A Perspective on Social Justice

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Consider the expression “social justice”. What does it actually mean? Presumably, everyone is in favor of justice, as opposed to unfairness. But let’s consider what the people bloviating most strongly actually mean by the expression. What do they really want?

In the broadest sense the expression suggests that someone (or some group) is getting more than they deserve, while someone else (or some other group) is getting less than they deserve. It is not necessarily money. It can be anything from treatment by police to treatment by banks when considering mortgage applications or treatment by employers when deciding whom to promote.

Proponents of social justice always assume that either there is bad will on the part of someone making decisions or else that unfair outcomes have been institutionalized by historical events. In other words, either decisions are being made by racists or inherent racism is just the way things have developed over time. Such racism may be either overt or covert. Here I am using the word “racism” to cover all forms of discrimination for reasons of gender, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

I don’t think there is much argument that overt racism has been on the decline for many years. It certainly is not gone completely but incidents of everything from lynching to official redlining are no longer acceptable. When they do occur (as it appears may have been the case in the George Floyd killing) public outcry swiftly condemns perpetrators.

It is the hidden aspects of the problem that is causing the recent upsurge in controversy. How do we account for disparate punishment of criminals by courts? How do we explain pay disparities between groups that seems alike except for race, gender, etc.? Why do certain groups never seem to make it into positions of preference, power or prestige?  Is “the system” somehow holding them back or do they have certain characteristics or behavior that is a root cause of the problem?

I do not want to get caught up in debate over whether cops arrest more blacks because blacks commit more crimes or the issue of why blacks get harsher sentences on average than white. I know the arguments on both sides and I know the remedies that have been suggested. If society does not like “search and frisk” policies, it has to choose between frisking fewer blacks, frisking more whites, or frisking no one. NYC is conducting a lab with respect to the third alternative under Mayor de Blasio and the results are not encouraging.

However, the debate over social justice has moved beyond preventing discrimination in the future to undoing it in the past. In its most daring form, it is called “a conversation about reparations”. It starts with a recitation of past history and argues that bad things that happened in the past have effects that carry over into current generations and prevent them from achieving equality. Therefore, the argument goes, society has a moral obligation to somehow make up to the current generation of “victims” for the past injustices to their forebears. For example, if slave families were callously broken up a century and a half ago, that should excuse weak acceptance of familial responsibilities among many black men today. Similarly, if slaves were denied an education, that explains (at least in part) why blacks tend to do less well in school today, since they may not have grown up in a family environment that fostered educational achievement.

While these arguments are weakened by the multigenerational time periods involved since slavery ended, nevertheless, they cannot be dismissed out of hand.

The question is what can and should be done about it, if anything?

No matter how one tries to present it in order to make it palatable, social “justice” boils down to taking money from one group (taxpayers) and transferring it either in cash or services to a group labeled as “victims” of past injustice, even if was perpetrated on others many years ago. The scheme proposed by Senator Warren involves a wealth tax, which is simply a way of clawing back “ill-gotten gains” and redistributing them. If an entrepreneur or CEO paid his employees starvation wages while rewarding himself handsomely, the concept is to recapture and redistribute some of his accumulated wealth.

In theory, that is not absurd, although obviously not all of those being clawed would agree that their wealth was obtained immorally. This is not like seizing Bernie Madoff’s stolen funds and making restitution to those whom he defrauded. This is an all-wise Government deciding who is deserving of fleecing, who was shorn and who should benefit from it all.

In practice, “reparations” is a non-starter, even if you believe it has moral value (which I don’t, for reasons I will get to in a minute). Here are some real practical problems.

  1. Who decides and on what basis?
  2. What is the justification for taxing wealthy individuals whose parents were immigrants and did not benefit from slavery?
  3. Do those who qualify on racial grounds but are already wealthy get benefits or do they pay a reparations tax?
  4. How can the public be protected from benefits going primarily to supporters of the party in power?
  5. Why just blacks? Many other groups have also suffered from lack of social justice. Once we start deciding on victims, where does it end?
  6. Reparations are just another form of reverse-discrimination, doing good for one group by doing bad for the rest.

America was created out of equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. There is no question that various groups have been used and abused, starting with the indigenous peoples we threw off their lands and extending through various waves of immigrants. Not just black slaves, but also Irish, middle Europeans, Asians, Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, etc. all had to fight their way out of poverty and extreme, often brutal discrimination. Women also were in many ways kept in bondage for many decades. It may not have been as legal slaves, but they were systematically denied opportunities for education, training, and admission to professions for which they were deemed incompetent. Women were told they were mentally inferior.

This was all unjust. But tearing everything down in order to right the wrongs of the past will not make a stronger America. It will only strengthen the bitter animosity that divides us now. It will be in everyone’s interest to personally identify with some group of victims in order to get in on the largess. (Pocahontas comes to mind.) All of the groups mentioned above have made tremendous strides, sometimes helped by laws but more often by hard work and sacrifice. Little was handed to them on a silver platter. Now the folks clamoring for more social justice today want it for free, by taking from someone else, in order that they may live better. Confiscation is never a sound basis for social harmony and economic strength. Progress takes time, but we are increasingly living in a world dangerously used to and insistent upon instant answers.

Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of players in the NBA and NFL are black, the BLM movement insists that there is discrimination because too few coaches are black. There are few jobs more competitive than sports coaching. It is truly a matter of produce or perish. Black coaches have been appointed, but only a few have succeeded. I have no easy explanation. Undoubtedly, more will be tried. But is it not insanity for teams to aim for racial equality in the coaching positions instead of success on the field? If black coaches have talent, they will succeed, just as they have in the games. But most coaches fail. It isn’t easy nor should it be.

Some will argue that economic growth should take a back seat to social justice. This is the naive thinking of dreamers who believe that mankind is a perfectible species, capable of whatever sacrifice is needed to realize their dreams. While civilized humans possess an unusual willingness to help their neighbor and often exhibit a high degree of altruism, there are limits. Martyrs for a cause are in short supply. Dreamers would prefer that someone else be the martyr for their cause.

The economist Henry Hazlitt once summed it up by observing that when A and B get together and worry about the plight of C, they often call on D to do something about it. Hazlitt said that in that situation, the one that he worries about more is D.

I do not advocate doing nothing about discrimination, bad cops, etc. Specific situations need to be addressed, as it seems they have not been in the past. But defunding the police, toppling statues, rewriting history, and reparations are not the answer. Many injustices were ignored for too long and many remain to be corrected. Nothing, however, will be achieved by hatred and violence.

Ken Veit is a retired insurance company CEO and actuary.

DHS: Twitter Censorship ‘Threat to Security’

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On the eve of U.S. elections, where candidates have significant differences on U.S. immigration policy, Twitter censorship shut down the account of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan.
Morgan had attempted to tweet out the following information, which was flagged by the tech giant for violating its rules on hateful and violent content:


Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf called the censorship a “threat to security” in a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, saying it served to “cut off an essential mode of communication between U.S. government officials and the public. In doing so, Twitter is sabotaging public discourse regarding important national and homeland security issues.”
Further, Wolf said, suppressing the tweet constituted “obstructing Americans’ inalienable right to communicate with each other and with their government and its officials.”
The issue of illegal immigration is a point of contention between President Donald Trump and his Democrat challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden.
While building a border wall and allowing for only legal, vetted immigration has been a central tenet of Trump’s domestic policy, Biden and his party have been vehemently opposed to the wall as well as Trump’s limits to immigration.
Biden has vowed, if elected, to cancel the current administration’s temporary ban on immigration from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad, North Korea and Venezuela, which he characterizes as a “Muslim ban.”
The temporary pause in immigration from these countries (two of which are not Muslim) is due to the fact that current vetting procedures were not deemed sufficient to counter the security risks from immigrants from these countries.
In its recently-released report, “Homeland Threat Assessment 2020,” the DHS identified immigration as an important homeland security threat for 2021.
In addition to expected immigration surges at the southwest border from the Caribbean and Central and South American countries (looking for post-pandemic economic opportunities), the Center for Immigration Studies says the DHS is predicting “surges in migration from outside the Western Hemisphere, among them unspecified national security ‘threat actors,’” a likely reference, in part, to terrorist travelers who would stand a better chance of disappearing in a huge, smothering crowd.
The Threat Assessment report states, “Although the majority of migrants do not pose a national security or public safety threat, pathways used by migrants to travel to the United States have been exploited by threat actors. As a result, surges of migrants could undermine our ability to effectively secure the border.”
The Twitter censorship of the CBP tweet took place just hours after Dorsey concluded his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee after he was summoned to explain why his company had shut down the Twitter account of the New York Post to suppress a story unfavorable to Biden.
In his letter to Dorsey, Wolf pointed out the information in the tweet was supported by data. In addition, Wolf told Dorsey,

“Whether you know it or not, CBP guards the front line of the American homeland. CBP repels and arrests thousands of violent criminal gang members each year. CBP rescues young girls who are forced into cross-border sex trafficking. CBP intercepts dangerous drugs and contraband, including enough of the opioid fentanyl to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States several times over.
“CBP fulfills the United States’ most obvious and essential law enforcement and national security responsibility to the people of our country. Your company may choose to be ignorant of these facts, but it is no less censorship when you choose to suppress them.
“There was no reason to remove Mr. Morgan’s tweet from your platform, other than ideological disagreement with the speaker. Such censorship is disturbing. Twitter’s conduct censoring U.S. government officials also endangers the national security.
“It is dangerous and damaging when any publisher arbitrarily and unfoundedly decides, as it did here, that the facts and policies of a particular Presidential Administration constitute ‘violence’—in order to censor them.”

Wolf also noted that the “gross censorship” was not accidental. After the CBP’s tweet was censored and Morgan’s account shut down, the CBP appealed the decision to Twitter, but Twitter denied the appeal. Only after the CBP went public with the story did Twitter unlock the account.
Twitter may think it is acting in the service of the underprivileged through its censorship, however, it only weakens the foundations of law and order by ignoring the threat to the U.S. posed by extremists and other nefarious actors — and denying the American people the opportunity to choose how to protect themselves.
Moreover, when criminal gangs, sex traffickers and drug dealers perceive that entry into the country is easy, they are only emboldened. With their increased ability to harm, more innocents become their victims.
COLUMN BY

Meira Svirsky

RELATED ARTICLE: Facebook censoring facts on Islam using a jihadi fact checker
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EDITORS NOTE: This Clarion Project column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

A Contagion of Hatred and Hysteria

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Lockdown is a blunt, indiscriminate policy that forces the poorest and most vulnerable people to bear the brunt of the fight against coronavirus. As an infectious diseases epidemiologist, I believe there has to be a better way.

That is why, earlier this month, with two other international scientists, I co-authored a proposal for an alternative approach — one that shields those most at risk while enabling the rest of the population to resume their ordinary lives to some extent.

I expected debate and disagreement about our ideas, published as the Great Barrington Declaration.

As a scientist, I would welcome that. After all, science progresses through its ideas and counter-ideas.

But I was utterly unprepared for the onslaught of insults, personal criticism, intimidation and threats that met our proposal. The level of vitriol and hostility, not just from members of the public online but from journalists and academics, has horrified me.

I am not a politician. The hurly-burly of political life and being in the eye of the media do not appeal to me at all.

I am first and foremost a scientist; one who is far more comfortable sitting in my office or laboratory than in front of a television camera.

Of course, I do have deeply held political ideals — ones that I would describe as inherently Left-wing. I would not, it is fair to say, normally align myself with the Daily Mail.

I have strong views about the distribution of wealth, about the importance of the Welfare State, about the need for publicly owned utilities and government investment in nationalised industries.

But Covid-19 is not a political phenomenon. It is a public health issue — indeed, it is one so serious that the response to it has already led to a humanitarian crisis. So I have been aghast to see a political rift open up, with outright abuse meted out to those who, like me, question the orthodoxy.

At the heart of our proposal is the recognition that mass lockdowns cause enormous damage.

We are already seeing how current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.

The results — to name just a few — include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health.

Such pitfalls of national lockdowns must not be ignored, especially when it is the working class and younger members of society who carry the heaviest burden.

I was also deeply concerned that lockdowns only delay the inevitable spread of the virus. Indeed, we believe that a better way forward would be to target protective measures at specific vulnerable groups, such as the elderly in care homes.

Of course, there will be challenges, such as where people are being cared for in their own multi-generational family homes.

I am certainly not pretending I have all the answers, but these issues need to be discussed and thrashed out thoroughly.

That is why I have found it so frustrating how, in recent weeks, proponents of lockdown policies have seemed intent on shutting down debate rather than promoting reasoned discussion.

It is perplexing to me that so many refuse even to consider the potential benefits of allowing non-vulnerable citizens, such as the young, to go about their lives and risk infection, when in doing so they would build up herd immunity and thereby protect the lives of vulnerable citizens.

Yet rather than engage in serious, rational discussion with us, our critics have dismissed our ideas as ‘pixie dust’ and ‘wishful thinking’.

This refusal to cherish the value of the scientific method strikes at the heart of everything I, as a scientist, hold dear. To me, the reasoned exchange of ideas is the basis of civilised society.

So I was left stunned after being invited on to a mid-morning radio programme recently, only for a producer to warn me minutes before we went on air that I was not to mention the Great Barrington Declaration. The producer repeated the warning and indicated that this was an instruction from a senior broadcasting executive.

I demanded an explanation and, with seconds to go, was told that the public wouldn’t be familiar with the meaning of the phrase ‘Great Barrington Declaration’.

And this was not an isolated experience. A few days later, another national radio station approached my office to set up an interview, then withdrew the invitation. They felt, on reflection, that giving airtime to me would ‘not be in the national interest’.

But the Great Barrington Declaration represents a heartfelt attempt by a group of academics with decades of experience in this field to limit the harm of lockdown. I cannot conceive how anyone can construe this as ‘against the national interest’.

Moreover, matters certainly are not helped by outlets such as The Guardian, which has repeatedly published opinion pieces making factually incorrect and scientifically flawed statements, as well as borderline defamatory comments about me, while refusing to give our side of the debate an opportunity to present our view.

I am surprised, given the importance of the issues at stake — not least the principle of fair, balanced journalism — that The Guardian would not want to present all the evidence to its readers. After all, how else are we to encourage proper, frank debate about the science?

On social media, meanwhile, much of the discourse has lacked any decorum whatsoever.

I have all but stopped using Twitter, but I am aware that a number of academics have taken to using it to make personal attacks on my character, while my work is dismissed as ‘pseudo- science’. Depressingly, our critics have also taken to ridiculing the Great Barrington Declaration as ‘fringe’ and ‘dangerous’.

But ‘fringe’ is a ridiculous word, implying that only mainstream science matters. If that were the case, science would stagnate. And dismissing us as ‘dangerous’ is equally unhelpful, not least because it is an inflammatory, emotional term charged with implications of irresponsibility. When it is hurled around by people with influence, it becomes toxic.

But this pandemic is an international crisis. To shut down the discussion with abuse and smears — that is truly dangerous.

Yet of all the criticisms flung at us, the one I find most upsetting is the accusation that we are indulging in ‘policy-based evidence-making’ — in other words, drumming up facts to fit our ideological agenda.

And that ideology, according to some, is one of Right-wing libertarian extremism.

According to Wikipedia, for instance, the Great Barrington Declaration was funded by a Right-wing think-tank with links to climate-change deniers.

It should be obvious to anyone that writing a short proposal and posting it on a website requires no great financing. But let me spell it out, since, apparently, I have to: I did not accept payment to co-author the Great Barrington Declaration.

Money has never been the motivation in my career. It hurts me profoundly that anyone who knows me, or has even a passing professional acquaintance, could believe for a minute that I would accept a clandestine payment for anything.

I am very fortunate to have a house and garden I love, and I couldn’t ask for more material wealth than that. Far more important to me are my family and my work. Yet the abuse continues to flood in, increasingly of a personal nature.

I have been accused of not having the right expertise, of being a ‘theoretical’ epidemiologist with her head in the clouds. In fact, within my research group, we have a thriving laboratory that was one of the first to develop an antibody test for the coronavirus.

We were able to do so because we have been working for the past six years on a flu vaccine, using a combination of laboratory and theoretical techniques. Our technology has already been patented and licensed and presents a rare example of a mathematical model leading to the development of a vaccine.

Even more encouraging, however, is that there is now a groundswell of movements — Us For Them, PanData19 and The Price of Panic, to name but three — seeking to give a voice to those, like me, who believe that the collateral damage of lockdown can be worse than the virus itself.

On Thursday, a broad coalition was launched under the banner of Recovery. Drawing people from across the mainstream of political views, the movement is calling for balance and moderation in our response to Covid-19, backed by a proper public debate and a comprehensive public inquiry.

I am delighted that it has received such a level of support.

For, ultimately, lockdown is a luxury of the affluent; something that can be afforded only in wealthy countries — and even then, only by the better-off households in those countries.

One way to go about shifting our perspective would be to catalogue all the ways in which lockdowns across the world are damaging societies. At present, I am collaborating with a number of colleagues to do just this, under the banner www.collateralglobal.org.

For the simple truth is that Covid-19 will not just go away if we continue to impose enough meaningless restrictions on ourselves. And the longer we fail to recognise this, the worse will be the permanent economic damage — the brunt of which, again, will be borne by the disadvantaged and the young.

When I signed the Great Barrington Declaration on October 4, I did so with fellow scientists to express our view that national lockdowns won’t cure us of Covid.

Clearly, none of us anticipated such a vitriolic response.

The abuse that has followed has been nothing short of shameful.

But rest assured. Whatever they throw at us, it won’t do anything to sway me — or my colleagues — from the principles that sit behind what we wrote.

Dr. Gupta is a professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.

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This column  from  American Institute for Economic Research is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of the sponsors.

 

ALERT: Fascist Anarchists’ group ‘Shut Down D.C.’ targets American Patriots

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Fascism

“a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control”

Never in my lifetime have I seen the kinds of hate and violence in American cities that I see today. These even outdo the violent anti-Vietnam War protests that swept our nation in in 1960s.
Groups like BLM, Antifa and now Shut Down D.C. are openly revolting in an attempt to overthrown our governments at every level. We are seeing, in primarily Democrat controlled enclaves such as Portland, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Atlanta, Detroit, Baltimore and many others, violence and destruction the likes of which I have never seen before.
Now this hate and destruction is coming to the “Deep State” located in our nation’s capital.


The ShutDownDC website states:

ShutDownDC uses strategic direct action [riots and violence] to advance [social] justice and hold [Republican] officials accountable. We’re a growing movement and we’re getting ready for an uprising [revolution]. Now’s the time to get involved so we’re ready to hit the streets [riot and destroy]. [Emphasis added]

ShutDownDC is specifically targeting Republican members of Congress:


ShutDownDC is part of the Green New Deal movement. They are the Green Shirts of the Democrat power grab to control American industry via climate regulation and intimidation.
In a 2019 Washington Post column Hannah Natanson titled ‘Shut Down D.C.’: What you need to know about the protests that are creating gridlock in Washington wrote:

A broad coalition of climate activists called “Shut Down D.C.” is blocking streets throughout the nation’s capital during the Monday morning commute to draw attention to climate change.

The protest is timed to coincide with the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, at which climate activists and leaders, including 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, are slated to speak. It follows a strike across six continents Friday and a youth conference at the United Nations on Saturday.

The traffic shutdown is meant to send a particular message to D.C.’s powerful political elite, according to Liz Butler, an organizer for Shut Down D.C. and vice president of organizing and strategic allegiances for Friends of the Earth Action.

Read more.


©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.
RELATED ARTICLE: Meet the Climate Scientists That Social Media Censors Don’t Want You to Know About
RELATED TWEET: True American patriots.

Leg-Shootin’ Joe (Biden)

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To paraphrase Will Rogers, it ain’t so much what Joe Biden doesn’t know about guns; it’s what he is sure he knows that just isn’t so.

Biden considers himself an expert on guns; just ask him. He is completely unaware that he knows nothing, and that what he thinks he knows is just flat wrong. Jaw-droppingly, eye- rollingly, what-in-blazes-is-he-babbling-about wrong. Like Cliff Klaven, he speaks foolishness, but with supreme confidence. “Always wrong, but never in doubt.”

His latest Klavenism is this, in response to an ABC interviewer’s question about police reform:

“There’s a lot of things we’ve learned and it takes time, but we can do this,” Biden said. “You can ban chokeholds … you have to teach people how to de-escalate circumstances. … Instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg.”

Shoot them in the leg? Really? Seriously? He said that? Out loud? On television? OMG.

Let’s start with the basics: The only thing that justifies shooting another human being is the overwhelming need to make that person stop doing whatever they are doing to imperil a life. That need must be so urgent that it does not matter – morally or legally – whether that person dies. Here is an example: A Bad Guy (hereinafter “BG” – and how judgmental!) is running through a shopping mall, hacking people with his machete. He has already hacked six people, and now he is approaching a young mother holding her child. You have a gun. If you do not shoot, it is 100% certain that he will chop the mother and the child. Are you justified in shooting? Of course. What if you shoot the BG, but he chops the mother and the child, and then dies in the ambulance? Was that a successful shooting? No, because you didn’t stop him. What if you shoot the BG, and he stops, and does not chop the mother and child – but recovers from his gunshot wound and does not die? Successful shooting? Yes, because the objective was to stop him, not kill him. Whether he dies or not is irrelevant. Thus, we (police and non-police alike) never shoot to kill; we shoot to stop. We don’t care whether the BG lives or dies, because the goal is to make the BG stop.

Here is a surprise for the Bidens of the world: people don’t always stop when you shoot them. This ain’t the movies, where BGs are thrown backwards through plate glass windows when they are shot, while Good Guys shake it off because “it’s only a flesh wound.” If the bullet happens to hit the central nervous system (brain or spinal column), then the BG stops instantaneously; the electrical system is shut down. Otherwise, stopping is caused by one of three things: blood loss, pain, or psychological distress (fear). Blood loss can take a long time, often too long. Pain is an iffy thing, especially if the BG has lots of painkillers on board (alcohol and/or other drugs). Most stops are caused by fear: “Oh my God; I’ve been shot! I’m gonna die!”

Here is another surprise for those, like Biden, who are not knowledgeable about guns: hitting what you are shooting at is difficult. It’s darned hard to hit a human-sized paper target that is not moving. It’s much harder to hit an actual human who is moving, and who is trying, with great determination, to kill you. Depending on the police department, police officers hit the people they are trying to shoot somewhere between 10 and 50 percent of the time. For that reason, we practice shooting “center of mass.” That improves our chances of hitting the BG somewhere. If we aim at the center of the torso (approximately the heart), we consider ourselves lucky – and skilled – if we manage to hit the elbow or the hip. Because BGs don’t always stop when shot, and because so many shots miss, we don’t just shoot once and admire our work; we shoot a lot. How much? Twice? Ten times? We shoot until the BG stops doing the awful thing that made shooting him necessary and justified.

Trying to shoot somebody in the leg is an incredibly stupid idea. For one thing, it greatly increases the chances of missing. There are two downsides of missing: (1) the BG will not stop doing the awful thing that we need him to stop doing, and (2) every shot that misses has the potential to hit a Good Guy, such as the child that the BG was trying to hack with the machete or the man on the bus  a mile away. In addition, a shot in the leg rarely causes a person to stop, unless by luck the shot hits the femoral artery, in which case quick death is almost certain. Ironically, then, leg shots decrease the likelihood of stopping, but increase the likelihood of death. Biden certainly does not understand this.

On the subject of guns, as well as so many other subjects, Leg-Shootin’ Biden is full of – um – misinformation.

Don’t Mail Your Ballot (Anymore)!  But do VOTE.  And vote for me (please!)

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Election Day is less than a week away and that means that if you’re an Arizona voter, you should no longer mail your ballot.  If you’re a resident of Maricopa County, you can still take your mail-in ballot to any of the locations listed on this website, and drop it in a special box without waiting in line.  If you choose to vote this way, please drop off your ballot by Friday, so that it can be signature verified in time to be part of the initial returns.  You can then track your ballot by clicking “Check Your Status” on this website. You can also, of course, vote in person on Tuesday, Election Day.  By going to that same website, you can find a nearby voting location that allows in person voting.  You must bring valid identification.  You will get a ballot printed after waiting in line.  Fill out the ballot, and then feed it directly into a tabulation machine.

Whatever method you prefer, please VOTE!

So far, significantly more Democrats have voted.

As of October 26, Maricopa County has had:

  • 457,859 Democrat ballots returned
  • 421,858 Republican ballots returned
  • 295,622 Other ballots returned (Independents, No Party Declared, Libertarian)

This is not good for Republicans, but there is still time to catch and pass the Democrats.  There are approximately 2.6 million registered voters in Maricopa County.  They are divided accordingly:

  • Republicans = 917,596 (35.3%)
  • Democrats = 815,894 (31.4%)
  • Libertarians = 25,061 (1%)
  • Others = 839,407 (32.3%)

Republicans have the registration advantage.  Now we just need to put it to work by VOTING.

When you do vote, I ask that you vote for me, Stephen Richer, for Maricopa County Recorder, the office that oversees recordings, voter registration, and election administration.

I wrote previously for The Prickly Pear that we need to “Make The Recorder’s Office Boring Again.”  If you want a reminder as to how it unfortunately became not-boring, then check out www.FireFontes.com or PhonyFontes.com, a website produced by The Arizona Free Enterprise Club to get a sense of how the current Recorder has been incompetent, unfair, unlawful, and uncivil.

VOTE!

Stephen Richer is an attorney, businessman, and the Republican nominee for Maricopa County Recorder. He and his wife (who met while both in law school at The University of Chicago) live at the base of South Mountain in Phoenix. Learn more about Stephen at his website www.RicherForRecorder.com.

America, Please Beware: A Toxic Theory of Race Relations in Our Schools

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Most Americans were not aware when a toxic theory of race relations deeply embedded itself into our culture, especially our schools.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) sounds like sophisticated academic reasoning, but it is not rooted in any science nor subjected to disciplined analysis. It is based on the assumption that white people are born with a belief in their own superiority and with fixed prejudice against other races. It can never be eliminated because it is ‘inborn’.

Racism is defined as the mindset of judging people on the basis of their race. It is profoundly racist to believe that any person’s beliefs can be reliably determined based only on their skin color.

CRT represents the exact opposite of the vision proclaimed by generations of American civil rights leaders, culminating in Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. King’s dream was of an America where races live together amicably, where color blindness was a shared goal and where race really didn’t matter that much.

To the CRT crowd, race infuses every aspect of life. It determines our character and behavior. If all white people are bigoted, then the nation they founded and its institutions must also be racist, so the notion of ‘institutional’ or ‘systemic’ racism naturally follows.

Critical Race Theory thus becomes the public ideological foundation of Black Lives Matter (despite their true Marxist identity and goals) and others wishing to foment hatred toward America. CRT also places the rest of us on a cruel hamster wheel. If we really are unable to forgo our innate racism, why even try? What good are attempts at interracial friendship and mutual acts of kindness? And if you object to being deemed automatically racist, that only provides further proof of your bigotry.

But does systemic racism really explain, for example, higher black incarceration rates? Blacks comprise 13% of America’s population, yet committed 53% of the murders in 2018, 54% of robberies and 34% of armed robberies, which would logically result in higher arrest and incarceration rates.

Asians, by contrast, comprise 5.6% of the population but commit to just 1.3% of the murders, 1.4% of the robberies and 2.1% of armed robberies. Is this proof that police have a pro-Asian bias and ignore Asian criminality?

Or is it more likely because across the races, there is a direct correlation between having a father in the home and crime rates. Take note of this ominous statistic – there’s a greater than 70% unwed pregnancy rate among blacks? Even more ominous, the Marxist founders of BLM advocate eliminating the nuclear family throughout society.

Still, almost unbelievably, CRT has become mainstream academic dogma in our universities. Although proponents avoid publicity, many parents are now discovering that even elementary school children are being introduced to the basics of CRT.

They’re serious. One national organization insists that “stopping the systemic dehumanization” requires “flooding our children with counter messages… until there is no racial inequality in incarceration and no brutality from the police and others.”

Educators in Chicago are provided with a “say their name” tool kit where Angela Davis, an unrepentant terrorist, admonishes that “in a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist.” In other words, kids, no room for discussion or nuance. You are either all in for BLM/CRT or you are the enemy of decency.

Major corporations, hoping to avoid racial shaming, are supportive. In the name of ‘diversity training’, white employees are told they should “struggle to own their racism“ and “invest in race-based growth“ .’Safe spaces’ are created where humiliated whites sit in mandated silence while black employees explain “the discomfort of their racism“ and “what it means to be black”. If they become too emotional or too mean, whites are not allowed to protest.

It’s chilling to think how far we’ve come from the days when racial hostility was in decline, when in response to our racist past, Americans were determined to do better and to bring us together. Critical Race Theory drives us apart and precludes the very initiatives that would support progress for black citizens.

Make no mistake, this is not an accident. CRT is not meant to improve the lot of blacks but to stoke the resentments that will enable the Marxist takeover of the American Republic that BLM and their radical allies fervently seek.

America, please beware.

 

Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.

The “Myth” of Pre-Existing Conditions

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If you have a history of hypertension, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, breast or prostate cancer, lumbar stenosis, treated grand-mal seizures or any of tens of thousands of conditions in the spectrum of human disease, you have a pre-existing condition.  As a member of the human race, you either have or will eventually have one or multiple pre-existing conditions in your life. Not one medical condition or diagnosis in the vast universe of human pathology, whether minor or life-threatening, is mythical. As an anesthesiologist retired from a forty-year clinical career, virtually all of my patients had one or multiple “pre-existing” conditions. The co-morbidities in a given patient often have an important or critical impact on the management of the anesthetic. Why have I entitled this essay as The “Myth” of Pre-existing Conditions?

Let us shift our focus to the political and insurance implications of “Pre-Existing Conditions”. This focus is quite different from the medical reality of 320 million Americans’ true health care profiles. A different story always emerges when actual facts are considered in any political story, especially during an election season immersed in malignant partisan behavior. Consider the following about the history of “pre-existing conditions” since the 1990s to the present day.

  • The incessant cry of Americans being bankrupted by a “pre-existing condition” was used in the run-up to the March, 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act by a one-party majority legislative juggernaut with complete absence of any bipartisanship. Its purpose was to create fear and anxiety in the citizenry.
  • The real story of “pre-existing conditions” was then and is now that the vast majority of Americans, a large percentage of whom have existing medical conditions, are insured through employer-provided insurance (fully or in part), Medicare, Medicaid, VA coverage, the Indian Health Service and other insurance platforms that accept all patients with or without pre-existing conditions.
  • The problems of pre-existing conditions pertained to less than 1% of the population in 2009 and had been effectively dealt with by state-run, tax-subsidized high-risk pools in 37 states. The increasing movement toward state-subsidized, high-risk insurance plans for the very small (0.67%) segment of the American population trapped without insurance from job loss or a decision not to insure before illness occurred was growing, effective and appropriate for a society caring for its most needy. Obamacare ended this abruptly.
  • The 1996 HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) legislation was directed at protecting the maintenance of health insurance for Americans as well as issues surrounding “confidentiality” of medical information. Insurance companies were forbidden by statute to cancel insurance for a new condition or charging exorbitant premiums for clients continually insured prior to a new, now “pre-existing condition”.
  • The Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, raised insurance costs for American families and limited insurance options to the extreme. If you have an ACA “protected” pre-existing condition and are insured in the market outside of Medicare or Medicaid, premiums are more than 200% of pre-ACA costs and individual and family deductibles have risen to many thousands of dollars. If you or a family member have an expensive medical condition that was previously (pre-Obamacare) well covered by private health insurance with affordable premiums and deductibles, the annual cost of ACA insurance premiums and deductibles may now reach $20,000 or more before the first dollar of insurance coverage is triggered. A family with an annual income of $60,000 or more and ineligible for Obamacare subsidies is in a financial nightmare. This is not protection of “pre-existing conditions”, the rallying cry and fear mongering that was used to force the ACA into existence by a one-party vote.

This constant “Pre-Existing Condition” cry by the Democrat party and every Democrat candidate in the 2018 mid-terms and in the current election is indeed a political myth. Despite the GOP response always being to “Protect Pre-Existing Conditions”, the mythical perversion of a real medical and insurance coverage concern for a very small segment of the American population is a disgraceful use of language as a propaganda tool.

Reform of health care costs is the overwhelming issue for our economy and for all Americans relating to their medical care and access to the health care system. Unless voters are armed with the facts about health insurance and the reality of actual coverage for pre-existing conditions, their votes may be cast for candidates and a party seeking to achieve the century-long goal of a single-payer, government health care system primarily to advance political power and to create dependence. The majority of Americans wisely know or sense that a government controlled, single-payer health care system would deprive us of high-quality medical care by mandated rationing of resources and diminished future advances in medical care we expect and deserve.

Prop 208 & District Bureaucrats Are Failing Students and Teachers

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If state legislators pitched an “education funding” plan that gave just 13 cents of each new dollar to teachers, what would you call it? Perhaps a waste, an insult, or a scam?

Or perhaps just Prop 208.

Of course, Prop 208 (also known as the “Invest in Ed” initiative) didn’t come from state legislators—it came from $4 million dollars poured in from political organizers in Portland, Oregon. But in any case, out of the hundreds of millions of dollars Prop 208 would raise via higher taxes, it would put just 13 cents of each new dollar toward increasing teacher pay. And if that weren’t bad enough, that would be an improvement over the spending behavior of our school districts over the past 40 years. Indeed, as shown in a new Goldwater analysis, while K-12 funding has increased more than $60,000 per class of 20 students (in inflation adjusted terms) over the past four decades, districts have put less than ten cents per dollar of that increase toward boosting teacher pay.

So let’s start with the 13 cents for teachers raised by Prop 208—surely this isn’t true? After all, the official infographic from the Invest in Ed campaign shows that 50% of the money from Prop 208 goes to “Teacher Pay.”

That sounds great, except for the fact that—and I urge every last reader to check this for yourself—the drafters literally rewrote the definition of the word “Teacher” in the initiative to say it “means any non-administrative personnel…who instructs students or support student academic achievement…”

In other words, any staffer who a school district wants to say supports students’ academic achievement is now a “teacher” (I guess that’s one way to solve a teacher shortage?), and every extra dollar those other staffers get now counts as increased “teacher pay” in the eyes of Prop 208’s backers.

And if this sounds farfetched (again, please look yourself) even the initiative itself separately distinguishes between the “teachers” eligible for the 50% of Prop 208’s dollars on one hand, and the actual “classroom teachers” who are guaranteed only the 13% allocated to retention and mentoring and the Arizona Teachers Academy.

This false advertising bait-and-switch alone should be enough to sink Prop 208 in the eyes of voters who care about K-12.

Yet perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise: Arizona state lawmakers fully met the union’s #1 demand just two years ago: a 20% teacher pay raise, which gave districts enough money to bring average teacher pay to roughly $58,000. According to the Arizona Tax Research Association, that money from state lawmakers was enough to boost Arizona’s teacher salaries to #26 in the nation (#16 when adjusted for costs of living). Yet the Invest in Ed campaign has gone out of its way to downplay this investment, saying it amounted to “nothing” to educators.

Speaking of Arizona’s overall investment in K-12, we’ve heard over and over that our state legislators have gutted public school funding. Well, what you probably haven’t heard from union activists is that both the U.S. and Arizona have dramatically increased K-12 funding over the past several decades, and that it has been districts channeling funding away from teacher raises.

In fact, as Goldwater’s new analysis shows, after adjusting for inflation, total per pupil funding for Arizona public school students has increased 42% since 1980, rising by over $3,000 per student from $8,119 to $11,594. (In unadjusted dollars, funding per student has increased even more dramatically during this time, from $2,602 to $11,594.)

That means that a classroom of 20 students has over $60,000 more on average to spend each year on students’ education than in 1980, even after adjusting for inflation.

Yet just as Prop 208 would put a mere 13 cents toward teacher salaries going forward, school districts have put less than 10% of their funding increases over the past 40 years into boosting teacher salaries.

How could that be? Well, compared to the more than $60,000 increase in funding available per class of 20 students, districts have increased average teacher salaries just $4,500 per teacher (adjusted for inflation). Specifically, average teacher pay in Arizona in 1980 was $17,158 ($53,537 in today’s dollars), compared to the $58,000 available today. (And it’s not even an issue that districts simply hired more teachers instead: the student-teacher ratio hasn’t budged.)

In contrast, state audits have revealed that districts like Scottsdale have spent $4 million a year on excess and unused building space (enough to have given every teacher nearly a $3,000 raise), while others like Tucson spend $10 million a year on excess administration costs.

But what about the massive cuts we’ve heard so much about? Well, even adjusting for inflation, Arizona students receive more money today than any year in state history except a handful of years in the run-up to the Great Recession. And it turns out even that peak in funding in 2008 owed much to state legislators’ decision to increase K-12 funding by hundreds of millions of dollars a year above what was required by law back when the economy was strong. And when looking at decade over decade increases—rather than arbitrarily starting the clock at the peak of the housing and economic bubble leading into 2008 like Prop 208’s backers insist on doing—Arizona’s per pupil funding has increased every decade since 1980, even adjusted for inflation, rising from $8,119 (1980) to $9,127 (1990), to $10,708 (2000), to $11,009 (2010), and to $11,594 (2020).

In short, while it is true that Arizona has increased its per pupil expenditures less aggressively than other states, even as it continues to outperform many of these same higher-spending peers in both math and reading, Arizonans ought to look for ways to continue improving and expanding educational opportunity for students—as state legislators have done—not reward deceptive, politically motivated ad campaigns like Prop 208.

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Matt Beienburg is the Director of Education Policy and the Director of the Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy at the Goldwater Institute. He is the author of the new policy brief A History of Increase: K-12 Funding in Arizona.

This column from In Defense of Liberty at the Goldwater Institute was published October 16, 2020 and is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of the sponsors.

Biden’s Plans to Restrict Second Amendment Rights

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The Biden/Harris campaign has posted The Biden Plan To End Our Gun Violence Epidemic  on their campaign website.  To spare you the discomfort of having to read through their proposal to regulate the Second Amendment out of existence, the following are some key features.

  • Banning the manufacture and sale of so-called “high-capacity” magazines and “assault weapons,” identified by cosmetic and functional features. The Biden euphemism for these is “weapons of war.”  Candidate Biden also wants them regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA) like full-auto firearms, short barrel rifles and sound suppressors.  Existing owners will have the “choice” of registering their “evil black rifles” as NFA firearms or surrendering them to the government.
  • Restricting firearm purchases to one-per-month and outlawing the private transfer of firearms. Online sales of firearms, ammunition, kits and gun parts would also be prohibited.  So would the possession of so-called “ghost guns” that can be assembled from kits, parts or 3D printing.  There would also be a federal requirement to report a lost or stolen firearm and punishment for not “safely” storing your firearm or preventing access by a minor.
  • Expanding prohibited possessors to include those convicted of certain misdemeanors and those adjudicated by the Social Security Administration (SSA) as unable to manage their affairs (like paying bills or writing checks) for mental reasons. They also propose the rapid identification of those who become prohibited possessors, for whatever reason, for swift confiscation of their firearms.
  • Extending the time limit that a NICS background check must be completed. Also, requiring local law enforcement to be notified when someone fails a background check.  Statistically, there is over a 99% chance that a failed NICS check is a false positive.  Under a President Biden, several hundred thousand law-abiding gun owners could experience an oh-dark-thirty SWAT raid simply because of a computer mismatch.
  • Incentivizing the state level passage of Red Flag laws that allow for firearms confiscations without due process. “Incentivizing” is political-speak for dangling the promise of federal funds to states to compel them to pass legislation.
  • Incentivizing states to establish a system to “license” firearms owners. Unelected bureaucrats would decide whether or not you would be allowed to exercise your Right to Keep and Bear Arms. They also want to treat “gun violence” as a public health epidemic.  It won’t be long before the dots are connected to prohibit firearms ownership as a medical preventative.
  • Repeal of the “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” that protects firearms manufacturers from civil liability for criminal misuse of a firearm.
  • A whole lot more, such as empowering the U.S. Justice Department to enforce all these laws.
  • Remember in November!  How do you want your future as a gun owner to look?  Not voting is a decision to surrender your rights.

This article is reproduced by permission granted by the Arizona Citizens Defense League.

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The ACDL is the foremost Arizona organization protecting your Second Amendment rights, helping Arizona achieve the number one position in gun rights by Guns & Ammo magazine.

Presidential Election Chaos When Black Lives Didn’t Matter

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A nation that somehow survived the chaos of the 1876 election can survive the expected chaos of the 2020 election.

You’re no doubt aware of the predictions of chaos if the presidential election is close, due to several states changing the deadlines for mail-in ballots.

If the predictions come true, the nation will survive the chaos, based on history. After all, it survived the extremely chaotic election of 1876.

That election was between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden, to see who would replace incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant, whose administration had been tarnished by various scandals, especially scandals regarding the politically-powerful railroads, which had been paying off members of Congress with shares of stock in exchange for subsidies and land grants.

Like today, race was a big issue of the day.  It is not a stretch to say that unresolved racial issues back then laid the foundation for Black Lives Matter today.

In essence, Republicans were the party committed to ensuring that freed blacks were able to exercise their voting rights in the former Confederacy. Democrats, on the other hand, wanted to maintain Southern white supremacy, resorting to unspeakable violence if necessary.

Black lives didn’t matter much to Democrats after the Civil War.

To stem the violence, Grant had sent federal troops into the South, a military intervention that raised constitutional issues of states’ rights and further exhausted a nation already exhausted from the Civil War and the debts from the war. Southern blacks had won many elected offices because of military protection, but when the protection waned, so did their political power.

Blacks weren’t the only targets of racism. Irish immigrants in the North and South were hated about as much as blacks. Later, Italians and other Southern Europeans would replace the Irish as targets.

Ignorant of history, ‘woke’ Americans typecast all of the 100 or so white ethnic groups as coming from privilege, without realizing that Southerners put Italians in the same socioeconomic class as blacks, restricted them to black schools, and lynched eleven of them in New Orleans.

In 1876, Harper’s Weekly ran a political cartoon displaying ugly caricatures of blacks and the Irish on its cover by popular cartoonist Thomas Nast, who made a racist equivalence in the cartoon between “ignorant voters” of the Irish immigrant North and the black South.

An aside:  Several other liberal publications, including The Atlantic and The New York Times, have a sordid history in terms of racism, imperialism, and other issues, going back to the 19th century and much of the 20th century. Maybe their fixation on white guilt today is a projection of their own guilt onto those who don’t deserve such guilt.

Anyway, back to the election of 1876.

It would take a couple of pages to detail all of the shenanigans surrounding the election, so an overview will have to suffice here. Let’s begin with an excerpt from the book, The Republic for Which It Stands, by Richard White:

The Democrats had relied on fraud, violence, and coercion to suppress the black vote, and the Republicans marshaled fraud of their own and their control of the returning [election] boards to count out the Democrats. Even the Democrats agreed that Hayes had carried South Carolina in a corrupt and violent election where there were more votes cast than adult males. In Florida, first the courts and then the new Democratic legislature had intervened, resulting in three different counts, one for Hayes and two for Tilden. In Louisiana, the head of the electoral commission, with his eye on the main chance, tried to sell the results to the highest bidder, but although there is some evidence that both sides nibbled, they did not bite. The attempt failed.  Both states gave their electoral votes to Hayes.

The drama continued when Democrats got an elector in Oregon invalidated, which resulted in a tie in the Electoral College.  Congress then had to convene and officially count the votes, but couldn’t reach agreement on the count because of differing interpretations of the Twelfth Amendment and disputes over the constitutionality of its own rules.

Neither side wanted the election decided in the House or Senate. If the election were decided by having the president of the Senate count the votes, Hayes would win. If it were decided in the House, Tilden would win.

Civil War hero George McClellan, a Democrat and first commander of the Army of the Potomac, threatened to raise troops and march on Washington.

To break the stalemate, both sides agreed to create a Federal Electoral Commission, drawn from the Supreme Court, Senate and House. But that also split along partisan lines, until a compromise was reached and the impasse was broken by an associate justice of the Supreme Court, who voted for Republican Hayes. To get the vote, Hayes had to agree to not deploy federal troops in the South and leave the fate of Southern blacks in the hands of Southern Democrats. As a result, Democrats retained the House, Republicans retained the Senate, and the nation missed an opportunity to heal its racial wounds.

It would take another nine decades before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, both of which were followed by Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society. All of these did much to advance equal rights and economic opportunities for blacks, but the last two also produced misguided welfare programs that led to the breakup of two-parent families, leaving most young black males today without a father in the household.

This is one of the leading causes, if not the leading cause, of crime, poor test scores, and economic disparities among African Americans—a causal relationship that is largely pooh-poohed by Democrats, who see traditional families as a white thing (and an Asian thing). This runs counter to their cliché that black lives matter, but at least they’re now saying that black lives matter, which is not what they said in 1876.

The Real Threat to Your Guns is Not Just Rust and Politicians

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The biggest threat to your fundamental right – your right to keep and bear arms – may not be what you’ve always feared. It may not be new laws. The risk may not even be from the two main political parties, though they both need constant watching, as Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers warned.

No, the threat may be coming from something we were keenly alerted to back in the 1950s and 1960s, which we’ve grown inured to, bored with, discarded onto history’s trash heap. We may have forgotten it as a guns-and-ammo threat, but it’s still there. As alive as ever, active as ever, working its nefarious magic, seeking to take every gun you own, every round of ammunition you possess, either by direct force or through subversive covert action. That enemy is our old friendly villain, Marxism and communism, now in control of fully one third of the world’s population and making inroads here. Mass media, infected with that scourge, is not alerting us. They hide it, disguise it, aiding and abetting a mortal enemy of our Republic.

Thomas Jefferson warned, “Be eternally vigilant” to preserve freedom. He could never have imagined an enemy like Karl Marx. The rioting, looting, arson and upheaval we have WITNESSED on our televisions every night, is being run by dedicated Marxists with announced plans, signage, upraised fists. They make no secret of it. Class warfare. Call it “racism” if you want, but that’s not it, we are as free from racism as any nation you can name, which is why American immigration is basically a one-way street – inbound. No one is breaking into Cuba, China, Africa or lining roadways escaping here. These nightly mobs have communist influences and international provocateurs at their heart. Leaving you armed to resist is not their plan.

In fact, leaving your police armed to resist is not the plan either. Stop and think. Could true Democrats or Republicans support any version of eliminating armed police, abandoning swaths of cities to mobs? No. They have been overwhelmed by a mindset, a propaganda wave, a core tool of communism. The very brainwash that turned 5,000 years of a brilliant Chinese empire’s art, music, religion, history, culture and the rest, into a monolithic, terrified, follow-the-leader brutal dictatorship is here, proposed right now, in your face.

“The United States will eventually fly the communist flag. The American people will hoist it themselves,”
–Nikita Khrushchev

The proof is in writing, in Congress (HR5717), and the Senate (S3254). While our primary gun-rights networks have been distracted with familiar lists of horribles – these bills have them all – the real gun bans are more subtle, more total, and more devastating than anything our enemies ever presented before.

You’ve heard these before. Sure, it’s not good. At least it’s familiar, mostly:

  • AR-15 Confiscation
  • AR-15 Look-alike Confiscation
  • Ammunition and Magazine Limits
  • Shopping Restrictions
  • Carry and Loaded-Possession Bans
  • Semi-auto Bans
  • Bans by gun type – Including guns with grips
  • Taxation on Arms, Ammo, Accessories
  • Registration Schemes
  • Background Checks
  • Personal Transfer Bans
  • Private Sale Bans
  • Gun Show Bans
  • Training Restrictions
  • A “Heller Ban,” Overturned in D.C. by the U.S. Supreme Court, no loaded or accessible gun at home unless under attack
  • Plus, Joe Biden’s website calls for prohibiting teaching teachers about marksmanship and firearms.

THE REAL GUN BAN: PSYCH TESTS
None of that matters though. It’s a distracting smokescreen – a diversion. Hidden in page after page of gun bans and conditions, no one will be allowed to have a gun or ammo at all – including anything you already own – without the new “comprehensive” federal gun license that’s only issued at an official’s discretion.
Democrats wrote this and put it in both houses of Congress, ignoring the fire it sets to the U.S. Constitution and the Second Amendment. Republicans have stayed quiet, regardless of their oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Gun ownership under Democrat’s control requires a psychology evaluation. There is no indication who will conduct this, or how it might be appealed if unfavorable. An unelected federal board of decision makers will decide:

  • Are you of “sound mind and character” (no standards described, to be Board determined later);
  • Do you have “factors that suggest that the individual could potentially create a risk to publicsafety”  (what armed citizen doesn’t potentially pose such a risk?);
  • Do you meet or fail to meet “any other requirements the State determines relevant” (to be set after elections, without any statutory parameters – completely arbitrary, limitless control);
  • And then authorities shall, “make a determination of suitability” for your ownership and possession of arms, including your own (in other words, a “may issue” vs. “shall issue” license at the federal level, with socialists in charge, if they get their way);
  • These are written into the bill. In addition, authorities, “shall establish standards and processes by which licensing authorities can revoke, suspend, or deny the issuance or renewal of a covered license” required to possess firearms;
  • The new required federal gun license, with mandatory written and shooting testing in addition to the psych tests, and numerous other conditions, applies to all guns you own or seek.

Gun-averse mass media has “overlooked” this. The Second Amendment is being changed from an uninfringed right to a might-be-issued licensed and scrutiny under dictatorial control. Go ahead, say it: “They can’t do that!”

How can an armed electorate even resist this wild scene? Democrats’ “representatives” are “with them.” Speak against them, they attack your principles. The few people standing up against this cultural revolution find themselves the ones facing “hate” charges – thought crime. Police are ordered to stand down! The ones who stand up are decommissioned, disbanded and defunded. It’s the socialist way. One election is all that stands between this and collapse of the Constitution.

“The United States will eventually fly the communist flag. The American people will hoist it themselves,” Nikita Khrushchev predicted. Even now, our leaders propose funding Red Flag Laws (in HR5717/S3254). Mass media and many citizens think that’s great. “No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you already have communism…. We will destroy you from within,” Khrushchev again.

In 1963, communism’s 45 goals were put in the Congressional Record. These few lines illuminate the mob’s movement and threat to your guns and way of life:
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motion pictures.
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

It’s Marxism, infecting America – as predicted – our guns’ and liberty’s greatest enemy.

Award-winning author Alan Korwin has written 14 books, 10 of them on gun law and has advocated for gun rights for nearly three decades. See his work or reach him at GunLaws.com. This article originally appeared in Dillon’s Precision Blue Press.

CNN Butchers the Facts on Late-Term Abortions

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This article was originally published by JustFactsDaily on October 12, 2020

In a so-called “fact check” of the vice-presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris, CNN reporter Caroline Kelly presents a barrage of disinformation that hides the realities of late-term abortion and the agenda of the Biden–Harris campaign.

During the debate, Pence stated that “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support taxpayer funding of abortion all the way up to the moment of birth, late-term abortion.” CNN, which begins each of its fact checks with the phrase “Facts First,” uses a flurry of falsehoods to undercut Pence’s factual statement.

The “Medical Term” Farce

CNN begins its fact check with an attempt to delegitimize the phrase “late-term” abortion by declaring it “is not a medical term.” This claim is flatly disproven by medical journals that have published articles with titles like:

These medical journals and others, along with Planned Parenthood, abortion clinics, and media outlets have used the phrase “late-term” on numerous occasions to describe abortions that are performed from as few as 14 weeks into pregnancy to as many as 35 weeks or later.

More importantly, a vice-presidential debate is not a medical forum, CNN is not a medical periodical, and journalism guidelines bluntly instruct reporters to avoid medical jargon:

  • The book English for Journalists emphasizes: “A common source of jargon is scientific, medical, government and legal handouts,” and “if you write for a newspaper or general magazine you should try to translate jargon into ordinary English whenever you can.”
  • The New Oxford Guide to Writing states: “Jargon is technical language misused. Technical language, the precise diction demanded by any specialized trade or profession, is necessary when experts communicate with one another. It becomes jargon when it is applied outside the limits of technical discourse.”
  • The book Writing for Journalists drives home the point: “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”

In violation of that journalism standard, journalists selectively use medical jargon in ways that obscure the facts that:

A common example of how media outlets use clinical jargon to sanitize the facts of abortion is by inconsistently and incorrectly using the word “fetus,” a medical term derived from a Latin word meaning “offspring” or “newly delivered.” Reporters frequently use this term to describe the object of an abortion, but they use the word “mother” to refer to a pregnant woman instead of the clinically accurate term, “gravida.”

And when the topic is not abortion, journalists often shun the word “fetus” and use “baby” or “child” in its place. In fact, the ombudsman of the Boston Globe once apologized to its readers because the paper used the term “fetus” to describe an unborn child who was killed when his mother was shot in the stomach. The apology was sparked by a torrent of criticism from readers who objected that the Globe “truly dehumanized” the “child” and that “every other news channel, TV, and newspaper called it a baby.”

Beyond their double standards, reporters often misuse the term “fetus,” revealing that they are out of their depth. Per Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, a fetus is “the unborn offspring in the postembryonic period, after major structures have been outlined, in humans from nine weeks after fertilization until birth.” Simply put, the word “fetus” applies from nine weeks after fertilization until birth. Yet, numerous major news organizations have misapplied this term to both before and after this period.

Late-Term Abortions Are Not Rare 

According to CNN, “Doctors say abortions performed later in pregnancy are exceptionally rare.” In truth, late-term abortions are far more common than deaths that the media portrays as frequent occurrences like firearm homicides, young adult Covid-19 fatalities, and murders committed by police officers.

A 2013 paper in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health estimates that “more than 15,000” abortions are performed each year in the U.S. “at 21 weeks or later.” The authors note that this amounts to about 1% of all abortions, “but given an estimated 1.21 million abortions in the United States annually,” “later abortions” add up to “a substantial number of abortions.”

Hence, these “exceptionally rare” late-term abortions are more numerous than the:

  • 12,000 murders per year committed with guns.
  • 6,000 Covid-19-related deaths of people under the age of 45.
  • 50 people per year who are executed under the death penalty.
  • 7 police officers per year who are arrested for murder or manslaughter in an on-duty shooting, and the 1–2 officers who are ultimately convicted of such crimes.

Most Late-Term Abortions Are Not for Medical Reasons

CNN claims that “abortions performed later in pregnancy” are “often” because “of a fetal condition that can’t be treated or in cases of maternal health endangerment.” This is a common talking point of abortion proponents, but the disclosures of abortion providers reveal just the opposite:

  • Martin Haskell, who is credited with inventing the partial-birth abortion procedure stated, “I’ll be quite frank: most of my abortions are elective in that 20-24 week range…. In my particular case, probably 20% are for genetic reasons. And the other 80% are purely elective.”
  • Renee Chelian, president of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, said of late-term abortions, “The spin out of Washington was that it was only done for medical necessity, even though we knew it wasn’t so.”
  • Doctors at two New Jersey abortion clinics independently revealed that each of their clinics was performing roughly 3,000 late-term abortions per year and nearly all of them were elective and not for medical reasons.
  • Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, stated that late-term abortion are “primarily done on healthy women and healthy fetuses.”

The statements above are corroborated by a study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute—a research organization whose “Guiding Principles” include support for legalized abortion. As summarized by the New York Times, the study found that “only 2 percent of abortions done after 16 weeks of pregnancy are done because of fetal abnormalities,” and such abortions are “most often performed to end healthy pregnancies because the woman arrived relatively late to her decision to abort.”

Biden and Harris Support Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Up Till Birth

According to CNN, Pence’s statement about Biden and Harris is “partially misleading and partially false” because “a Biden campaign official told CNN that Biden supports Roe v. Wade—the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, as amended by Planned Parenthood v. Casey.”

However, the plain words of those court decisions prove that Pence’s statement is entirely accurate. This is because these rulings prohibit states from banning abortions at any stage of pregnancy if any abortionist claims it is for “the health of the mother.”

Importantly, Roe defines threats to a mother’s health so broadly that they can include practically anything. Some eye-opening examples of what Roe deems to be hazardous to “health” are the work of “child care,” the “stigma of unwed motherhood,” and “the distress” of parenting “an unwanted child.”

In Casey, the Supreme Court ruled that “Roe’s essential holding be retained and reaffirmed,” including “a confirmation of the State’s power to restrict abortions after viability, if the law contains exceptions for pregnancies endangering a woman’s life or health.”

Furthermore, Roe places all decisions about what constitutes “health” into the hands of abortionists. It does this by mandating that Roe “be read together” with Doe v. Bolton, a companion case that the Supreme Court issued on the same day. In Doe, the Court ruled that all abortion providers have full authority to decide if an abortion is necessary to protect a woman’s “health” based solely on their “best clinical judgment.”

Many states have passed laws that defy Roe and Casey, and Biden and Harris say that they will overturn all of them through a federal law that codifies Roe. They also support “repealing the Hyde Amendment,” which has restricted taxpayer funding of abortion for more than 40 years except in cases of rape, incest, and if the life of the mother is endangered.

CNN also alleges without evidence that “no candidate in either political party supports abortion ‘up to the moment of birth’,” but the fact is that Democrats blocked a bill in 2019 that would have required healthcare providers to “preserve the life and health” of children who are aborted and born alive. Harris was among the 42 Democrats who filibustered this bill in the Senate.

Summary

During the vice presidential debate, Mike Pence accurately and straightforwardly described the positions of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden on late-term abortions, noting that they support such abortions up to birth and want them funded by taxpayers.

Yet, CNN deceitfully claimed his statement is misleading in an article that it titled “Pence Echoes Trump’s False Claims at Vice Presidential Debate.” Furthermore, CNN laced its “fact check” with other canards that hide the harsh realities of late-term abortion and the fact that they are performed more than 10,000 times per year on healthy, conscious humans with healthy mothers.

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This column from JustFactsDaily.com is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of the sponsors.

Arizona Free Enterprise Announces 2020 General Election Endorsements

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Phoenix, AZ (October 8, 2020) – With early ballots hitting mailboxes this week, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club has released its final slate of endorsements for the 2020 general election cycle.

The endorsed candidates represent individuals who align with the organization’s principles and key policy goals.  Club President Scot Mussi stated, “It is critical Arizona has leaders and policy makers who are able to articulate and stand up for free market principles and pro-growth policies.  This slate of candidates has proven they can and will.”

Proposition 207 – No
Proposition 208 – No

U.S Senate
Martha McSally

U.S Congress
Tiffany Shedd, CD 1
Brandon Martin, CD 2
Daniel Wood, CD 3
Paul Gosar, CD 4
Andy Biggs, CD 5
David Schwiekert, CD 6
Debbie Lesko, CD 8

Corporation Commission
Eric Sloan
Jim O’Connor

State Legislative Races
Judy Burges, LD 1 House
Quang Nguyen, LD 1 House
Deborah McEwen, LD 2 House
Travis Angry, LD 4 Senate
Joel John, LD 4 House
Regina Cobb, LD 5 House
Leo Biasuicci, LD 5 House
Walt Blackman, LD 6 House
Brenda Barton, LD 6 House
David Peelman, LD 7 House
Bret Roberts, LD 11 House
Warren Petersen, LD 12 Senate
Vince Leach, LD 11 Senate
Mark Finchem, LD 11 House
Travis Grantham, LD 12 House
Jake Hoffman, LD 12 House
Sine Kerr, LD 13 Senate
Tim Dunn, LD 13 House
David Gowan, LD 14 Senate
Gail Griffin, LD 14 House
Becky Nutt, LD 14 House
Nancy Barto, LD 15 Senate
Steve Kaiser, LD 15 House
Justin Wilmeth, LD 15 House
Kelly Townsend, LD 16 House
Jacqueline Parker, LD 16 House
JD Mesnard, LD 17 Senate
Liz Harris, LD 17 House
Suzanne Sharer, LD 18 Senate
Paul Boyer, LD 20 Senate
Anthony Kern, LD 20 House
Shawnna Bolick, LD 20 House
Rick Gray, LD 21 Senate
Kevin Payne, LD 21 House
Beverly Pingerelli, LD 21 House
David Livingston, LD 22 Senate
Ben Toma, LD 22 House
Frank Carroll, LD 22 House
Michelle Ugenti-Rita, LD 23 Senate
John Kavanagh, LD 23 House
Joseph Chaplik, LD 23 House
Tyler Pace, LD 25 Senate
Rusty Bowers, LD 25 House
Tatiana Pena, LD 27 House
Jana Jackson, LD 28 House

County, City, Town

Maricopa County
Proposition 449 – No
Stephen Richer, County Recorder
Allister Adel, County Attorney
Steve Chucri, Board of Supervisors District 2
Bill Gates, Board of Supervisors District 3
Shelly Boggs, Maricopa County Community College District Board – At Large
Laurin Hendrix, Maricopa County Community College District Board – District 1
Susan Bitter Smith, Maricopa County Community College District Board – District 3

Gilbert
Matt Nielsen, Mayor

Scottsdale
Lisa Borowsky, Mayor

Phoenix
Merissa Hamilton, Mayor

Judges

Supreme Court
Robert Brutinel, YES
Andrew Gould, YES
John Lopez, YES

Maricopa County
Jay Adleman
Sara Agne
Scott Blaney
Lori Horn Bustamante
Rodrick Coffey
Connie Contes
Christopher Coury
Adam Driggs
Pamela Gates
Michael Kemp
Daniel Kiley
Suzanne Marwil
Scott McCoy
Paul McMurdie
Kathleen Mead
Scott Minder
James B. Morse
Jennifer M. Perkins
Adele Ponce
Timothy J. Ryan
Timothy Thomason
Peter A. Thompson
David K. Udall
Christopher T. Whitten

Congressman David Schweikert and His Moral Bank Account

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There is disappointing news about an ethics scandal in the office of Congressman David Schweikert. The fine imposed by the U.S. House of Representatives (Arizona Congressional District 6) for $50,000, paid by the Congressman, is indicative of serious improprieties. While some of this seems to surround his chief of staff Oliver Schwab, the responsibility is always with the boss.

As we peruse news reports, the exact nature of the violations remains unclear. Campaign finance laws can be quite arcane and difficult, but such laws are written by Congress, are they not?

But the concern many Conservatives have is the Congressman has drunk the murky water of the Potomac, found a comfortable lily paid, and has taken up residence in the swamp; something many of us are trying to drain.

We hope that is not the case.

So, what does a Conservative do under these circumstances?

The theologian and talk show host Dennis Prager has an interesting way of framing these kinds of issues.  He says each person has a moral bank account. A person makes deposits of good deeds into the account over a lifetime. Because of the basic sinful nature of people, we all unfortunately make withdrawals as well.

There is not one of us who is perfect so we must judge a life, a career and assess the moral balance remaining in an individual’s moral bank account.

David Schweikert has been, on balance, a good representative of his Arizona District, earning a better than 98% rating with the American Conservative Union Foundation. He has not been involved in previous infractions. From a Conservative perspective, you can’t get much better than his voting record.

In the limited interactions we have personally had with him, he was always gracious and uncommonly well informed, especially on budget issues.

We regret his actions and do not mean to minimize our disappointment in him. This was all unnecessary. It is also dangerous, for Arizona is at risk of turning purple and shading towards blue. His seat is important and he should not mess with our political health for his own benefit.

He has made a substantial withdrawal from his moral bank account with this incident. However, the balance is still positive, especially because this appears to be the first time he has gotten into this kind of difficulty.

His seat is too important for Conservatives to lose, and with his moral bank account still strongly in positive territory, we will pinch our nose and vote for him again and support him, letting him know we don’t want to see this kind of problem ever again.

We suggest you do likewise.

LOCKDOWN: The New Totalitarianism

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Every political ideology has three elements: a vision of hell with an enemy that needs to be crushed, a vision of a more perfect world, and a plan for transitioning from one to the other. The means of transition usually involve the takeover and deployment of society’s most powerful tool: the state. For this reason, ideologies trend totalitarian. They depend fundamentally on overriding people’s preferences and choices and replacing them with scripted and planned belief systems and behaviors.

An obvious case is communism. Capitalism is the enemy, while worker control and the end of private property is the heaven, and the means to achieve the goal is violent expropriation. Socialism is a softer version of the same: in the Fabian tradition, you get there through piecemeal economic planning.

The ideology of racism posits something different. The hell is ethnic integration and race mixing, the heaven is racial homogeneity, and the means of change is the marginalization or killing off of some races. Fascism imagines global trade, individualism, and immigration to be the enemy while a mighty nationalism is heaven: the means of change is a great leader. You can observe the same about certain brands of theocratic religious traditionalism.

Each of these ideologies comes with a primary intellectual focus, a kind of story designed to occupy the mind. Think about exploitation. Think about inequality. Think about race theory. Think about national identity. Think about salvation. Each comes with its own language to signal one’s attachment to the ideology.

Most of the above ideologies are well worn. We have plenty of experience to draw on from history to observe the patterns, recognize the adherents, and refute the theories.

This year has given us a new ideology with totalitarian tendencies. It has a vision of hell, of heaven, and a means of transition. It has a unique language apparatus. It has a mental focus. It has signalling systems to reveal and recruit adherents.

That ideology is called lockdown. We might as well add the ism to the word: lockdownism.

Its vision of hell is a society in which pathogens run freely. Its heaven is a society managed entirely by medical technocrats whose main job is the suppression of all disease. The mental focus is the viruses and other bugs. The anthropology is to regard all human beings as little more than sacks of deadly pathogens. The people susceptible to the ideology are the people with various degrees of mysophobia, once regarded as a mental problem now elevated to the status of social awareness.

This year has been the first test of lockdownism. It included the most intrusive, comprehensive, and near-global controls of human beings and their movements in recorded history. Even in countries where the rule of law and liberties are sources of national pride, people were put under house arrest. Their churches and businesses were closed. The police have been unleashed to enforce it all and arrest open dissent. The devastation compares with wartime except that it was a government-imposed war on people’s right to move and exchange freely. We still cannot travel.

And remarkably, after all of this, what remains missing is the empirical evidence, from anywhere in the world, that this shocking and unprecedented regime had any effect on controlling much less stopping the virus. Even more remarkably, the few places that remained fully open (South Dakota, Sweden, Tanzania, Belarus), points out Will Jones, “lost no more than 0.06% of their population to the virus,” in contrast to high deaths lockdown New York and Britain.

Early on, most people went along, thinking that it was somehow necessary and short term. Two weeks stretched to 30 days which stretched to 7 months, and now we are told there will never be a time when we don’t practice this new public-policy faith. It’s a new totalitarianism. And with all such regimes, there is one set of rules for the rulers and another for the ruled.

The language apparatus is now incredibly familiar: curve flattening, spread slowing, social distancing, targeted layered containment, non-pharmaceutical intervention. The enemy is the virus and anyone who isn’t living their life solely to avoid contamination. Because you can’t see the virus, that usually means generating a paranoia of The Other: someone unlike you has the virus. Anyone could be a super spreader and you can recognize them by their noncompliance.

If Robert Glass or Neil Ferguson deserve to be called the founders of this movement, one of its most famous practitioners is Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes for Health. His vision of the future is positively shocking: it includes restrictions on who you can have in your home, the end of all large events, the end of travel, perhaps an attack on pets, and the effective dismantlement of all cities. Anthony Fauci explains:

“Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues. In such a transformation we will need to prioritize changes in those human behaviors that constitute risks for the emergence of infectious diseases. Chief among them are reducing crowding at home, work, and in public places as well as minimizing environmental perturbations such as deforestation, intense urbanization, and intensive animal farming.

Equally important are ending global poverty, improving sanitation and hygiene, and reducing unsafe exposure to animals, so that humans and potential human pathogens have limited opportunities for contact. It is a useful “thought experiment” to note that until recent decades and centuries, many deadly pandemic diseases either did not exist or were not significant problems. Cholera, for example, was not known in the West until the late 1700s and became pandemic only because of human crowding and international travel, which allowed new access of the bacteria in regional Asian ecosystems to the unsanitary water and sewer systems that characterized cities throughout the Western world.

This realization leads us to suspect that some, and probably very many, of the living improvements achieved over recent centuries come at a high cost that we pay in deadly disease emergencies. Since we cannot return to ancient times, can we at least use lessons from those times to bend modernity in a safer direction? These are questions to be answered by all societies and their leaders, philosophers, builders, and thinkers and those involved in appreciating and influencing the environmental determinants of human health.”

Fauci’s entire essay reads like an attempted lockdown manifesto, complete with the fully expected longings for the state of nature and an imagined purification of life. Reading this utopian plan for a society without pathogens helps explain one of the strangest features of lockdownism: its puritanism. Notice that the lockdown particularly attacked anything that resembles fun: Broadway, movies, sports, travel, bowling, bars, restaurants, hotels, gyms, and clubs. Still now there are curfews in place to stop people from staying out too late — with absolutely no medical rationale. Pets are on the list too.

If an activity is fun, it is a target.

There is a moral element here. The thinking is that the more fun people are having, the more choices that are their own, the more disease (sin) spreads. It’s a medicalized version of Savoranola’s religious ideology that led to the Bonfire of the Vanities.

What’s remarkable is that Fauci was ever in a position to influence policy through his closeness to power, and he did in fact have a strong influence over the White House in turning an open policy into a lockdown one. Only once the White House caught on to his real agenda was he removed from the inner circle.

Lockdownism has all the expected elements. It has a maniacal focus on one life concern – the presence of pathogens – to the exclusion of every other concern. The least of the concerns is human liberty. The second least concern is the freedom of association. The third least concern is property rights. All of this must bow to the technocratic discipline of the disease mitigators. Constitutions and limits on government do not matter. And notice too how little medical therapeutics even figure in here. It’s not about making people get better. It’s about controlling the whole of life.

Note too that there is not the slightest concern here for trade-offs or unintended consequences. In the Covid-19 lockdowns, hospitals were emptied out due to restrictions on elective surgeries and diagnostics. That suffering from this disastrous decision will be with us for many years. The same is true of vaccinations for other diseases: they plummeted during the lockdowns. In other words, the lockdowns don’t even achieve good health outcomes; they do the opposite. Early evidence points to soaring drug overdoses, depression, and suicide.

This is sheer fanaticism, a kind of insanity wrought by a wild vision of a one-dimensional world in which the whole of life is organized around disease avoidance. And there is an additional presumption here that our bodies (via the immune system) have not evolved alongside viruses for a million years. No recognition of that reality. Instead the sole goal is to make “social distancing” the national credo. Let us speak more plainly: what this really means is forced human separation. It means the dismantlement of markets, cities, in-person sports events, and the end of your right to move around freely.

All this is envisioned in Fauci’s manifesto. The entire argument rests on a simple error: the belief that more human contact spreads more disease and death. In contrast, Oxford’s eminent epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta argues that globalism and more human contact have boosted immunities and made life vastly safer for everyone.

The lockdowners have had surprising success in convincing people of their wild views. You only need to believe that virus avoidance is the only goal for everyone in society, and then spin out the implications from there. Before you know it, you have joined a new totalitarian cult.

The lockdowns are looking less like a gigantic error and more like the unfolding of a fanatical political ideology and policy experiment that attacks core postulates of civilization at their very root. It’s time we take it seriously and combat it with the same fervor with which a free people resisted all the other evil ideologies that sought to strip humanity of dignity and replace freedom with the terrifying dreams of intellectuals and their government sock puppets.

READ MORE

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and nine books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. Jeffrey is available for speaking and interviews via his email. Tw | FB | LinkedIn

This column from American Institute for Economic Research https://www.aier.org/article/lockdown-the-new-totalitarianism/ is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of the sponsors.

 

Prop 207: Written by the Marijuana Industry, for the Marijuana Industry

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Prop 207 doesn’t simply decriminalize marijuana. That could have been done in a page or two. Marijuana sellers, instead, wrote 17-pages of changes to Arizona law, creating a lucrative recreational marijuana industry for themselves, at the cost of Arizonans. The sweeping changes in Prop 207 would impact current laws governing driving impairment, workplace safety, as well as protections through employers, landlords, and HOAs.

Perhaps the more egregious change is the elimination of Arizona’s DUI standard for marijuana impairment. Prop 207 rids the books of this law without replacing it with another clear standard of impairment. This makes it harder to prosecute impaired drivers, while we still lack the technology to gauge marijuana impairment during a roadside stop by police. This leaves police ill equipped to keep our roadways safe. Marijuana-related traffic deaths in “legal” states bear that out.

After Washington State legalized recreational marijuana, marijuana-related traffic fatalities doubled. In Colorado, someone died every three days in 2018 in marijuana related traffic crashes.

The tragedy on the roadways in these states shouldn’t come as a surprise, nearly 70% of marijuana users in Colorado admit to driving stoned, and almost a third, do it daily.

Prop 207 doesn’t limit the risks to roads. It ties the hands of employers who want to keep a drug-free workplace. The initiative forbids employers from taking any adverse action against employees based on their use of marijuana, and limits their ability to keep employees from coming to work stoned. Prop 207 only allows employers to prohibit employees from using marijuana and its high potency concentrates at the worksite. There is nothing stopping employees from using the drug, and then going to work stoned.

Consider the consequences of day care workers or employees at an elderly care facility.

The authors of Prop 207 put profits above kids by allowing the sale of marijuana-laced candies, gummies, cookies, and other snacks that appeal to kids. They further serve themselves by allowing advertising of such pot-snacks on TV, radio, and social media.

This, though we know marijuana use damages the developing brains or teenagers. It impacts learning, memory and coordination, causing academic failure, according to the Mayo Clinic. It inhibits brain development , causing permanent IQ loss, and it hinders learning, attention, and emotional responses. And, it can lead to long-term dependence. 

A study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that after the legalization of recreational marijuana, the number of cases of adolescent marijuana use disorder increased 25%. 

States that legalized recreational marijuana have among the highest teen use rates in the nation. Is this what we want for Arizona’s future?

The marijuana sellers who wrote Prop 207 are more concerned about creating and keeping a future customer base. That’s why they made using marijuana a statutory right under the initiative, and hamstrung landlords and HOAs to ensure nothing stops their customers from growing a dozen 10-foot tall plants in their back yard; and virtually no community can ban pot shops from their neighborhoods. They even included in the proposition front porch delivery, regardless of how many kids are playing out front.

You won’t find these details in their ads, on their road signs, or even in most news reports. Instead, they tout the 16% tax that they claim will bring much needed revenue to the state. But the tax is capped, and the revenue is earmarked, assuming it’s ever realized – which is unlikely.

In the six Western states with recreational marijuana, tax revenue accounts for less than 1% of state revenues. And Colorado spends $4.50 on marijuana related expenses for every $1 in marijuana revenue.

As these details emerge, support for Prop 207 drops. A recent poll shows support at just 46%, and opposition at 45%. Another poll puts likely voter support at just 47%. These are far lower numbers than early polls indicated.

As voters consider all the facts, they must remember this key point: Arizona laws passed by ballot initiatives are almost impossible to change or fix. The state legislature cannot remedy problems that arise. Arizona would be stuck with every detail of Prop 207, just as the marijuana industry intended.

Cindy Dahlgren

Communications and Media Specialist
The Center for Arizona Policy

O: 602-424-2525 | Mobile: 856-607-4208

www.azpolicy.org |  Subscribe to Engage Arizona

A GREAT AWAKENING: The U.S. Relationship with China and the CCP is on the November 3rd Ballot

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One of the odd byproducts of the Wuhan virus pandemic and its subsequent lockdown has been the growing realization of the perfidy of China, its malevolent influence on the World Health Organization and the dependence the U.S. has on that Communist nation for pharmaceuticals and other important manufactured goods. Indeed, the awkward integration of supply chains with a hostile competitor is a revelation to many.

Beyond that, others have started to notice the Chinese Communist influence on American campuses through Confucius Institutes and the increasing dependence on higher education of hundreds of thousands of full paying Chinese students.That they obtain excellent educations and go back to the homeland to plot our demise is also disheartening and a clear danger.

Then there are the multiple cases of military and industrial espionage and significant influence, if not control, of marque commercial organizations like the NBA, Nike, Disney and multiple other beneficiaries of our free enterprise and rule of law.

Many sports and media companies boycott individual states that pass social legislation they detest but see no problems at all engaging with a nation that violates treaties in Hong Kong, runs a chain of concentration camps, engages in murderous organ harvesting and runs a thoroughly dictatorial regime.

It would seem even organizations with impeccable American DNA like Little League Baseball have been penetrated and compromised.

As for American politicians, we likely don’t know the half of it. If the Biden family and the Clinton family have already been seriously compromised, we must suspect that other political dynasties have.

How far do these Chinese tentacles extend in our society? Is it healthy?

For the most part, the Established Conservative Movement (the ECM) has been slow to respond. After all, much of the initial outreach to China was by Republican Richard Nixon, whose anti-communist credentials were built around the case of Alger Hiss.

The realpolitik approach, the integration of China into multiple international organizations and the reliance on “globalization” was to a large extent the work of Henry Kissinger, who has always been very influential among Republicans. President Bill Clinton shepherded China into the World Trade Organization in 1998 only to watch China and the CCP increasingly violate trade agreements, manipulate its currency and commit rampant theft of intellectual property to the present day.

For conservatives with a libertarian slant, the mantra of “free trade” seemed dominant, even though trade relationships were uneven and intellectual property theft was rampant.

Donald Trump has been consistent on China for decades. Yet as a Republican president, he was an outsider and hence not part of either the Republican Party establishment or the network of think tanks and publications that make of the ECM. Hence, there has been considerable resistance to Trump even within his own party and certainly among many in the ECM.

To be sure, there were exceptions. Websites such as American Greatness, newspapers like the Epoch Times, think tanks like The Hudson Institute and The Claremont Review of Books and the military historian Victor Davis Hanson have been sounding the alarm on China  for some time. This is also true to some extent of the Hoover Institute. Among politicians, Senator Tom Cotton has been outstanding.

But just in the past several months, neoconservative Commentary ran articles critical of China. We think this intellectual momentum has now reached a tipping point with the June 22, 2020 Special Report in National Review, the longstanding flagship publication of the ECM. The main article written by Daniel Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute and Nicholas Eberstadt is summed up on the cover:

“We worked to make China a global power. For more than 40 years. Under both Republicans and Democrats. IT WAS A MISTAKE.”

Wow! The article is well worth reading.

It is likely this cover story marks a watershed event in the Conservative Movement. It is no longer a fringe idea to suggest China is a threat to the United States. The vulnerability of many Democrats, including Biden, to Chinese commercial ties and influence are features of the 2020 Presidential campaign.

Moreover, there is a kind of historical inversion which is taking place.

Trump, at first, was linked to the American First Movement prior to World War II which was “isolationist” and did not recognize the threat of either Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany. Trump thus was seen as reactionary and retrograde among think tank intellectuals.

But in a strange inversion, it was the ECM and Progressives that could not recognize China as a threat every bit as dangerous as Nazi Germany. Trump turns out to be Churchill while the establishment of both parties and much of America’s business leaders turn out to be Charles Lindberg.

Because China has been so successful at compromising international institutions, getting the U.S. free of the clutches of these international surrogates for China might appear on the surface to be isolationist but it must be done because China is increasingly recognized as a threat, not a trading partner.

If international organizations have been captured by a hostile adversary, Trump’s vision of putting America first and keeping it strong and independent is wise, prudent and necessary.

Obviously, the relationship with China and the CCP is on the November 3rd ballot. A vote for Biden is a vote for continuing the 40-year capitulation to China.

County Recorder Adrian Fontes Disrespects the Law and Voters

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Adrian Fontes won his seat for county recorder in 2016 by capitalizing on an underprepared Presidential Preference election at which no one anticipated the wave of turnout.  Despite Fontes’ unrelenting criticism of then long-time recorder Helen Purcell and lofty promises to “restore democracy,” Fontes’ record as recorder is ironically marred by utter incompetence, corruption and reckless disregard for the law and voters.

In short, Fontes has been a disaster and the electorate deserves better representation.

Fontes Has Done a Horrible Job Running County Elections, Wasting Millions in Taxpayer Dollars

Fontes’ debut election was the Primary in August 2018.  By 6:00AM 62 polling centers were not operational.   In fact, it took until 11:30 AM on voting day for all the centers to be up and running.  Though Fontes was quick to pass the buck to the contractor for the voter check in system, these were not the only operational gaffes.  Public records procured by the media showed Fontes’ office received over 200 complaints from voters.  Poll workers were untrained and unprepared, voters received incorrect ballots and many instances were cited of unsecured ballots.  And the “mundane” details required to grease a smooth election process were too tedious for Fontes to bother with – many polling stations lacked the basics including working internet, printers without toner and locations that were simply locked.

Ultimately, taxpayers were on the hook for another $200,000 for outside audits to determine why the election had been such a debacle.

Fontes has claimed he needs more resources to run day to day operations, increase outreach to the community and invest in new ballot tabulation systems.  In fact, he has squandered these tax dollars hiring useless positions like a taxpayer-funded lobbyist, personnel to run voter registration drives at Democrat-rich events, and flashy new technology that come election day failed.

Fontes Has a Complete Lack of Respect for Voters

Aside from Fontes’ just being bad at his job, the current county recorder has demonstrated a complete lack of respect for the elections office and subsequently for the voters he is supposed to represent.  After a voter on Facebook had the “audacity” to question why the mail-in ballot he received did not have a clear date it needed to be returned by, Fontes told him (a fellow Democrat) to “Go f— yourself.”   Though Fontes claims he serves voters, his belligerent treatment of valid voter concerns demonstrates an actual deep disdain for being accountable to them.

This record of erratic and incompetent behavior led to the County Board of Supervisors hiring their own elections director and taking a more direct role in overseeing election day operations.

Fontes Does Not Believe He Should Have to Follow the Law

Adrian Fontes has seemed to be incapable of coming to terms with his loss of powers.  In an effort to be more relevant, this year Fontes proceeded in his cavalier fashion to unilaterally rewrite election law.  Fontes declared he would mail early ballots to all voters even those who are not on the Permanent Early Voters List (PEVL).  This was not legal.  And he was told so by the County Board of Supervisors, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State (a member of his own political party), and finally a Superior Court judge.

And as if there wasn’t enough confusion and uncertainty during these times, Fontes continued with his disregard of the law by instructing voters if they made a mistake on their ballots to cross it out and refill it.  This unlawful advice could have led to many voters’ ballots not being counted at all.  Acting upon his own authority, with blatant indifference for the law (again), a Superior Court judge (again) blocked his actions.  Of course, this was after 2 million erroneous instruction sheets were already printed at the expense of taxpayers.

It is clear when Fontes does not like a law, he simply chooses to ignore it.  Unfortunately, it is the taxpayers and voters who keep flipping the bill for his immature and irresponsible behavior.

It is obvious at this point that Adrian Fontes is not interested in the job of administering elections. Fontes sees the position of County Recorder as nothing more than a political operation to be used for the benefit of himself and his political cronies.  Voters deserve a fair, unbiased and seamless election process, something Fontes is incapable of delivering.  Come November, voters should vote accordingly.

This Blog from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club https://www.azfree.org/county-recorder-adrian-fontes-disrespects-the-law-and-voters/ is republished with permission. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of our sponsors.

The Tragedy of Tucson: First in a two-part series on why the Old Pueblo isn’t prosperous

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With 1.05 million people, metro Tucson is Arizona’s second-largest metropolis. About 56% of that population is in the City of Tucson, about 36% is in unincorporated Pima County, and the remaining 8% is in the relatively nice suburbs of Oro Valley and Marana.

Once the territorial capital of Arizona, Tucson has a milder climate than Phoenix and is located in a prettier natural setting. But Tucson has fallen far short of its potential and lags behind Phoenix in key measures. It also lags behind other cities that, like Tucson, were once part of Mexico and, before that, part of the Spanish Empire. To wit:

Tucson Vs. Other Locales Poverty and Income

If the above were not bad enough, the City of Tucson has one of the highest rates of property crime in the nation. Moreover, its largest school district, the Tucson Unified School District, has some of the lowest test scores and graduation rates in Arizona. On the plus side, its University High School is one of the best in Arizona and it has some good private schools and charter schools, including the world-renown Basis schools. Generally, schools are better in the northern suburbs and in the southeastern suburb of Vail.

In a case of too little too late, residents of the city have voted for increased spending on city roads and parks, which are in terrible shape due to decades of deferred maintenance. Roads in the surrounding county are so bad that 90% of them are rated as substandard or failed. Even in wealthy neighborhoods in the Foothills to the north of the city, pavement is badly crumbled, alligatored and potholed. There are even some dirt streets just a couple of miles north of the city limit, smack in the middle of suburbia.

Blight of course goes hand in hand with poverty, but the rundown and seedy condition of much of the metropolis has nothing to do with poverty. It has to do with bad zoning, bad code enforcement, bad government, and bad maintenance of both public and private properties. Arterial and collector streets are littered, illegal signs and banners proliferate, landscaping is sparse, and tacky strip malls dominate the scenery.

In 1970, Life Magazine designated the major east-west thoroughfare of Speedway Blvd. as the ugliest street in America. Unfortunately, it is not the only ugly street in the metropolis.

Rivaling it for the top honor is Oracle Rd. (State Route 77), a major north-south artery that runs from center city, through a few miles of unincorporated county, and then through the town of Oro Valley. The ugliness of the stretch in the City of Tucson makes one weep in despair, but the stretch north of the city makes one consider suicide. The latter is devoid of landscaping and sidewalks but is full of weeds, litter and breathtakingly ugly commercial development. Judging by the condition of this state route, the state must hate Tucson, or maybe the state knows that Tucsonans will tolerate being treated as second-class citizens.

Downtown Tucson has been somewhat revitalized, but it came at the expense of a redevelopment boondoggle known as Rio Nuevo, which wasted $200 million, according to some estimates. If governmental incompetence were a salable export, Tucson would be richer than Silicon Valley.

Tucson is off the radar as a headquarters location by large corporations. This results in a brain-drain, as talented young professionals, including graduates of the University of Arizona, tend to move elsewhere for opportunities. Hard data on how many leave and where they go cannot be found, but anecdotes suggest that popular destinations are Phoenix, Denver and Dallas.

How did metro Tucson get this way? The second part of this series will answer the question in detail, but here is a preview: Tucson’s troubles were purposely inflicted decades ago on the metropolis by a cruel establishment that benefited personally from the status quo and had one overriding goal: not to become another Phoenix.

This is the real tragedy of Tucson.

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