushed in Albany. Progressive firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is on the other side of the Democrat debate, calling on Albany to “slow down” on any legislative changes. By “slow down,” of course she means do nothing. If Ocasio-Cortez and her allies had their way, prisons would be entirely abolished. The outcome of the bail reform fight will say a lot about progressive power in Albany.
Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost seven to one in New York City, so don’t hold your breath waiting for conservative reform. But there are straws in the wind that suggest change might be stirring. One is the surprisingly vigorous campaign of veteran prosecutor Jim Quinn for Queens borough president. Quinn beat his five rivals for the post in the latest fundraising reports and has been making waves with his criticism of liberal excesses such as the bail reform law and the closing of the Rikers Island jail complex. On Twitter, Quinn called out Ocasio-Cortez and her allies for their “dangerous, radical agenda” and for “ignoring double-digit crime spikes & the victims impacted.”
Them’s fightin’ words in New York. The election is March 24 in a field crowded with liberal contenders surfing the progressive wave. But Quinn’s conservative message may resonate with a different sort of voter—like the one who told Bill de Blasio at the Forest Hills town hall meeting, “Mr. Mayor, I do not feel safe.
Until next week,
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Dick
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