What's Wrong with noncitizen New Yorkers voting?
Noncitizen votes dilute the fundamental principle of self-rule; just another drop in the backlash wave.
 |
|
Why are New York progressives such pretentious, pugilistic dimwits?
Yesterday, the new mayor decided not to veto a new law that will allow noncitizens the vote. According to ABC News, “More than 800,000 noncitizens and ‘Dreamers’ in New York City will have access to the ballot box” starting with elections in 2023.
Let’s get some facts on the table. First, this is an action by the city of New York, and it technically allows immigrants to vote only in city elections, not for federal or state races. Technically. Do we trust the process? Second, this is not the first city to allow noncitizen voting. It is legal in many places, and has been in place for many, many years. This is a big deal, because New York is a big deal, and a trendsetter.
Politically, you have to wonder if NYC Dems know that this will reduce confidence in the integrity of elections. It muddies the waters. At a time when the country is being roiled by anxiety about election fraud, this action is divisive rather than healing.
What’s Wrong With Noncitizen Voting?
Noncitizen voting offends the foundational principle of democracy: self-rule. The American revolution, and every democratic revolution since, is grounded in the idea that we the people have the right to rule ourselves rather than a king, a tyrant, or any foreign power.
Advocates argue that all people living in the city have a right to self-rule in that city. Do they mean the 65 million tourists that visit Manhattan every year? Folks from Wisconsin and Tennessee and the Southern states? No. Why would those dopes get a say? This is for foreigners who are not American citizens.
Progressives frame this as racial justice and a fight for immigrant rights. “We build a stronger democracy when we include the voices of immigrants,” said former City Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez, who led the effort in the New York. What Rodriguez gets wrong is that most NYC immigrants already have the right to vote because most NYC immigrants are citizens. They made the effort to assimilate, learn the laws, pass the test, and take the oath.
New York City is home to 3.1 million immigrants, the largest number in the city’s history. The majority of immigrant New Yorkers are naturalized U.S. citizens.
- Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs 2018 Annual Report
What is most offensive is that the noncitizens voting in New York are also going to be voting in their home countries. Mexico, for example, already protects the right of its expatriates to participate in elections, including the over 10 million Mexicans who live in the United States. They won’t lose that when NYC allows them to vote as well, rather they will get to double vote — something American citizens cannot do.
On June 6, 2021, Mexico allowed electronic voting to its citizen abroad, and over 25,000 people living in the United States were registered to do so.
A report from Pew notes that, “Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, are among the Latin American countries that currently allow citizens abroad to vote. Ecuador, like Mexico, [allowed] citizens to vote for the first time in its presidential elections in 2006.”
The Arc of Progress
One hundred years ago, many if not most citizens were unable to vote. Women had no voting rights. Many minorities in many places were harassed and disenfranchised. It was wrong, but the arc of progress slowly and surely overcame the barriers to equal voting rights. In 1910, the first state gave all women the right to vote, which became the law of the land on August 18, 1920, when the 19th amendment to the Constitution was ratified.
This is the nature of American democracy. Unfortunately, that instinct to make constant progress manifests in ways that are as unlawful as the reactionary wrongs they overcome. In other words, it’s hard for modern progressives to recognize success. There is always another grievance. And it leads them to dumb comparisons, as if modern rules allowing 2 weeks but not 4 weeks of early voting are “Jim Crow 2.0”. Ummm, no.
Citizenship is meaningful, at least it is to most Americans. By chipping away at it’s value, New York wounds democracy. On the contrary, I favor great immigration and just wrote a book advocating for more immigration to America, but only with a robust system of patriotic assimilation.
This is not about racism. And it’s not about immigration. Rather, it reduces the incentive for noncitizen immigrants to become citizens. And it overreaches by allowing foreign students, tourists, and businesspeople to vote — people with no long-term commitment to the city or nation. What’s to stop a hundred thousand Chinese “tourists” from establishing residency and voting in the 2024 presidential election?
You may say, “Hey Kane, that’s alarmist.” To which I say, “This is mild compared to conspiracy fodder you just tossed on the culture wars.” Much worse will be said. Much worse will be believed. That’s the biggest offense of New York’s overreaching progressivism: noncitizen voting erodes trust in elections, trust in government, and ultimately trust in the law.
Progressives remind me of Ferris Bueller, sometimes. They think it’s fun to take their hands of the wheel and hit the gas. They keep pushing. And pushing. And pushing. Someday, Cameron is going to push back.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The quick answer and correct one is NO!
Can You Trust the NY Times?
The most influential news source in the world is the New York Times. Every day, hundreds of newspapers and news stations around the world follow its lead. After all, isn’t the Times the gold standard of journalism? Investigative reporter Ashley Rindsberg reveals the truth in this eye-opening video.
Iran rules out prospect of an interim nuclear agreement in Vienna
Foreign Ministry spokesman says Tehran wants ‘a lasting and credible agreement, and no agreement without these two components is on our agenda’
Today, 10:35 am
Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Monday ruled out an interim agreement with world powers, as the sides continue their talks in Vienna aimed at returning to the 2015 nuclear accord.
A spokesman for the ministry, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said Tehran is “looking for a lasting and credible agreement, and no agreement without these two components is on our agenda.”
He added: “We all need to make sure that the return of the United States [to the deal is accompanied by verification and the receipt of guarantees, and that a lifting of sanctions must take place. These are not achieved by any temporary agreement.”
On Sunday Iran’s foreign minister said talks with world powers to revive the nuclear accord were approaching a “good agreement” but reaching one soon depends on the other parties.
“The initiatives of the Iranian side and the negotiations that have taken place have put us on the right track,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said.
“We are close to a good agreement, but to reach this good agreement in the short term, it must be pursued by the other side,” state news agency IRNA quoted him as saying.
Negotiations to restore the nuclear deal resumed in late November after they were suspended in June as Iran elected a new, ultra-conservative government.
The original deal offered Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. But then-president Donald Trump withdrew the US in 2018 and derailed the accord, prompting Tehran to begin rolling back on its commitments.
Amir-Abdollahian said the Islamic Republic was not looking to “drag out” negotiations.
It is “important for us to defend the rights and interests of our country,” he said.
Unlike the other parties to the agreement — Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China — the US has only been engaged in the talks indirectly.
Tehran earlier this week said it had detected a new “realism” on the part of the world powers ahead of further negotiations in Vienna.
Amir-Abdollahian appeared to echo those comments on Sunday, saying that “yesterday, France played the role of a bad cop, but today it is behaving reasonably.”
“Yesterday, the American side had unacceptable demands, but today we believe that it has adapted to the realities” of the situation, he added. “At the end of the day, a good deal is an agreement that satisfies all parties.”
The parties to the 2015 agreement saw it as the best way to stop the Islamic Republic from building a nuclear bomb — a goal Tehran has always denied, but which the West believes it actively sought.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Friday that negotiations were progressing on a “rather positive path” but emphasized the urgency of bringing them to a speedy conclusion.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Schumer is a worm who engages in double speak. Must be related to the one in The Garden of Evil:
gee note : schumer is nothing if not flexible
What Chuck Schumer said about the filibuster when the shoe was on the other foot
By Post Editorial Board
“Bottom line is very simple: The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called ‘the cooling saucer of democracy’ into the rubber stamp of dictatorship. We will not let them. They want, because they can’t get their way on every judge, to change the rules in mid-stream, to wash away 200 years of history. They want to make this country into a banana republic, where if you don’t get your way, you change the rules. Are we going to let them? It’ll be a doomsday for democracy if we do.”
That was what Sen. Chuck Schumer said in 2005, as he successfully argued that Republicans should not change the Senate’s filibuster rules to get their way. Now that Democrats have the Senate majority, with him as their leader, he’s arguing strenuously for sidelining the filibuster to “wash away 200 years of history.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hurricane Putin Catches Europe — and Biden — Between War and Appeasement
By ALEKSANDRA GADZALA-TIRZIU, Special to the Sun
The last few weeks have in Europe been marked by an impending sense of doom — akin, for this Floridian, to the apprehension that accompanies a looming hurricane. Will it make a direct hit or will we, by some stroke of luck, be spared? Russian maneuvers on Ukraine’s border and its entry into Kazakhstan have prompted similar anxieties — call it Hurricane Putin.
With this week’s diplomatic talks underway — between American and Russian officials today at Geneva, followed on Wednesday by the Russian-NATO Council at Brussels, and ending on the meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Thursday at Vienna — there is now, too, a growing sense of coming clarity as the storm discloses its path.
So far, the prognosis does not look good.
Moscow arrives at the parley with a strong hand. Its military intervention in Kazakhstan under the Collective Security Treaty Organization and at the behest of the Kazakh president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has ostensibly expanded its influence. As has been noted in these columns, Mr. Putin could seize on the moment to annex northern Kazakhstan, as Moscow tried in 1992.
Meantime, more than 100,000 Russian troops are stationed on the border of Ukraine, with Mr. Putin threatening military action if his demands are not met. He has managed to shape the global narrative, with some Western reports taking on an Alice in Wonderland quality, echoing chatter about “the threat from NATO.” What threat?
Mr. Putin behaves as if he’s playing for keeps and would stop at nothing short of the revival of the pre-1991 European security order. For Moscow, the current moment is about more than just Ukraine or, for that matter, NATO. The West’s narrative has been less clear, and Western leaders arrive at the talks ostensibly frenzied and divided.
A prelude to the week came with a flurry of reports — and denials in Washington — that the Biden administration would consider scaling back American troop deployments in Poland and the Baltics in exchange for Russian de-escalation. Even if unfounded, such rumors suggest a diplomatic weakness and conciliatory posture on which Mr. Putin is counting. Moscow has already signaled “disappointment” with the messaging from Washington.
On America’s side, negotiations are led by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who negotiated the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran. This, too, offers little comfort. In a readout from Secretary Sherman’s first meeting with her counterpart, Sergei Ryabkov, the American is quoted as saying, “The United States will discuss certain bilateral issues with Russia, but will not discuss European security without our European Allies.”
It is, of course, only correct and prudent to include in negotiations the countries most likely to be affected by the outcome. Yet in the current context this, too, smacks of American vacillation. Under the threat of war, Mr. Putin requested a meeting with President Biden over the heads of America’s European allies — and Mr. Biden acquiesced.
Once the misstep was grasped, there was then a quick rearranging of chairs and an announcement that the meeting between Russia and America would take place in Europe and only amid meetings with other European partners. Yet Mr. Putin has limited interest in these additional meetings.
Their eventual outcome is also unclear. While NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said that NATO “stands ready for conflict in Europe” and is ready to “strive for a better relationship,” Germany has been downplaying the risks and signaling a desire for a “new Ostpolitik,’ as earlier reported in the Sun.
Russia, too, has little interest in a “better relationship” with Europe or in abiding by the kind of “rules based international order” to which Ms. Sherman alluded in her remarks. In what is a decisive week in European and global politics, then, the West stands as a house divided and seemingly not fully aware of — or otherwise uncertain what to do about — Moscow’s menacing.
For Europe Hurricane Putin blows in as a precarious moment that teeters between war and appeasement, both of which risk altering its geopolitics. Let us not forget, too, that on the sidelines sits Communist China, which is watching closely to discover the limits of American and Western power. The storm is fast approaching, and we seem to be heading for a direct hit.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hanson defines rioting:
What Makes Riots, Conspiracies, Cabals, and Insurrections ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’?
Shut up and keep quiet; that is all ye need to know.
“Indeed, men too often take upon themselves in the prosecution of their revenge to set the example of doing away with those general laws to which alike can look for salvation in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against the day of danger when their aid may be required.”
—Thucydides, on the stasis at Corcyra
If the Republicans take the House or perhaps even the Senate, what new norms will they inherit from the Democratic majority of 2019-2021?
Will Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on national television ritually tear up the text of Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address and grimace while he speaks? Was that Speaker Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) intended vision of her new “narrative” for the 21st-century Congress?
Will the new majority, calling back to 2018, almost immediately begin impeaching an unpopular Biden? And will Republicans likewise dispense with a special counsel’s report, or with formal hearings with an array of witnesses with spirited cross-examinations?
Will they establish a special committee to investigate the rioting of summer 2020? Perhaps, in the new cannibalistic spirit of the age, will they dig into which national political figures—or colleagues—communicated with the Antifa or Black Lives Matter riot leaders, or offered them bail?
Will Speaker McCarthy veto Democratic committee members and instead appoint his own Democrats—on three criteria: one, that they have previously voted to impeach Biden; two, that either they cannot realistically again run for, or cannot conceivably be reelected to, the House; and three, that in advance they publicly praise and agree with McCarthy on the unwarranted virulence of the 2020 riots?
Will Republicans claim as reason to impeach Joe Biden that he failed to execute the laws as he swore to, by nullifying U.S immigration law? Was he not also guilty of an “abuse of power” and “obstructing Congress,” as he allowed 2 million aliens unlawfully to cross the southern border, during a pandemic without either testing or vaccinations, helping to spread the disease with reckless disregard? Will the new Congress subpoena generals to investigate the surrender and flight from Afghanistan, and especially who ordered it and why?
Would the Republicans follow the new norms and thus impeach a once-impeached and acquitted Biden a second time as he leaves office, and have the Senate try Biden in 2025 as a private citizen—again with neither a special counsel nor formal report—nor with the chief justice presiding over the trial, as the Constitution demands?
Will they appoint a special counsel to appoint a dream team of conservative lawyers? And would they allot a budget of $40 million and a lifespan of 22 months to get to the bottom of the Biden family pay-for-play syndicate, as federal investigators try to square Biden family expenditures and lifestyles with reported incomes?
Would such a counsel subpoena all the records of the Biden family, especially those concerning the financial labyrinth of Hunter Biden, to determine whether the Bidens registered as lobbyists for foreign governments, declared to the IRS their entire incomes, told the truth while under oath, or contacted public officials to influence U.S. foreign policy?
As far as “domestic terrorists”—who, according to Vice President Kamala Harris, rival the Imperial Japanese Navy’s killing of 2,400 Americans at Pearl Harbor or Bin Laden’s 9/11 hit team that murdered 3,000 civilians—should a bipartisan Warren Commission of distinguished citizens, without politicians of either party, be convened and entrusted to look at both the January 6 and summer 2020 riots?
The goal would be complete transparency: the FBI would turn over all records concerning the use of informants in both riots. Former Attorney General Merrick Garland would be called in to detail what the FBI did and did not do—as the investigation also queried the agency’s other efforts monitoring parents at school board meetings or serving as the Biden family clean-up and retrieval service.
All communications during days of riot between law enforcement and politicians, and within law enforcement, likewise would enter the public domain.
The violent deaths of Ashli Babbitt and more than 30 victims of the 2020 riots would be fully reinvestigated: who were the parties responsible for their deaths? Were they arrested, indicted, convicted, and incarcerated—or exempted? Would there be dozens of indictments, in Kyle Rittenhouse fashion?
Which social media platforms were used during both the 2020 and January 6 riots, if any, to coordinate violent activity? Did public officials or candidates contribute to the violence by encouraging exemptions, or offering to bail out offenders?
Did demonstrators in the violent weeks before the election and in the street modulate their high profiles and calibrate violence on the prompt of “powerful people” in politics and the media, as seemingly suggested in a recent Time magazine braggadocious article (e.g., “There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.” [emphases added])
“Good” and “Bad” Riots?
“Now too many see the protests as the problem. No, the problem is what forced your fellow citizens to take to the streets: persistent, poisonous inequities and injustice . . . And please, show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful. Because I can show you that outraged citizens are what made the country what she is and led to any major milestone. To be honest, this is not a tranquil time.”
—CNN anchorman Chris Cuomo
What if there had been a quite different national reaction following the shooting of military veteran Ashli Babbitt, the petite woman who was killed by an unnamed law-enforcement officer while unarmed and committing the crime of unlawfully entering the U.S. Capitol?
What if from January to May 2021, 120 days of looting, arson, and violence had followed the killing of the unarmed Babbitt by a policeman whose identity federal police would not divulge? As a result, what if right-wing thugs and criminals for four months in late spring and summer of 2021 had engaged in rioting, arson, and looting that resulted in over 30 deaths and $2 billion in property damage, flame-seared police precincts and torched federal courthouses, and caused 2,000 police injuries?
What if red state governors gave the rioters and protestors a pass to violate quarantines, given the outrageous killing of an unarmed woman? What if national figures such as a Republican vice presidential candidate bragged of contributing to bail funds for any rioters and looters and arsonists who were arrested?
Yet what if most of those hypothetical right-wingers in 2021 reacting to the Babbitt killing and responsible for trying to burn down government buildings were either not arrested, or subsequently released after being arrested, or had their charges dropped? And imagine if such exemptions accorded to right-wing thugs and miscreants stood in contrast to the hundreds of summer 2020 rioters still sitting in jail—often in solitary confinement, without recourse to bail—and watched by abusive right-wing deplorable guards?
What would be the reaction if local law enforcement were ordered by red state mayors not to stop such post-January 6 violence, as governors refused to call out their National Guards? What if the top retired military echelon in 2021 had libeled a Democratic president for even suggesting that federal troops were necessary to reestablish calm? What would happen if for days on end, zany armed right-wingers carved out a swath of downtown Phoenix, declaring it their own autonomous zone, and warned police not to dare enter their domain?
Beautiful Conspiracies, Lovely Cabals?
“There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs . . . Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears . . . That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”
—Molly Ball, Time
So left-wing Time journalist Molly Ball wrote in obvious admiration of the supposed real “heroes” of the 2020 election.
But what if in the next election, copycat, private citizen, right-wing billionaires likewise in “secret” and through a “shadow campaign” pull off a successful “conspiracy”?
What if in this new normal a “well-funded cabal of powerful people” on the Right managed to “influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information”? What would the Left say of all that after their candidate lost the 2024 election?
What if right-wing journalist hacks bragged post facto that their successful effort was the epitome of a “conspiracy,” and “well-funded” cabals—given their noble efforts to modulate and calm down right-wing protests in the streets before the election, and get their allies in the media “to control the flow of information”?
Would leftists allege that right-wing looters and arsonists obeyed commands from colluding right-wing billionaires and politicians to clean up their act, temporarily, given the bad pre-election media optics? Would that be racketeering across state lines or a conspiracy or an insurrection turned off and on? Would right-wing freelancers be praised for trying to warp the media and channel the “flow of information”? Perhaps, the noble conspiracy would succeed, with the aid of the media and FBI, to squash any embarrassing story about a Trump family diary or laptop?
What if Joe Biden was not just dealing with his own self-created disasters that have dropped his polls below 40 percent, but also simultaneously with such a right-wing cabal suing in the courts, after failing to persuade purple-state legislative majorities to overturn existing voting laws? What would Biden do if dozens of right-wing funded lawsuits, adjudicated by right-wing Trump-appointed judges, began systematically altering purple-state balloting procedures passed by their legislatures?
What if suddenly and mysteriously in 2024 there were no longer 102 million early and mail-in voters, but a more typical 30-40 million voters casting ballots outside of Election Day? What if the abnormal and surreal 2020 ballot disqualification rate of 0.1 to 0.4 percent in many states, returned to a more normal two to four percent?
Would any on the Left object if a single right-wing billionaire stealthily channeled $419 million into preselected swing-state red precincts, effectively to take over public oversight of the balloting? Would Hillary Clinton then again say the Republican winner was “illegitimate”? Would celebrities once more appear in videos urging the electors not to honor their states’ voting tallies?
All Ye Need to Know
The point of these hypotheticals is that there is no point, no consistent theme, no constant principle concerning riots, conspiracies, cabals, and insurrections—except one.
There is only the left-wing desire through any means necessary to obtain, increase, and use power to alter the Constitution and our long-held traditions and customs of governance, especially when the majority in a constitutional republic opposes such efforts. The lesson then is that all means are justified to obtain morally superior ends—with the caveat that only leftists can be morally superior.
As a result, sometimes “dark money” cabals and “unfolding” conspiracies of “powerful people,” who vow to rid the world of Trump, successfully can and should “change rules and laws” and again “control the flow of information” and modulate “protests” and coordinate private enterprise “ resistance.”
But what of the supposedly clueless public? What of the non-powerful people, the clingers, the dregs, and the irredeemables, the smelly in Walmart, and the toothless who have no inkling of such a smug, hip “shadow campaign”? What of those without Mark Zuckerberg’s billions, or Silicon Valley’s control of “the flow of information” or vast sums of “hundreds of millions in public and private funding”?
They are left with only the surreality that sometimes elected legislatures passing laws to require a voter to present an ID is “racist” and “voter suppression,” but at other times private “cabals” and conspiracies of “powerful people,” who outside of government and in secret, should certainly be “changing,” “steering,” and “controlling” voting procedures and the media coverage of such efforts.
In their deplorable ignorance, they are to accept that sometimes 120-day big riots are admirably not “tranquil,” but smaller one-day ones are terrorism and insurrection. Sometimes unarmed suspects, with a long record of meritorious military service, lethally shot by a policeman deserved it, as the law enforcement shooter becomes heroic and the victim demonized and slandered, as the killing is no indictment of policing. But then again, sometimes unarmed suspects, with lengthy arrest records, who die while in police custody are deified, as the death contextualizes ensuing riots and mayhem.
Sometimes renegade impeachments without rules are wonderful to behold; sometimes they would be hateful, vindictive, and destructive of American democracy.
A cynic who knew nothing of politics, nothing of the contemporary American Left or Right, might instead conclude in Orwellian fashion that big, lengthy deadly riots, are “good,” smaller, shorter, less-lethal ones “bad”; that bigger, more secret, and more successful cabals are good; but smaller, more open, and less successful ones would be bad.
Also good is a Congress going to unprecedented lengths to destroy an effective president with a successful record. Bad is a Congress impotently attempting to block a failed president with a catastrophic record.
And so shut up and keep quiet, since that is all ye need to know . . .
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Pelosi should be in jail with Hillary as her roommate.
Pelosi is a complete hypocrite.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has built a political career calling out big companies for their corporate greed.
Now, the NY Post is alleging that Speaker Pelosi has raked in an astounding sum of $30 million personally from insider stock trades through the very large tech companies she oversees in Congress!
What’s worse is Pelosi is even going as far as blocking bipartisan efforts to stop members of Congress from being able to trade stocks.
Essentially Pelosi is making millions of dollars and preventing anyone from stopping her.
Currently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s estimated net worth stands anywhere from $40 million to $252 million and her family has recently invested several more millions into call options on companies such as Google, Salesforce, Micron Technology and Roblox.
Simply put, call options are bets that the stock price will go up on these companies.
Pelosi has pushed back against any attempt from other to stop her and her family from trading stocks and simple states that America is a “free-market” and there is no conflict of interest going on.
++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment