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The Illusion of a Palestinian ‘Demilitarized’ State

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By Bassam Tawil

As part of its effort to promote the idea of a “two-state solution,” the Biden administration has been talking about the need to establish a “demilitarized” Palestinian state next to Israel.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is reported to have asked the State Department for a “review of what a demilitarized Palestinian state would look like based on other models around the world.”

The purpose of such a review is to look at options for how a “two-state solution” can be implemented in a way that assures security for Israel, a US official told the American media outlet Axios.

The Biden administration is homing in on a new doctrine involving an unprecedented push to immediately advance the creation of a “demilitarized” but viable Palestinian state, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman reported in early February:

“[The plan] would involve some form of U.S. recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would come into being only once Palestinians had developed a set of defined, credible institutions and security capabilities to ensure that this state was viable and that it could never threaten Israel.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi has also voiced support for the establishment of a “demilitarized” Palestinian state.

“There must be a Palestinian state on the June 4 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, side by side with Israel,” the Egyptian president said in November 2023.

“We are ready for this state to be demilitarized, and for there to be guarantees of the presence of forces, whether from NATO, the United Nations, or Arab or American forces, so that we can achieve security for both states, the nascent Palestinian state and the Israeli state.”

The talk about a “demilitarized” Palestinian state comes in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel and the murder, rape, torture, mutilation, and burning alive of 1,200 Israelis, including women, children, and the elderly. Hamas also kidnapped more than 240 Israelis, more than half of whom are still being held hostage in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel used various types of weapons, including assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and motorized hang gliders. Thousands of terrorists infiltrated Israel from the Gaza Strip, which has been under the exclusive control of Hamas since 2007. The Iran-backed terror group Hamas soon launched a coup, overthrowing the Palestinian Authority (PA) and seizing control over the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas coup came two years after Israel withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip, after evacuating more than 9,000 Jews who were living there in more than 25 communities. Since 2005, there have been no Jewish civilians or soldiers in the Gaza Strip, which became a semi-independent Palestinian state.

After the Hamas takeover, Israel and Egypt tightened their respective border crossings and placed restrictions on shipping to prevent smuggling and the infiltration of terrorists and weapons. Since the Hamas takeover, Israel, a state the size of New Jersey, has been bombarded by tens of thousands of rockets and mortars — more than 11,000 just since October 7: 9,000 from Gaza, 2,000 from Lebanon.

The Israeli and Egyptian arms blockade did not prevent Hamas and other terror groups from smuggling large amounts of weapons into the Gaza Strip, mostly through the border with Egypt. The blockade also did not prevent the Palestinian terror groups from manufacturing and developing their own weapons, including various types of rockets and missiles. The idea that the Gaza Strip would become a “demilitarized” entity thanks to the Israeli and Egyptian security restrictions proved to be a pipe-dream.

The October 7 massacre of Israelis demonstrated that Israel’s enemies do not need tanks and warplanes to invade Israel murder 1,200 people and wound more than 5,000 others. The Palestinians have proven over the past few decades that when it comes to murdering Jews, they will use anything they can get their hands on as a weapon, including knives, cars, swords, screwdrivers, clubs, daggers, stones, Molotov cocktails, and explosive belts.

Four months after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, it has become clear how the Palestinian terror groups were successful in transforming the Gaza Strip into one of the most dangerous and militarized areas in the Middle East. The Israeli army has discovered and destroyed dozens of Hamas tunnels, many of which were equipped with electricity, ventilation, sewage systems, communication networks and rails, as well as weapons and food. The Gaza Strip is so full of weapons that, four months into the war, the Palestinian terrorists are still using rocket-propelled grenades and explosive devices to attack Israeli troops.

The situation in the West Bank areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority is equally worrying. In the past few years, Iran and its terror proxies had accelerated efforts to smuggle weapons into the West Bank through Jordan.

“Iran wants to turn Jordan into a transit area for weapons going into Israel,” said Amer Al-Sabaileh, founder of Security Languages, a counterterrorism think tank in the Jordanian capital of Amman. The bulk of Iranian weapons to Palestinians go into the West Bank, particularly to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to a senior Jordanian security official.

In November 2023, Israeli authorities foiled an attempt to smuggle 137 guns into Israel from Jordan, in what they said was the largest-ever seizure of weapons on the Jordanian border.

Four months earlier, Israeli authorities thwarted an unusual weapons smuggling attempt into Israel from Jordan, the details of which have not been cleared for publication. The smuggling was described as “irregular,” and not similar to previous, and frequent, smuggling attempts. Authorities investigating the incident believe the weapons were being spirited in for use by Palestinian terror groups in the West Bank.

In April 2023, a Jordanian parliament member was arrested by Israeli authorities for attempting to smuggle more than 200 firearms into the West Bank using his diplomatic passport.

The flow of weapons into the West Bank has facilitated the emergence of several armed groups responsible for countless terrorist attacks against Israelis. Most of these groups operate in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, which has several security forces consisting of tens of thousands of officers who are supposed to disarm the armed groups.

If the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip managed over the past few decades to accumulate so many weapons, one can only imagine what would happen if they were handed an independent and sovereign state with full control over the borders with Egypt and Jordan. The Palestinians would undoubtedly continue their efforts to obtain more weapons to be used in the Jihad (holy war) to kill Jews and eliminate Israel.

First, even if the Palestinians commit in advance to a “demilitarized” state, experience shown that their promises are worthless.

More importantly, according to Louis René Beres, professor emeritus at Purdue University and an expert in international law and political science, any commitment to a demilitarized state by the Palestinian leadership would be legally worthless:

“Any treaty is void if, at the time it was entered into, it conflicts with a ‘peremptory’ rule of general international law (jus cogens) – a rule accepted and recognized by the international community of states as one from which ‘no derogation is permitted.’ Because the right of sovereign States to maintain military forces essential to ‘self-defense’ is such a peremptory rule, Palestine, depending upon its particular form of authority, could be entirely within its right to abrogate any pre-independence agreement that had compelled its demilitarization.” [Italics in original.]

The Palestinian Authority committed, under the terms of the peace agreements signed with Israel, to combat terrorism and enforce law and order in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, the PA essentially did nothing to confiscate illegal weapons or crack down on the countless armed groups operating under its nose.

Even today, the PA is virtually doing nothing to foil terrorist attacks against Israelis from areas under its control in the West Bank. It is hard to find one Palestinian family in the West Bank that does not possess an assault rifle, pistol, or some other weapon.

After Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians had a chance to turn the coastal enclave into the “Singapore of the Middle East.” Instead, they turned it into one massive base for Jihad and terrorism. They also used the Gaza Strip as a launching pad to fire tens of thousands of rockets and mortars into Israel.

According to Beres:

“There are several substantive and foreseeable problems with Palestinian demilitarization. The first such problem has to do with conspicuously unchanging Palestinian commitments to an Arab state that would replace Israel. The second concerns certain critical expectations of international law-abiding expectations that could conceivably allow any Palestinian state to abrogate its pre-independence commitments to remain ‘demilitarized’…

“Therein lies the jurisprudential core of the Palestinian demilitarization problem: International law would not necessarily require Palestinian compliance with any pre-state agreements concerning the use of armed force. From the standpoint of such authoritative law, enforcing demilitarization upon a sovereign state of Palestine would be sorely problematic.” [Italics in original.]

Beres noted that both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas continue to agree on one central deal-breaking point: First, Israel’s existence is intolerable on purely religious grounds and, second, Israel, in its entirety, is nothing more than “Occupied Palestine”:

“Unhidden, both the Arab world and Iran still have only a ‘One-State Solution’ for the ‘Israel Problem.’ It is a ‘solution’ that eliminates Israel altogether, a physical solution, a ‘Final Solution.’ Even today, official Arab maps of ‘Palestine’ (PNA and Hamas) show the prospective Arab State comprising all of the West Bank (Judea/Samaria), all of Gaza and all of Israel. They knowingly exclude any references to a Jewish population and list ‘holy sites’ of Christians and Muslims only.”

Beres warned Israel not draw comfort from a purportedly legal promise of Palestinian demilitarization:

“Should the government of a new state of Palestine choose to invite foreign armies and/or terrorists onto its territory, it could do so without practical difficulties and without violating international law.”

As a fully sovereign state, Palestine might not be bound by pre-independence agreements, even if the compacts were to include the United Nations and/or United States reassurances to the contrary.

Beres added:

“Because authentic treaties can be binding only upon states, any agreement between a non-State Palestinian National Authority (presumably in tangible concert with Hamas) and a sovereign state of Israel would garner little respect…

“Following the Gaza war, any plan for accepting Palestinian demilitarization would be built upon sand. Neither the United States nor Israel should ever base its geostrategic assessments of Palestinian statehood upon such an illusory foundation. Following any implemented form of post-Gaza war independence, neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas would accept the idea of a ‘limited’ form of Palestinian statehood. By any Arab world definition, such an idea would be considered unreasonable and humiliating.”

No one can stop a future Palestinian state from becoming a lawless and militarized state. Such a state on Israel’s doorstep would pose a direct and grave threat to Israel’s existence and actually facilitate the mission of the Iranian regime and its terror proxies to murder more Jews.

*****

This article was published by the Gatestone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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The Takeover

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By Neetu Arnold

A massive increase in foreign money and students on American campuses is driving radicalization and subsidizing institutional failure

Something new and peculiar stands out about the wave of anti-Israel student activism that has rocked American university campuses since October: There is a visibly more radical element to these protests. Student activists almost seemed to take glee in Hamas’ massacre of innocent civilians—when they weren’t denying that it happened at all. The antisemitic rage struck a different tone than the typical anti-Israel fare that has become a central part of American student activism since Students for a Democratic Society formed in the 1960s.

So what changed? The answer is clear to anyone who watched the videos: these student protests are no longer composed solely of left-wing American students steeped in critical theory and post-colonial ideology. The protests are now havens for foreign students, especially those from Arab and Muslim countries, with their own set of nationalist and tribal grievances against Israel and the United States. In some cases, such foreign students appear to lead the protests in their pro-terrorism chants—some of which are in Arabic, or translations of Arabic slogans.

What we are witnessing is the latest consequence of a quiet revolution in higher education: the internationalization of the American university. Today, there are more than one million foreign students enrolled at American universities, making up more than 5% of the total student population. At elite universities, the situation is much more extreme: international students make up almost 25% of the student population.

The process of internationalization was slow at first, but it has rapidly accelerated in the past two decades. Since the Institute of International Education started to keep track of foreign student enrollment in 1948, it took over 50 years for enrollment to increase from 25,000 to more than 500,000 by 2000. But it only took 15 years after that for the number of international students to double to its current level of one million.

The motivations of universities to admit so many international students are two-fold. Foreign students, first and foremost, serve as cash cows. They disproportionately pay full price for tuition and housing, whether it comes from sponsorships by foreign governments or their own families’ largesse. The deal is even better for public universities—international students pay the out-of-state price, which is significantly higher than the tuition rate for in-state students.

Increasing international student enrollment also fits neatly into universities’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals. While this particular phenomenon is more recent, it is crucial for understanding the current shifts in international student recruitment. It also provides universities with a moral justification for their equivocating response to egregious—and perhaps even illegal—acts by international students in recent months…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Tablet Magazine.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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Too Many Lawyers Leading to Too Much Mischief

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By Bruce Bialosky

The world has been directing negative comments against lawyers for at least five hundred years. Law schools push out too many people with degrees that go on to lay waste to our economy. Ambulance chasers have given way to the mass marketers arranging financial mayhem. Our government hires throngs of attorneys to attack our businesses and stifle our livelihoods. They end up engaging against legal counsel at other governmental entities in death-match battles financed by our taxes. This has accelerated into an egregious attack on our political system.

The visceral hatred of Donald Trump has redefined “political positioning.” Having lived through both RDS (Reagan Derangement Syndrome) and BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome), the TDS we are experiencing eclipses the previous ones in such a manner to resemble zombies on speed due to their vengefulness. They were willing to threaten our political system while he was President and have been working to destroy our court system ever since. If you don’t think these actions have a destructive effect permanently, you are probably experiencing TDS yourself where anything is justified to rid us of the menacing “Orange Man.”

This refers to the five ginned-up court cases against him. These include the defamation case held in one of the two locations (NYC and DC) that Republicans — and particularly Trump — have no chance of winning. The case only existed because a New York State law was created just so the case could move forward. Then a billionaire hater of Trump funded the legal fees to enable the lawsuit. The fact that a person can win a case based on an incident where she cannot even identify the place or date that it occurred is an affront to our legal system.

The other four cases are based on three people who engineered their political careers to get and convict a person without any specific knowledge of a crime. The fourth, Jack Smith, is such a rabid attack dog that he has spent hundreds of thousands of our dollars attempting to try and convict Trump, timed specifically to precede the 2024 election to ensure Trump loses.

The case just ruled on in New York is so disgusting it almost defies description. Leticia James, who has twice been elected Attorney General of the State of New York, defines how sick their political system has become. After persistent attempts, she finally found a 1956 statute – one that has never been applied (to anyone’s knowledge) because it is so absurd on its face. Let’s be clear here, despite anything James has charged, and Judge Arthur Engoron (handpicked by James) ruled, Trump did absolutely NOTHING wrong. If you believe he did then you have blanket ignorance of real estate loans in the modern world and most likely have a severe case of TDS. There were no criminal charges here. No one was harmed.

Engoron judged Trump owes $360 million not including interest. He has the chutzpah to say in his verbose ruling that if Trump had just been contrite Engoron would have ruled differently. If Trump had been, Engoron would have just stated, “See, he admitted he is wrong” and then puked out the same ruling in an attempt to break Trump. The fact that Trump must produce the funds in cash within 30 days and cannot use any banks doing business in New York (one of the world’s two banking capitals) demonstrates Engoron’s single-minded vengeance. Fortunately, an appeals court set aside some of the draconian requirements established by Engoron.

There is the special case of Kathy Hochul, New York’s clueless governor, who came out immediately and told the business world not to worry about doing business in New York as this ruling relates only to Trump. That statement alone validated the trial’s sole purpose: the destruction of Mr. Trump. Be assured the remainder of the business world saw what happened and will be reorienting their efforts away from New York thinking they could be next in line to have their assets confiscated by hollow rulings.

Jack Smith had a pitchfork thrown at his case to get Trump before our national election. Turns out President Biden had acted similarly, but even worse. He was not President at the time he kept top secret documents on open and careless display in his garage next to his prized Corvette. Robert Hur, the federal prosecutor in the Biden case, stated he did not recommend pursuing a case against Biden because he is too mentally feeble. Hur had to state his rationale, the absence of which would have clearly defined the separate and unequal justice for Democrats versus Republicans. Not levying charges against Biden makes Smith’s case a testament to inequality.

Suggesting “Trump acted differently” is simply hogwash. It is all about TDS.

There is a special case of DA Fani Willis. Ms. Willis had to concoct a RICO case that should have been handled by the Attorney General of the state if it had any validity. She is obviously a well-educated lady, but she should brush up on Confucius. He stated, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

During a recent lunch with a litigator friend, he looked at me and said “What was she thinking? How did she think the relationship with (special prosecutor) Wade would not be discovered?” By immediately stating the cause of the claims against her was – you guessed it, racism – it was obvious she had no defense.

My friend and I spoke again after Willis testified that she had actually paid Wade back in cash. Please give me a break. In 45 years of working with the IRS, I have never and would never invoke the word “cash.” Where did the cash come from? She and her father then ginned up this story of black people paying for things in cash. Maybe 50 years ago. Every black person I know chases their credit card mileage points like the rest of us. Show us the withdrawals from your bank account, Ms. Willis, your W-2 employee. To answer my friend’s rhetorical question, she could only have been thinking no one would look into her. And when they did, she made up this grossly stupid story about cash. Has she never heard of Venmo?

Ms. Willis proceeds with this immense disservice to prosecutors everywhere. Wade did not think about this because he is not really a prosecutor, and he would not know unless he watched a cop show. When she made up the lie about when their relationship started, she never thought they might trace his cell phone activity. That is what cops do today — trace the cell phones of suspected criminals and pinpoint their locations. Do you think Willis would know it is provable that Wade was servicing her late at night way before invoking the phony date their relationship supposedly began? Wade never thought of tracing because he is not really a prosecutor, and/or doesn’t watch cop shows.

In this case, Confucius may be wrong. Hopefully, she will only have dug one grave – her own.

Alvin Bragg’s case is not worthy of discussion except to say he is another attorney using his power to destroy a disfavored person. His case has been judged to be inane, but you can never predict a New York jury vis-à-vis Mr. Trump.

It sounds like this column is about defending Trump. It is not. It is about defending our legal system against lawyers attempting to destroy it. How about lawyers destroying our legal system when they go after the licenses of attorneys general they disfavor? I rest my case. We must put a stop to this before we decline further to a second-rate country. It is not about Trump; it is about our government.

*****

This article was published in Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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Somersaulting Over Sonoran Hot Dogs

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By Craig J. Cantoni

The human capacity for inconsistency, contradiction, hypocrisy, double standards, and cognitive dissonance fascinates me—especially my own large capacity for such intellectual somersaults.

Somersaults were on display in a recent news story in the Arizona Daily Star. The story was about “Sonoran hot dog king” Daniel Contreras being in intensive care in a Tucson hospital. (“Family seeks prayers for Tucson’s El Guero Canelo Sonoran hot dog king,” Arizona Daily Star, March 2, 2024.)

Conteras is a local celebrity for winning a James Beard culinary award and being featured on the TV show “Man v. Food” for his Sonoran hot dog, which is served at his restaurant, El Guero Canelo. I applaud his success and join other Tucsonans in wishing him and his family well.

So, where is the intellectual somersault? Let me set the table.

Bacon and mayonnaise are among the toppings on a Sonoran hot dog. This makes it even more unhealthy than refried beans lathered with lard

The Sonoran hot dog has its origins in Mexico, where almost four of every ten people over the age of fifteen are obese, an obesity rate that almost equals the rate in the U.S. Mexico now has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world, with a staggering 16.9% of the population afflicted with the disease, a disease that can become terribly debilitating. The diabetes rate in the U.S. is about five percentage points lower but still affects nearly 30 million Americans.

To continue setting the table, another recent story in the Arizona Daily Star was about the Tucson Unified School District receiving $7.2 million from a class-action lawsuit against tobacco companies JUUL Labs and Altria Group. The companies had been sued by TUSD and other districts around the country for the negative effects on schools from the marketing of vaping products (smokeless tobacco) to students. The money is being used by TUSD to hire health counselors.

To conclude with the setting of the table, the Arizona Daily Star had run a regular column until recently on the local marijuana industry. The column put a positive spotlight on selected retail marijuana stores and featured various pot products, including products in packaging and flavors that would appeal to kids. This in a city with a serious problem of pedestrians being fatally run over by cars, often due to the pedestrian or driver being impaired.

The inconsistencies are striking. One product, smokeless tobacco, is demonized, while two others are celebrated, although all three can have negative health effects.

The statistics on the health effects of vaping are squishy, but let’s assume that vaping is considerably unhealthier than smoking pot or eating hot dogs topped with bacon and mayo. That still doesn’t justify the double standard of saying nothing but negatives about vaping and nothing but positives about the others.

I have to stop here. It’s time for my snack of Peanut M&Ms.

*****

Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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The American Stasi Controls What You Hear And See To Control What You Think And Do

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By Sean Davis

Big Tech, federal agencies, and corporate media are working together to undermine the country and control your thoughts.

It’s tempting to look at Big Tech, corporate media, and federal agencies as distinct industries and entities with their own goals and organizational structures, but that’s not the right way to analyze them in 2024. In reality, they are just different systems within the same organism, similar to how eyes, ears, and legs are all part of a human body. They have different roles and functions, but all are subordinate to the same overarching goal: total power.

In 2024, these entities all function as part of a single system: the American Stasi. Recall that the Stasi was the oppressive spying and law enforcement regime deployed by the Soviet Union against the people of East Germany. The American regime today is every bit as corrupt and deceitful as the Soviet Stasi was during the Cold War. Big Tech and the federal surveillance system work hand in glove to manipulate what you see, hear, and think. The surveillance state spies on you constantly if you engage in activities it detests: going to church or speaking out at a school board meeting, for example. It develops and deploys complex technologies used to manipulate your perception of reality.

Big Tech is the deployment mechanism for much of this technology. Social media networks use government-funded technology to censor the news you read. Search engines use these technologies to prevent you from ever seeing information that’s inconvenient to the regime. Step out of line, and the surveillance state will demand that Big Tech shut down your account or prevent you from earning any revenue from your journalism. I personally know this happens because the regime did it to me and to The Federalist in 2020 and beyond.

Corporate media is used by both the surveillance state and Big Tech to bombard you and overwhelm you with messages it wants you to hear. If the government needs you to hate another country to justify the government’s desire to go to war with it, corporate media will gladly comply with story after story demanding war and slurring anyone who dissents as a domestic terrorist. The government will often spy on these dissenters and leak details of their private lives to corporate media to embarrass them, or they may even deliberately spread vicious lies about someone, knowing corporate media will happily broadcast them. Truth is no obstacle to the American Stasi.

If the government needs a war to replenish the coffers of its military-industrial complex backers and to justify the continued existence of its obscene security and surveillance services, it will use every appendage in the American Stasi to get its way. Corporate media will vilify the target foreign nation and any domestic dissenters. The FBI and its cronies will spy on, smear, and terrorize dissenters as national security threats. Defense research agencies will distribute technologies to their Big Tech friends, which will be used to throttle and deplatform citizens who object to the government’s actions.

And Big Tech will happily censor anyone the regime targets and then pat themselves on the back for being on the “right side of history.” At no point does the American Stasi engage in self-reflection and wonder if maybe it is the real villain. They all work in concert with each other in a constant feedback loop, effortlessly reinforcing each other in a manner requiring little overt direction.

Like with a human body, the eyes and ears and arms and legs don’t need step-by-step instructions for every menial task. They all know what’s required of them, or else they wouldn’t be part of the system. None of this is speculative, by the way. It’s all too real, and each one of you has witnessed multiple American Stasi operations rolled out over the last decade. Once you recognize what they’re doing and how the playbook never really changes, it’s difficult to unsee.

Russiagate? 100% American Stasi op from beginning to end. Ukraine impeachment? American Stasi op to defend its money-laundering playground in Ukraine, protect Biden, and hurt Trump. It was a psyop trifecta. The Kavanaugh rape hoax? Obvious American Stasi op. Covid? Oh, you better believe it. They brought out all the big guns on that one: it gave them the opportunity to take out Trump and deploy a biomedical surveillance state.

Hunter Biden’s laptop? Yep. The FBI fed lies to corporate media, and those lies were then used as censorship fodder by Big Tech. J6? Obviously. And, of course, the Ukraine war. And these are just the ones I can list off the top of my head. I promise you there are far more because the American Stasi never stops trying to manipulate the American people into giving the regime more power.

Power is all the American regime cares about, and it won’t stop until you don’t have any left.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Weekend Read: A Tale Of Two Lies – Part 1: Jewish Settler Colonialism  thumbnail

Weekend Read: A Tale Of Two Lies – Part 1: Jewish Settler Colonialism 

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By Marvin A. Treiger

Are there settler-colonial states in the modern era? Of course, there are. The best example of such a state is Tibet. The Chinese invaded Tibet in 1959. In the past 40 years and counting, 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed constituting one/fifth of the population. The occupiers have destroyed 6,000 monasteries arguably exceeding the total number of Churches in Europe during the Middle Ages. Chinese have moved into Tibet, primarily into the larger cities in vast numbers. Their total numbers are unknowable because they are hidden by the Chinese government but their number grows daily.

This is settler colonialism. Few in the West seem much bothered by these atrocities. Nor is there much knowledge or concern for other ongoing atrocities. Over 52 thousand Nigerian Christians have been martyred at the hands of Jihadi Muslims. Although not strictly speaking an example of “settler colonialism,” over 18,000 Churches have been burned to the ground and Muslim Nigerians simply move into destroyed neighborhoods.

In contrast, the Western world’s myopic attention zeroes in almost exclusively on Israel as a “settler-colonial” state. Israel is branded as illegitimate. Jihadis, other Arab Muslims, and growing numbers of Western leftists share this view. An illegitimate state is necessarily oppressive. Hence, the calls for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” i. e. the elimination of the whole of Israel and all of its Jews.

Support for Hamas for this genocidal project soared after the October 7 massacres with 85% of Palestinians on the West Bank believing the attack was correct while those in Gaza supported it by 57%. This is an extremely important reaction to note because it constitutes an endorsement of genocide in its most barbaric form by the population itself.

Yet, the whole bloody mess is built on a tissue of layered LIEs. Let’s take a look at them from the beginning.

Historical Jewish Presence in the Region

Jews have maintained a continuous presence in the “Holy Land” for the past 3,100 years. This was factually true even during occupations by Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire. The most significant invasion took place in the 7th century when Islamic hordes from the Arabian Peninsula overran and colonized the region.

It is true that the number of Jews ebbed and flowed in the face of alternating conquest and renewal. These conquests were achieved through force and violence which is one of the abiding features of settler-colonialism and was visited upon the indigenous Jews of the region.

Still, the Jews survived and persisted in many places such as Tiberius on Lake Kinneret, also known as the Sea of Galilee, and in mountainous Safed where the Jewish mysticism of the Kabbalah was forged and flourished in the 1,500s and abides to this very day. Also, in Hebron and in numerous small communities Jews survived.

Jerusalem, of course, was central to the deepest religious impulses of Jews as it is for Christians. As recently as 1850, the first official census was conducted by the Ottoman Empire and found that 50% of the population of Jerusalem were Jews.

At that time, the region had been so neglected by the Ottomans, that depopulation left the region somewhat uninhabited with an optimistic total of only 380,000 persons by around 1880.

The Period in Question and the Rise of Zionism  

The period in question targeted by accusers as foundational to Jewish settler-colonialism is 1878-1948. During that period many Jews began to migrate to this region during the reign of the Ottoman Empire and also when the region remanded to the British mandate following the Ottoman collapse after WW I.

The Zionist Movement was established in 1897 as part of the broader movement for the self-determination of nations that swept the world of oppressed peoples at that time. The principal Zionist impetus for Jews to migrate came from the periodic and rising pogroms in Europe and Russia.

Jews constitute both a people and a religion. The religious dimension was predominate for over 2,000 years. Every year in every family the Ceder was concluded with the words “Next year in Jerusalem”. This was the heart yearnings of displaced people so often marginalized and persecuted in the lands to which they had been exiled while never being fully accepted in their new homes.

Zionist forerunners established some 20 villages before Zionism became an official movement thus adding to the original Jewish population living there. The Ottomans had been in decline and its many absentee owners and administrative operatives were happy and eager to accept Jewish money for land purchases.

The Zionist movement stepped up this process dramatically. The Rothschilds and other means were helpful in this endeavor of land purchases. Most Jews moving to the region were poor. Inspired and resourceful, these settlers made uninhabitable areas livable. Swamp lands which were numerous due to nearly non-existent water management were also plagued by malarial mosquitoes and thus readily sold to immigrants. Ironically, once drainage techniques were employed, some of this land became highly fertile.

The land prospered. As a result, word spread, and many Arabs moved in to participate in the prosperity resulting from Jewish innovations. For the first time in centuries, the area began to show promise and impoverished Arab fellaheen rushed in. It was the time of the greatest prosperity for the poor Arabs of the region. As a result, they moved to the region in droves. For example, as late as 1920, there were 565,000 Arabs, up from 380,000 in 1880. This number soared to 1,247,000 by 1947.

In the early years, this process was almost entirely non-violent although there was a tradition of Bedouin bandits, local feuds, and squabbles to be sure. It’s a stretch, to put it mildly, to fancy this process as some sort of colonial invasion imposed on a resident population. It fails the smell test. It is only brought up in this way to invalidate Jewish presence and smear it as essentially the dirty deeds of dirty, oppressor Jews – a familiar theme in the Middle East and the West from time immemorial.

These decades of Jewish migration involved hundreds, even thousands, of land transfers which are documented in detail, including the political and economic circumstances surrounding the principal transfers. All these were contractual. They were neither the result of land grabs nor conquests. 

Finally, after years of painstaking research, these records from the Ottoman period and the British Mandate were all gathered in the work of Arieh Avneri: The Claim of Dispossession: 1878-1948. The book is a bit of a slog but well worth your time if you wish to go into the land question in depth. Colonialism it is not. Unless paying exorbitant prices en masse beyond a land’s worth equals colonialism.

A Palestinian “national” movement only appeared in the 1920’s. Why so tardy? In part, because it needs to be remembered that the Ummah, or extended community of Muslims of the “House of Peace” transcended the category of traditional nations.

Once a region is conquered by the armies of Islam it remains in the Ummah unless defeated in war. Eventually, its place in the Ummah must be revived. Doing so is a special mission obligatory for true Muslims. For example, it is believed that southern Spain must one day be returned to the Ummah. One way or another. The region of Palestine is no different. The Jewish presence violated this sacred principle of the “House of Peace” and must be eliminated.

In our modern period, nations and national consciousness emerged. The advent of the self-determination of nations represented a necessary tactical adjustment for Jihadis as a workable method for restoring Ummah to lost lands. And so the nationalist movement began in the region.

By 1921, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem began stimulating riots which morphed into pogroms by 1929 when the Hebron Massacre occurred. Ironically, few European or Ashkenazi Jews lived In Hebron. Most were Sephardic Jews, i.e. Arab Jews who lived there for religious reasons from earlier times. Again in the 1930s there were several more pogroms. 

The Grand Mufti, now leader of the Palestinian movement, and Hitler formed an alliance in 1941. By 1943, the Grand Mufti, who by then was the established leader of the nationalist movement, advised Hitler that same year to take the Jews to Poland where the “final solution” was already known to be awaiting them. By then, Hitler had his hands full and couldn’t be bothered.

In 1948, the UN established a partition of a Jewish and an Arab Muslim state. This was the first internationally legalized “two-state solution” which we hear so much about today. By late 1947, the population of the area of what was to become Israel in 1948, contained 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs.

On May 15, 1948, Israel declared its independence. The following day, the armies of 5 Arab nations declared war on Israel. This would be the first of many attempts to prevent a “two-state solution” by Arab nations.

The origins of the specific theory of Israel as a Settler-Colonial state arose as a corollary to Lenin’s theory of imperialism. Lenin argued that while early colonies were based upon a mercantilist advantage to the Mother Country, modern domination of weaker countries was based upon the export of capital and the profits derived therefrom. 

Lenin’s data was compromised primarily in terms of what it omitted. it turned out that most foreign capital was invested in other advanced countries, not in colonies. It also emerged that investments in colonies also stimulated industry and benefitted those nations to some extent in the long run.

The use of the theory of “settler-colonial imperialism” was taken up by the Jihadis and initiated the Marxist radical left’s alliance with Islamism. After all, they have a common enemy in the Little Satan (Israel) and the Great Satan (America), the Little Imperialist and the Big Imperialist.

*****

Next: A Tale Of Two Lies – Part 2: The Two-State Solution and Freedom Caucus Resolution

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

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Fourteen Russian Hoaxes and What Explains Them

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By Adam Mill

The New York Times reports that the entire corruption case against the Biden family in the U.S. House of Representatives was dealt “a stinging setback” after special counsel David Weiss obtained this indictment against a key “whistleblower” for lying about the Bidens. The indictment alleges that Russians used this informant, who also worked for the FBI, feeding him disinformation about the Bidens supposedly accepting large payments as bribes. It is important to remember, however, that this indictment is merely an allegation. We should view it within the context of many previous allegations that, like this indictment, align with the joint government/media operation to get Trump.

Weiss has also been accused of using his office to slow-walk the investigation into the Bidens in order to protect them. Remember that the Justice Department has a terrible record for “justice” when it comes to anything political, particularly as it relates to Russia.

Bookmark this article for reference in the future. This is not to say that the Justice Department might trump up a case merely to protect President Biden. It is merely to remind readers that there’s a long track record to consider. Whenever we hear our government or its servants in the media make a politically charged claim about Russia, we should refresh our memories of the many stories that turned out to be hoaxes surrounding that country. Here is a brief list to keep handy:

  1. The Russian Co-Signers Hoax: In August of 2018, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell claimed Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin cosigned loans to Donald Trump from Deutsche Bank. MSNBC quickly retracted the claim when Trump threatened to sue. Read here for a deeper dive into that story and a good laugh.
  2. The Trump Tower Russians Hoax: In July of 2017, The New York Times reported that Donald Trump, Jr. met with a Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, at Trump Tower in 2016 in the hope that she had opposition research against Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Although a meeting did take place, the “Russian” in question shared a client with Fusion GPS—the firm Clinton hired to frame Trump for colluding with Russia. Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson had dinner with her on the night before and after the Trump Tower meeting and the opposition research used to bait Donald Trump, Jr. came directly from Fusion GPS.
  3. The Hunter Biden Russian Disinformation Hoax: In October of 2020, shortly after The New York Post reported on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop , 51 intelligence officials signed a letter characterizing the story as Russian disinformation. The claim was easily disproved by people who authenticated emails found on the laptop. Nevertheless, at the urging of the U.S. government, social media companies censored the story to protect the Bidens.
  4. The Russian Bounty for U.S. Soldiers Hoax: In June of 2020, NBC cited anonymous government sources who claimed that the Russians paid bounties to the Taliban for every U.S. soldier it killed. Later, after the election, NBC admitted the story could not be verified.
  5. The “Russia Destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline” Hoax: Shortly after the September 2022 destruction of the natural gas pipeline, anonymous Western officials blamed Russia for the explosion. The allegations quickly fell apart as the investigation proceeded and now no credible source now makes that claim.
  6. The “Carter Page Is a Russian Spy” Hoax: In order to justify spying on the Trump campaign, the FBI lied to a FISA court to obtain warrants spanning one year ending in 2017 to spy on Trump campaign figure, Carter Page. FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith later pleaded guilty to fabricating evidence to bolster that lie. Page was not a spy for Russia and the FBI knew it at the time it applied for the warrant.
  7. The “Trump Is a Russian Asset” Hoax: This hoax may have started when Hillary Clinton paid Fusion GPS to smear Donald Trump, late in the spring of 2016. But the intelligence community quickly sponsored the allegation with anonymous leaks by “retired” intelligence officials. The Guardian gave new life to the hoax here in January 2021. In spite of years of investigation, the combined forces of the FBI, the CIA, Congress, and Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation have never provided any convincing evidence of this charge.
  8. The Russia/Alfa Bank Hoax: Days before the 2016 election, Slate reported that a “group of computer scientists” alleged that the Trump organization had a secret backchannel to a bank in Russia called, “Alfa Bank.” Slate wrote, “Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence.” Later, a special counsel charged Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann with fabricating the story and sponsoring it to the FBI. A DC-based jury acquitted Sussmann of these charges in May of 2022.
  9. The Russian Troll Farm Hoax: In 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller dismissed charges that two Russian companies (Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord) ran troll farms that interfered with the election. No one expected that either company would defend itself from the indictment. But the Russian companies surprised the Justice Department by hiring an attorney who demanded proof of the wrongdoing. The Justice Department could not meet its evidentiary burden and dismissed the charges. The government had alleged that the Russians used the companies as cutouts to influence the 2016 election through a massive troll farm operation. But the government was forced to admit in open court that it had no evidence that the Russian government had anything to do with the alleged troll farms.
  10. The “Devin Nunes Is a Putin Puppet” Hoax: In 2017, former Representative Devin Nunes led one of the most consequential congressional investigations of all time. Among the revelations his investigation uncovered is the discovery that Hillary Clinton paid for the Trump dossier that accused Trump of being a Russian puppet. So naturally, Nunes himself was accused of being a puppet of Russia.
  11. The “James Comer Is a Putin Puppet” Hoax: More recently, there has been a coordinated counterstrike against House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer. Among the allegations: Comer is doing Putin’s bidding by investigating the Bidens. Related to this hoax is the hoax that the FBI’s arrest of a single witness topples the entire Comer case against Biden. On the contrary, Comer has produced undisputed bank records showing foreign payments to the Bidens including payments from Russia.
  12. The Russian “Pee Tape” Hoax: Among the Clinton-financed smears against Donald Trump, none is more memorable than the allegation that Trump instructed two Russian prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed during his visit to Russia. The FBI used taxpayer money to attempt to obtain this alleged video tape. Although the FBI did not have possession of any such tape, it appears that then-director James Comey used his knowledge of the operation to produce it in an attempt to blackmail the then-incoming President Trump. The Justice Department inspector general chased the hoax to the source who, apparently, informed Christopher Steele’s infamous and discredited “dossier.” On page 187 of the inspector general’s report, we learn that even Steele’s source disavowed the story as “rumor and speculation.”
  13. The Michael Cohen Paid Russian Hackers Hoax: Steele alleged through his dossier that President Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, traveled to Prague in 2016 to pay the Russian hackers responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to obtain the emails later leaked by Wikileaks. Cohen quickly produced passport records to show the meeting never took place. Czech intelligence later corroborated the denial.
  14. The Russian/DNC Hack Hoax: While it is possible that the Russians really were behind the hack of the DNC, there are legitimate reasons to question the claim that we know the Russians were behind it. It is not an established fact. For one thing, computer security experts have noted that the exfiltrated information downloaded too fast to be an over-the-internet hack. Further, the FBI relied on Hillary Clinton’s own vendor to attribute the hack to the Russians and it did next to nothing itself to corroborate that claim. Read here for a more detailed discussion of the holes in that narrative.

Readers, undoubtedly, will be able to expand on this list in the comments.

Why the ongoing effort to tie things back to Russia? Former State Department official, Mike Benz, offered this explanation in his recent groundbreaking interview with Tucker Carlson:

And what little resistance there was washed over by the rise and saturation of Russiagate, which basically allowed them to not have to deal with the moral ambiguities of censoring your own people. Because if Trump was a Russian asset, you no longer really had a traditional free speech issue. It was a national security issue.

The interview should be required watching for every American. Benz, who writes extensively on the censorship-industrial complex, makes a persuasive case. Agencies like the Department of State, the Pentagon, and the CIA are supposed to be outward-facing. By tying Trump to the external Russian threat, they could access the powerful intelligence and censorship tools that work so effectively abroad. 

*****

This article was published by Chronicles and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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The Myth of National Defense Spending

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By David Brady,Jr.

Editors’ Note: Without discussing the wisdom of Ukraine’s military aid, the author is correct in taking on the persistent myth that defense spending is always good for the economy. Instead, it diverts resources that would have been spent by consumers and businesses and directs resources into things that are either blown up or that blow up other things. Blowing things up is never “productive”, even if it is sometimes necessary. However, that spending may be beneficial to particular economic interests, but not the economy as a whole. That’s the difficulty. Fundamentally, it diverts resources from making people’s lives better because these are not freely made choices.  Defense spending may indeed be necessary to defend the country. For that, there is no question, but it is still a distortion that should be recognized as a negative thing and should be restricted.  However, to justify spending that does not defend the country on the basis that it “creates jobs”, is economically ignorant and morally repugnant. The debate really should be about the expenditures truly necessary to defend the interests of the country and recognize that whatever it is, defense spending takes money from other endeavors the public may have chosen.  This is pretty much true for all government spending. It is more a redirection of wealth, than the production of wealth.  That Senator Tuberville resists spending even if benefits are provided for his state, is laudable. The debate should be about the merits of the defense spending in question, not about whether it is great for the economy.  If it were true that war was good for the economy, then we should relish war and be in a state of war constantly.  Come to think of it, that pretty well describes the past 25 years. That makes no sense on either an economic or moral basis. Recent data shows that upwards of one-third of current GDP “growth” is government spending. Really? How productive has it been?

Among the most persistent of myths in the sphere of economics is the supposed benefits of government spending in the economy. Apologists will include government spending in gross domestic product measures, as if government production is truly “productive.” A common argument in favor of government spending is national defense spending.

US Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) declared on Twitter that he would be voting against a defense package that would send further money to Ukraine and Israel. American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Marc Thiessen quote tweeted the senator, saying,

Ukraine aid money is going to Alabama to produce the following systems: High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Javelins, M1A1 Abrams tanks, M2A4 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Hydra-70 rockets, M777 howitzer parts (Paladin M109A7), M88A2 Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utility Lift Evacuation System (HERCULES) vehicles, and Stryker armored personnel carriers.

This is creating jobs for your constituents and hot assembly lines in factories in Alabama that will benefit U.S. national security.

Why are you voting against Alabama defense jobs?

One can argue the ethics of defense spending, but that is a different form of analysis. It is important to unpack whether this statement is accurate. Is more defense spending beneficial for constituents and consumers?

First, let’s accurately portray the argument in favor of more defense spending. The argument is likely as follows: Legislation that sends more money to the Department of Defense will go out in the form of government contracts to private manufacturers. These manufacturers will create more jobs, create more goods for defense, and generally “boost the economy.” These jobs give wages to laborers who demand goods from other industries, and so on.

Thiessen’s argument goes further. When legislation is passed, it might be earmarked for contractors within a certain locality. The legislators bring benefits to their constituents in the form of new jobs. Thus, there is an incentive for legislators to support such legislation as it will bring jobs to their districts.

This is often called pork-barrel legislation. Legislators pack a bill going through Congress with government spending appropriations that go toward their constituents and special interests. This method is used to garner votes for a piece of legislation by making it “beneficial” for all who support it. Amendments are offered to get more votes, and the benefits get further distributed to constituents who will vote in the next election. It is commonly used as a tactic to help special interest legislation that would otherwise be unpopular.

The first proper critique of this method comes, of course, down to the financing of the legislation and contracts. Not an ethical critique but an economic one. Government spending must be financed in some way. The three means are taxation, inflation, and borrowing. Or taxation, hidden taxation, and deferred taxation. It is always a tax on the citizenry.

The easiest to identify is normal taxation and borrowing. Taxation is easy enough to understand. Borrowing involves the issuing of treasury bonds in exchange for private dollars, with the expectation of future repayment of those bonds with interest in the future. It is a promise of future taxation.

Inflation comes through central banks intervening in the latter process. The central bank purchases treasury bonds from what we call in the United States primary dealers and creates new money in the form of either orders of physical currency through the Bureau of Engraving and Printing or adding to their accounts at the Fed. New currency to finance fiscal spending will bid up prices in the private sector, especially through the loan market. All these methods are regressive.

With simple taxation, the effect on markets is clear enough: Taxes are either income or attached to some good or service. When attached to a good or service, say a tax on cigarettes, there is a deadweight loss as less exchange occurs.

Figure 1: Deadweight Loss from a Tax

Source: Wikipedia.

Taxes on income will result in a reduction of income. Income will be diverted only to the most urgent of needs, what we might call the highest-ordered needs. There is less ability to consume and demand goods that might stimulate production. There is less ability to save, which will harm future production possibilities and perhaps the loans markets.

Inflation will similarly affect spending. Inflation raises the price of goods and services. It will push consumers to spend in the moment, out of fear of prices rising further. This reduces demand for goods that satisfy lower-ordered needs. Austrians go further to describe how business cycles come to be through this process. All the methods of financing will distort the actions of consumers and the producers that cater to them.

Continuing from financing, the actions of the contractors themselves will affect the market. Fundamental to this understanding is an understanding of market prices. Market prices result from demonstrated preferences by consumers. Consumers buy or do not buy goods at certain prices, and producers make decisions anticipating a certain price for a good or service. The actions of producers and consumers in accordance with their preferences and demands are crucial to the proper coordination of land, labor, and capital.

Government contractors enter the market with funds that are not given to them by shareholders. They purchase capital, rent or purchase land, and rent labor for wages. A government action is not that of individuals. It is funded through money taken by force. These contractors are not providing goods to individuals with demands but a government agency making broad requests. These contractors are not a natural market phenomenon that produces goods for true consumers.

Resources like land, labor, and capital are not demanded for their own sake. They are valued because they are used to produce lower-ordered goods, the lowest being consumer goods. The burger buns a McDonald’s franchise purchases are not valued because McDonald’s wants to consume them but because they produce a good that they hope to sell. The same is true of the laborers it employs. Their labor is demanded to produce the goods they want to sell to consumers. The same is true of the land rented or bought for the business. These resources are higher-ordered goods.

Entrepreneurs make decisions about which land, labor, capital, and processes to employ based on their anticipations of market prices for the lower-ordered goods they are producing. The government contractor does not operate in this way. The government contractor already has revenue secured from contracts. They are not responsive to a market price, and thus their demand for higher-ordered goods (the resources used to create a lower ordered good) is also not responsive.

Resources that would ordinarily go to produce goods for consumers are instead demanded by the contractors that cater to the government. They compete for capital and affect market prices for higher-ordered goods. Increased demands for these goods will raise their prices and government contractors will divert resources from industries that create consumer goods. Consumers are made worse off, and resources are sent to the contractors.

Thus, we reach the “public goods problem.” The typical public good analysis describes a public good as a good that is “nonexcludable” and “nonrivalrous.” This means a public good is either available to all citizens, does not dwindle in supply with use, or both. The problem arises that many of the so-called goods described might very well not meet these conditions. It might be better to describe a public good as a government monopoly over a good or service.

The problems with public goods are the free rider problem and the lack of proper prices. For this article, we will focus on the latter. The lack of prices on the market implies either a lack of demand or a total monopoly on the goods by the government. The demand for these goods is not the result of individuals demanding fighter jets, new naval ships, and missiles. Perhaps if allowed to, they would be, but for now, they are the result of proclamations by the government.

The demand for these goods from manufacturers is not reflective of real demand by consumers. These are not goods that will be consumed by the average American. These goods are not “productive” (i.e., the result of the natural market). Rather than have goods that help the consumer, we receive the orders of politicians and the Department of Defense that are contingent on some expected conflict in the future.

Contrary to what Mr. Thiessen argues, further government spending will not necessarily help Americans. The methods of financing the spending will distort the market by harming consumers and producers. Whichever method of taxation is used—ordinary, deferred, or hidden—the market will be warped from its natural activities. Resources, including laborers and capital, that would flow to true consumer goods are instead diverted to the demands of the government. Rather than allow the market to provide material goods and services that are demanded by consumers, the government siphons resources from productive America. Government ditch-digging doesn’t help the well-being of its citizens.

*****

This article was published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Free Speech on Trial

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By Jeffrey Tucker

In a lifetime of observing policy controversies and court cases, we’ve never witnessed anything as crucial to the future of the idea of freedom itself compared with what will transpire on March 18, 2024. On that day, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Murthy v. Missouri concerning whether the government can force or nudge private companies to censor users on behalf of regime priorities.

The evidence that they have been doing so is overwhelming. That’s why the 5th Circuit issued an emergency injunction to stop the practice on grounds that it is inconsistent with the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The censorship industrial complex is working right now and hourly to delete free speech in America. That injunction was stayed pending a review by the highest court.

The case itself hasn’t even gone to court. This decision is only about the injunction itself, which was issued based on the alarming results of discovery alone. Essentially, the lower court is screaming “This must stop.” The Supreme Court is trying to assess whether the violations of liberty are extreme enough to justify a pre-trial intervention now.

A positive ruling for the plaintiffs doesn’t solve every problem but at least it will mean that freedom still stands a chance in this country. A ruling for the defense, which is essentially the government itself, will give license to every federal agency – including those that operate in secret like the FBI and CIA – to threaten every social media and media company in this country to delete any and all content that runs contrary to the approved narrative.

There will be a celebration in Washington if this happens. On the other hand, there will be tears if the court decides for the defense. It could be that the court will take an in-between position, refusing to let the injunction go ahead and promising some possible decision at a later date pending trial. That would be a disaster because it could mean three or more years of full censorship pending an appeal of whatever the outcome of the trial is.

Free speech is everything. If we don’t have that, we have nothing and freedom is toast. All other problems pale in comparison. There are plenty of them, from healthcare to immigration but if we don’t have free speech, we cannot get the truth out about any of them. The censorship industrial complex is wholly dedicated to making sure that we have no debates at all and that dissident voices are not even heard.

As it is, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook – and many more besides – already heavily restrict speech. They work in cooperation with government and those tasked by government to do elite bidding. We know this for a fact.

When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he discovered a vast censorship machine operating on behalf of the FBI and other agencies. Millions of posts were being taken down along with users. He has done his best to rip out the guts of this borg. Doing so entirely changed the character of the site. It became useful again.

Not even the scale of the problem is widely understood. Usually people say that free speech is necessary to protect minority opinions. In this case, the numbers don’t matter to the censors. You could have 90% of users trying to advance an idea and still have it censored. This is what the old Twitter did. It was daily and hourly attacking the company’s user base. This was their job, no matter how much it contradicts the whole point of social media.

Brownstone is predictably throttled by all these companies but it is not just about us. It is about everyone who disagrees with the Davos “Great Reset” agenda. This could pertain to EVs, gender transitions, lockdowns, immigration, or anything else. Even now, the Google Artificial Intelligence engine extols the glories of lockdowns, masking, and mass injections while completely ignoring contrary science. This is how they want things to be. Google’s search engine is no better. It might as well be a federal agency.

The Justices hearing the case will be in an awkward position. My guess is that none of them even knew that this was going on to the extent it is. They will likely be shocked when they look at the evidence providing that there is a trillion-dollar industry in full operation that has massively distorted the public mind. Every federal agency is involved, deeply embedded in the operations of all media companies and digital technology, which in turn requires universal surveillance and persecution of contrary voices.

Until just a few years ago, this entire industry – which involves federal agencies, universities, nonprofits, shadow companies, bogus fact-checks, and every manner of spook-operated front companies – was not known to exist. Now that we know, we are shocked by the extent of it. It has invaded the whole of our lives to the point that we cannot tell the real news from that which is fed to us by intelligence agencies. Even worse, we’ve come to expect that most of what passes for approved opinion is flat-out false.

The Justices will discover this truth. They will likely be astonished. But they will also be taken aback by how integral to our lives it has become. As it turns out, the federal government for nearly a decade has placed a very high priority on curating the public mind, lying at every turn for its own benefit and that of its industrial partners.

Everyone in the old Soviet Union knew for sure that Pravda spoke for the Communist Party. But do people understand that their Google search results and Facebook timelines are no better? It’s not clear whether and to what extent people do understand this but it is our reality.

Will the Justices really be willing to pull the plug on the entire machinery? Doing that would be more disruptive of an established interest group than anything the court has done in many years or even ever. It would fundamentally change the way our technologies work. It would be devastating to federal agencies. Policing such a new system called free speech would be another matter entirely. It would mean that thousands of people would suddenly have nothing to do. That would be wonderful, but would it happen?

As I say, censorship is now an entire global industry. It involves the world’s most powerful foundations, governments, universities, and influencers. It seems like everyone wants a part in crushing what they called “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “malinformation,” which is true information that they don’t want out. We are surrounded by this machinery of control and yet most people have no clue.

Every federal agency at this point has taken it upon themselves to cajole every information provider into rigging the system so that only one perspective gets out. This has a massive impact on public opinions.

As an example, four years ago, I wrote an article that accidentally made it through the censors and I watched as millions read my piece. Even now, I hear about it at cocktail parties coming from total strangers who don’t know that I’m the author. Nothing like that has happened since that magical day. Most of my writing goes into a dark hole, and this is despite writing daily for the 4th largest newspaper and having access to a huge public forum at Brownstone. People without such access do not stand a chance. Their posts on Facebook are disappeared the instant they post, while YouTube slams their content as contrary to community standards, with no other explanation.

Self-censorship has become the habitual practice of the intellectual class. Otherwise you only beat your head up against the wall and make yourself a target. Minute-by-minute in real time, public opinion is being shaped by this wicked industry, which dramatically distorts political outcomes.

As I say, this is surely the most important issue we face. A decision by the Supreme Court to let this go on – seeing no real issue here – will lead straight to our doom and the death of freedom itself.

There’s an additional problem that is very serious. These days, there is a massive race on to program censorship into the algorithms themselves so that no one is actually doing it, so that there cannot be any real defendants in a case against them. AI will soon be running everything so that Google and Facebook etc can simply say that their machine learning is doing the dirty work.

Perhaps one of the reasons AI has hit us with such a rush is precisely because of this case before the court. The deep state and its industrial partners are not going to give up easily. Everything depends on their victory over free speech, so far as they are concerned.

This is very worrisome, which is why one should hope for a sweeping statement by the Supreme Court that reaffirms the fundamental American commitment to have government completely out of the business of manipulating public opinion through curating what information you see and read and what you do not see and read.

It’s tragic that such a fundamental human right should so heavily depend on the majority decision of this one body. It’s not supposed to work this way. The First Amendment is supposed to be law but these days, the government has built an entire empire around the idea that it simply does not matter. The job of the Supreme Court is to remind our overlords that the people are not merely putty in the hands of deep state agents. We have fundamental rights that cannot be abridged.

There is a rally scheduled outside the court on March 18th, with many speakers making themselves available to the press. Note the sponsoring organizations: these are the freedom fighters in America today. You are welcome to join us.

It won’t sway the court, of course. And the crowds will surely be thinner than they otherwise would be given how much success the censorship industry already enjoys. Still, it is worth a shot.

Truly, we should all shudder to think of the future of American freedom in the absence of a decisive statement by the court on behalf of the basic liberty the Framers intended to be protected for everyone.

*****

This article was published by The Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Pixabay

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

The 2024 Election Will Be Neither Free Nor Fair thumbnail

The 2024 Election Will Be Neither Free Nor Fair

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By Jeremy Carl

The normalization of election tampering has perverted American politics.

Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything,” said Dostoyevsky, and indeed, we’ve become so accustomed to the manipulation of our elections that it’s become almost the norm. But the Democrats have already far exceeded even their previous serious misdeeds. Conservative complaints about this tend to be dismissed as conspiracy-mongering or poor sportsmanship. But to pretend that the Democrats’ actions since November 2020 are just part of the rough-and-tumble of politics is to ignore a mountain of evidence staring us in the face.

There is nothing normal about the presidential election of 2024—nor should we attempt to normalize it, because the Democrats’ behavior has been a tragedy for American democracy. As Matt Taibbi put it in an outstanding article analyzing recent moves from the Democrats, the “2024 presidential race increasingly looks like it will be decided by lawyers, not voters, as Democrats unveil plans for America’s first lawfare election.”

If anything, Taibbi understates the case. Democratic election interference has been so pervasive that it is hard to see how we could have an election that objective outside observers would consider free and fair. This is a grave and serious accusation to level and one that holds frightening implications for the future of American democracy. But it does us no good to hide from the truth.

The GOP Body Count

The Biden regime and its accomplices have made sure that friends and allies have paid a severe price for taking them on. My Claremont colleague John Eastman, a former law school dean and Supreme Court clerk for Justice Thomas, has been forced to pay millions of dollars in legal fees to defend himself from both criminal and civil charges over the legal advice around the 2020 election that he gave to President Trump. Lawyers are supposed to advocate aggressively for their clients. Whether or not one agrees with Eastman’s theories (and a number of conservative attorneys have supported him), there is no evidence that he did not argue them in good faith.

Nonetheless, he faces disbarment in California and criminal charges in Georgia, filed by corrupt Fulton County DA Fanni Willis. Many other Trump attorneys have already pled guilty to Georgia charges or still face legal jeopardy. But, of course, Eastman’s prosecution and possible disbarment isn’t really about Eastman. It’s about sending a message to other talented conservatives—don’t defend Donald Trump or Republicans in general or you’ll face the end of your careers, personal bankruptcy, and possibly the end of your freedom.

The people who demand that we “protect democracy” are the same people eliminating democracy. A core part of the Biden strategy, as shown in leaked campaign strategy memos, is to paint his opponent as fundamentally an “existential threat to democracy,” even as he and his allies make one anti-democratic move after another.

The federal government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars prosecuting and tracking down everyone in or near the Capitol on January 6, 2021, where the overwhelming majority have been charged out of all proportion to both the threat they posed and damages they caused, only a few months after authorities almost completely ignored the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests, the most economically damaging riots in American history. As the political saying goes: “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.”

As Taibbi shows, leading Democrats were using the term “insurrection” within hours of the Capitol riot when few outside of perhaps Democratic political circles were thinking about what that term meant, legally and politically. Months later, as Taibbi documents, in a since-deleted tweet, Democrat uber-fixer Mark Elias specifically raised the specter of using the Fourteenth Amendment to disqualify sitting members of Congress from running for re-election and explicitly suggested litigation to remove GOP candidates from ballots, which we are now seeing in Colorado and Maine in the case of President Trump.

To some extent, the radicalization of the Democrats’ tactics has grown so extreme because they must protect an extremely weak candidate. The obvious challenges of Biden’s mental decline, so vividly evident in his highly staged and limited public appearances and then documented in special counsel Robert Hur’s decision not to prosecute him over the illegal retention of classified documents, are apparent to any fair observer. This was all largely true in 2020 as well, but the compliant regime media allowed Biden to hide in his basement and never face significant questioning from reporters, using COVID as a shield. Now, seeking to protect their feeble frontrunner, the establishment has closed ranks even more tightly in 2024—declaring the New Hampshire primary non-binding and canceling its primary in Florida entirely, while driving potential threats like Robert Kennedy Jr out of the Democratic primaries, and then depriving him of Secret Service protection as an independent candidate.

The Plot Against the President

But by far the gravest of the Democrats’ sins has been the lawfare against Trump himself. Trump, as the regime media constantly reminds us, has been indicted on 91 felony counts in four criminal cases and charged with a variety of civil misdeeds. And where are these cases?—they are in 73 percent Democratic-voting Fulton County, Georgia, where the corrupt and entitled prosecutor recently put her arrogance (and ignorance of the law) on full display.

They are in 86 percent Democratic Manhattan, where a liberal judge has ordered Trump to pay a $450 million fine for an alleged “fraud” with no victims in which his lenders were paid back with a profit. The Wall Street Journal correctly called this “unprecedented” (so much so, that New York’s Governor Hochul went on the record to reassure normal borrowers that they didn’t have to worry—only Trump would be targeted this way). This has followed an equally unprecedented $82 million civil judgment against Trump in New York for defamation in another flimsy case from a highly questionable actor. Beyond that, Trump has been indicted by the feds for storing classified material at Mar-a-Lago, the same crime for which they declined to charge Biden (who had no declassification ability prior to his presidency). And of course, Trump is on trial in Washington, D.C. as well.

Trump’s legal fees in combating this illegitimate lawfare campaign in 2023 totaled more than $50 million. This was an amount equivalent to what he has spent on television ads. And the costs are far more than financial. Rather than spending his efforts on the campaign trail against Biden, the anti-Trump lawfare has ensured that he is tied up in courtrooms. “If I weren’t running none of this stuff would have ever happened. None of these lawsuits would’ve ever happened. I would’ve had a nice life!” an understandably indignant Trump said outside the courtroom after one of his most recent trials.

Regardless of your views of his guilt or innocence of any of these charges, it is almost unimaginable that Trump would have faced any of these charges were he not running for president, nor can it possibly be a coincidence that he faces all these charges on the eve of the election.

In a serious country that cared about democracy, national institutions would go the extra mile to ensure that these trials do not interfere with the election. Instead, the media openly cheer for the trials in these corrupt highly-partisan jurisdictions to take place before the election.

The Danger Ahead

But it’s not just Trump, or his lawyers, or January 6 defendants who are at risk. Even ancillary enemies of the regime are targeted. A Delaware court revoked a $56 billion pay package given to Elon Musk, his reward for creating enormous shareholder value that far exceeded even this hefty sum. The decision was an unprecedented action in Delaware’s corporate history, according to the Wall Street Journal, and it was designed to send a clear signal to those opposing the regime, as are the numerous federal prosecutions and investigations of Musk-owned businesses. It was a lesson not lost on other businessmen, such as leading tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, who have not bent the knee to the regime. “They’re teaching him a lesson. They want him to back down, and hope to silence other business leaders (including me),” Lonsdale wrote on X.

Combine the Democrats’ massive election interference with a presidential candidate who is not shy about calling it out and you have a potentially combustible situation. President Trump is fond of bluster, but his strongest supporters were often frustrated by how much Trump colored within the lines dictated by his enemies in his first administration. Given his treatment by the regime, it is hard to see why he would be so constrained in a second term.

I am not involved with the election nor have I advised President Trump in 2024. But Trump’s advisors are doubtless seeing the same things I have seen. It would be politically suicidal for President Trump, if upon attaining office, to let this blatant election interference go unpunished. He would be derelict in his duty not to prosecute criminally the deep-state actors going after him. He would be derelict in his duty if he did not declare total war on the administrative state that declared total war on him—and he would be derelict in his duty if he did not pursue a Lincoln-like posture against courts that tried to thwart him and his agenda in lawless demonstrations of raw politics.

And yes, this is of course a potentially dangerous course of action—but letting the Democrats spend years waging relentless lawfare against the opposing party and its leader in a manner without precedent would be even more dangerous to what is left of American democracy. It is only through relentless action against those who have declared war on him and his supporters that Trump would have any hope of restoring democratic checks and balances to a system currently run by a left-wing oligarchy with an increasingly visible iron fist.

But regardless of Trump’s strategy, and how aggressively he chooses to pursue it, the Democratic Party’s undermining of our election in 2024 has led America to the edge of the abyss.

At the very least, the Right can stop playing games and acknowledge what is staring us in the face.

As Lonsdale wrote on X, “Should we be scared, or fight harder?”

I know which course I plan to choose, and I trust that President Trump and his allies will choose similarly.

*****

This article was published by The American Mind and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit : YouTube screenshot Forbes

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

State Universities Are Teaching Students To Blow Up Oil Pipelines, Records Show thumbnail

State Universities Are Teaching Students To Blow Up Oil Pipelines, Records Show

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By Luke Rosiak

‘How to Blow Up A Pipeline’ author wants to send message to ‘capitalists’ that ‘their properties will be trashed’

At least sixteen universities are promoting the book “How to Blow Up A Pipeline,” which outlines for readers how to commit eco-terrorism — oftentimes making it required reading, a Daily Wire investigation found.

The book was published in 2021 by Swedish professor Andreas Malm and calls for terrorism and overthrowing capitalism, acknowledging that people will be killed as a result. “Demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed,” the book says.

Now multiple state-funded universities took classes that were nominally on unrelated topics, and contorted them into courses that read just four books, including the pipeline manifesto and a communist manifesto. At the University of California-Berkeley, for example, students of Geography & Interactive Biology were required to read the book. Instructors Jake Kosek and Paul Fine took what was ostensibly a biology course and transformed it into one on “decolonization.” The syllabus states that the “class focuses on the scientific practice of modern botanical taxonomy as a colonial formation that conditions our modern relations” and how the names of plants “were often forged to be of service to empire-building.”

The lessons across the country suggest that universities’ support for terrorism extends beyond the students supporting Hamas on many campuses. In fact, the book looks to Palestinian terrorists for inspiration, advising that, “As part of the mass resistance in the besieged Gaza Strip in the spring of 2018, Palestinians invented techniques for sending kites and helium-inflated condoms carrying incendiary materials across the wall to burn Israeli property.”

U.S. intelligence identified the book as a “developing threat” and security risk because “Malm encourages pipeline sabotage and property destruction.” Twenty-three government agencies, including the FBI, warned that the film adaptation of the book, released in 2023, could spark terrorism.

A New York Times interviewer was taken aback at Malm’s willingness to cause death. “It’s hard to think that deaths don’t become inevitable if there is more sabotage,” the interviewer said.

“Sure, if you have a thousand pipeline explosions per year, if it takes on that extreme scale. But we are some distance from that, unfortunately,” Malm answered.

“Don’t say ‘unfortunately,’” the interviewer interjected.

“Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents,” Malm replied.

Malm said he hasn’t had the opportunity to blow up a pipeline personally but that he would “gladly participate” if given the opportunity.

“If I were part of a group where something like blowing up a pipeline was perceived as a tactic that could be useful for our struggle, then I would gladly participate,” he said. “I have engaged in as much militant climate activism as I have had access to” and “I’ve done things that I can’t tell you or that I wouldn’t tell others publicly.”

He said he trained his four-year-old son to “be on the lookout for S.U.V.s” because the child “knows these are the bad cars” and has “an awareness of the tactic of deflating S.U.V. tires.”

His own children were not the only youth being inculcated with an ideology of destruction.

In Spring 2022, City University of New York professor Joseph Mohorcich required students to read the book as part of a course called Politics and Human Survival, which persuaded students that without radical action, “everyone could die a terrible death.” Students were also required to read “Revolutionary Suicide” by Black Panthers member Huey Newton, who was accused of murder and rape. Mohorcich wrote a paper called “What level of resistance to air pollution is justified? On violence and self-defense.”

Arizona State University, a public university, required students of Professor Mina Suk’s “Are Humans Special? Environmental Theory” to read “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” that same semester…..

*****

Continue reading at the Daily Wire.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

9 Ways The Feds Are Using ‘Bidenbucks’ To Rig The 2024 Election thumbnail

9 Ways The Feds Are Using ‘Bidenbucks’ To Rig The 2024 Election

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By Shawn Fleetwood

Joe Biden is using taxpayer money to run a highly partisan get-out-the-vote operation designed to rig the 2024 election in Democrats’ favor.

Nearly three years have passed since President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14019, an overreaching directive aimed at inserting the federal government into state election administration.

While deceptively marketed as a heroic effort to enhance “American democracy,” Biden’s directive is far more partisan than the White House and regime-aligned media are willing to admit. The order instructed hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in the electoral process by using U.S. taxpayer money to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. More specifically, federal departments were told to collaborate with so-called “nonpartisan third-party organizations” that have been “approved” by the administration to supply “voter registration services on agency premises.”

Despite the administration’s attempt to stonewall requests for — and heavily redact — documents related to the order’s implementation, conservative media outlets and good government groups have obtained communications revealing that many of the supposedly “nonpartisan” groups colluding with federal agencies on voter registration efforts are extremely left-wing.

Among these organizations is Demos, a left-wing advocacy group seeking to advance the Democrat Party’s political agenda. According to InfluenceWatch, the group has “close ties” to the faction of the Democrat Party “associated with” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., signed a petition backing the Green New Deal, and is staffed with Democrat operatives. The left-wing American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, is also among those working with federal agencies to register new voters.

As The Federalist has previously reported, voter registration efforts are almost always a partisan venture and often involve left-wing groups that abuse their nonprofit status to target likely Democrat voters. (Congressional Democrats have voted down Republican-backed legislation aimed at repealing Biden’s directive.)

Biden’s unprecedented use of taxpayer dollars to run highly partisan voter registration and get-out-the-vote operations to the benefit of Democrats is unlikely to instill confidence in American voters, whose trust in the electoral process was shaken following the chaotic and irregular 2020 election. Here are just a few of the many federal agencies engaged in the scheme and how each is using “Bidenbucks” to rig the 2024 election in Biden and Democrats’ favor.

1. Office of Personnel Management

In March 2022, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced it will allow federal employees to take up to four hours of “administrative leave” to vote in any U.S. election. The agency further granted these workers the same amount of time to serve as poll workers or observers, should they choose to do so.

The guidance is a departure from previous OPM policy, which granted leave to federal workers “on election day only” and permitted them “to access paid time off in limited circumstances based on [their] work schedule and the polling hours in their community.” When announcing the change in policy, OPM said it “recognizes that voting has evolved beyond a single election day” and claimed the new guidance would limit supposed “barriers to voting.”

During the 2020 election, the vast majority of political donations from federal employees went to Democrat candidates, according to data published by OpenSecrets. For example, of the $2.36 million in political contributions from Department of Justice employees in the 2020 election cycle, $2.02 million (87.6 percent) went to Democrats while only $286,083 (12.4 percent) went to Republicans.

2. Department of Education

The Education Department’s role in carrying out Biden’s executive order is unsurprising, given Democrats’ increased focus on courting young voters. During the 2022 midterms, for example, this 18-29 age demographic broke heavily for Democrat candidates over Republican ones by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

In April 2022, the agency’s Office of Postsecondary Education told universities they are required under the Higher Education Act of 1965 to “make a good faith effort” to make mail voter registration forms “widely available” to their students and informed colleges that they may use work-study funds — which are used to provide part-time campus jobs to help students with tuition costs — to pay students to “support voter registration activities.” These institutions were additionally instructed to expand their roles in the electoral process, such as by becoming voting sites and supplying locations for ballot drop boxes.

As The Federalist noted the same year, “Having taxpayers fund get-out-the-vote activities that support Democrats in this way had previously not been allowed.”

Most recently, the Education Department released a “toolkit” that includes guidelines for universities on how to increase voter registration and turnout on their campuses. The document also contains guidance for K-12 institutions, such as recommendations that schools “[d]etermine if [their] state allows pre-registration for individuals under 18 years old and, if so, identify opportunities for high school students to do so.”

3. Department of Health and Human Services

In June 2023, The Daily Signal’s Fred Lucas reported that the Indian Health Service (IHS), which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services, is collaborating with the ACLU, Demos, and several other left-wing organizations to register new voters. In order to expand the reach of these efforts, the Biden administration designated an Arizona-based Indian Health Service (IHS) facility as an official voter registration hub in October.

According to Arizona Democrat Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Native Health of Phoenix, which caters to “urban Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and all other individuals,” will “assist individuals in the voter registration process.” The administration confirmed that the IHS facility would be one of five designated as voter registration sites by the end of 2023.

Much like young voters, Native Americans heavily favor Democrats.

4. Department of Agriculture

The USDA is another federal agency directing its efforts at potential Democrat voters. Earlier this month, emails obtained by The Daily Signal show the agency was colluding with Demos as early as August 2021 to work on turning out voters.

As The Federalist’s M.D. Kittle reported, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service “encourages all state agencies administering the child nutrition programs to provide local program operators with promotional materials, including voter registration and non-partisan, non-campaign election information, to disseminate among voting-age program participants and their families.”

One of the “ideas” recommended by the agency is for “[s]chool food authorities administering the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in high schools, and adult day care centers and emergency shelters participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to promote voter registration and election information among voting-age participants and use congregate feeding areas, such as cafeterias, or food distribution sites, as sites for the dissemination of information.”

5. Department of Homeland Security

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency within DHS, announced an update to its Policy Manual in August, which included provisions directing agency employees to “increase awareness and expand access to voter registration during naturalization ceremonies,” in which eligible immigrants officially become U.S. citizens. Studies have indicated a voting preference among legal immigrants for Democrat candidates over Republican ones.

The guidelines specifically instructed USCIS to provide newly ordained citizens “access to voter registration services” at these ceremonies and additional information “regarding points-of-contact for voting and voter registration.” Agency employees were also tasked with requesting local or state election officials “attend ceremonies to distribute, collect, and review voter registration applications, and to officially register new citizens to vote.” In the absence of said officials, USCIS must “coordinate” with “nongovernmental organizations” — that are presumably “approved” by the administration — to provide these same services.

6. Department of Labor

In fulfillment of Biden’s directive, the Labor Department issued guidance in March 2022 “to all 50 states and the nation’s territories encouraging them to designate more than 2,300 locally operated American Job Centers as voter registration agencies.” The agency specifically noted how “partners that operate programs and services” with these centers “can engage in voter registration efforts with their participants,” such as hosting so-called “nonpartisan organizations” to facilitate get-out-the-vote activities.

The list of “eligible partners” includes the WIOA Title I Youth Programs, YouthBuild Programs, and Indian and Native America Programs — all of which cater to demographics likely to vote for Democrats.

7. Department of Veterans Affairs

The Department of Veterans Affairs initially distributed a survey to more than 12 million veterans and their families “to better understand Veterans’ experience with the voter registration process, and to better assist Veterans in addressing and overcoming any challenges.” By September 2022, the agency expanded its voter registration efforts by partnering with Kentucky, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to “create a pilot voter registration program that provides voter registration information, materials and — if requested — assistance to Veterans, eligible dependents and caregivers at select VA facilities.”

The VA was flagged as one of several agencies “on the right track” in a “progress report” published by left-wing groups (including Demos and the ACLU) that measured how effectively departments are complying with Biden’s directive.

8. Department of the Interior

The Interior Department (DOI) is also adequately fulfilling Biden’s order, according to the metrics laid out in a report published by leftist groups.

The analysis specifically highlighted how DOI provided “high-quality voter registration services” to individuals who attended two agency-sponsored “tribal educational institutions” in Kansas and New Mexico. Those two institutions — the Haskell Indian Nations University and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute — have since been designated as voter registration sites.

“DOI has moved to ensure that eligible students who attend these institutions have regular access to high-quality voter registration services,” the report reads. “Notably, DOI is improving access to registration and voting among a population that has long been excluded—Native Americans.”

9. Department of the Treasury

The Treasury Department has incorporated voter registration efforts “into the services provided through the tax clinic assistance program, Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA), which provides tax assistance to low-income individuals across the county,” according to the same “progress report.” The agency further moved to require “all grantees who receive federal funding to administer these tax clinic assistance programs” to offer voter registration services.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

If This Is “Christian Nationalism”… Sign Me Up! thumbnail

If This Is “Christian Nationalism”… Sign Me Up!

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By David Harsanyi

A very brief inquiry into MSNBC’s theory of the natural rights of man

The other day, Politico writer Heidi Przybyla appeared on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” to talk about the hysteria de jour, “Christian nationalism.” Donald Trump, she explained, has surrounded himself with an “extremist element of conservative Christians,” who were misrepresenting “so-called natural law” in their attempt to roll back abortion “rights” and other leftist policy preferences. What makes “Christian nationalists” different, she went on, was that they believe “our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority.”

As numerous critics have already pointed out, “Christian nationalism” sounds identical to the case for American liberty offered in the Declaration of Independence. Then again, the idea that man has inalienable, universal rights goes back to ancient Greece, at least. The entire American project is contingent on accepting the notion that the state can’t give or take our God-given freedoms. It is the best kind of “extremism.”

None of this is to say there aren’t Christians out there who engage in an unhealthy conflation of politics and faith or harbor theocratic ideas. It is to say that the definition of “Christian nationalism” offered by the people at Politico and MSNBC comports flawlessly with the mindset that makes the United States possible.

Conservatives often chalk up this kind of ignorance about civics to a declining education system. It’s not an accident. It’s true that Przybyla, a longtime leftist propagandist — and I don’t mean a biased reporter; I mean a propagandist whose reporting is often transparently ludicrous — followed up her MSNBC appearance with an embarrassing clarification. But even if Przybyla were fluent in the philosophy of natural rights, one strongly suspects she, like most progressives (and other statists), would be uninterested. It’s a political imperative to be uninterested.

If natural rights are truly inalienable, how can the government create a slew of new (positive) “rights” — the right to housing or abortion or health care or free birth control? And how can we limit those who “abuse” free expression, self-defense, and due process if they are up to no good? You know, as Joe Biden likes to say — when speaking about the Second Amendment, never abortion — no right “is absolute.”

The most telling part of Przybyla’s explanation, for example, was to concede that “natural law” had on occasion actually been used for good. When natural law is used to further “social justice” it is legitimate, but when applied to ideas the left finds objectionable (such as protecting unborn life) it becomes “Christian nationalism.” It’s almost as if she doesn’t comprehend the idea of a neutral principle. It’s the kind of thinking that impels the media to put skeptical quotation marks around terms like “religious liberty,” but never around “LGBT rights” or “social justice” and so on.

It’s also true that the “Christian nationalism” scare is a ginned-up partisan effort to spook non-Christian voters. And, clearly, to some secular Americans, the idea that a non-“earthly authority” can bestow rights on humans sounds nuts. As a nonbeliever myself, I’ve been asked by Christians many times how I can square my skepticism of the Almighty with a belief in natural rights.

My answer is simple: I choose to.

“This is the bind post-Christian America finds itself in,” tweeted historian Tom Holland. “It can no longer appeal to a Creator as the author of its citizens’ rights, so [he] has to pretend that these rights somehow have an inherent existence: a notion requiring no less of a leap of faith than does belief in God.”

No less but no more. Just as an atheist or agnostic or irreligious secular American accepts that it’s wrong to steal and murder and cheat, they can accept that man has an inherent right to speak freely and the right to defend himself, his family, and his property. History, experience, and an innate sense of the world tell me that such rights benefit individuals as well as mankind. It is rational.

The liberties borne out of thousands of years of tradition are more vital than the vagaries of democracy or the diktats of the state. That’s clear to me. We still debate the extent of rights, obviously. I don’t need a Ph.D. in philosophy, however, to understand that preserving life or expression are self-evident universal rights in a way that compelling taxpayers to pay for your “reproductive justice” is not.

John Locke, as far as I understand it, argued as much, though he believed that the decree of God made all of it binding. Which is why, even though I don’t believe my rights were handed down by a superbeing, I act like they are. It’s really the only way for the Constitution to work.

The question is: How can a contemporary leftist who treats the state as the source of all decency– a tool of compulsion that can make the world “fair” — accept that mankind has been bequeathed a set of individual liberties by God, regardless of race or class or political disposition? I’m not sure they can anymore.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

America’s DEI Commissars Threaten Freedom thumbnail

America’s DEI Commissars Threaten Freedom

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By Barry Brownstein

In his book The New Puritans, Andrew Doyle observed, “We have seen the evangelists of ‘social justice’ take control of our major cultural, political, educational and corporate institutions, thirsty for opportunities to be seen to vanquish devils, be they real or imagined.” Doyle warned, “these illiberal trends… threaten to sabotage all the progress we have made since the civil rights movements of the 1960s.”

Too few listened when F. A. Hayek issued a similar warning almost 50 years earlier. In his book Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice, Hayek observed, speaking of “social justice” that “the old civil rights and the new social and economic rights cannot be achieved at the same time but are in fact incompatible; the new rights could not be enforced by law without at the same time destroying that liberal order at which the old civil rights aim.”

I don’t think Hayek would be shocked by DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives and its use of racism to “fight” racism. Recently, under pressure, the world-famous Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine repudiated the view of its chief diversity officer, Dr. Sherita Golden. Dr. Golden, in her monthly newsletter, had written all “white people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle- or owning-class people, middle-aged people and English-speaking people” are privileged.

We are all familiar with Golden’s rhetoric; the only surprise was that Hopkins repudiated her statement. Think of America’s DEI officers in light of Soviet commissars who expected to have their way. 

In the former Soviet Union, a commissar was a bureaucrat embedded in the military or other government organizations to ensure that decisions were true to the spirit of the communist party. Their job was to maintain ideological purity.

Scenes in Vasily Grossman’s classic novel Life and Fate are set during the battle for Stalingrad. Casualties were enormous, and one brigade needed a new chief of staff. Colonel Novikov needed Commissar Getmanov’s approval to appoint Major Basangov. Getmanov responded: “The second-in-command of the second brigade is an Armenian; you want the chief of staff to be a Kalmyk [Mongolian] – and we’ve already got some Lifshits [a Jew] as chief of staff of the third brigade. Couldn’t we do without the Kalmyk?”

The fate of the Soviet Union hung in the balance, and the commissar was counting the ethnic identities of the officers. Novikov yielded to the commissar and appointed a Russian. Although Novikov “laughed at Getmanov’s military ignorance… he was afraid of him.”

Today in America, many may laugh at DEI officers, but as with Novikov, a shadow of fear crosses over them.

The old civil rights movement that Doyle and Hayek referred to was win-win. No one’s equality before the law subtracted from another’s equality. Today’s DEI initiatives are win-lose. A less-qualified person receives a job based on race, sex, or other status, and someone more qualified is denied a job.

Hayek explained, “the demand for ‘social justice’ therefore becomes a demand that the members of society should organize themselves in a manner which makes it possible to assign particular shares of the product of society to the different individuals or groups.”

The abuse of social justice, Hayek wrote, “threatens to destroy the conception of law which made it the safeguard of individual freedom.” He explained when this “quasi-religious superstition” of social justice uses coercion, it must be fought; for it is “probably the gravest threat to most other values of a free civilization.” 

Hayek further observed, “Almost every claim for government action on behalf of particular groups is advanced in its name, and if it can be made to appear that a certain measure is demanded by ‘social justice’, opposition to it will rapidly weaken.” Today, DEI commissars make their demands counting on weak opposition.

The American Library Association defined social justice, in part, as “A world in which the distribution of resources is equitable and sustainable, and all members are physically and psychologically safe, secure, recognized, and treated with respect.” Hayek predicted vague gobbledygook, like the ALA’s, would become the norm.

Once the term social justice was weaponized, Hayek explained, it could only expand: “It was in the belief that something like ‘social justice’ could thereby be achieved, that people have placed in the hands of government powers which it can now not refuse to employ in order to satisfy the claims of the ever increasing number of special interests who have learnt to employ the open sesame of ‘social justice’.”

Chicago Pastor Corey Brooks is on the frontlines, fighting to alleviate suffering in his community. He exposed DEI ideology for what it is:

DEI ideology… has no ability to help… It doesn’t offer faith, and it doesn’t offer meaningful work… It’s manipulative rhetoric, a way of exploiting… on behalf of professional-class ideologues who seek to use our pain to fuel their rise through American institutions. Their stock-in-trade is a soul-destroying poison whose moral and real-world effects are as negative for our communities as those of any other drug that is sold here.

Brooks points us to consider the destructive effects of DEI initiatives. Hayek observed, “classical liberalism… was governed by principles of just individual conduct while the new society is to satisfy the demands for ‘social justice.’” Today, people are told they are victims or victimizers. Victims expect the government to remedy their grievances.

Hayek predicted that once social justice became an accepted criterion to allocate resources by coercion, government would have to treat people “very unequally.” That there are far too many people training for careers as DEI commissars would not have surprised Hayek:

Once the rewards the individual can expect are no longer an appropriate indication of how to direct their efforts to where they are most needed, because these rewards correspond not to the value which their services have for their fellows, but to the moral merit or desert the persons are deemed to have earned, they lose the guiding function they have in the market order and would have to be replaced by the commands of the directing authority.

Hayek knew that social justice would undermine equal treatment under the law. Today, in Doyle’s words, social justice places “emphasis on group identity over the rights of the individual, a rejection of social liberalism, and the assumption that unequal outcomes are always evidence of structural inequalities.” America’s DEI commissars, like Golden, spread the poisonous doctrine that society is based on some groups exercising their “privilege” at the expense of others.

Hayek warned that the more such poison spreads, the more our civilization is at risk. Why have so many people ignored his warning? We know the answer: fear. And we know the antidote: courage.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute For Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Biblical Critical Theory Is Not Biblical. It’s Watered-Down Marxism

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By Roger McKinney

Christianity Today magazine, founded by Billy Graham, chose Christopher Watkin’s book, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, as one of its 2024 Book Awards and the book most likely “to shape evangelical life, thought, and culture.” Other Christian organizations promote the book too.

Nonreligious readers won’t care, but they need to keep in mind that most people won’t take a class or read a book on economics. I can clear a crowded room just by mentioning economics. But they do read books like this one or listen to pastors who do. Evangelicals make up about 25 percent of voters. So, any plan to change the direction of the country’s economic policies requires reaching them.

Watkin, a lecturer in French studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, trudges through the Bible applying his interpretations to his perception of modern Western culture. He calls his method “diagonalization,” in which he identifies extreme cultural views and places biblical principles in the middle.

But his diagonalization forces him to see only extremes, many of which don’t exist. Much of what he writes is reasonable, but his train derails when writing about the market:

The market paradigm constructs us as producers and consumers of tradable commodities, each with its calculable price. This is, after all, how many religions in the world work.

[Michael] Sandel argues that we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society because now everything is negotiated, bought, and sold, including love, security, and identity. . . . Our relationships with our families, with our partners and with the world we live in are all business deals calculated to bring us profit. . . . We compete for finite resources . . . and those with nothing to exchange or no discretionary time to build up capital or networks are left behind.

Is the “market” the grocery market, the stock market, or the convenience store? Those aren’t frightening and the “market” must be terrifying. But no creature called “the market” exists. The market is merely the process by which buyers and sellers find each other and negotiate prices. But that doesn’t terrify anyone. And if Watkin would read his Bible, he would learn that most of the evils he finds the market making us commit are detailed in the book written sixteen hundred years before the advent of capitalism.

Following the Marxist portrayal of capitalism, Watkin wrote,

The market paradigm of excess, by contrast, is a surplus of overproduction, overconsumption, and limitless profit that become necessary for the maintenance of economic growth and that issue in increasing wealth for some and increasing inequality between all. . . . [It] contents itself to scratch around in the broken cisterns of limitless accumulations.

Had Watkin read any economics book by good economists, meaning Austrian, he would know that general overproduction of all goods and services is impossible. It happens in specific industries just before a recession, due to earlier money printing by central banks, and is temporary. But what does overconsumption look like? Some claim it destroys the environment, but the environment in the West has never been cleaner, not counting the hysteria over carbon dioxide. General overproduction and overconsumption don’t exist.

Given the biblical emphasis on relieving poverty, one would think Watkin would see “overconsumption” as a good thing, far better than starving. Reducing production and consumption means becoming poorer. What standard of living does he prefer? Does he admire the Amish? Or should we return to the natural standard of living the world suffered from prehistory until the advent of capitalism in which millions died of starvation in frequent famines?

Inequality measured by the Gini coefficient is about the same level today as it was 150 years ago, around 50. From 1950 until the 1980s, it averaged around 40. There are many reasons for the rise since 1980. One is that confiscatory taxes on the wealthiest between 1950 and 1980 forced them to take less of their wealth in taxable income by sheltering it in tax-free investments, such as municipal bonds. The rise in the Gini coefficient since then is largely the result of lower marginal tax rates that encourage wealthy people to report more taxable income.

A second cause is the aging of the population. Older people have more wealth and higher incomes than younger people. Another cause is the explosion of poor fatherless households due to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society socialism that increased the likelihood that homes would not have both parents. Finally, increased immigration adds to the ranks of the poor. In sum, the slight ascent of the Gini coefficient is due to changing tax laws, an aging population, a growing number of poor households due to single-parent homes, and immigration, not the market.

In another section, Watkin assaults the labor market, going far beyond the Marxist straw man of wage “slaves”:

Modern humanity sacrifices to machinic efficiency using the currency of its labor, just as the ancient Carthaginians sacrificed to Moloch using the currency of their children. The Moloch Machine shapes and figures the bodily movements of workers that tend it, just as our own habits, attitudes, and movements are increasingly molded by the human-shaping power of smartphones and social media.

Socialists compete to invent the most outrageous descriptions of capitalism. Watkin wins a prize with his comparison of working for wages to burning children alive on an altar to a pagan god. But how does he want people to exchange services? Would he have us go back to feudalism or actual slavery, which the ancient Greeks thought imperative for a good society?

Had Watkin read Frédéric Bastiat, he would know that when a businessman pays a worker his wages, he isn’t buying the worker’s body and soul. The manager is paying the worker only for the services he renders for a period. Paying him for doing nothing would be theft by the worker. Not paying him would be theft by the businessman.

Finally, Watkin dredges up the ghost of the tyranny of markets without laws:

The right fails to acknowledge that when freed from regulation and government, individuals and institutions become prey to the harsh, brutal lordship of the market. As John Milbank argues, the market imperative breaks down and co-opts any spaces of resistance to its logic such as families and local associations based on trust, and leads not to a new egalitarian freedom but to “a far worse hierarchy than in the past,” namely “a hierarchy of sheer money, force and spectacle; a hierarchy without even any pretensions to virtue.”

No advocate for free markets has promoted a society without laws prohibiting theft, fraud, murder, and kidnapping, not even Murray Rothbard’s anarchocapitalism. From the theologians at the University of Salamanca during the Reformation, who distilled the principles of capitalism, until today, all capitalists have insisted on the rule of law and punishment of those who violate the rights of others to life, liberty, and property.

What Watkin is concerned about is greed. But Adam Smith demonstrated that competition in free markets suppresses greed better than any government regulations. Why? Because greedy businessmen can buy politicians cheaply to write regulations that satiate their greed. But competition in free markets forces greedy businessmen to supply the wants of their customers or risk losing them to a competitor.

Does Watkin offer any evidence that markets have created the world he describes? No, he merely quotes another socialist making that assertion. The US and the West are nowhere near as horrible places as Watkin and other theologians and philosophers claim. How do I know? One reason is the number of people coming here legally and illegally. Another is the US’s record of charity. These countries led the world in charity from 2009 through 2018: United States, Myanmar, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Except for Myanmar, those are Western countries.

Most of Watkin’s book doesn’t deal with markets and makes some valid points. But his egregiously sloppy sections on markets destroy any confidence in the rest of the book.

*****

This article was published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and is reproduced with permission.

“Not The Way It Works”: Attorney Opposing Bump Stock Ban Repeatedly Explains To Liberal Justices How Guns Work thumbnail

“Not The Way It Works”: Attorney Opposing Bump Stock Ban Repeatedly Explains To Liberal Justices How Guns Work

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By Katelynn Richardson

Editors’ Note: There are two issues in play here. First is the public issue – some justices are fundamentally ignorant about how a gun works. Bump stocks enhance the trigger action, but can be removed and are not integral to the trigger mechanism itself. This confusion is evident by the questions asked by some of the justices, who happen to be female, and perhaps never had much experience with either guns or other mechanical devices. We don’t mean that in a sexist sense as we know plenty of women who shoot well and understand how a trigger works. However men, at least in the past, often got their first firearms in their teens or earlier, messed with cars and such, more often served in the military, and generally had more mechanical experience and frankly are more interest in mechanical things. Secondly, it is not for the ATF or other branches of the administrative state to stretch the wording of laws to create new legislation. Legislating is the job of Congress, the elected representatives of the people. If there is merit in banning “bump stocks”, that is the task of Congress.

The attorney opposing a Trump-era ban on bump stocks repeatedly corrected the Supreme Court’s liberal justices on the operation of semi-automatic firearms during oral arguments Wednesday.

The liberal justices frequently pointed to the fact that a bump stock allows a semi-automatic to fire at the same speed as a machine gun, making it “functionally” like an automatic weapon. Jonathan Mitchell, the attorney representing the U.S. Army veteran who challenged the ban, Michael Cargill, said the speed is not what matters; it is the operation of the trigger itself.

“It’s factually incorrect to say that a function of the trigger automatically starts some chain reaction that propels multiple bullets from the gun,” Mitchell told Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “A function of the trigger fires one shot, then the shooter must take additional manual action.”

The case, Garland v. Cargill, challenges the bump stock ban enacted by the Trump administration following the 2017 Las Vegas concert mass shooting, which was implemented by interpreting the definition of “machine gun” in the federal law restricting the transfer or possession of machine guns to encompass bump stocks. Mitchell argued that the government’s interpretation fails on two counts: a bump stock does not make a gun automatic, and it does not change the trigger mechanism to allow more than one shot per function.

The National Firearms Act defines a “machine gun” as a weapon that automatically shoots more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.” Bump stock devices enable semi-automatic rifles to fire quickly by using the weapon’s recoil to help “bump” the trigger against the finger.

Justice Elena Kagan argued that the law was intending to restrict “anything that takes just a little human action to produce more than one shot.”

“That’s just not the way they wrote the statute,” Mitchell replied. With a bump stock, he explained that the trigger still needs to reset every shot, and there is only one shot fired for each function of the trigger.

“I view myself as a good textualist,” Kagan said. “But textualism is not inconsistent with common sense. A weapon that fires a multitude of shots with a single human action, whether it’s a continuous pressure on a conventional machine gun, holding the trigger, or a continuous pressure on one of these devices on the barrel — I can’t understand how anybody could think those two things should be treated differently.”

In response to a question from Justice Samuel Alito, Mitchell noted Congress could have had policy reasons for excluding bump stocks from the definition of machine gun, such as the way it can help people with disabilities like arthritis.

“Even a person with arthritis, why would Congress think they needed to shoot 400 to 700 or 800 rounds of ammunition under any circumstance?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked. (RELATED: MARK CHENOWETH: Will SCOTUS Finally Send ATF’s Bump Stock Ban Back To Congress?)

Several of the conservative justices expressed some level of skepticism of the government’s argument.

“Intuitively, I’m entirely sympathetic to your argument. It seems like, yes, this is functioning like a machine gun would,” Justice Amy Coney Barret told U.S. Principal Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher. “But looking at that definition, I think the question is, why didn’t Congress pass that legislation to make this covered more clearly?”

Justice Neil Gorsuch worried that the reinterpretation of the definition — which occurred after both Democratic and Republican prior administrations declined to include bump stocks in the definition of machine guns — suddenly rendered up to half a million Americans federal felons. Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed concern that the rule would “ensnare” people who were unaware of the change.

At one point, Gorsuch appeared incredulous that people would “sit down and read the federal register.”

“That’s what they do in their evening for fun,” he joked. “Gun owners crack it open next to the fire and the dog.”

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Foreign Billionaire-Backed Climate Org Pressuring Broadcasters To Censor Ads Critical Of Biden’s EV Mandate thumbnail

Foreign Billionaire-Backed Climate Org Pressuring Broadcasters To Censor Ads Critical Of Biden’s EV Mandate

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By Nick Pope

A green nonprofit that is indirectly funded by a foreign billionaire is pressuring broadcasters to drop advertisements that criticize the Biden administration’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda.

Climate Power wrote to numerous broadcasters this week demanding that they stop airing American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM)-funded advertisements in swing state markets that rail against President Joe Biden’s plans to impose widespread EV adoption in the coming years. The charitable organization affiliated with Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss healthcare mogul and billionaire philanthropist, donates millions of dollars to the Fund for a Better Future, which was the fiscal sponsor for Climate Power until 2023, a spokesperson for Climate Power previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AFPM launched its seven-figure ad campaign designed to highlight and criticize the administration’s EV policies on Tuesday. The ads, which describe Biden’s policies as an EV mandate, are airing in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, Montana and Washington, D.C.

Climate Power’s warning letter to local affiliates states that the broadcasters “must remove these ads from the air immediately” because “there is no pending federal ‘car ban,’ and to claim otherwise is patently false and intentionally misleading.” The letter suggests that AFPM’s ads could be in violation of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, and instructs the broadcasters to contact Climate Power — an Internal Revenue Service-recognized 501(c)4 that is spending more than $80 million to tout Biden’s climate policies ahead of the 2024 presidential election — to confirm that the ads are no longer running on their stations. (RELATED: Left-Wing Billionaire’s Nonprofit Is Pushing A TikTok Campaign Against American Energy)

Climate Power strongly disputes that the Biden administration is imposing EV mandates, but the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed tailpipe emissions standards would effectively require 67% of all light-duty vehicles sold after model year 2032 to be electric, according to the agency. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also proposed its own aggressive update to fuel economy standards that would force manufacturers to substantially increase the fuel efficiencies of their fleets to an extent that effectively makes the policy an “EV mandate,” Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for Energy Research Dan Kish previously told the DCNF.

“These ads are filled with lies meant to scare Americans about a ‘car ban’ that doesn’t exist – and they should be taken off the air,” Climate Power Executive Director Lori Lodes said in a Tuesday statement. “The Biden administration isn’t banning gas-powered cars or appliances – they’re fighting against corporate polluters to make our air and water cleaner and give Americans more affordable alternatives to fossil fuel. Big Oil knows that and is intentionally misleading Americans to protect their obscene profits.”

Since 2021, the Berger Action Fund, a 501(c)4 affiliated with Wyss, has given about $40 million to the Fund for a Better Future, a grantmaking organization that shells out funds to support a wide range of left-of-center causes and organizations, according to Politico. The Berger Action Fund has also given more than $77 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a “dark money” organization managed by the for-profit consultancy Arabella Advisors that does not have to disclose its donors, since 2021.

Because Wyss is a Swiss citizen, he is not allowed by law to directly donate to American political candidates or political committees, but the activities of his nonprofit and associated organizations have allowed him to quietly become one of the most influential individual donors in American politics today, according to The Associated Press.

In May 2021, Americans for Public Trust — a government watchdog and transparency group — filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that Wyss, his nonprofits, and affiliated organizations have “violated fundamental compliance and transparency rules” governing political spending by foreign nationals.

Climate Power did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Are Policymakers Oblivious to the Importance of Crude Oil, or Are They Intentionally Sending Us Back to the 18th Century? thumbnail

Are Policymakers Oblivious to the Importance of Crude Oil, or Are They Intentionally Sending Us Back to the 18th Century?

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By Ronald Stein

The elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is that crude oil is the foundation of our materialistic society as it is the basis of all products and fuels demanded by the 8 billion on this planet.

World leaders are not cognizant enough to know that wind turbines and solar panels only generate occasional electricity but manufacture no products for society and have no plans for the replacement of the supply chain of products and fuels now manufactured from fossil fuels, which are the basis on every infrastructure segment that are supporting the 8 billion on this planet!

Over the last 200 years, and the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion, we learned that crude oil is virtually useless, unless it’s manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products in our daily lives that did not exist before the 1800’s, and the fuels for the 20,000 commercial aircraft, and more than  50,000 military aircraft in the world and the 50,000 merchant ships and the military and space programs, hospitals, communications, electronics, and mining for industrial and precious metals.

Of the three fossil fuels of coal, natural gas, and crude oil, most government officials and policymakers are unaware that the use of coal and natural gas are mainly for the generation of electricity. The third fossil fuel, crude oil, is virtually never used for the generation of electricity but is the basis of more than 6,000 products that did not exist 200 years ago.

But wait, Life without oil is NOT AS SIMPLE AS YOU MAY THINK as breezes and sunshine can only generate intermittent electricity, and NEITHER wind turbines, nor solar panels, can manufacture anything for society.

The pre-1800’s set the stage for the fantastic growth after mankind’s discovery of crude oil:

  • Life longevity was around forty years of age and people seldom travelled more than one hundred miles from where they were born.
  • The world population was about one billion people.
  • No electricity, as all generation of electricity is only possible with the parts made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil for continuous and uninterruptible electricity being generated from coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric power plants, and occasionally generated electricity from weather dependent wind turbines and solar panels.
  • The following infrastructures were not around a few short centuries ago, because they all need components and parts that were NOT available in the pre-1800’s.
    • Transportation
    • Hospitals
    • Medical equipment
    • Appliances
    • Electronics
    • Telecommunications
    • Communications systems
    • Space programs
    • Heating and ventilating
    • Military

Without Crude Oil there can be no Electricity! Today’s electrical generation from hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar are ALL based on the products, components, and equipment that are made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

As technologies advance for more reduced carbon electricity generation and use, there will be more requirements for critical minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth elements that are essential components in many of today’s rapidly growing electricity technologies – from wind turbines and electricity networks to electric vehicles. Demand for these minerals is growing quickly as electricity transitions gather pace. All those exotic minerals and metals only produce electricity, as they CANNOT make any PRODUCTS used in today’s economy.

Most government officials and policymakers are unaware that ALL electricity came AFTER the discovery of oil, starting with the light bulb made from oil. All electrical generation from hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar are ALL based on the products, components, and equipment that are made with PRODUCTS made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

Today, a few centuries after the discovery of crude oil:

  • Everything that needs electricity, and every infrastructure, are made from products based on the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, from the light bulb to the iPhone, defibrillator, and all the parts of EV’s, toilets, and spacecraft.
  • Weather related fatalities have virtually disappeared with all the products and medications available today that were not available a few centuries ago.

Looking back at the history of the petroleum industry, it illustrates that the black cruddy looking crude oil was virtually useless, unless it could be manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are now the basis of chemical products, such as plastics, solvents, and medications, that are essential for supporting modern lifestyles. The more than 6,000 products  that are based on oil are being used for the health and well-being of humanity and the generation of electricity did not exist a few short centuries ago.

Almost never discussed is how to maintain the supply chain of cost-effective PRODUCTS that are essential to human flourishing.

Energy literacy starts with the knowledge that crude oil is the basis of our materialistic society. Conversations are needed to discuss the difference between just “ELECTRICITY” from renewables, and the “PRODUCTS” that are the basis of society’s materialistic world. Wind turbines and solar panels are themselves MADE from oil derivatives, and only generate occasional electricity but manufacture NOTHING for society.

World leaders continue to have little comprehension that ridding the world of oil, without a replacement in mind, would be immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products now manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths, and could be the greatest threat to the world’s eight billion population.

World leaders continue experiencing a “dangerous delusion” of a global transition to “just electricity” that they believe will eliminate the use of the crude oil that made society achieve so much in a few centuries. Without those products made from petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, the policymakers must be imagining NO jets, ships, defense, or space programs in our future!

How dare the ruling class, powerful elite, and media, avoid energy literacy conversations about the “Elephant in the Room”, as the end of crude oil that is manufactured into all the products and transportation fuels that built the world to eight billion people, would be the end of civilization as “unreliable electricity” from breezes and sunshine cannot manufacture anything.

Until a crude oil replacement is identified, the world needs a back-up plan that replaces crude oil that will support the manufacturing of the products demanded by the 8 billion of our materialistic society.

Please share this information with your friends to further enhance conversations about Energy Literacy as Breezes and Sunshine cannot manufacture anything. Electricity CANNOT exist without crude oil !

*****

This article was published by The Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Trio Submits Proposal To Ban Tracking Firearms Through Purchases thumbnail

Trio Submits Proposal To Ban Tracking Firearms Through Purchases

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By Alan Wooten

Restricting the use of a merchant category code to track transactions for firearms and ammunition sales has been proposed by Republican U.S. Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York, Richard Hudson of North Carolina, and Andy Barr of Kentucky.

The implementation of the MCC, as it is commonly known, happened in September 2022 by the International Organization for Standardization. Visa, Mastercard, and American Express paused the implementation, and Hudson said he’s questioned it from the outset.

A release from Hudson says the proposal would “preempt California’s newest attempt to single out and surveil law-abiding firearm and ammunition owners.” News broke last week that American Express, Visa and Mastercard would go forward and track gun store purchases in the state.

In a release, Lawrence G. Keane, National Shooting Sports Federation senior vice president and general counsel for the Firearm Industry Trade Association, said, “The Biden administration has already proven they cannot be trusted to respect the private firearm transactions of law-abiding citizens. Without a warrant, federal agencies collected financial information on private firearm and ammunition transactions to create an illegal government watchlist of gun owners. Representative Elise Stefanik’s legislation would rein in federal overreach to use the private financial transactions of law-abiding citizens against them for political means.”

Stefanik said such tracking is a violation of constitutional rights.

She said in a release, “I share the concern of law-abiding gun owners across our nation that have voiced their fear that such tactics will work to serve the radical Left’s anti-gun agenda. I will always stand up for our Second Amendment rights as Americans and provide a critical check to any entity attempting to encroach on our liberties.”

Hudson said, “Gun grabbing liberals will stop at nothing to take away your Second Amendment rights. This is unacceptable, dangerous, and a first step to gun confiscation.”

Barr said the privacy of purchases is not negotiable. Randy Kozuch, interim executive director of the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action, the lobbying arm of the NRA, said the merchant category code for firearms retailers “is nothing more than a scheme to surveil law-abiding gun owners.”

Amalgamated Bank made the request to set up the code. At the time, New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a letter to the three major credit card companies urging them to support the move. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, running for election that fall, gave her support as well.

Twenty-one state attorneys general responded with a letter to the credit card companies’ leaders requesting they not support the MCC.

Montana, in 2023, banned the practice.

*****

This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

America First Legal Sues Maricopa County thumbnail

America First Legal Sues Maricopa County

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By Neland Nobel

America First Legal, a law firm closely associated with the first Trump Administration, is suing Maricopa County for election malfeasance.

American First is headed by Stephen Miller, former Senior Advisor to President Trump.  Also serving on the board is Gene Hamilton, former Counselor General in the Department of Justice, Reed D. Rubinstein a former Deputy Associate Attorney General, and Daniel Epstein, Senior Associate Counsel to the President, and counsel for the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

In the suit filed in Yavapai County, America First Legal asserts:

“The Maricopa Defendants’ administration of elections in Maricopa County has been sloppy, shoddy, and rife with mistakes. Their mismanagement has made Maricopa County—and the entire State of Arizona—the laughingstock of the nation. The Defendants’ mistakes and unlawful conduct are so numerous that it is beyond the scope of one single lawsuit to correct. This complaint merely identifies the most egregious of the legions of errors and illegalities and seeks judicial remedy to correct them.”

They further suggest that over 55% of voters polled believe that the recent elections were tainted and that public confidence in elections has been adversely affected by the behavior of Maricopa County both in conducting the election and in responding to complaints from voters.

In a press release dated February 26, 2024, America First Legal announced:

“On Friday, America First Legal (AFL) re-filed a landmark Arizona election integrity case on behalf of its clients in Yavapai County Superior Court. It replaces the initial case, which had been filed in Maricopa County and was voluntarily dismissed in response to Maricopa County’s schemes to sabotage the case. Additionally, it adds Yavapai County as a defendant.

On February 6, 2024, AFL filed a landmark election integrity case against Maricopa County, the members of the county Board of Supervisors, and County Recorder Stephen Richer on behalf of the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, a local grassroots organization, and Eric Lovelis, a registered voter in the county. On February 16, AFL amended the complaint to add a Coconino County registered voter as a plaintiff and to add Coconino County and its Board of Supervisors and Recorder as defendants.

On February 8, 2024—just two days after filing the case—AFL filed a routine motion for a change of venue, asking for the case to be transferred to Yavapai County. Arizona law says that parties in a lawsuit against a county have the absolute right to have the case moved away from that county. The Arizona legislature created this right because it recognized the inherent power imbalance when a party is forced to litigate against a county on that county’s home turf.

However, notwithstanding the clear requirements of Arizona law, Maricopa County has been fighting tooth and nail to force this case to stay in Maricopa County. For example, the Maricopa County Defendants filed a motion to dismiss Maricopa County from the case so that the law allowing a change of venue wouldn’t apply. But, of course, Maricopa County is an essential and necessary defendant in a case that challenges election procedures in the County. Counties play a key role in administering elections, and election lawsuits regularly include counties as defendants. “

In addition, the new case also asserts claims against Yavapai County, alleging that some of the county’s signature verification and curing procedures are unlawful, that it has been unlawfully canceling voter registration without their knowledge or consent, and that it maintains unstaffed drop boxes. Additionally, the new complaint alleges that during the 2022 elections, at least one voting center in Yavapai County had printer malfunctions that caused long lines. 

According to James Rogers, America First Legal Senior Counsel:

“A majority of Arizonans believe that problems with how Maricopa County conducted the 2022 election affected the outcome. Public trust in our institutions is faltering. This lawsuit is about restoring integrity to our election process. And what is Maricopa County’s response to the legitimate concerns of its citizens? Frivolous procedural motions trying to delay the case and ensure it is not heard on its merits. This voluntary dismissal is not the end of this case, but just the beginning. With this case newly refiled in Yavapai County, we will continue to zealously prosecute this case on behalf of our clients. It’s time to restore public confidence in Arizona’s elections. “

The entire complaint can be accessed at the following link: https://media.aflegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/26203840/Strong-Communities-v.-Yavapai-Maricopa-and-Coconino-Counties-Complaint.pdf

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

STAY INFORMED

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