Torture, Sterilization, and Brainwashing: Uyghur Camp Survivors Testify to Congress thumbnail

Torture, Sterilization, and Brainwashing: Uyghur Camp Survivors Testify to Congress

By Catherine Salgado

“Sterilization, electric shock torture, and brainwashing are hallmarks of the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of the Uyghur people, according to prison camp survivors.” Survivors of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims testified to Congress this week. You won’t see much coverage of the horrendous crimes detailed in this hearing in the mainstream media, because the CCP has infiltrated our institutions. But these people’s stories need to be told. And all those US companies and politicians who want to compromise with China—they are complicit in this horror.

The CCP is the greatest mass murderer of all time, at a staggering 500 million deaths and counting. But of course that 500 million, as massive a number as it is, only represents a fraction of the number of people abused and oppressed by the CCP. The Uyghur testimony to Congress highlighted that.

“[The Daily Signal, March 23] Gulbahar Haitiwaji and Qelbinur Sidik witnessed firsthand the realities of Chinese concentration camps where Uyghur Muslims are held and tortured…Haitiwaji is Uyghur and lived and worked in China before moving to France. At the end of 2016, she was called back to China for an issue that she was told regarded her retirement pension. Upon returning to China, Haitiwaji was arrested and sent to a “reeducation” camp.

‘First they shackled my feet and then they detained [me],’ Haitiwaji said. ‘The woman’s condition in the detention centers are horrible. All women are shackled and our language… we are all prohibited to speak.’

Haitiwaji, author of ‘How I Survived a Chinese ‘Reeducation’ Camp: A Uyghur Woman’s Story,’ said she and the other women in the prison were interrogated and tortured.

‘The rooms we were kept in had bunk beds, a bucket to serve as a toilet, and cameras panning the room,’ Haitiwaji said in her written testimony. ‘There was no mattress, no toilet paper, no sheets, nowhere to wash.’

Every day, Haitiwaji underwent 11 hours of Chinese language education…’There are four types of torturing methods,’ Sidik said. ‘One is electric button, electric helmet, electric glove, and a tiger chair.’”

The next time Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or a Biden official says something pro-China, keep this in mind. Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) obtained revelatory documentation on the Uyghur genocide last year. In one 2017 document, a CCP official said, “If he was handcuffed, could he run away? No, he would be unable to, wouldn’t he? Shoot him dead if he run a few steps. You see, in such a situation, if they run, just kill them. There will be no problem, because we have already authorized this a long time ago.” Yet where was the explosion of outrage from the self-righteous US media and politicians?

Sidik, another testifier to Congress, is Uzbek, and she served as an instructor in the “reeducation” camps starting in 2017, when she was assigned to a “new teaching position”—helping “re-educate” Uyghurs in a concentration camp.

“‘For each meal they eat one Chinese bun and water, and even going for toilet is monitored,’ Sidik, speaking through a translator, said of her students, adding that within the six months she was there, ‘none of them had any shower.’

Sidik said her students would be called from her classroom for interrogation. Because the interrogation rooms were located near the classrooms, she would hear ‘horrible screaming sound from torture.’

‘There are four types of torturing methods,’ Sidik said. ‘One is electric button, electric helmet, electric glove, and a tiger chair.’

Every Monday, Sidik recalls that female prisoners were given an unknown medicine. ‘After they take that, those medicines [then] the period will stop,’ she said. ‘Even some woman who were breastfeeding the babies, the breast milk will stop after taking that medicine.’”

By the way, isn’t it interesting that one of the side effects of the Covid-19 vaccines is said to be damaging women’s fertility—and at least one of the major Covid vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech’s, is manufactured by a CCP-owned company? Is the US government and Big Pharma importing CCP forced sterilization? After all, in the 20th century, there were many thousands of women forcibly sterilized with the sanction of the US government during the eugenics craze, so it’s hardly unprecedented.

“Sidik said in her written testimony that while working at an all women ‘center,’ that sometimes, when the women ‘would come to class, I could tell [by] how they walked with difficulty or were sobbing that they had been sexually abused.’

The police working in the camps were ‘raping women but also inserting batons, even electric ones, into their private parts and even men’s rectums,’ Sidik said.”

The CCP is a completely evil entity and it has to be destroyed, before it destroys the Uyghurs—and America too.

*****
This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

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Mask Mandates in Healthcare Facilities are the Evilest of them All thumbnail

Mask Mandates in Healthcare Facilities are the Evilest of them All

By Aaron Hertzberg

Of all the odious evils prosecuted by the government and medical establishments throughout the pandemic, mask mandates remain the paradigmatic visual symbol of the senseless capital-‘S’ Science quackery so destructive to society that contributed nothing towards mitigating covid disease or transmission.

Thankfully, mask mandates have become so politically toxic that the mainstream media – however reluctantly – felt compelled to acknowledge this. Even in California, the zenith of untrammeled covid zealotry, public health officials were forced to backtrack from attempts to reinstate mask mandates in the face of public backlash.

Yet facemasks continue to be required in one area of public life: healthcare. To this day, many if not most hospitals and doctor’s offices require patients and staff alike to mask up from the moment they step foot inside.

Superficially, although reviled by most, mask mandates in healthcare settings nevertheless possess a patina of legitimacy not found in any other arena. Facemasks, especially the ubiquitous blue surgical masks, were indelibly etched upon the psyche as commonplace within medical facilities before the pandemic struck. It is doubtful that mask requirements in healthcare settings would have otherwise persisted far beyond their expiration date everywhere else without this prior cultural acclimatization to masks in healthcare settings.

This is devilishly ironic, in a perverse sense. Mask requirements in healthcare facilities are the most indefensible and unconscionable of them all. It is hard to find a practice more corrosive to patient welfare and the provision of medical care than mask mandates.

That mask mandates in healthcare settings were even contemplated, let alone enacted and enforced, is categorically insane. A medical institution is at its core an enterprise organized to advance the welfare of patients (at least in theory and rhetoric, which is not insignificant even though the practical implementation is sorely lacking). Forcibly masking patients imposes medical harm; causes patients physical and emotional distress; poisons the doctor-patient relationship; pits the patient against the medical staff now doubling as mask police; and, worst of all, dethrones individual patient welfare as the overarching priority in favor of the welfare of a nebulously characterized ‘everyone else’ – among other detrimental effects (to be fleshed out in more detail below).

Masking patients is a uniquely pernicious annulment of patient welfare as the North Star anchoring medical ethos. Masking patients is inherently a savagely violent desecration of “primum non nocere” – first, do no harm. Masking patients amounts to medical molestation, a depraved abuse of patients already suffering from medical maladies, one that also substantially interferes with and cripples patient care. Contrast mask requirements to vaccine mandates – as evil and deadly as those are – that at least in the abstract can be theoretically justified with [false] insinuations about the necessity and efficacy of a vaccine. Administering a vaccine is not an inherently harmful act by definition like masking a patient is.

Not to be outdone, the insulation of mainstream medicine from any factual or scientific predicate rivals its towering moral calumny. Mask requirements for healthcare facilities continue to be sustained in the face of an unrelenting flurry of fatal knockout blows struck by study after study finding that, as a purely scientific matter, masks of any kind are wholly inutile amulets bereft of any discernible impact on the transmission or epidemiology of respiratory viruses.

Indeed, never has so much been perpetrated by so few upon so many on the basis of so little [borrowing from Churchill].

Unfortunately, the inevitable consequence of societal desensitization to the unnaturalness of facemasks in healthcare settings is that people have been similarly desensitized and fail to notice the profound transformation of the fundamental character and orientation of healthcare and medicine. Conversely, the ferocious mauling of medical ethics shows no sign of abating despite covid receding from the forefront of political controversy.

If we are to reverse course, it is imperative that we eviscerate the veneer of normalcy shrouding the diabolical nature of the abhorrent pandemic policies the medical establishment stubbornly persists in maintaining. It is the aim of this article to convey a sense of the profoundly abusive nature of healthcare mask mandates – the lynchpin propping up the pandemic-minted Medical Reich.

A few pointers by way of introduction:

  • The following list is intended to highlight and flesh out a few of the more central and destructive harms caused by masks. Bear in mind that this list is neither complete nor are the individual examples fleshed out to the fullest degree possible.
  • There is a large amount of overlapping between the various things enumerated here.
  • These are general principles only. They are not true for every healthcare professional in every situation – people are different and are differently disposed or susceptible to various psychological dynamics. Likewise, different people experience different effects in varying degrees.

Why are healthcare mask mandates so corrosive to the practice of medicine?……

*****
Continue reading this article, published by Brownstone Institute and reproduced with permission.

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Planned Parenthood Pivots To Hormones As A Major Funding Stream

By Emma Wilenta

In the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, many speculated that Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, would struggle to continue to turn a profit. This, however, has not been the case. Rather, it has turned to an alternative high-demand service: transgender hormone therapy.

Planned Parenthood is not new to this industry. They have offered “transgender care” since at least 2017. However, it’s notable that in recent years, they have expanded their offerings as the services become more popular, particularly amongst young people.

At the national level, Planned Parenthood is the second largest provider of hormone therapy, according to a document put out by the organization itself.

In its 2019-2020 Annual Report, Planned Parenthood says it has more than 200 facilities in 31 states that provide hormone therapy for patients seeking so-called “gender-affirming care.”

Its website offers friendly information for those seeking hormone therapy, including minors:

Planned Parenthood is proud to provide a safe and welcoming place to get transgender/nonbinary hormone therapy. We offer services to transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary people.

These services include estrogen and anti-androgen hormone therapy, testosterone hormone therapy, and puberty blockers.

There is also a searchable feature that makes it possible to find offerings close by and schedule either in-person or telehealth appointments to receive the drugs. In an interview with IWF, detransitioner Cat Cattinson detailed how little vetting was needed to obtain testosterone from Planned Parenthood. After hearing that Planned Parenthood offered “gender-affirming care,” she decided to give them a call, assuming she would need to go through some sort of process to get a prescription for testosterone. Shockingly, after just a thirty-minute phone call with a doctor whom she never met, Cat had a prescription for the Schedule III controlled substance.

As Kelsey Bolar reported in IWF’s Identity Crisis episode highlighting Cat’s experience, “Cat told the doctor that she wanted to start with a low dose because she was a semi-professional singer and didn’t want to risk compromising her singing voice. But she said she later found out that Planned Parenthood prescribed her double that of other female-to-male ‘transitioners.’”

The pivot towards gender-affirming care is a smart move financially, as National Review notes:

Planned Parenthood is proud to provide a safe and welcoming place to get transgender/nonbinary hormone therapy. We offer services to transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary people.

Sadly, the damage that Planned Parenthood inflicts is not limited to providing dangerous hormones to vulnerable youth, which side effects include, but are not limited to infertility, diabetes, liver toxicity, and permanently altered sexual features, but also poisoning their minds through their popular sex-ed curriculum in public schools across the nation.

Fox News recently reported on a Planned Parenthood sex educator named Mariah Caudillo, who is employed by Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, which serves over 220,000 people in California and Nevada. All 35 health centers in the Mar Monte network offer “gender-affirming care.”

On social media, Caudillo advises teens on how to acquire sex toys and hide them from parents, and she discusses a wide range of other sexually explicit topics geared toward curious young people.

Organizations like Planned Parenthood are actively working against parents to steal the joy and innocence from America’s youth by teaching children about sexually explicit topics. Worse, the organization is chemically altering anyone who walks through its doors willing to pay for hormone therapy.

*****
This article was published by Independent Women’s Forum and is reproduced with permission.

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Transgenders

By Bruce Bialosky

This topic somehow has become one of the most important subjects in America. It is characterized by some as “the civil rights fight of our time.” A recent column by one of the “sterling” columnists at the New York Times finally made me address this issue.

Jamelle Bouie belongs to the chorus of writers at the New York Times and Washington Post who advocate jumping on the bandwagon of any current trend. While Mr. Bouie’s opinions on this matter might very well be heartfelt, one might also think at least one of these agenda items to radically change our lives would face some resistance.

Bouie’s column is entitled, “There is No Dignity in This Kind of America.” It reveals where he is heading from the start.

One must wonder where Mr. Bouie was on this issue before June 26, 2015, when Gays were granted the right to marry by the U.S. Supreme Court. The transgender issue was nowhere on the agenda and since then has become transcendental. Someone involved in the Gay community informed me that every relevant organization turned immediately to this issue after the ruling. They had won that long fight for gay marriage and now had no issue to drive fundraising. Transgenders went from nowhere on their websites to the most burning issue and fundraising came along with it.

Bouie starts his column with the bold statement, “Over the past year, we have seen a sweeping and ferocious attack on the rights and dignity of transgender people across the country.” He does not state how these new laws will discriminate against transgenders; you must simply accept his premise.

He loses credibility when he proceeds to cast the entire argument as not just going after transgenders, but the entire LGBTQ community. It just ain’t so, Jamelle, and that is where so many people are antagonized.

I have a long history of support for the Gay community as I will once again state the best man at my wedding was and is gay. I will say I wasn’t the first to accept Gay marriage, but I did before the Supreme Court ruled and I believe it is a settled issue as virtually no one is arguing for change.

The issue of transgenders is different for me as it is for a lot of people and a lot more than Jamelle might think. People don’t like being bullied into making this such an important cause. I believe many people have a lot of concerns, as I do. Many believe that just because our medical science has reached a point where we can alter males to appear like females and females to appear like males that may just not be the right thing to do. We are also concerned about the long-term medical effects of the procedures taken to make the transition. And many certainly believe if someone chooses that path, it is nobody’s business. But it should not be on our collective dime.

The single most disconcerting aspect of this matter concerns minors – as in educating or sharing information with them. It is clear scientifically people do not achieve full mental development until they are roughly 25 years old. Not only is this issue being addressed to young adults, but also to adolescents. It never fails to amaze me how focused or preoccupied some get on issues like this that they cannot accept reasonable boundaries. And then they call the opposition zealots.

Yet schools and public authorities are encouraging minor children to pursue transgender activity while not informing parents. Connecticut has legislation proposed that would protect teacher-student conversations from parental access. How misguided is that? Many suggest children get in their heads that they are not a boy or a girl, but a member of the other sex. It is as if they are little Einsteins generating original thought and they just happened to land in the same spot.

Bouie ties the supposed attacks on transgenders to the fight over abortion. In my mind, the only tie is that supporters like Bouie feel their cause is so just that parental authority needs to be discarded. Those nasty parents just don’t understand the issue or what their children are experiencing. Abort that child of the fifteen-year-old; cut off those breasts of the developing fourteen-year-old; we just know better.

To me, the transgender movement is a bridge too far. I believe many just don’t see them in the “alphabet soup” the movement has created. I wish them no harm. I encourage adults to make prudent decisions about their experience because a gender change is a major, major decision. I will harbor nothing but glad tidings for anyone who makes that decision and Godspeed.

But I won’t encourage it. I will also not be bullied by the Jamelle Bouies of this world into thinking this is the most serious human rights issue in the country. That means if you are involved, please keep it to yourself.

*****

This article was published by FlashReport and is reproduced with permission from the author.

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An Estimated 90% of Childless Women Wanted Kids

By Catherine Salgado

Careers alone don’t usually fulfill men—and they certainly don’t fulfill women. “Be fruitful and multiply,” God told Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28, and God knew what he was doing. An unearthed 2010 study estimated that 90% of childless women actually didn’t choose not to be mothers.

I am so grateful my own mother gave up her military career to stay home and raise and homeschool me and my siblings. I have also personally known a number of young women who spent years insisting aggressively that they would never have children because it would interfere with their careers, passed the age of 30, and suddenly became almost desperate to have children. There are other women I know who did not realize their maternal longing until it was too late.

As the great GK Chesterton so wisely observed, “I do not deny that women have been wronged and even tortured; but I doubt if they were ever tortured so much as they are tortured now by the absurd modern attempt to make them domestic empresses and competitive clerks at the same time…How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe?” Being a mother is the most important “job” a woman can have. If only more modern women realized that before it’s too late.

“[PJ Media, Feb. 23] It turns out, researchers have quantified the proportion of childless women whose status was intentional, and the number is extremely low.

Via The Guardian:

Who are the childless and how many of them wanted children? The closest we can come is a 2010 meta-analysis by the Dutch academic Prof Renske Keiser, which suggested that only 10% of childless women actively chose not to become mothers. That leaves 90% of women [who wanted children]. Only 9% of that 90% are childless for known medical reasons.

(Here is the study in its original German.)

That 10% figure may even be a stretch. Feminist dogma — which childless women disproportionately subscribe to — prohibits the expression of aspiration for motherhood, as it indicates submission to the Patriarchy™ or whatever. So it’s possible that they are too ashamed or repressed to consciously admit to wanting children — perhaps even to themselves.”

Most of us wonder at some point what our legacy will be when we die. There could be no greater legacy than to have given the world another young life full of promise.

This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

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Culture of Death: Dem Resigns After Calling to Abort Kids with Disabilities to Avoid Using Up School Budgets thumbnail

Culture of Death: Dem Resigns After Calling to Abort Kids with Disabilities to Avoid Using Up School Budgets

By Catherine Salgado

As the late Pope John Paul II once said, we are living in an era where most countries promote a “culture of death.” One of the most obvious examples of this is the zealous, almost religious support of so many for abortion; even many people who understand that abortion is wrong still admit exceptions for rape and incest, as if the killing of an innocent baby somehow ceases to be the killing of an innocent baby based on the circumstances of conception. My point being that in many European, American, and Asian countries, a lot of people have become more or less desensitized to death and even murder. An extreme instance of this is the Democrat who recently complained that down syndrome children or children with other disabilities need special educational resources when he argued they should have just been killed before birth, so as to avoid inconveniencing anybody. That is how cheaply Democrats value individual human life.

MRCTV reported that Michael Hugo resigned from his position as Framingham Democratic Committee chair about a month after he created a “firestorm” with his comments during a city council meeting about “abortion access.” Hugo whined that children born with mental or physical disabilities are supposedly strains on school budgets.

Hmm, seems we’ve heard complaints about “non-perfect” people and demands to kill them en masse before in recent history. . .oh, that’s right, Adolf Hitler believed in exterminating anyone who was “imperfect” so such people wouldn’t “burden” the system! And we know how well Hitler’s theories played out!

“[MRCTV] ‘That becomes a very local issue because our school budget will have to absorb the cost of a child in special education, supplying lots and lots of special services to the children who were born with the defect,’ Hugo said at the Feb. 7 meeting.

The comment sparked immediate fury from the public, forcing the Framingham Democratic Committee to condemn Hugo’s remarks at a February 26 meeting – about three weeks later. Hugo faced widespread calls to resign, demands that weren’t calmed with his copious ‘apologies’…

While Hugo’s comments are revolting to say the least – there’s not really a word in the English language to capture the evilness of suggesting an infant be murdered if they’re anything less than physically perfect – I fail to see how his comments are any different than Ana Navarro openly claiming on CNN last year that babies with Down syndrome should be aborted if their families don’t want the burden of raising a child with a difference (she even used her own brother as an example of such a proverbial boat anchor).”

Despite the fact that Hugo apologized, he also complained how ill-used he was and asserted the story was unnecessarily amplified. Geez, can’t a guy say children should be murdered so they don’t use up money without being harassed???

In Jan. 2022, at the March for Life in Washington, D.C., activist Katie Shaw, who has Down Syndrome, noted that there is a waiting list in America to adopt Down Syndrome kids, but over 80% of babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted. The abortion rate is horribly tragic, but Shaw’s comment proves that children with disabilities have families ready and waiting to welcome and love them, even if their biological parents can’t (I can also say as someone who heard Shaw speak that day that she was more articulate than half of Congress).

School budgets in this country aren’t being drained by children with disabilities, they are being drained by stupid projects like LGBTQ sex ed and CRT; illegal aliens; and individuals who overspend and do their jobs poorly. Maybe if schools stopped buying pornographic programs and racist literature for children, there would be more money for the precious, joyous, and loving children who have just as much a right to life in America as those whom Democrats consider physically “perfect.”

*****
This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

There is an important runoff election for the Phoenix City Council District 6 on March 14. Conservative Sal DiCiccio (R) is term limited and will be replaced by the winner of this race. The two candidates are Republican Sam Stone and Democrat Kevin Robinson. If you live in District 6 (check here), you either received a mail-in ballot or you must vote in person (see below).

This is a very important race that will determine the balance of power on the City Council. Phoenix, like many large cities in conservative states, has tended blue with the consequences many cites suffer from with progressive governance. Have you noticed the growing homeless problem in our city?

Conservative Sam Stone is the strong choice of The Prickly Pear and we urge our readers in District 6 to mail your ballots in immediately and cast your vote for Sam Stone. Learn about Sam Stone here. Sal DiCiccio’s excellent leadership and term-limited departure from the Phoenix City Council must not be replaced by one more Democrat on the Council (Democrat Robinson endorsed by leftist Mayor Gallego). Sam Stone is a superb candidate who will bring truthful and conservative leadership to the Phoenix City Council at a time when the future of Phoenix hangs in the balance between the great history of this high quality, desert city we can live in and are proud of or the progressive ills of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Mail-in ballots were sent to registered voters in District 6 on the February 15th. Mail your ballot no later than March 7th – it must be received by the city no later than March 14th to be counted. If you are not on the Permanent Early Voting List you must cast your ballot in person.

In-person balloting at voting centers will occur on three days in mid-March:

  • Saturday, March 11: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  • Monday, March 13: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
  • Tuesday, March 14: 6 a.m. to 7 p.m

In-person voting can be done at the following locations:

  1. Sunnyslope Community Center, 802 E. Vogel Ave.
  2. Bethany Bible Church, 6060 N. Seventh Ave.
  3. Devonshire Senior Center, 2802 E. Devonshire Ave.
  4. Memorial Presbyterian Church, 4141 E. Thomas Road
  5. Burton Barr Central Library, 1221 N. Central Ave.
  6. Eastlake Park Community Center, 1549 E. Jefferson St.
  7. Broadway Heritage Neighborhood Res. Ctr., 2405 E. Broadway Road
  8. South Mountain Community Center, 212 E. Alta Vista Road
  9. Cesar Chavez Library, 3635 W. Baseline Road
  10. Pecos Community Center, 17010 S. 48th St.

You can also vote in person at City Hall through March 10th on the 15th floor. City Hall is at 200 W. Washington St.

The Sex-Ed Industrial Complex Revolves Around Planned Parenthood And Is Fueled By Your Tax Dollars thumbnail

The Sex-Ed Industrial Complex Revolves Around Planned Parenthood And Is Fueled By Your Tax Dollars

By Anna Miller and Scott Yenor

Schools have assumed an outsized role in sex education in the past 50 years. Today, schools propagandize on behalf of transing kids, kinky sex, and coming out as gay. But this isn’t a problem just in leftist enclaves — schools in red states are promoting the same propaganda as schools in blue states. How can this be happening, even in supposedly conservative jurisdictions?

Planned Parenthood, as we show in our new report from the Claremont Institute, carefully controls and coordinates the entire policymaking process to promote its goal of sexual revolution. In Congress, it seeks riders and findings to make the funding of abstinence-only sex education more difficult; it has spearheaded the effort to favor programs that reduce sexual risk as opposed to avoiding sexual risk.

This process results from concerted action at the highest levels of government, led by an iron triangle of activist pressure groups, legislative allies, and aligned administrative activists. Planned Parenthood is grooming children to be the vanguard of sexual perversity and degeneracy in a new, sexually liberated America.

Not only does the influence of Planned Parenthood spearhead the sexual revolution in America’s schools and beyond, but its activity also illustrates how Big Government funds and supports leftist political activity more generally. The left depends on funneling national tax dollars toward its favored causes — and conservatives have all but abandoned the field to such efforts.

Congress has established at least four funding streams for sex education. Both the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) and Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) initiatives are competitive grant programs left over from the Obama era. Two Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) programs, passed in the Trump administration, were originally designed to emphasize abstinence-only-until-marriage education. These four programs, housed within Health and Human Services, cumulatively dispensed $228 million through 243 grants between 2020 and 2023.

Planned Parenthood and its affiliates dominate the grant process. According to our study of award winners, nearly $167 million, comprising 80 percent of HHS sex education funding, went to grantees partnering with Planned Parenthood. Seventy-nine percent of successful programs used Planned Parenthood-endorsed curricula. Planned Parenthood and its affiliates won 86 percent of TPP funds, 90 percent of PREP funds, and about three-quarters of SRAE funds.

Planned Parenthood’s main work comes from carefully priming and directing the grantmaking process within the administrative state. First, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates developed National Sexuality Education Standards (NSES) and, in conjunction with the CDC, they developed the Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT). The NSES and HECAT are leading edges of the sexual revolution.

The second edition of NSES, published in 2020, requires teaching gender identity to kindergarteners and puberty blockers to third graders. NSES also requires teaching about abstinence — but it is the new abstinence, which allows for vaginal sex in the backseat of the car so long as one uses a condom. Almost half of America’s school districts have adopted Planned Parenthood’s sex education standards as curricula.

Planned Parenthood and affiliates then design curricula to satisfy their own NSES and HECAT standards. In fact, there is a ratchet built into the grant programs so that ever more radical curricula can be developed. Twenty-five percent of TPP funding must go to the development of new sex education products — so that the leading edge of the sexual revolution can be inched forward with monies from the federal government. One such innovative program is a $1.5 million grant to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research, which developed Girl2Girl, an education program for “girls who are into girls.” Today’s innovative programs are tomorrow’s staples like Making Proud Choices! or Reducing the Risk, each used in hundreds of school districts around the country.

Grantees must also select from curricula deemed “medically accurate” by HHS. Planned Parenthood has mastered the art of having curriculum designated “medically accurate” through TPP Evidence Review. Of more than 600 studies evaluated under TPP Evidence Review, only 24 of them were approved for use in schools, and Planned Parenthood endorsed or created 17 of them.

All of this is possible because the granting agencies within HHS are staffed with left-wing political activists who bend the administration of programs to like-minded groups. HHS itself has a department-wide commitment to leftist sexual ideology in its Equity Action Plan. In the context of sex education, this means pursuing “equity” between gays and non-gays or transgender-identifying people so that groups supposedly on the outs in American society have a chance to become grant recipients.

Thus the iron triangle is complete: Congress appropriates and issues friendly amendments; bureaucrats direct a process that favors aligned interest groups like Planned Parenthood; Planned Parenthood receives grants, develops curriculum, sells other curricula, and shapes the standards by which grants are evaluated. Breaking into this process is not easy for groups that do not already share the values and goals of the movement.

Only Congress can break up this iron triangle of radicalism. The public is wondering how we are losing children to these degenerate ideologies. The answer is not simple, but part of the solution is easy to identify: Defund national sex education programs and refuse to teach them at the state level.

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

TAKE ACTION

There is an important runoff election for the Phoenix City Council District 6 on March 14. Conservative Sal DiCiccio (R) is term limited and will be replaced by the winner of this race. The two candidates are Republican Sam Stone and Democrat Kevin Robinson. If you live in District 6 (check here), you either received a mail-in ballot or you must vote in person (see below).

This is a very important race that will determine the balance of power on the City Council. Phoenix, like many large cities in conservative states, has tended blue with the consequences many cites suffer from with progressive governance. Have you noticed the growing homeless problem in our city?

Conservative Sam Stone is the strong choice of The Prickly Pear and we urge our readers in District 6 to mail your ballots in immediately and cast your vote for Sam Stone. Learn about Sam Stone here. Sal DiCiccio’s excellent leadership and term-limited departure from the Phoenix City Council must not be replaced by one more Democrat on the Council (Democrat Robinson endorsed by leftist Mayor Gallego). Sam Stone is a superb candidate who will bring truthful and conservative leadership to the Phoenix City Council at a time when the future of Phoenix hangs in the balance between the great history of this high quality, desert city we can live in and are proud of or the progressive ills of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Mail-in ballots were sent to registered voters in District 6 on the February 15th. Mail your ballot no later than March 7th – it must be received by the city no later than March 14th to be counted. If you are not on the Permanent Early Voting List you must cast your ballot in person.

In-person balloting at voting centers will occur on three days in mid-March:

  • Saturday, March 11: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  • Monday, March 13: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
  • Tuesday, March 14: 6 a.m. to 7 p.m

In-person voting can be done at the following locations:

  1. Sunnyslope Community Center, 802 E. Vogel Ave.
  2. Bethany Bible Church, 6060 N. Seventh Ave.
  3. Devonshire Senior Center, 2802 E. Devonshire Ave.
  4. Memorial Presbyterian Church, 4141 E. Thomas Road
  5. Burton Barr Central Library, 1221 N. Central Ave.
  6. Eastlake Park Community Center, 1549 E. Jefferson St.
  7. Broadway Heritage Neighborhood Res. Ctr., 2405 E. Broadway Road
  8. South Mountain Community Center, 212 E. Alta Vista Road
  9. Cesar Chavez Library, 3635 W. Baseline Road
  10. Pecos Community Center, 17010 S. 48th St.

You can also vote in person at City Hall through March 10th on the 15th floor. City Hall is at 200 W. Washington St.

Blaming White Racism thumbnail

Blaming White Racism

By Jason D. Hill

The killing of Tyre Nichols is a horrific continuation of American black-on-black crime.

Many commenters on the Left have situated the arrest of Tyre Nichols—the black man who was evidently beaten to death by five Memphis police officers, also black—as a racial issue. White supremacy, they say, does not require the presence of white people to effect its ugliness, because black people—especially those working in a structurally racist institution such as policing—internalize the racist attitudes of whites. There is, according to these pundits, a close parallel between the Nichols case and other abuse cases involving white cops and black victims, because many blacks absorb racist views about blacks and enact them against their own race as enforcers of white supremacy.

It makes more sense to interpret the beatings that resulted in this young man’s death as another case of black-on-black crime. Those five black police officers constituted a gang of thugs which unleashed its viciousness against an innocent victim. This is the trauma many blacks in inner cities suffer every day from the gang members who prey on their neighborhoods.

Blacks targeting other blacks for murder is the most systemic form of racial profiling that exists in the U.S. today. Black-on-black crime is a national security disaster and risk. It betrays a deep current of black self-hatred that expresses itself in homicidal rage turned largely against black people.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the offending rate for blacks (the number of blacks who commit homicide as a percentage of the population) was almost eight times higher than that for whites, and the victim rate six times higher. Most homicides were intraracial, with 84 percent of white victims killed by whites, and 93 percent of black victims killed by blacks.

Racial profiling of blacks by other blacks is systemic and pervasive in the black community. One hears it in the music where the black gang lifestyle, murders, sexploitation, explicit and graphic sexual depictions of blacks, drugs, and violence are routinely celebrated and consumed in the black community. There is, as far as I can tell, no other aesthetic analogue in any other culture—not where members of a race or ethnicity celebrate and encourage each other to murder their own kind, hyper-sexualize each other, and sell, steal, and consume drugs; not where a lifestyle predicated on the degradation of one’s in-group is a constitutive feature of the culture.

During an appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday, January 29, 2023, Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan lamented the beating death of Nichols at the hands of the five Memphis police officers. Speaking with host Chuck Todd, the Republican legislator stated, “I don’t know that there’s any law that can stop that evil that we saw,” before adding, “but no amount of training’s going to change what we saw in that video.”

Jordan has been criticized for being offensive and insensitive in saying that. But perhaps he has a point. Evil cannot be legislated away. It can be punished when it violates the rights of others, but the brokenness and the evil that those officers carry within themselves are rooted deeply. They maliciously executed a beating they knew could kill a slightly built man. No law, at least not in a free society, can uproot the aesthetic debauchery or the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the black community in the United States.

It is not the case, of course, that black American culture has to be this way, nor that it always has been this way. This cultural indigence derives largely from the way that leftists have resolutely made excuses for the worst outcomes for African Americans, insisting that all of it was a result of and reaction to white racism. Everything good and wholesome about black life—the sense of mutual aid, bettering one’s station, and the importance of family and marriage—was denigrated as a kind of false consciousness. Brutish misery was promoted as black authenticity.

Perhaps Jim Jordan was speaking elliptically, for he knew that if he spoke openly he might be rebuked and censured. Yes, of course there are good black police officers who have emerged from a broken and bankrupt culture; one cannot steep oneself too deeply in stereotypes. But stereotypes hold some degree of truth to them. The gang that killed Tyre Nichols derives from a bereft culture, a culture where blacks seem to be represented everywhere, where white supremacy penetrates every sphere of public and private life. But laser focused attention needs to be aimed at a parallel society existing concurrently in the USA.

When we speak of black American culture today, we are talking about a culture that is broken, bereft of values, moral heft, and sustained leadership. It is self-destructing. It is a thug culture that contributes little of any intellectual, aesthetic, or moral value to the world at large. The gang of five police officers who killed Tyre Nichols are the most eloquent manifestation of its ethos.

When asked what comes to mind when we think of black culture in America today, many of us would rather not say, because the answers are stark, dark, and devoid of much we would care to pass on to future generations. So we should not be surprised that thugs dressed in uniforms are no different than the ones with their pants hanging low below their waists who roam the streets terrorizing innocent citizens.

Congressman Jordan is correct. There might not be any laws to eradicate the evil depicted in the video showcasing the killing of Tyre Nichols. There are, however, radical solutions that can be entertained; solutions our society may rather not be ready to consider and implement. They might ask us to ponder the question of who gets let into the future, and who remains outside the realm of admission into civilized society.

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

TAKE ACTION

There is an important runoff election for the Phoenix City Council District 6 on March 14. Conservative Sal DiCiccio (R) is term limited and will be replaced by the winner of this race. The two candidates are Republican Sam Stone and Democrat Kevin Robinson. If you live in District 6 (check here), you either received a mail-in ballot or you must vote in person (see below).

This is a very important race that will determine the balance of power on the City Council. Phoenix, like many large cities in conservative states, has tended blue with the consequences many cites suffer from with progressive governance. Have you noticed the growing homeless problem in our city?

Conservative Sam Stone is the strong choice of The Prickly Pear and we urge our readers in District 6 to mail your ballots in immediately and cast your vote for Sam Stone. Learn about Sam Stone here. Sal DiCiccio’s excellent leadership and term-limited departure from the Phoenix City Council must not be replaced by one more Democrat on the Council (Democrat Robinson endorsed by leftist Mayor Gallego). Sam Stone is a superb candidate who will bring truthful and conservative leadership to the Phoenix City Council at a time when the future of Phoenix hangs in the balance between the great history of this high quality, desert city we can live in and are proud of or the progressive ills of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Mail-in ballots were sent to registered voters in District 6 on the February 15th. Mail your ballot no later than March 7th – it must be received by the city no later than March 14th to be counted. If you are not on the Permanent Early Voting List you must cast your ballot in person.

In-person balloting at voting centers will occur on three days in mid-March:

  • Saturday, March 11: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  • Monday, March 13: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
  • Tuesday, March 14: 6 a.m. to 7 p.m

In-person voting can be done at the following locations:

  1. Sunnyslope Community Center, 802 E. Vogel Ave.
  2. Bethany Bible Church, 6060 N. Seventh Ave.
  3. Devonshire Senior Center, 2802 E. Devonshire Ave.
  4. Memorial Presbyterian Church, 4141 E. Thomas Road
  5. Burton Barr Central Library, 1221 N. Central Ave.
  6. Eastlake Park Community Center, 1549 E. Jefferson St.
  7. Broadway Heritage Neighborhood Res. Ctr., 2405 E. Broadway Road
  8. South Mountain Community Center, 212 E. Alta Vista Road
  9. Cesar Chavez Library, 3635 W. Baseline Road
  10. Pecos Community Center, 17010 S. 48th St.

You can also vote in person at City Hall through March 10th on the 15th floor. City Hall is at 200 W. Washington St.

‘Contagious’ Energy at Arizona March for Life 2023 thumbnail

‘Contagious’ Energy at Arizona March for Life 2023

By Catherine Salgado

“The energy and the joy is contagious.” The Arizona March for Life happened on Feb. 23 starting at the State Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona. I attended the rally before the march, which drew a large crowd, and thousands participated in the march. While the mood was optimistic due to the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade, Arizona’s new Democrat pro-abortion governor Katie Hobbs is an ominous opponent to future pro-life legislation and current pro-life laws in Arizona.

Several of the speakers vowed that Arizona’s legislature would continue to stand for life, however. Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma, with multiple state congressmen gathered behind him, said that Democrats want to change Arizona law to allow abortion right up to birth. “But that will not happen on my watch,” he said. “As a legislator, and the speaker of the Arizona House behind me, I will always fight to protect the good laws that we have passed in this state to safeguard the sanctity of life.” He emphasized, “The rights of the unborn must be protected…our convictions are unbreakable.”

Senate President Warren Petersen indicated that until God is at the center of Americans’ lives again, unborn babies are at risk. “We need to bring God back into our lives,” he said. He thanked God for helping ensure that Roe would be overturned, and said that the number one reason he and many fellow legislators are Republican is because of the pro-life issue. “Republicans believe in the sanctity of life.” He added that the Founding Fathers “had it figured out,” highlighting the right to life in the Declaration of Independence, meaning America was founded on the principle of the sanctity of life.

Arizona Life Coalition’s Lori Zee Gray said she was referred to an abortion clinic by Planned Parenthood when she became pregnant at age 17, and that the abortion damaged her heart and soul, so she now helps pregnant women explore options. Another woman who helps pregnant girls explore options, Lynn Dyer, was given a “pro-life hero” award by Ashley Trussell of Arizona Life Coalition. Trussell said Dyer stopped eating chocolate in 1973 as a sacrifice to stop abortion, and has been praying and counseling women daily outside abortion clinics for decades, convincing several women to change their minds and to give life to their babies every week. She also helped a Planned Parenthood employee of 17 years become pro-life.

President of the national March for Life Jeanne Mancini found the mood of the gathered crowd inspiring. “The energy and the joy is contagious, so my heart is very light and it’s beautiful to see Arizona come together,” she said.

The teen winner of the Arizona Life Coalition’s student essay contest also spoke, and emphasized that our culture is suffering from what the late Pope Benedict XVI called the “dictatorship of relativism,” where nothing is morally definitive and everything is relative. Once a single exception is made against the sanctity of life, the downhill trend is inevitable. Until Americans value truth more than ego and personal desires, abortion will continue to be accepted by many Arizonans and Americans.

But that’s why so many speakers and Phoenix Bishop John Dolan emphasized the need for God at the rally–because, as George Washington once observed, “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” The overturn of Roe is progress for the pro-life cause, but until God is again widely recognized as America’s king, the battle for the lives of unborn babies will continue.

TAKE ACTION

There is an important runoff election for the Phoenix City Council District 6 on March 14. Conservative Sal DiCiccio (R) is term limited and will be replaced by the winner of this race. The two candidates are Republican Sam Stone and Democrat Kevin Robinson. If you live in District 6 (check here), you either received a mail-in ballot or you must vote in person (see below).

This is a very important race that will determine the balance of power on the City Council. Phoenix, like many large cities in conservative states, has tended blue with the consequences many cites suffer from with progressive governance. Have you noticed the growing homeless problem in our city?

Conservative Sam Stone is the strong choice of The Prickly Pear and we urge our readers in District 6 to mail your ballots in immediately and cast your vote for Sam Stone. Learn about Sam Stone here. Sal DiCiccio’s excellent leadership and term-limited departure from the Phoenix City Council must not be replaced by one more Democrat on the Council (Democrat Robinson endorsed by leftist Mayor Gallego). Sam Stone is a superb candidate who will bring truthful and conservative leadership to the Phoenix City Council at a time when the future of Phoenix hangs in the balance between the great history of this high quality, desert city we can live in and are proud of or the progressive ills of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Mail-in ballots were sent to registered voters in District 6 on the February 15th. Mail your ballot no later than March 7th – it must be received by the city no later than March 14th to be counted. If you are not on the Permanent Early Voting List you must cast your ballot in person.

In-person balloting at voting centers will occur on three days in mid-March:

  • Saturday, March 11: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  • Monday, March 13: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
  • Tuesday, March 14: 6 a.m. to 7 p.m

In-person voting can be done at the following locations:

  1. Sunnyslope Community Center, 802 E. Vogel Ave.
  2. Bethany Bible Church, 6060 N. Seventh Ave.
  3. Devonshire Senior Center, 2802 E. Devonshire Ave.
  4. Memorial Presbyterian Church, 4141 E. Thomas Road
  5. Burton Barr Central Library, 1221 N. Central Ave.
  6. Eastlake Park Community Center, 1549 E. Jefferson St.
  7. Broadway Heritage Neighborhood Res. Ctr., 2405 E. Broadway Road
  8. South Mountain Community Center, 212 E. Alta Vista Road
  9. Cesar Chavez Library, 3635 W. Baseline Road
  10. Pecos Community Center, 17010 S. 48th St.

You can also vote in person at City Hall through March 10th on the 15th floor. City Hall is at 200 W. Washington St.

When it Comes to Destroying Gun Rights, George Soros Plays the Long Game thumbnail

When it Comes to Destroying Gun Rights, George Soros Plays the Long Game

By Lee Williams

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Open Society Foundation’s George Soros may appear to have similar goals. They have each spent massive amounts of their personal fortunes in pursuit of their political objectives through networks of shadowy cutouts, foundations and nonprofits. Both champion big government and abhor personal freedoms – especially gun rights – but it is their methods that separate their madness.

Bloomberg funds a half-dozen Astroturf (they’re certainly not grassroots as he claims) anti-gun groups, which focus primarily on policy and legislative issues. If pro-gun legislation appears anywhere in the country, Bloomberg will dispatch his red-shirted Demanding Moms to snuff it out. Their activism is overt, well publicized by the legacy media and somewhat episodic. There’s a sense of immediacy to Bloomberg’s efforts.

Soros, by comparison, seeks to influence society as a whole. He wants to control what people think by modifying their behavior. He’s a woke globalist and not much interested in local issues. While Bloomberg seeks to control the media narrative, Soros actually controls the media.

If Bloomberg’s efforts can be viewed as tactical, Soros’ are strategic, and at the age of 92, he’s pumped enough money into his gun-control empire to ensure it will continue long after he’s gone.

‘Most generous giver’

Born György Schwartz in pre-World War II Hungary, Soros was educated in England, emigrated to the United States and opened his first hedge fund in 1969. A year later he opened his second, Soros Fund Management.

Today, his personal wealth is estimated at nearly $26 billion, and he has donated more than $32 billion to his Open Society Foundations and other left-wing causes, which led Forbes Magazine to call him the “most generous giver.”

The Open Society Foundations, or OSF, consist of 20 smaller foundations, has branches in 37 countries and operates in more than 120 countries. It is financially capable of continuing its founder’s efforts into perpetuity. Soros’ son, Alexander Soros, currently chairs OSF’s board of directors.

In 2000, OSF’s Center on Crime, Communities & Culture and the Funders’ Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention, released “Gun Control in the United States,” which is one of the most radical gun-control documents ever produced.

The researchers who prepared the document found differences, of course, between state gun laws. Obviously, states such as California and New York had far stricter gun laws than Louisiana or Florida.

“The most striking results of this survey are (a) the lack of uniformity in firearm regulation across the country; (b) the enormous differential between the top and bottom of the spectrum; and (c) the poor scores achieved by most states. 42 states fall below minimum standards for public safety, since they lack basic gun laws such as licensing and registration. The lowest ranking states have almost no firearm regulation of their own; instead they rely entirely on the federal government’s NICS background check at point-of-sale by licensed dealers,” the document states.

The researchers believe all state gun laws should be the same, and they called on the federal government to remedy this “problem” by forcing the freer states to conform with the more restrictive ones.

“All states should move toward consistent regulatory frameworks based on licensing of firearm owners and registration of guns,” the researchers wrote. “States should implement basic anti-trafficking measures, in particular one-gun-a-month laws.”

In addition, the report calls for bans of “assault weapons” and “Saturday Night Specials,” mandatory waiting periods, registration of all guns, permits to purchase firearms and more.

The report quickly became the template for all of Soros’ gun-control efforts.

Media control

In January, MRC Business, which is part of the Media Research Center, revealed that from 2016-2020 Soros gave more than $131 million to various media groups, some of which include NPR, ProPublica, Free Press, Project Syndicate and the Poynter Institute – a Tampa-based media thinktank which, I should disclose, spent at least some of the money on a hit piece about me.

“Soros understands something American conservatives have never fully grasped: media outlets are essential to influencing people,” the MRC authors wrote. “The media influence that Soros bought was enough to insulate him from being seriously investigated by most journalists.”

Soros certainly got what he paid for. ProPublica’s archives are chock-full of anti-gun stories and NPR has even more.

Through his OSF, Soros also offers two types of lucrative media fellowships – one designed for new reporters and the second for “more experienced individuals with a proven record of achievement and expertise.” The beginner fellowship offers a grant of $100,000. The second comes with a staggering $140,000. In addition to the fellowships, OSF offers all-expenses-paid bootcamps for young reporters. While Soros’ sponsorship of these bootcamps is somewhat hidden, his attempt to indoctrinate the young journalists is not.

None of the media outlets ever mentioned Soros’ generosity, and they never probed his finances or his multiple foundations. Nearly all of the coverage of Soros or his businesses has been glowing. The legacy media has never once bitten the hand that feeds them.

‘Soros-backed DA’

Last June, after a mass shooting on Philadelphia’s South Street left three dead and 11 wounded, Soros-financed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner blamed the National Rifle Association.

“The terrible crimes last night on South Street tell our Pennsylvania legislators it’s time for real action,” Krasner wrote in a social media post. “Boycott NRA lobbyists, boycott NRA donations, and bring real common sense gun regulation to Pennsylvania. Now.”

Of course Krasner never mentioned how his failure to aggressively prosecute gang members, gun crimes or repeat offenders who commit gun crimes had led to a record number of homicides in the City of Brotherly Love.

Krasner is certainly not the first Soros-funded prosecutor to do their benefactor’s bidding in front of the TV cameras. In fact, the list is long.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, another Soros-backed prosecutor, was elected after promising to “reform” the criminal justice system, which was code for allowing crimes to go unpunished – unless they involved a defensive gun use.

Gardner went gangbusters after Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who famously stood their ground while protestors invaded their gated community.

Gardner described their actions as a “violent assault,” and filed felony weapon charges, despite Missouri’s Castle Doctrine, which says a homeowner has “the absolute unmitigated right to protect his or her castle or family while on their property.”

Ultimately, the McCloskeys pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and both were pardoned by Gov. Mike Parson. However, Gardner’s relentless hounding of the couple forced even a few liberal commenters to question her motivations, but they’re not difficult to find. Gardner’s election was financed by a super PAC, to which Soros donated $30,000.

Perhaps the most infamous Soros-backed DA, Los Angeles County Prosecutor George Gascón, tried to strongarm American Express, Visa and Mastercard into prohibiting their customers from purchasing homemade firearm kits.

“Our purpose in writing to you today is not to recruit you in a legal debate on the merits of these legal cases or the enforceability of these laws. … [T]here is a difference between what may or may not be technically legal and possible and what is most assuredly wrong. It is to your company’s sense of right and wrong to which we now appeal,” Gascón wrote, according to a news story by the NRA.

While Gascón was busy writing letters, Los Angeles slid further into the crime cesspool. Gascón barely survived a recall effort, which sought to replace him with a prosecutor who would actually enforce the law.

In a column published last year by The Wall Street Journal, Soros wrote that he funds progressive prosecutors because they promote safety and justice and are “popular and effective.”

Chaos theory

It cannot be argued that Soros-funded prosecutors have allowed crime to surge in their jurisdictions, which creates the very same “gun violence” the Soros-funded media love to cover, and the Soros-funded gun-control groups can then exploit and use in their messaging.

Whether this three-pronged cycle is purposeful or coincidental is open to debate, but Soros certainly controls members of all three groups. It’s a type of vertical syndication never seen before – and one with deadly consequences.

Soros’ woke progressive socialism leaves blood and bodies in its wake. Normally, this would draw the attention of prosecutors and/or the media, but in this case, they’re paid participants, and as fellow woke progressive socialists it fits their narrative.

Compared to Soros, Bloomberg and his Demanding Moms are nothing but an irritant. Soros, his woke prosecutors and the lapdog media he bought and paid for, combined with the anti-gun groups he endowed for decades, pose the more significant threat to our civil rights, and it’s one that will not end anytime soon.

*****
This article was published by Second Amendment Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

The Abolition of School Discipline thumbnail

The Abolition of School Discipline

By Daniel Buck

You don’t quickly forget the sound of a child gagging as another child clutches him in a chokehold. As a middle-school teacher, I turned the corner in the hallway one day and found a child with his arms wrapped around the neck of a refugee student — a population that was frequently the target of bullying. The perpetrator had instigated several incidents before, and he was involved in several more thereafter.

At another school where I taught, we had fights at least weekly. On one occasion, as students spilled into my classroom, a boy asked me why we had so many. He said he was embarrassed to attend the school.

Such stories are not outliers. According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, misbehavior, office referrals, and violence spiked this past year in schools and districts across the country. The Washington Post has found a similar pattern. Individual districts reported a marked rise in such behavior. In my own conversations, teachers said their behavior rosters were the only evidence they needed of worsening conduct; some told me their schools hit referral records by mid-year.

Theories regarding causes of this increase are legion: social media, months of online schooling, riots in the streets, larger societal trends of family and institutional breakdown, and plenty more. Assigning portions of blame would hardly be constructive, but it is crucial to focus on one clear driver of the problem — the trend away from punitive discipline in schools — because it is of recent vintage and within school officials’ control.

Alternatives to standard, punitive discipline, while glittering ideals in the abstract, are a resounding failure in practice. It’s a story that parallels the rise and fall of “broken windows” policing in society more generally — an analogue through which we can understand the causes and consequences of the abolition of school discipline.

BROKEN SCHOOL WINDOWS

In the 1980s, the Atlantic ran a famous essay titled “Broken Windows” by George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, which outlined a new form of policing. The article was based on a 1969 experiment by Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who parked two cars — one in an affluent neighborhood and one in a poor neighborhood — and observed what happened. Residents in the former neighborhood ignored the first car, while residents of the latter quickly vandalized the second one.

Not content with this simple experiment, Zimbardo did something unorthodox: He smashed the window of the car in the affluent neighborhood. Lo and behold, passersby soon vandalized this formerly untouched car. Zimbardo’s conclusion was simple: Broken windows, untidy streets, and a general sense of disorder signal to everyone in the vicinity that this is the kind of place where no one cares enough to enforce the rules. Low-level disorder thus fosters further chaos and criminality.

As violent crime spiked in the 1980s, broken-windows policing — inspired by Zimbardo’s experiment — became a popular response. Police spent as much energy shooing along loiterers, keeping an eye on bus stops, and listening for small quarrels between shop owners and customers as they did targeting violent criminals. Cities from New York to Los Angeles implemented the tactic.

The following decade witnessed dramatic drops in crime across the board: Aggravated assault and larceny fell 24% and 23%, respectively, while homicides, rapes, robberies, and burglaries each plummeted around 40%. In New York City, crime dropped at twice the rate of the national average. Though the claim is not without controversy, there is evidence that the broken-windows strategy contributed to these declines……

*****

Continue reading this article at National Affairs.

Democratic Rep Suggests Traditional Families Are ‘Un-American’ thumbnail

Democratic Rep Suggests Traditional Families Are ‘Un-American’

By Laurel Duggan

Democratic South Dakota state Rep. Erin Healy suggested that idealizing the traditional two-parent married household is “dangerous” and “un-American” in a Monday tweet.

Healy was rebuking Family Heritage Alliance’s claim that a home with a married mother and father was the safest place for a child. Critics came to the group’s defense, with some pointing to data supporting the claim that married biological parents are the safest adults for children to live with.

“Extremist group Family Heritage Alliance said this morning that the safest place for kids are in families that have a married mom and dad. What a dangerous and un-American belief,” Healy wrote. It’s unclear what specific comments Healy was referring to, as her office and Family Heritage Alliance did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

Children living with their married biological parents experience the lowest rates of maltreatment, according to a 2010 study by the Department of Health and Human Services. Children whose single parent had a live-in partner saw more than 10 times the rate of abuse and nearly eight times the rate of neglect compared to children living with their married biological parents.

Further, children whose single parents had a live-in partner saw the highest rates of physical and sexual abuse compared to children in other living situations, according to the study; 15.4 out of 1,000 of this group experienced physical abuse and 12.1 of 1,000 experienced sexual abuse, compared to 2.5 and 0.7 out of 1,000 respectively for children with married biological parents.

“Actually, when it comes to abuse, the safest place for kids is an intact, biological married family. See, e.g., this federal report on child abuse and neglect,” Brad Wilcox, director of the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, wrote.

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

The 1519 Project: An Antidote to Caricature? thumbnail

The 1519 Project: An Antidote to Caricature?

By Paul Schwennesen

Predictably, and with more than average fanfare, The New York Times’s headline-grabbing The 1619 Project is coming to the small screen. Hulu has released a six-part docuseries on the controversial historical revision, which purports to demonstrate the racist foundations of the American Project. Brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones and Dean Baquet, this new “origin” myth has become something of a political hot-potato in the culture wars.

Though it’s not likely to go very far, I’d like to toss another potato into the fire and point out that slavery was well-established in North America at least one hundred years before the alleged “beginning” of the American slavery story. Complete with the myriad complexities, contradictions and paradoxes of real life, the Spanish Americas (including much of what is today the United States) were awash in slavery. Slavery between Indians. Enslavement of Indians by Spaniards. Enslavement of Spaniards by Indians. And yes, tragically, enslavement of blacks, ladinos, Moors, and every distinction between. It was messy, it was endemic, and it was very real—but it was certainly not confined exclusively to Blacks, nor to early Americans in Virginia. Perhaps this deeper, more complex history might be called the 1519 Project.

The 1619 Project’s film trailer claims that the “very first enslaved Africans were brought here over four hundred years ago.” This is not only inaccurate (it was well over five hundred years at least), but it promotes the very sort of historical amnesia it professes to redress by entirely ignoring the much-earlier history of slavery in America.

“Since then,” it goes on, “no part of America’s story has been untouched by the legacy of slavery.” This is true in the narrowest sense, but it studiously misses the larger point: no part of the history of the entire world has been untouched by the legacy of slavery. The 1619 Project makes only glancing reference to sixteenth-century American slavery, and instead seeks to make a special case of colonial English slavery, with a specific political aim to impugn “capitalism” and the “hypocrisy” of revolutionary founding ideals. By carefully ignoring the larger context of slavery in the Americas, it engages in weaponized, cherry-picked history that supports its own motivated ends, amongst which are special race-based preferences and “$13 trillion in reparations.”

Phil Magness and others have already done yeoman’s work in documenting the numerous historical inaccuracies and outright fabrications of the The 1619 Project (and, charitably, what the project gets right), so I won’t rehash except to say that, as a historical product the Project is, shall we say, questionable. But setting that aside, the biggest tragedy of all is that The 1619 Project’s tunnel-vision ignores so much rich history: remarkable people, troubling facts, and brutal truths that cut across all manner of ethnic and geographical boundaries.

It ignores, for instance, the astonishing story of Esteban de Dorantes, the Black Moroccan slave who was shipwrecked in 1527 on the coast of Florida and helped three survivors (out of some 600) walk across most of what is now North America (Florida to Arizona and thence to Mexico City), enduring years of serial enslavement by coastal Indians along the way.

It overlooks “Madalena,” the Tocobaga native who was swept up by conquistadors, sent to Cuba, traveled to Spain and ultimately returned to her people in an epic saga of enslavement, resilience, and redemption.

It discounts black slaves who escaped into what is now North Carolina (in 1539!) to marry and live with the Indian women of Xuala, and the curious reactions of their Spanish owners, who were surprised, “because they were regarded as good Christians and friends of their master.”

It sidesteps the endemic slavery of North America where Spaniards found:

[M]any Indians native to other provinces who were held in slavery. As a safeguard against their running away, [their captors] disabled them in one foot, cutting the nerves above the instep where the foot joins the leg, or just above the heel. They held them in this perpetual and inhuman bondage in the interior of the country, away from the frontiers, making use of them to cultivate the soil, and in other servile employments.

It neglects the experiences of Spaniards like Juan Ortiz and Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, who were captured and taken as slaves, enduring treatment “more cruel than [that] of a Moorish master.”

And so on. Starting America’s slavery story arbitrarily at 1619 abandons to obscurity these equally important chapters of a collective tale. A 1519 Project, however, adds complexity that counters popular conceptions of a monolithic, European-dominated slavery culture. It would address Pueblo enslavement of Teya women, for instance. It would not shy from Hernando De Soto’s brutal “iron collars.” It would acknowledge the anti-slavery sentiment of large parts of Spanish society. It would, in short, force us to reckon with history as it was, instead of how it ought to have been.

To that end, while a 1519 Project may seem to some like an attempt to trivialize the egregious impact of a brutal institution in the United States, it is not. It is instead an attempt at a more honest, more complete history of slavery, so that we don’t delude ourselves into repeating the tragic mistakes of the past—treating one another differently based on the color of our skin, for instance.

Hulu’s 1619 Project tells us that “the truth is, Black Americans have always been foundational to the idea of American freedom” and that their “contributions are undeniable.” Yes, this is so. But to suggest that the experience of slavery is a uniquely Black, or uniquely North American phenomenon does a great injustice to the Blacks and other North Americans who came before 1619.

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

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Feb. 12: Birthday of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln

By Catherine Salgado

“He who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.” —Abraham Lincoln

Today [last week on 2/12] in 1809, in a poor log cabin in the frontier of Kentucky, a baby named Abraham Lincoln was born. He rose from poverty to the presidency and saved his country from the two scourges of civil war and slavery.

Lincoln gave us such wise sayings as “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally;” and “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right;” and “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” Not to mention such jokes as, “I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.” It would be well if we now heed his advice, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Lincoln guided us through the greatest crisis of American history till that point; he ended slavery, saved the Union, and was assassinated because he had come to support full civil rights for all Americans, regardless of race. Lincoln was a man great enough both to do the right thing when everyone told him not to do it and to admit when he had been wrong.

Happy birthday to the US President second only to George Washington in greatness, Abraham Lincoln.

*****
This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

10 Woke Offenders: These Companies Push Radical Left Agenda, Fire Conservative Staff thumbnail

10 Woke Offenders: These Companies Push Radical Left Agenda, Fire Conservative Staff

By Katrina Trinko

A new database can help conservative consumers identify which companies actively work to promote leftist ideology and, in some cases, fire conservatives.

The 1792 Exchange, a nonprofit focused on the dangers of “woke capitalism” that urges companies to be neutral on ideological issues, last month released a database of over 1,000 companies.

The database assesses the risk that “a company will cancel a contract or client, or boycott, divest, or deny services based on views or beliefs,” the 1792 Exchange says.

At a time when the culture wars increasingly are being fought, not just in Washington and state capitols but in boardrooms across the country, it’s a welcome development to have a resource to help determine whether your dollars are supporting companies that are neutral or companies that are working against you and your beliefs.

Scanning the entries for companies, I was surprised at just how politically involved so many well-known corporations have become.

Sure, I expected tech companies such as Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) and Alphabet (parent company of Google) to be liberal. And I knew that, as delicious as its ice cream might be, Ben & Jerry’s still hadn’t strayed from its leftist roots.

But I was surprised to see other companies, such as Kohl’s, Ford, Kroger, and Allstate, get slapped with the 1792 Exchange’s “high risk” label. From toy manufacturers to airlines, from drug stores to supermarkets, plenty of companies are busily fighting for leftist causes.

Here’s just a few examples of companies deemed “high risk” by 1792 Exchange:

1. Alaska Airlines. The airline fired two employees after they spoke out against the company’s support for the Equality Act—a bill that likely would require girls sports teams to let biological males play. Alaska Airlines also had “created a new aircraft livery following the death of George Floyd to promote Black Lives Matter” and “issued pro-Black Lives Matter pins and T-shirts for employees.”

2. Allstate. The insurance company “suspended PAC donations to members of Congress who objected to the election certification, streamlined funds to Planned Parenthood, and created ads promoting LGBTQ values.” Back in 2005—apparently, Allstate was ahead of the times on wokeness—the company fired an employee after he wrote an article “at home on his own time explaining his religious views against homosexuality and his beliefs that the movement was dangerous.”

3. Comcast. Not only will this company’s internet service throw you into despair (or is that just my experience?) but it also promotes leftism. Comcast is “an advocate for the Equality Act and has issued statements opposing the Georgia election security bill,” the 1792 Exchange says. The company also “donated $100 million to various groups affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement” and “announced that it would fund employees’ travel to get an abortion.”

4. CVS. The drugstore chain famed for its mile-long receipts is apparently woke on everything except wasting paper. It “advocates for the Equality Act and transgender participation in girls’ sports” and “the company signed an open letter opposing a Florida bill that would prevent teaching gender identity and sexual orientation in schools to kids in K-3rd grade.” CVS gives employees abortion travel “benefits” and “fired a Catholic nurse practitioner after she refused to prescribe or administer abortifacients, citing her religious beliefs.” In a somewhat surprising twist, though, CVS does say it protects employees’ differing viewpoints.

5. Ford. The American car manufacturer may boast of building trucks “Ford tough,” but it seems to have little spine when it comes to leftist pressure. The company has backed the Equality Act and spoken out against election integrity bills. The company also “fired a Christian employee in 2015 for remarks he made against Ford’s advocacy for LGBTQ rights, which he alleged was religious discrimination.” One bright spot from the company is that leaders refused to stop making police cars, despite some pressure, in 2020.

6. Kohl’s. The department store chain has gone full woke internally, having its “recruiters attend an ‘Unconscious Bias, Influencing, Diversity Sourcing, and Diversity 101 training’” and in 2020, making “all employees … attend ‘unconscious bias’ training.” Just in case you want to wear your wokeness on your sleeve, Kohl’s sold a “‘racial equity’ line of clothing, with logos similar to those commonly used by Black Lives Matter.”

7. Kroger. If you thought your views on gay marriage would be irrelevant in a supermarket, think again: The grocery store chain “fired two Christian employees who requested not to wear the gay pride logo on their work aprons.” Kroger also “enables community donations to Planned Parenthood” and will pay travel costs for employees to get an abortion.

8. Marriott. The hotel chain has embraced more leftist causes than a college student in Berkeley. It has supported the Equality Act, spoken out against religious freedom legislation in Arizona and Georgia, and opposed Florida’s bill banning teaching sexual orientation and gender identity to kids in kindergarten through third grade. But apparently China, not known for its wokeness, is A-OK: Marriott “fired a social media manager for using the company’s Twitter to like a tweet thanking Marriott for recognizing Tibet and Taiwan as separate entities from China.”

9. Mattel. The toy company behind Barbies, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, and American Girl has decided children’s toys should come with a dollop of wokeness. Mattel has the dubious distinction of making the first gender-neutral doll, back in 2019. Last year, the company made a “trans-Barbie” in honor of notable actor and transgender activist Laverne Cox. Nor is Mattel content to just push propaganda in toys: The company “advocates for the Equality Act and transgender participation in youth sports.”

10. Pfizer. The pharmaceutical giant doesn’t hold back from getting involved in issues unrelated to health. Pfizer “has signed open letters supporting the Equality Act and transgenders in youth sports” and “opposed the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, which prohibits teaching gender identity and sexual orientation in schools to kids in K-3rd grade.” It also matches employees’ donations to Planned Parenthood.

Alaska Airlines, Allstate, Comcast, CVS, Kohl’s, Kroger, Marriott, Mattel, and Pfizer didn’t respond to emails from The Daily Signal asking them to confirm or deny the statements about them in the 1792 Exchange’s report. The Daily Signal could not reach Ford for comment.

“The Corporate Bias Ratings contains vital information for shareholders, nonprofits, and small businesses about companies that may cancel them for their views,” says Eric Korsvall, chief operating officer of The Heritage Foundation, in an emailed statement. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

“Conservatives cannot afford to ignore these important ratings,” Korsvall adds.

I agree with my colleague. Whether it’s emailing a company to let them know that you’re disappointed in their political decisions, or boycotting them outright, conservatives need to make clear there are consequences for mixing leftist political activism with business decisions.

You might also consider whether it’s time to boost some businesses that share your values. New Founding’s Align specifically “showcases businesses that support our shared way of life and vision for America,” urging conservatives: “Don’t buy from people who hate you. Don’t let your money stab you in the back.”

There also are businesses such as Goya Foods, whose CEO Robert Unanue praised President Donald Trump (and didn’t back down when threatened with boycotts), and Seven Weeks Coffee, which donates part of its proceeds to pregnancy resource centers.

Someday we might get back to an America where politics stays in Washington and state capitols, and doesn’t infiltrate businesses. But sadly, that’s not today’s America—and if conservatives are serious about winning, they need to reflect on where they put their money.

*****
This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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Firing a Shotgun Into the Air, Shooting to Wound and Other Dangerous Ideas

By Lee Williams

When Joe Biden announced last week that police should shoot to wound rather than shoot to stop the threat, most people ignored his crazy ideas and considered them merely the rantings of an 80-year-old man likely suffering from dementia, who has lived most of his adult life in a bubble surrounded by armed protective details.

But when Rob Pincus told FOX News he supported Biden’s ideas, even shooting a shotgun out a door to scare away bad guys, it was too much. Even with Pincus’ previous statements calling for more gun control, he had crossed the Rubicon. There was no going back.

Here’s what Pincus told FOX News: “Biden, many years ago, made a statement about going outside and firing a shotgun up in the air if somebody is trying to break into your home. What he said last Friday is really very closely related to that concept, which is if you’re going to use a gun, you don’t have to use it to kill someone, there’s other ways to somehow use a gun to defend yourself; and that is anathema to people in the training community, whether it’s law enforcement, military or civilian defensive shooting in the United States,” Pincus said, adding later, “I have to admit that Biden’s right. If somebody were trying to break into your home, and you stick a shotgun out the window and fire rounds into the air, that person is probably going to leave.”

Now that Pincus was all-in on Biden’s warning shots and shooting-to-wound tactics, I asked experts from law enforcement, the military and the civilian shooting industry what they thought about Pincus’ comments. Here’s what they had to say.

Law enforcement’s response

“The whole concept of what Biden was saying is insane,” said Sarasota County (Florida) Sheriff Kurt Hoffman. “Every modern law enforcement agency is teaching a single-officer response to an active shooter, so you’re never going to shoot to potentially incapacitate. You’re going to shoot to stop the threat. Why shoot for limbs, feet or ankles? It makes no sense whatsoever.”

Shooting to incapacitate, Hoffman said, prevents a deputy from helping the wounded.

“If you can’t effectively neutralize a threat as quickly as possible – which equals shooting center mass – you can’t render aid to other people on scene who need assistance. Are you going to wound someone and hope he stays down while you render aid? This is the complete antithesis of what we would do. This is crazy.”

Firearm industry’s response

Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said firing warning shots as Biden and Pincus have suggested could land the gun owner in jail.

“Among the cardinal rules for firearm safety is to know your target and what is beyond. NSSF does not recommend any firearm owner blindly fire their shotgun, or any other gun for that matter, into the air. President Biden’s, or anyone else’s advice, that this is a viable option only puts gun owners on shaky legal ground. Jeffery Barton, of Clark County, Washington, was charged with illegally discharging a firearm after intruders attempted to break into his home. Those charges were later dropped. However, he was convicted of obstructing a police officer,” Oliva said. “Firearms are used lawfully each and every day to defend an individual’s life or the lives of loved ones. The decision to use a firearm in self-defense is a serious and are never taken lightly. Discharging firearms recklessly into the night sky could have unintended consequences. Firearm owners should be confident of their intended target and what is beyond it whether they are using their firearm to defend their life, hunting or on a recreational target range. Firearm safety rules are paramount, no matter what the scenario.”

Training community’s response

Bob Keller is a retired Master Sergeant who spent all of his career in Army Special Operations, including 17 years as a Tier One operator in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D), which is better known as Delta Force. Today, Keller teaches civilians, law enforcement, government and corporate groups through his training firm, Gamut Resolutions.

Keller has been in more than 400 gunfights and has never once shot to wound. It is “ignorant and irresponsible” he said for any instructor to teach shooting to incapacitate.

“There’s no way an average shooter can do that,” Keller said. “If you’re telling people to do that and they get in an active shooter situation – and keep in mind anything within CONUS is a no-fail shot – and they’re now aiming for someone’s arm or leg, the likelihood of them making the shot is miniscule. That’s a tough shot for me and I’ve been training my whole life. What happens if they miss the shot and hit a child? Such a low-percentage shot is a huge risk in a CONUS environment. I’ve never shot to wound, at least not intentionally. If someone has a gun in their hand and is getting ready to use it, you don’t shoot to wound. Does he (Pincus) know how hard of a shot that is? It’s ridiculous. Who’s going to be held responsible if a friendly gets shot because someone was trying to shoot the bad guy’s arm? I’d like to see him (Pincus) make that shot.”

Marc Pezzella is a former SWAT team member, a former SWAT team commander, a retired Sheriff’s Office lieutenant and a former U.S. Department of State military contractor with more than 25 years of service and tactical experience, who now teaches tactical shooting at Advanced Defensive Concepts.

Pezzella believes Pincus’ shooting-to-wound idea is lunacy.

“Shooting to wound? Who are you shooting at? Are they mentally stable? Do they feel pain? What is their level of commitment to the fight? Will shooting make them more angry? Are they on drugs? Are they on alcohol? Are they able to fight through the wound?” he asked.

Pezzella pointed out that that 96% of civilian defensive shootings take place within nine feet.

“Assuming you hit them in the arm or leg, within nine feet you don’t have time, distance or opportunity to shoot again,” he said. “Shooting in combat is extremely difficult to do well: they’re shooting and moving, and you’re moving. If someone threatens you with a firearm, the time you think you have to wound them does not exist, assuming you can even hit them. It’s not possible to shoot someone in the extremity in the real world.”

The what-goes-up-must-come-down response

Joe Krawtschenko is a retired law enforcement officer, a firearms instructor and owner of The Gun Shoppe in Southwest Florida.

A few years ago, he met Diego, a then-10-year-old boy who was fighting for his life.

“Diego and his parents were standing in their front yard near Ruskin (Florida) watching fireworks on New Year’s Eve,” Krawtschenko said. “He was standing between his parents when he suddenly fell to the ground bleeding from the head. A .45-round hit him right on the top of his head, penetrated his skull and was lodged in his nasal cavity.”

Diego was in a coma for a week and spent years recovering.

“What goes up must come down, with enough force to kill someone, and we don’t know where it’s coming down,” Krawtschenko said. “Diego recovered. The last time I saw him, he took a class from me with his mother. He’s a normal kid, riding a skateboard.”

Krawtschenko described Pincus’ and Biden’s tactic of shooting into the air as “moronic.”

“You’re going to have a bunch of idiots firing warning shots into the air with no idea where the shot’s going to land,” he said. “We live in a well-populated area. Look around within a mile of where you live. There are schools, parks and playgrounds loaded with kids. Diego and his parents never became anti-gun. They’re anti idiots-with-guns.”

*****
This article was published by Second Amendment Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

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Mom Explains What It Took to Rescue Daughter From Transgenderism

By Virginia Allen

Erin Friday’s daughter was introduced to gender identity ideology in a comprehensive sex-ed class in seventh grade.

“The seed was planted after that class,” Friday says. “And in fact, all of her friends, there were five, sat in my front yard saying what their new labels were.”

Friday says she was “alarmed by the language that they were using, including ‘pansexual,’ which is not a term that 11-year-olds should know.”

The mother began looking into what her daughter was learning in school and was struck by the fact that other adults were not also questioning the teaching of gender ideology to middle schoolers.

When her daughter said she was “transgender,” Friday began taking decisive steps to rescue her from transgenderism. She took her daughter’s phone, put her in a new school, and tried her best to surround the preteen with the truth about who she was as a female. It was not easy, but Friday says, as a parent, “you have to be strong enough, your love for your child has to be strong enough, to take their vitriol.”

After about a year and a half, Friday’s daughter stopped claiming a transgender identity. Today, through the work of the parental support group Our Duty, Friday is helping other families navigate through gender identity ideology.

Friday joins the show today to share her story, and to explain how parents can protect their children from the harms of gender identity ideology.

*****
This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

Weekend Read: How the Soft-on-Crime Sausage Gets Made thumbnail

Weekend Read: How the Soft-on-Crime Sausage Gets Made

By Parker Thayer

In October 2022, the Ronald Brownstein of The Atlantic wrote an impassioned defense of the left-wing progressive criminal justice reform movement, claiming there is no clear connection between rising crime rates and the polices of allegedly “soft-on-crime” district attorneys (DAs).

The article provides an . . . interesting . . . argument.

Brownstein concedes, among other things, that

  • National crime rates reversed their downward trend around 2014,
  • Left-wing progressive DAs first became popular in the “mid 2010s,”
  • 20 percent of the country now lives in the jurisdiction of a left-wing progressive DA compared to “essentially none 10 years ago” when crime rates were at an all-time low, and
  • There is “no clear alternative explanation” for rising crime rates besides the proliferation of left-wing progressive DAs.

The very frame of the story seems to undermine its central argument, but Brownstein claims that the anecdotal evidence of correlation is not to be trusted as proof of causation. To back up his claims, Brownstein presents two academic studies that serve as the basis of his entire argument.

Study 1: “The Red State Murder Problem”

One of the studies—conducted by the far-left Third Way, which Brownstein characterizes as a “centrist Democratic group”—claims that Republicans, not left-wing progressives, are responsible for rising crime because “per capita murder rates in 2020 were 40 percent higher in states that voted for Donald Trump.”

Was this study reputable? No, not really.

In fact, the Third Way study had been thoroughly debunked in the left-leaning Washington Post just the day before Brownstein’s article. The study was widely ridiculed because it ignored the obvious fact that almost all “red state murders” happened in Democrat-controlled districts within those states. Discrediting the study’s claims about Missouri, Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute wrote:

Take Missouri. Yes, it voted for Trump. But it is also home to two of the most dangerous U.S. cities—St. Louis and Kansas City—both of which are run by Democrats. Earlier this year, CBS News did an analysis of the “deadliest U.S. cities” using the latest FBI and other crime data. In 2019, it found, St. Louis had the highest murder rate in the nation, with 64.54 murders per 100,000 residents. Kansas City, meanwhile, had the eighth-highest murder rate, with 29.88 murders per 100,000. According to the FBI, the state had about 520 murders in major metropolitan areas that year, 20 in cities outside metropolitan areas, and 28 in nonmetropolitan counties. So, the vast majority of Missouri’s homicides took place in its Democrat-run cities.

The Third Way study was also mocked for trying to claim that high percentage increases in crime in Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska were proof that rising crime rates were a Republican-caused problem. As Thiessen highlights, Third Way omitted the fact that these three states saw a combined 75 murders in 2019, fewer than some neighborhoods in Chicago or St. Louis.

Although some basic critical thinking might have told him that the Third Way study was bogus, Brownstein can be forgiven for using it since it had, after all, been debunked just one day before. On top of that, the Third Way study isn’t really the heart of his argument anyway. Perhaps the second study is more trustworthy?

Study 2: Violent Crime and Public Prosecution

The centerpiece of the article was “Violent Crime and Public Prosecution,” a new study by the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. The researchers behind the study, Brownstein claimed, had found that “homicides over recent years increased less rapidly in cities with left-wing progressive prosecutors than in those with more traditional district attorneys.”

Unlike the Third Way article, the Munk School article had not been thoroughly debunked when Brownstein’s article was published. In fact, nothing major had yet been written about the study at all because it had been published earlier that same day. Without any significant commentary available to review, a look at the summary of the study can help explain the bare bones of its claims.

For example, the summary aims to score political points by pointing out that “the greatest proportional increase in homicide in 2020 took place in Mesa, Arizona, a city served by a conservative prosecutor.” What it doesn’t mention is that Mesa, a city of over 500,000, saw just 24 total homicides during 2020, which is hardly an indictment of conservative prosecution.

The study’s central claim, as Brownstein writes, is that “from 2015 to 2019, for instance, the study found that murder rates increased in a smaller share of cities with progressive prosecutors (56 percent) than in those with traditional prosecutors (68 percent) or prosecutors who fell in the middle (62 percent).” The data are interesting but not terribly useful because, among other things, they exclude data for 202o, the banner-year for left-wing progressive criminal justice reform. It also doesn’t account for state and local legislation that might affect crime rates. Nor does it consider changes to policing or police budgets. It draws data from only 65 cities and counties in the nation. Additionally, a glance at the data and methodology from the full study reveals that cities like New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, and Austin were lumped into the “middle” category.

Later on, the summary presents data from the study that supposedly vindicate the left-wing progressive DAs of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

Kim Foxx, the summary claims, can’t be blamed for Chicago’s staggering 56 percent increase in homicides during 2020 and the continued increases in 2021 because homicides spiked just before she assumed office in 2017 and were decreasing for three years after that until the pandemic began in 2020. What the summary doesn’t mention is that Foxx only announced she would not prosecute most drug offenses in 2020, that she refused to seek charges against people accused of rioting during 2020, and that Illinois passed left-wing progressive criminal justice reform laws in 2021.

Similar excuses were made for Larry Krasner of Philadelphia where the summary claims a combined 57 percent increase in homicides somehow could not be his fault just because the murders were concentrated in August and December. And for George Gascon of Los Angeles County, a 12 percent increase in homicides during his first year was somehow not his fault because murders increased 12 percent at the Los Angeles city center but 41 percent in the outlying county neighborhoods (which were also in his jurisdiction).

The claims made in the summary seem weak or deeply flawed, but time and further examination by experts will tell whether the study holds merit.

Follow the Money

The questionable assertions of the summary and the untested data of the full study are not the only possible problems with Brownstein’s primary source. There is also a disturbing money trail behind the study that suggests potential biases.

As both the Munk School authors and Brownstein admit, the study was commissioned and funded by the Center for American Progress, one of America’s leading left-of-center think tanks and policy-advocacy organizations. This alone is cause for concern, but there’s more.

The lead author, Todd Foglesong, is working as a fellow at the Munk School “In cooperation with the Open Society Foundations” and has been working on “developing a peer-based system of support for government officials that seek to solve persistent problems in criminal justice.”

Open Society Foundations is the private charitable foundation and influence-buying network of the infamous left-wing billionaire George Soros, who is also the number one campaign donor to left-wing progressive DAs. Soros has spent well over $30 million on contributions to left-wing progressive DAs across the country since 2015, and over two-dozen DAs who have received his money are currently in office. It seems notable that at least part of the primary author’s salary is apparently being paid by the largest campaign donor of many of the DAs being studied, but neither Brownstein nor the Munk School study makes any mention of this fact.

In fact, the Open Society Foundations (OSF) website reports that the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy has received $144,265 in OSF grants while the University of Toronto, where the Munk School is housed, has received a combined $2.7 million. The largest of these grants was a $1.3 million grant in 2016 that established the very “peer support system” for criminal justice reform that Foglesong is working on.

Behind the Curtain

This is how the soft-on-crime sausage gets made.

Brownstein’s article, and countless others like it, instruct readers to ignore the evidence of their eyes and ears because “the experts” have arrived at different conclusions. A quick peek under the hood would reveal that “the experts” are either incredibly biased or completely debunked, but most people don’t have the time or patience to look deeper so “the experts” get accepted at face-value.

Meanwhile, on social media and on the streets, activists and protestors assure them that the experts are correct and that a good person would vote for such change. Then, out of nowhere arrive a candidate with heaps of cash (from the same mega-donor who funded the experts) and a platoon of activists to lead the city forward into a new era. When the left-wing progressive is elected and the destruction of their policies is felt, the same experts come forward again to explain that it’s not their fault, the media rushes to report the expert testimony as fact, and the whole process starts over again. Rinse and repeat.

American cities desperately need to break this cycle to escape the continued scourge of left-wing progressive utopian experiments.

*****

This article was published by Capital Research Center and is reproduced with permission.

Did Washington Ignore Warnings About Fentanyl? thumbnail

Did Washington Ignore Warnings About Fentanyl?

By Jonathan Alpeyrie

“We are losing an entire generation due to drugs,” said Michael Cole, the founder of Lauren’s Wish Addiction Triage Center, an organization named after the daughter he lost to a fentanyl overdose. Growing up in West Virginia, Lauren was a strong student, athletic, and kind to others. At 16 she became addicted to opioids. She died on July 9, 2020, at the age of 26.

Driven largely by fentanyl, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 45. In 2020, close to 92,000 Americans died of a drug overdose, but the number rose sharply during the pandemic and lockdowns. In 2021, life expectancy in the U.S. hit its lowest point in two decades. In 2022, there were 109,000 overdose deaths, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control, with deaths from synthetic opioids up 80% over the same period and most of those attributable to fentanyl.

Other countries in the world don’t come close to America’s level of illegal drug consumption—or to its death tallies. The U.S. now consumes about 85% of all the world’s opiates. As a result, the rate of overdose deaths is around 20 times higher in America than the global average.

To understand how it is that a deadly and highly addictive poison has flooded the streets of American cities and small towns, one has to untangle the knot of connections linking Chinese drug manufacturers, Mexican cartels, and a homegrown culture of addiction that uses chemical remedies to treat economic and spiritual woes. That globalized and lethal supply chain, which is enriching criminal cartels while undoing the fabric of American life, is in part the result of shortcomings in U.S. policy, multiple former agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration told Tablet. According to them, the federal government failed to respond to repeated warnings about the coming fentanyl crisis, even as the casualties began to mount…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Tablet Magazine.

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‘Ground Zero’ Arizona Republicans Sounding Alarm Over Fentanyl Flowing From Border

By Cameron Arcand

Arizona Republican state legislators doubled down on their call to action on the border crisis, particularly on fentanyl, at a news conference on Thursday.

The legislators said that the rise in fentanyl deaths in the state is deeply concerning and called for more resources to support law enforcement and greater education on prevention techniques like the use of naloxone for accidental overdose deaths.

“We need to take swift action to deal with what is happening to combat it,” Rep. Steve Montenegro, who is the Chairman of the House Health & Human Services Committee, said.

Opioid overdoses, which commonly stem from fentanyl, result in over five deaths daily in Arizona, according to the state’s Department of Health Services.

Montenegro mentioned introducing a “placeholder bill” that will later be amended after talking with other government officials and experts.

“Now, Gov. Hobbs has stated that she agrees that this is a crisis. But her actions in gutting border-related funding to law enforcement says otherwise. That’s unacceptable,” he said.

Hobbs’s proposed budget cuts to the state’s Border Strike Force, The Center Square reported.

Later in the news conference, Republican House Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci also criticized the governor.

“She is not here to help the Arizonans with our border crisis. We are as Republicans,” Biasiucci said of the Democrat, who took office earlier this month.

Former interim director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan spoke as well, and he referred to Arizona as “ground zero” for fentanyl.

When The Center Square asked if the legislation would crack down on social media platforms being used for trafficking activity, Montenegro said the current focus is raising awareness.

“The focus is making sure Arizona understands this is a public health crisis. This is a public safety crisis,” he said.

“It’s a porous border. Fentanyl is killing our – kids aren’t blue or red. Kids that are dying, they don’t understand politics, but they’re dying. And we need to do something about that,” Montenegro added.

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

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