Trio Submits Proposal To Ban Tracking Firearms Through Purchases thumbnail

Trio Submits Proposal To Ban Tracking Firearms Through Purchases

By Alan Wooten

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

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

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

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

Stefanik said such tracking is a violation of constitutional rights.

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

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

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

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

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

Montana, in 2023, banned the practice.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

America First Legal Sues Maricopa County thumbnail

America First Legal Sues Maricopa County

By Neland Nobel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to James Rogers, America First Legal Senior Counsel:

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

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

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Recording Shows Maricopa County Recorder Richer Made Promises His Office Failed To Deliver On thumbnail

Recording Shows Maricopa County Recorder Richer Made Promises His Office Failed To Deliver On

By Sean Campbell

In June 2020, amidst the constraints of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Stephen Richer, presently serving as the Maricopa County Recorder, was observed participating in a Republican fundraiser. At the core of his platform was a commitment to restoring both lawfulness and fairness to the recorder’s office—a pledge he asserted had been neglected by the previous officeholder, current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, to the voters of Arizona.

“I’m Stephen Richer. I’m running for Maricopa County Recorder. That is the office that oversees elections, and I’m running against Democrat, Adrian Fontes. Who actually has a record, and he governs like somebody who has a record in fact,” he says. Following the General Election, Stephen Richer secured victory over Adrian Fontes. In 2022, Richer acknowledged and praised Fontes for his responsible handling as the County Recorder during the 2020 election cycle.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer has become the focal point of various controversies since assuming office. This has prompted constituents and fellow Republicans to question whether he is the suitable candidate for Arizona, especially since he has declared his intention to seek re-election for a second term.

The Arizona Senate passed SB1485 which promised to clean up the permanent early voting list in March of 2021. The proposed legislation would require officials to remove a voter from the Early Voting List (EVL) if the individual neglects to cast an early ballot in both the primary and general elections for two consecutive instances where a federal, statewide, or legislative race is present on the ballot.

The legislation mandates that counties must provide advance notification to a voter before proceeding with their removal from the Early Voting List (EVL).

Merissa Hamilton, Chairwoman of EZAZ.org and a AZGOP member of CD1, tells me “Stephen is blocking in person inspection of our voting records during the election.”…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Arizona Daily Independent News Network.

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Biden’s Foreign Policy thumbnail

Biden’s Foreign Policy

By Bruce Bialosky

While conceiving this column I came upon an observation about the difference between the Biden and Trump presidencies. Trump’s administration was chaos, but our lives were normal. Biden’s administration is normal, but everything else is in chaos.

When speaking about President Biden, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated, “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” That statement made in January 2014 was long before Biden ran as an experienced individual who then became President overseeing our country’s foreign policy. Matters have gotten even worse since he ascended to his current position.

There are many decisions Biden has made along with both his feeble Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. There are so many well-known decisions that have gone sideways and then there are others.

For example, there are the teams’ disastrous decisions regarding Brazil — the most significant country in South America. Biden did not like the positions of Jair Bolsonaro who was a staunch supporter of the United States and our allies. Because Bolsonaro was branded a “Trump-like individual,” Biden pushed the candidacy of Lula da Silva, a man convicted on corruption charges. Da Silva won by a smidgeon and has turned on the United States. He has cut a major deal with China to the detriment of the U.S. and has been undercutting our currency by arguing for others to stop using our currency as the international reserve currency. He has also come out against our ally Israel, accusing the country of genocide in Gaza and compared Israel’s actions to Hitler’s campaign to exterminate Jews. That was all in less than a year in office.

The Houthis are a special case. Trump put the group on the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The Biden gang took them off the list saying they wanted to “negotiate” with the Houthis. We all know the real reason is Biden’s childish behavior saying anything Trump did was bad and must be reversed. We see the results of Biden’s negotiations with the Houthis ending at the virtual closing of the Red Sea transportation lanes to anyone except the Chinese and now the Russians.

At least Biden finally reversed his terrible decision and decided at some time to put the Houthis back on the lists after coming to the realization they are simply handmaidens of the real culprits, Iran. At the same time, they exempted the Houthis from sanctions for receiving revenue from the sale of Yemen’s oil. The Bidens can’t even get sanctions correct on a group like the Houthis.

Then there is his fascination with trying to make peace with Iran. Biden was part of the Obama team that shipped truckloads of money to Iran and had some fantasy the mullahs were going to normalize their operations. The mullahs spent the money to arm their many surrogates including those well-known ones: Hezbollah, Houthis, and Hamas. Research indicates apparently Iran did not fund Boko Harum due to religious differences. This list doesn’t include the groups in Iraq and elsewhere. Trump left Iran broke. What did Biden do? He entered fantasyland and gave them access to hundreds of billions of dollars so Iran can wreak havoc all over the world. A sterling example of a horrific foreign policy.

Here is another disaster Biden has not managed – South Africa. Though he and his team did not create this mess, they have done nothing to stop it. In 2024, we are obligated to provide $393 million to South Africa. What are they doing with our money? Making nice/nice with Hamas and Russia and charging our ally, Israel, with genocide for fighting back against Hamas. If Mr. Blinken made any effort to stop them from doing these things, I am not aware. Where are the threats to cut them off? Why do we keep funding countries who do things against our country’s interests?

Biden has negotiated a disastrous deal with the dictator of Venezuela. Biden was caught in a vice because of soaring gasoline prices after cutting off many avenues of American energy development to appease his Green Wing. He went hat in hand to Maduro and allowed him to sell us oil. In exchange, we agreed to take in what is estimated between 500,000 and 800,000 refugees (who knows, no one is counting) fleeing his country that he has destroyed. Now Maduro has reneged on his part of the deal to have open, free elections. What a lousy negotiator.

Then there is the special case of Afghanistan. No need for a major rehash here. Just a reminder that we had only 2,500 troops there as part of an allied force totaling 10,000. Biden did not notify our allies of his departure and mayhem ensued. We now have a country run by people living in the 12th century.

Not to mention the threats from Russia and China which have accelerated because of their geopolitical strategy.

Mr. Blinken is now trying to circumvent the Israelis and create a state for the Palestinians in Gaza without the Israelis having a say. He says they will have security assurances. As my friend Cliff May, founder of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, stated in a recent column, “Like the security assurances Israelis received from the U.N. Security Council after they withdrew from Lebanon? Like the security assurances Ukrainians received from the U.S. when they gave up their nuclear weapons? Like the security assurances Hong Kong received when the British turned the territory over the China’s Communists?”

You get the point. The leadership of this Administration has manufactured chaos all over the world. And these people want another four years.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Nikki Haley’s Backers Spent Millions Boosting Her Bid In Her Home State. She Still Lost By 20 Points thumbnail

Nikki Haley’s Backers Spent Millions Boosting Her Bid In Her Home State. She Still Lost By 20 Points

By Robert Schmad

Political action committees and advocacy groups supporting Nikki Haley’s presidential bid spent millions in her home state of South Carolina, only for Haley to lose by 20 points in the state’s Saturday primary.

Groups including the pro-Haley SFA Fund, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity Action, and the liberal dark money-funded Defending Democracy Together collectively pumped over $8 million into supporting Haley in South Carolina between March 2023 and the February primary, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) data. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s backers only spent roughly $370,000 boosting the former president in South Carolina this election cycle.

Despite outside groups spending significantly more on Haley than Trump, the former South Carolina governor lost her home state by 20.3 points with more than 95% of votes counted, The New York Times reported(RELATED: Nikki Haley’s Presidential Campaign Rakes In Thousands Of Former Biden Donors)

Defending Democracy Together, which spent roughly $33,000 on YouTube ads meant to boost Haley in South Carolina, was co-founded by prominent ex-Republican Bill Kristol and has received more than $10 million in funding from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, one of the nation’s most prolific Democrat-aligned dark money organizations.

The Haley campaign’s New Hampshire state director lobbied for the Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2022, the Washington Examiner reported. SFA Fund, the primary pro-Haley super PAC, also received $250,000 from Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman.

Pro-Haley groups spent money on canvassing, advertisements, mailers, flyers, and voter engagement operations intended to boost her performance in South Carolina, FEC records show.

The deep pockets of Haley’s supporters have yet to win her any states.

Haley received more than twice as much support from outside groups ahead of the New Hampshire primary than Trump did. She went on to lose the state by more than ten points.

Haley’s third-place loss in Iowa, meanwhile, cost her about $442 per vote, according to Newsweek.

In Nevada’s primary, Haley lost to “none of these candidates.” Trump wasn’t on Nevada’s primary ballot as he ran in the state’s caucus, the race that actually determined who would get delegates.

Haley had previously vowed to stay in the presidential race until at least Super Tuesday, The Associated Press reported.

Failed Republican presidential campaigns have cost donors hundreds of millions of dollars so far. If Haley loses the Republican primary, which the Trump campaign expects to happen by March, she would add at least another $113.5 million to the total between her campaign and SFA Fund, according to FEC records.

The Haley campaign, SFA Fund, Americans for Prosperity Action, and Defending Democracy Together did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

*****

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

Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot Fox News

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Arizona News: February 28, 2024

By The Editors

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Trump Is Blunt and Right About NATO thumbnail

Trump Is Blunt and Right About NATO

By Doug Bandow

They just can’t take a joke. The former president Donald Trump made a sarcastic crack about encouraging Russia to attack NATO members who didn’t invest in their defense, and hysteria enveloped both Washington and Brussels. For some officials, the imbroglio appeared to signal the end of Western civilization.

Even worse, Europeans realized that they might have to do more for themselves militarily. The continent’s policymakers have begun thinking the unthinkable. Reported the New York Times, “European leaders were quietly discussing how they might prepare for a world in which America removes itself as the centerpiece of the 75-year-old alliance.” What is the world coming to if European governments can no longer cheap-ride the U.S.? The horror!

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spurred European governments to spend more. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said 18 of 31 members will meet the alliance’s two percent of GDP standard this year, three times the number in 2016.

Trump’s comment should accelerate this process, probably more than all the complaining, whining, and demanding of prior presidents combined. He claimed that the leader of an unidentified large European country asked if Trump would send in the American cavalry if that nation failed to meet its NATO obligations. Trump responded: “I said: ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’… ‘No I would not protect you. In fact I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You gotta pay.’”

No serious person should take Trump’s comments as a formal policy statement. Rather, it sounds like a witty riposte to a whiny Eurocrat seeking to justify his or her government’s irresponsible refusal to fulfill a state’s most fundamental duty, protecting its citizens. What American angered by decades of European cheap-riding did not secretly cheer Trump’s statement, especially when a febrile gaggle of European officials responded by wailing that Uncle Sam might stop playing Uncle Sucker?

One of the more stunning admissions came from the usual unidentified source, in this case an anonymous European diplomat speaking to Fox News: “When Trump came along, it woke us up to the fact that the U.S. might not always act in European interest, especially if it goes against American interest.” That was quite the admission, as the source granted: “It sounds naive saying it out loud, but that was the assumption a lot of people made.”

Imagine! The problem is not that Europeans gloried in getting American officials to put Europe first—that is to be expected. Rather, the outrage is that American officials did so. And apparently did so routinely, without the slightest sense of shame. It took the undiplomatic, untutored, potty-mouthed Donald Trump to restore a sense of sanity to the U.S.–Europe relationship.

Treating the Pentagon as an international welfare agency for well-heeled clients is not the only problem with NATO today. Creating an alliance so heavily dependent on one nation encourages other states to fantasize at America’s expense. Their representatives often concoct grand military schemes for “NATO”—in practice meaning the U.S.

For instance, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, a medley of Baltic government officials proposed imposing a “no-fly zone” over the latter. To be effective, such a ban would require shooting down planes operating over Russia as well, leading to full-scale war. Yet neither individually nor collectively do Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania possess anything approaching an “air force.” Obviously, they wouldn’t be enforcing a no-fly zone.

More recently, Estonia’s President Alar Karis pushed for naval confrontation with Moscow: “Western countries should establish a military presence in part of the Black Sea to ensure the safe movement of commercial and humanitarian aid vessels.” Estonia, however, has precisely six boats, two for coastal combat and four for mining. They are backed by two planes and two helicopters—for transport. Evidently, someone other than Tallinn would have to do the confronting.

Foreign commentators promote equally ambitious plans. Simon Tisdall, columnist for the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper, decided that the sword was, in fact, more powerful than the pen and wrote a column urging the use of “NATO’s overwhelming power to decisively turn the military tide” in Ukraine. Yet the U.K. military is shrinking and isn’t likely to be turning “the military tide” in Europe or elsewhere.

Two weeks ago, Peter Bator, Slovakia’s Permanent Representative to NATO, came to the U.S. to complain to Americans that the alliance—meaning them, the Americans—had not intervened on behalf of Ukraine. Rather melodramatically, he imagined his grandchildren saying, “You were the most powerful military organization in the world and you decided not to militarily support Ukraine. Please explain this to me.” Tragically, he couldn’t. “I would have difficulties,” he admitted. He said he could “find many fine arguments” of a “theoretical rhetorical” nature but would “still have problems just explaining it to myself.” So off to war, the transatlantic alliance should go!

Slovakia has only 17,950 people in the military and deploys just 30 main battle tanks, 60 artillery pieces, 19 combat aircraft, and 37 helicopters. Obviously, that doesn’t constitute “the most powerful military organization in the world.” Bator must be thinking of borrowing someone else’s armed forces “to militarily support Ukraine.” Probably not those of the Baltic states or London. I wonder whose?

It is one thing to be self-sacrificing and generous with one’s own life. Indeed, that’s just Biblical. Alas, that’s not what Bator expects. He is offering to sacrifice the lives of others—in this case, Americans. If NATO ends up at war with Russia, we all know who would be doing the bulk of the fighting and dying—Americans. If the conflict were to go nuclear, we know whom the Russian ICBMs would be targeting—Americans again. As for Slovakians, Bator undoubtedly would lead them in praising the U.S. for remaining steadfast for all that is good and wonderful as its cities burn and people perish. After all, that is Washington’s role in NATO, and he would probably express his satisfaction when talking to his grandchildren. What could be better than that?

It has long been evident to all that the transatlantic alliance is unbalanced. When it was created in 1949, even its proponents insisted that the U.S. would not provide a permanent garrison. Dwight D. Eisenhower declared, “We cannot be a modern Rome guarding the far frontiers with our legions if for no other reason than that these are not, politically, our frontiers. What we must do is to assist these people [to] regain their confidence and get on their own military feet.”

Unfortunately, the Americans stayed even as the Europeans recovered. And spent the last 75 years cheap-riding on the U.S. NATO officials are now celebrating that a majority of members, supposedly gravely threatened by Moscow, are finally devoting two cents on the Euro to their defense. Meanwhile, the expansion of NATO helped radicalize not just Vladimir Putin but the Russian public and was an important trigger for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Sixteen years ago, Fiona Hill, who gained notoriety after serving with the Trump National Security Council, warned President George W. Bush that inducting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was “a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action.”

Perhaps most perversely, Washington has turned an alliance intended to augment U.S. security into an international dole. In recent years, NATO’s expansion policy has been bizarre, including nations whose militaries amount to rounding errors. Even the latest additions, Finland, added last year, and potentially Sweden, which awaits approval from Hungary’s parliament, are only minor powers despite their PR buildup. (What sets Helsinki apart is its outsize reserve.) Nor do they make America more secure. Rather, the U.S. has again expanded its responsibilities in confronting a major conventional military power that possesses nuclear weapons.

While NATO officials proudly boast about the alliance’s capabilities, many of its members matter not at all. Consider the weakest links which, like Slovakia, sometimes harbor grandiose ambitions that only America can fulfill. Slovakia’s armed forces, as mentioned, number 17,950. Allies with smaller militaries are Croatia, 16,700; Denmark, 15,400; Sweden, 14,600; North Macedonia, 8,000; Albania, 7,500; Estonia, 7,200; Latvia 6,600; Slovenia, 6,400; Montenegro, 2,350; Luxembourg, 410; Iceland, 0. In contrast, America has 1,359,600 men and women under arms.

This didn’t matter so much at the start. No one imagined a Soviet invasion of the original military midgets, Denmark and Luxembourg. They were geographically incidental to defending countries with significant populations and industrial potential, then France and Italy, and later Germany. Iceland offered bases for the West best denied to Moscow under any circumstances.

In contrast, the recent defense dwarfs are concentrated in the Baltic and Balkans, neither of which is of security significance to America. The former is of minimal geographic concern and difficult to defend. The latter still suffers from its toxic history of confrontation and conflict. Europe might believe either or both to be worth defending, despite the famed Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s observation that the latter “wasn’t worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” It is certainly not in America’s interest to do so. And it is America’s interest that should determine American military policy.

Europe deserves Trump’s harsh words, but diplomacy is necessary to disentangle the U.S. from the continent. Washington shouldn’t withdraw abruptly since its defense dependents have configured their militaries—that is, skimped on outlays and short-changed readiness for decades—in reliance on America’s permanent presence. They need time to adjust. But not too much.

It is essential that the U.S. set a definite deadline for terminating its security guarantee. Subsidizing the indolent and privileged is bad for Europe as well as America. The Western allies should remain close and continue to cooperate on issues of common concern. However, the relationship should be among equals about issues important to all.

Donald Trump’s limitations are obvious, but he understands Europe, its addiction to U.S. military welfare, and the resulting cost to this nation. President Joe Biden expects Americans to die for Europe. Trump believes Europeans should do the dying for their own countries. A serious foreign policy debate on this issue is long overdue.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Bill Allowing Cheaper Blends Of Gasoline Passes Arizona Senate

By Cameron Arcand

Editors Note: If you travel much by car, you likely have noticed that gasoline is often cheaper in rural communities, in New Mexico, and Colorado.  That is because “special blends” are required for urban areas in Arizona. This is strange because Denver is a large metropolitan area situated in a bowl surrounded by mountains, and subject to air pollution just like Phoenix. So is Salt Lake City. Yet, their gasoline is often a dollar cheaper per gallon. In markets, there is the function of arbitrage. Buy in a cheaper market and sell in a more expensive market and thereby equilibrate prices.  There may be freight costs in the equation as well. You know markets are not functioning when arbitrage is not permitted. Often, this is caused by a lack of fungibility, that is to say, gas is “blended” differently in one locale than in another. Whatever the merits of the “blending” process, it should be evident that standardization will end the fungibility issue and allow arbitrage to function in markets. There is no rational reason for gasoline in Phoenix to be so much more expensive than elsewhere.  Gouging the middle and lower classes on fuel should be left to California where is it a practiced art.

A bill aimed at lowering gas prices by allowing more types of gasoline to be sold in Arizona passed the Arizona State Senate on Thursday.

In Maricopa County, environmental regulations allow for only two blends of gas to be sold to consumers, one winter blend and one summer blend, referred to as Cleaner Burning Gasoline, according to a news release.

Senate Bill 1064 passed along party lines, but Democratic Sen. Catherine Miranda voted in favor, making the final tally 17-11-2.

“From gasoline to groceries, electricity, housing, and every other basic necessity, Arizonans are paying thousands of dollars more per year to maintain the same quality of life they had just before Joe Biden took office. While we can’t prevent his implementation of the reckless policies that are hurting hardworking families, senior citizens, and young adults, we can help Arizonans keep more of their hard-earned dollars through commonsense solutions like SB 1064,” Sen. Justine Wadsack said in a statement following the bill’s passage.

“I’m hopeful this legislation will be signed into law because it is the right move to make to improve the lives of our citizens,” she continued.

Democratic Sen. Priya Sundareshan raised concerns about the effectiveness of lowering costs, as well as concerns about air quality regulation compliance.

“To try to pass a statute that mandates the allowance of these blends without having conducted that testing and modeling ahead of time is putting a cart before the horse,” she said in the explanation of her vote against the bill.

Gas prices may be lower in the winter than in the summer because of the blend used, as well as various other factors impacting energy costs. In 2023, gas prices went upwards of $5 in some parts of Arizona, according to the Arizona Republic.

The Center Square reported in December that the legislation would also give the Senate President and House Speaker the ability to apply for a waiver with the Environmental Protection Agency when refineries are circumstantially requesting fewer regulations. In June, an effort by some refineries to get more blends allowed by the EPA failed, Arizona’s Family reported. 

*****

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

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Mortgage Rates Rise Back to 7%, Housing Market Re-Freezes, Buyers’ Strike Continues. Prices Are Just Too High thumbnail

Mortgage Rates Rise Back to 7%, Housing Market Re-Freezes, Buyers’ Strike Continues. Prices Are Just Too High

By Wolf Richter

Inflation might not go back into the bottle voluntarily, and these mortgage rates – considered low in 1970-2000 – might stick around.

The average conforming 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose to 7.0% in the latest week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association today. The daily measure by Mortgage News Daily has been over 7% for days. These are the highest rates since mid-December when they were on their way down.

Mortgage rates had been flirting with 8% back in October last year when the rate-cut mongers fanned out in droves all over the media. Amid enormous hoopla about a gazillion rate cuts in 2024, starting in January, longer-term yields plunged. Mortgage rates plunged with them, with the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate, as tracked by the MBA, falling as low as 6.75% in mid-January. And it was going to be the next boom in the housing market. And then inflation data came in and called for order.

Housing market still frozen.

That relatively small increase in mortgage rates caused mortgage applications to re-plunge – after they’d barely risen from the record lows going back to 1995 – a sign that the housing market remains frozen because prices are still too high, and potential sellers are still thinking that this too shall pass, and potential buyers have figured it out…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Wolf Street.

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Migrant Crime Is Turning US Cities Into War Zones thumbnail

Migrant Crime Is Turning US Cities Into War Zones

By Betsy McCaughey

Criminals posing as asylum seekers are turning American cities into war zones.

The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, feared for how it tortures its victims, is setting up business in New York City, police sources reveal.

Gang members recruit migrants from shelters and as they come off buses from Texas, put them to work in retail theft rings or on mopeds, grabbing phones and handbags and roughing up pedestrians.

“This is organized crime. It’s just like the Mafia,” says Paul DiGiacomo, president of the NYC Detectives’ Endowment Association.

NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban warns of a “wave of migrant crime.” Democratic pols deny it. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says migrants “are looking for a better life.” True for many, not all.

NYC Comptroller Brad Lander accuses Caban of “fear mongering” and using a “Republican talking point.”

Believe the cops, not the pols. (RELATED: BETSY MCCAUGHEY: Democrats Really Love Rolling Out Welcome Mats)

Migrants in moped gangs and retail theft rings, some carrying guns, are terrorizing the Big Apple, Yonkers and New Jersey.

Two-man teams snatch pedestrians’ phones and deliver them to Tren de Aragua stash houses, where professional hackers make fraudulent banking transactions and drain cash from all accounts. Then the phones are wiped clean and shipped to South America for resale.

A 62-year-old woman was brutally dragged down a Brooklyn street by one of these moped thieves who made off with her purse. When you see mopeds, step back from the curb and hug the building — advice usually needed in a third-world city, not New York.

A shopper at JD Sports near Times Square was shot in the leg by baby-faced, 15-year-old migrant Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa when a security guard tried to stop him from robbing the store on Feb. 8. Figueroa whipped out a .45-caliber handgun and shot into the crowd. He has since been apprehended by police.

The next job is to track down the ringleaders who armed him and sent him into the store. The teen had been living in the Stratford Hotel, a city shelter, with his mother and attending school. He is also a suspect in a Jan. 25 incident in Midtown and a Jan. 27 robbery in the Bronx. After his first run-in with cops, the shelter system should have been notified and Figueroa should have been evicted.

Chicago is also being terrorized. There, professional criminals enlist migrants from the shelters to raid luxury stores at the suburban Oakbrook Center shopping mall, 5 miles west of the city. These migrants wouldn’t have a clue where Oak Brook, an upscale suburb, is, or how to get there without the criminal masterminds.

South American gangs are turning suburban malls into danger zones, explains retired Riverside, Illinois, Police Chief Tom Weitzel. “You’re at one of the suburban malls … pushing your kids in a stroller” and you can get caught in the violence, he said in an interview with Fox News.

“A lot more crossing the border are criminals or have criminal intent than is being publicly said,” Weitzel added.

Paul Mauro, a retired inspector of the NYPD, agrees. The claim that Venezuela is emptying its prisons is accurate, he suggested in a separate interview with Fox News.

Blame President Joe Biden’s open borders, but also the soft-on-crime Democrats in New York and Illinois, whose policies almost guarantee that migrant criminals can rob and assault without ever going to jail.

Hochul sweetens the attraction by guaranteeing asylum seekers cash welfare benefits — something the federal government bars so state and local taxpayers have to foot the entire bill.

On top of that, New York City is court-mandated to guarantee shelter to all, something Mayor Eric Adams should seek to overturn. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny observed that “the network of thieves” lives mostly in the shelter system.

That includes the migrants who beat up two cops at Times Square on Jan. 27. They had a string of previous arrests but were still living in shelters, courtesy of N.Y. taxpayers.

Adams is imposing an 11 p.m. curfew at some shelters. That’s window dressing.

Providing room and board to the same people who rob and threaten us makes no sense. Once migrants get in trouble with the law, the shelter system should be notified and they should be evicted. The only shelter they get should be at Rikers.

The Statue of Liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor.” It doesn’t say your lawbreakers, brutes and gang leaders.

*****

This article was published at AZ Free News and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

‘Arizona Border Invasion Act’ Passes State Senate, Hobbs Plans To Veto

By Cameron Arcand

A bill targeting illegal immigration in Arizona has passed the Arizona State Senate along party lines.

Republican Sen. Janae Shamp’s legislation dubbed the “Arizona Border Invasion Act” would criminalize crossing into Arizona under state law unless it is through a legal port of entry at the United States-Mexico border.

In addition, Senate Bill 1231 would give civil immunity to government employees who would enforce the proposed law.

“Well, I think what it’s gonna do is put the focus back where it needs to be with the states,” Shamp told The Center Square.

“They’re not enforcing anything,” she said regarding the Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis. 

The Republican is hoping that it will ultimately get the signature of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

“My message is: Please sign this. Please give our law enforcement a tool. Take the handcuffs off of them,” the senator said.

However, the governor’s office told The Center Square that she plans on vetoing the legislation.

“From day one Governor Hobbs has taken strong action to secure our border and is fighting for increased funding to combat the fentanyl epidemic and expand Operation SECURE,” a Hobbs spokesman said in a statement. “SB1231 is unconstitutional, will not secure the border, and will drive away businesses and jobs from Arizona. She will not sign it.”

The vote on Wednesday was 16-13-1, sparking a debate on the floor about the legislation implications for migrants.

Democratic critics of the bill have argued it is too similar to Senate Bill 1070, which was signed by former Republican Gov. Jan Brewer in 2010 and had some parts shot down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I think that this bill is just a direct criminalization answer. And what we have seen, and we have data that shows that criminalizing any area of policy does not yield the results that I think that we’re looking for here,” Sen. Anna Hernandez, D-Phoenix, told The Center Square.

While the governor has deployed National Guard troops to the southern border and been critical of the Biden administration, she previously vetoed Republican-backed border bills last session. In total, Hobbs vetoed 143 Republican-sponsored bills in 2023, according to the Arizona Capitol Times.

A similar debate is unfolding about a similar piece of legislation in House Bill 2748, which is sponsored by Rep. Joseph Chaplik, R-Scottsdale.

Migrant encounters at the Arizona border have remained high in recent months. In fiscal year 2024, the Tucson sector has seen 250,611 encounters so far, as well as 22,908 encounters in the Yuma sector, according to Customs and Border Protection data.

*****

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

Numerous Voter ‘Irregularities’ Exposed in Nevada – Predictor for 2024? thumbnail

Numerous Voter ‘Irregularities’ Exposed in Nevada – Predictor for 2024?

By Catherine Salgado

Numerous Nevada voters discovered on Sunday that there were worrisome errors in their voting history. Nevada was also one state with evidence of mass election fraud in the 2020 election.

Nevada’s Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar is a Democrat, and the state has a history now of sketchy election proceedings. Can we trust Aguilar when he claims to have fixed a voting irregularity?

From Trending Politics News:

“Nevada’s Secretary of State said reforms are underway after scores of voters noticed irregularities in their online records, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal…Technicians who reviewed the system blamed the problem on voter registrars in certain counties not taking proper steps to update voter registration records in the statewide system…

Daphne Lee, a Las Vegas resident and registered Republican, told the Review-Journal she checked her online voting records on Sunday and discovered that the system showed she and her family had cast mail-in ballots in the recent Republican primary, despite them not doing so. After trying to opt out of future mail-in ballots, she was told her voter record no longer existed.”

Aguilar claimed, “The top-down Voter Registration and Election Management System (VREMS) project at the Secretary of State’s office will go live prior to the June 2024 election, and remove the need for these outdated processes.” But can we trust him when it comes to election integrity? Probably not.

The Heartland Institute estimated that Donald Trump likely won Nevada in the 2020 election, before the fraudulent ballots were included. The 2020 election in Nevada included instances of the same voter apparently voting multiple times, dead people voting, non-residents voting, and other fraud. Will the Democrats try the same in 2024? I think we can safely say yes, and possibly even on a more egregious scale, now that they know they can get away with it.

Indeed, while the technology might have changed, Democrat election fraud is nothing new or unusual. It has been happening on a massive scale at least since the mid-1800s. Democrats have stolen dozens if not hundreds of elections over the years, using voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, mail-in voting, and other dishonest tactics. Even the ridiculous effort to remove Donald Trump from ballots is not new—a similar stunt was pulled in the 1860 election against Republican Abraham Lincoln!

Democrats always cheat—it’s their modus operandi because they always have been the anti-American party. They don’t believe most ordinary citizens, especially those who disagree with them, should really have the power to choose their own representatives. We stupid peasants don’t know what’s good for us; the enlightened elites will choose our oligarchs for us, from their position of eminent superiority.

The Democrat Party has been dishonest, elitist, and anti-constitutional from its very inception, and it won’t change now. The only question is whether Republicans are going to face facts and be ready to counter the fraud in 2024.

*****

Catherine Salgado is an accomplished writer and investigative reporter who publishes daily in her Substack column, Pro Deo et Libertate (For God and Liberty). This superb column provides news and opinion pieces from an honest, common-sense perspective in the spheres of culture, politics, liberal arts, and religion. The Prickly Pear is grateful for her permission to reproduce her public writings and recommends that our readers subscribe to Catherine’s superb Substack column. Please consider a paid subscription for full access to all of her excellent and informative writings.

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Goldwater Institute Creates New Series of Educational Videos thumbnail

Goldwater Institute Creates New Series of Educational Videos

By Neland Nobel

/in , , , , , , /by

Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute has developed a new series of educational videos called Foundations of Freedom.

It seems many people absorb information today more readily on videos than reading.

Whatever the method used, we think what the Goldwater Institute has done here is quite good and urge you to view their videos.

Here is one concerning education. Please take the time to view the video.

The series will include other subjects as well,  including such topics as property rights, free speech, equality, the environment, and the abolition of slavery.

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

1707 2560 Neland Nobel 2024-02-24 05:44:58Goldwater Institute Creates New Series of Educational Videos

EU Blamed Muslim Jihadis’ Genocide of Nigerian Christians on Climate Change thumbnail

EU Blamed Muslim Jihadis’ Genocide of Nigerian Christians on Climate Change

By Catherine Salgado

The European Union (EU) Parliament finally acknowledged the horror of the genocide against Nigerian Christians—but blamed the fake climate crisis instead of the very real Islamic terrorists.

Islamic scriptures approve and encourage the killing of non-Muslims and militants in Nigeria have zealously carried out a decades-long genocide against Christians that has left over 60,000 dead and many more kidnapped or displaced. In fact, Nigeria is the most dangerous nation in the world to be Christian. The West usually ignores the violence against Christians in multiple African nations, but even when the EU recently took notice, its wokeness led to an utterly preposterous diagnosis of the genocide’s cause.

“The European Parliament has condemned the Christmas Eve massacre of Christians in Nigeria but attributed the violence to climate change and environmental degradation instead of Sharia law, Islamic extremist groups, and the dangers of blasphemy accusations,” the Christian Post reported on Feb. 11. Fulani (Muslim) jihadis massacred at least 195 Christians from more than 20 different communities in Nigeria’s violence-plagued Plateau state throughout the 2023 Christmas season. The militants also burned eight churches, inflicted over 300 injuries, devastated homes, and displaced 15,000 people. Approximately 14 Nigerian Christians are killed daily for their faith, Christian Post stated.

Fortunately, the ever-brilliant EU discovered the root cause! Its motion pontificated that “the conflict is increasingly described in religious terms, while the perpetrators are yet to be identified and several factors are to be taken into account such as competition for land fueled by rapid climate change and the failure of authorities to hold to account those responsible for violence.”

The conflict is religious, you elitist buffoons. Muslims have been slaughtering Jews and Christians under orders from their holy texts since the 7th century—this isn’t exactly new. Furthermore, the “climate crisis” is an unscientific hoax, with plenty of evidence to contradict it and not a single accurate climate alarmist prediction in well over 50 years. Yet the EU lectured Nigerian authorities “to take meaningful steps to identify and address all root causes of the violence in Plateau state, such as competition for scarce resources, environmental degradation and the disappearance of effective mediation schemes.”

It’s a joke, but not a funny one for the unfortunate Nigerian Christians bereft of any meaningful Western aid as Islamic jihadis continue to burn, kidnap, and massacre.

*****

Catherine Salgado is an accomplished writer and investigative reporter who publishes daily in her Substack column, Pro Deo et Libertate (For God and Liberty). This superb column provides news and opinion pieces from an honest, common-sense perspective in the spheres of culture, politics, liberal arts, and religion. The Prickly Pear is grateful for her permission to reproduce her public writings and recommends that our readers subscribe to Catherine’s superb Substack column. Please consider a paid subscription for full access to all of her excellent and informative writings.

Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot Fox News

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

How Battleground Arizona Tackles Noncitizens on Voter Rolls thumbnail

How Battleground Arizona Tackles Noncitizens on Voter Rolls

By Fred Lucas

Arizona’s second-largest jurisdiction provides a glimpse into the battleground state’s obstacles in keeping dual voter lists, an election watchdog group says.

Pima County—the second-largest county, including the state’s second-largest city, Tucson—has removed a total of 186 noncitizens from its voter registration lists since 2021, according to data gathered by the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

Of the 186 names removed, seven are recorded as having voted during two federal elections, the data shows.

“Federal law hampers states’ abilities to validate citizenship during the voter registration process,” J. Christian Adams, president of Public Interest Legal Foundation, said in a written statement.  

Arizona requires proof of citizenship to vote in state elections. Because of the National Voter Registration Act, however, it can’t impose that same requirement during federal elections, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled. That law often is called the Motor Voter Act.

“The federal government could update Motor Voter to allow states to require proof of citizenship and add citizenship to Motor Voter’s reasonable list maintenance requirements,” Adams said. “Arizona is limited to building imperfect systems to address the problem of foreign national voting.”

Arizona, which Donald Trump carried in the 2016 presidential election but Joe Biden carried in 2020, is a closely watched battleground state in 2024.

“Roughly 65% of records came from ‘political parties and group drives,’” the report from the legal foundation says. “Although conclusions in other studies established that organizers of voter registration drives can be left-leaning, the party affiliations of the registrants within the Pima [County] disclosure are more varied.”

The report goes on to note: “Arizona has a somewhat better system. Arizona officials have tools to identify some potential foreign registrants to make contact and correct the record before an immigrant runs the risk of more legal trouble.”

As detailed in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” voter list maintenance is a problem across the country that includes noncitizens, registered voters who have died, and those who no longer live in a jurisdiction but are still listed as registered to vote. 

A spokesperson for Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, who oversees voter registration in the county, didn’t respond immediately to an inquiry from The Daily Signal for this story.

Last year, a similar analysis by Public Interest Legal Foundation found that Arizona’s largest jurisdiction, Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, canceled the registration of 222 voters since 2015, voters who had a total of nine recorded votes.

It is a federal felony to vote as a noncitizen.

The foundation’s report contends that in many cases, noncitizens likely didn’t intend to register to vote, but rather were registered without asking when getting driver’s license. In other cases, noncitizens were approached by an independent political group in a voter registration drive.

“The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (Motor Voter) provides the most common pathway for foreign nationals to get registered to vote,” the report says. “The 24 states plus D.C. which automate Motor Voter, not giving the immigrant the chance to decline registration, exacerbate the problem.”

Border states also have more legal immigrants moving back and forth, Public Interest Legal Foundation says in the report.

“Finally, battleground states with a high number of third-party voter registration drives can expose immigrants to improperly getting registered to vote,” the report says. “Every scenario where a foreign national encounters Motor Voter protocols creates risk for premature voter registration.”

In an interview earlier this month with The Daily Signal, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said keeping dual registration lists—one for state and local elections, the other for federal elections—has worked in securing Arizona from noncitizen voting. 

“We have the strictest regime in the country when it comes to noncitizens not being able to vote,” Fontes, a Democrat elected in 2022, told The Daily Signal. “We have a system where documented proof of citizenship has to be submitted [for state and local elections], and it’s a very cumbersome system. That’s what the law requires and we’ll continue to follow it. It’s far more thorough than we see just about anywhere.”

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

The Willis-Wade Effect thumbnail

The Willis-Wade Effect

By Craig J. Cantoni

As non-Whites rise to positions of power, they can be just as corrupt and self-dealing as Whites who abuse their power.

Contrary to what is conveyed by critical race theory and other intellectual hogwash, all humans are inherently the same when pickled in similar circumstances and cultures, regardless of race, ethnicity, or skin color. The Seven Deadly Sins are not bounded by epidermal differences.

Likewise, history shows that as so-called victims acquire power over their so-called former oppressors, they often exhibit the same characteristics that they once railed against. The tendency of the abused to become abusers is what I call the Willis-Wade effect.

The effect is named after African Americans Fani Willis and Nathan Wade. Willis is the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney who is prosecuting Trump, and Wade is the municipal judge and Willis’s paramour, who was retained by Willis at public expense for over a half-million dollars to assist her in the prosecution. The two lovebirds were so brazen that they took cruises and trips together to expensive locales.

Despite not being the brightest bulbs in the Georgia Bar, they were able to leverage their political power into an alleged case of self-dealing, privilege, and tawdriness. That makes them like many White power brokers in American history who weren’t very bright but were ruthlessly ambitious.

If Barack Obama had done what Trump is accused of doing, would Willis have prosecuted him, or would she have given him a pass because he is a Black Democrat? I don’t know, but I do know that in keeping with the Willis-Wade effect, Blacks can be just as racial and partisan as Whites.

Chicago serves as an example of Blacks following the example of Whites. Mayor Richard J. Daley made sure that his Democrat political machine took care of his fellow Irish before other ethnic/racial groups. His son, Richard M. Daley, would later leverage his dad’s political connections to become mayor.

By the time Lori Lightfoot became the first black female mayor of Chicago in 2017, the racial situation had reversed, with a disproportionate number of Blacks in key positions, including president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, chair of the Cook County Democratic Party, city treasurer, state’s attorney for Cook County, CEO of Chicago public schools, clerk of the Cook County circuit court, president of the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners, president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District for Greater Chicago, police superintendent, fire chief, and heads of the Chicago Transit Authority, the Chicago Housing Authority, the Chicago Board of Education, and the board of Chicago City Colleges.

Are we to believe that these Black officials didn’t do what Whites had done and favored their own kind and their own family?

Incidentally, in spite of Blacks holding these key offices, and in spite of Chicago being the springboard for Barack Obama’s political career, there has been no lessening of poverty and crime in Chicago’s Black neighborhoods since I lived in the Windy City decades ago.

The Willis-Wade effect also has operated overseas and with other races.

There are many former colonies around the world that freed themselves from the injustices of European colonialism but are now ruled by despots and beset by tribal and/or religious conflict—as was the case with most of them prior to Europeans arriving.

That’s not to excuse or rationalize colonialism or imperialism.

China didn’t suffer as much from European colonialism and imperialism as some other countries, but, going back in its long history, it certainly suffered greatly from the Mongol hordes, who invaded and colonized much of China. In more recent history, imperial Japan inflicted atrocities on China, especially in its brutal colonization of Manchuria. Then, in an example of the Willis-Wade effect, the Red Chinese under Mao prevailed after the Second World War and would go on to starve and brutalize tens of millions of their fellow Chinese.

It was a similar story in Cambodia under Pol Pot. And when the Bolsheviks took over Russia, they were worse than the czars.

Or take my race/ethnicity of Italian. The Mafia was born in Sicily as a counterforce to government corruption, but when it was exported to the U.S., it became a force for corruption.

Most of the consequences of the Willis-Wade effect aren’t as egregious but are certainly divisive and hypocritical. That’s especially so for the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement, which perpetuates new discrimination in the name of ending old discrimination. The same for critical race theory, which accuses Whites of racism, oppression, privilege, and other evils while committing the very same sins.

If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, Whites should be flattered.

Fani Willis and Nathan Wade probably deserve to be disbarred if they abused their power as alleged, but they also deserve to have a pernicious effect named after them.

*****

Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Bogus ‘ESG’ Group Rates China’s Slave-Fueled Energy Firms Better Than U.S. Oil And Gas Companies thumbnail

Bogus ‘ESG’ Group Rates China’s Slave-Fueled Energy Firms Better Than U.S. Oil And Gas Companies

By Chuck Devore

Editors’ Note: Either by accident or design (your choice), the environmental movement and its subsidiary the ESG movement, always seems to tilt the scales towards benefiting China and hurting the US. Whether making us dependent on Chinese-dominated solar panels and windmills, weakening our electrical grid, willfully overlooking the massive use of coal in China, or ignoring Chinese depredations against human rights and the environment, China always seems to get a free pass while US companies are condemned and starved of capital. We tend to feel this tilt to the Chinese is deliberate. One reason to think so is that the CCP is actively involved in funding the environmental movement.

Investment support services firm MSCI’s corporate leadership should be ashamed of continuing to shill for China.

From June 28, 2022, to Feb. 8, 2024, two of China’s most well-known stock indices, the Shanghai Stock Exchange Index and Hong Kong’s Hang Sang Index, have lost 20 percent and 28 percent of their value, respectively. And this is after the Chinese Communist Party completed $278 billion in stock purchases to stem the recent rout.

There is a consensus among experts that China is in deep economic difficulty. Paramount leader Xi Jinping has centralized power and curbed capitalistic freedom in China. It’s difficult to know anything with certainty about the nation’s economic stagnation since China recently outlawed the release of corporate or economic information and stopped releasing basic economic reports.

Even so, there is one sector of the international financial analyst community that still confidently issues opinions on publicly traded Chinese stocks: the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings firms — to their everlasting shame and embarrassment.

warned about the false picture that ESG ratings provide regarding corporations in June 2022, by comparing a publicly traded American firm, a Texas-based oil and gas royalties company known as Brigham Minerals and, since a merger, now known as Sitio (NYSE:STR), with three Chinese stocks in the energy sector.

The Chinese securities — not stocks in the U.S. sense as they don’t provide legal ownership of the Chinese companies, which are merely vehicles for China to attract foreign capital — were Xinyi Solar Holdings (OTC: XISHY), China Resources Gas Group (OTC: CGASY), and China Coal Energy Company (OTC: CCOZF).

How Are These Chinese Firms Rated Now?

MSCI is an investment support services firm with $2.1 billion in revenue that provides ESG ratings of corporations. Even though China requires every firm with 50 or more employees operating in China to employ at least one Communist Party political commissar, true independent audits don’t happen, and information about a firm’s financial health can now be considered national security information, MSCI rates Chinese firms anyway.

In 2022, MSCI rated the three Chinese energy stocks higher than the U.S. energy stock, with Brigham scoring 2 out of 10 ESG points overall. This compared to China Coal Energy, a firm majority owned by the Chinese government, with an overall ESG rating of 3.1; China Resources Gas Group, a natural gas pipeline operator and a subsidiary of a state-owned company, with an ESG score of 6.3; and Xinyi Solar Holdings — a firm that uses slave labor in its supply chain — with an ESG score of 6.1.

With ESG getting pushback from Texas and other states’ pension funds, I wanted to check back in on whether MSCI still rated these Chinese firms highly.

ESG investing has become a big driver in steering capital to corporations deemed to be good stewards of subjective principles. By 2025, financial management firms that claim to invest with ESG principles are projected to account for $50 trillion of a total global value of $140.5 trillion — more than a third of managed investments.

American Depositary Receipts in Xinyi Solar Holdings have declined from $30.64 in June 2022 to $8.87 in February 2024; China Resources Gas Group last traded on Sept. 12, 2023, at $27.27, down from $58.93, and is no longer listed; and China Coal Energy Company last traded on Jan. 8, 2024.

MSCI continues to helpfully rate all three firms, making one wonder if a real person does the analytical work or an AI on loan from previously writing stories at Sports Illustrated. Xinyi’s ratings are up a bit overall, and China Gas is up a bit too. Only China coal has seen its ESG ratings dip, mostly due to the downgrade of corporate governance from 2.2 out of 10 to 0.9.

Meanwhile, Sitio Royalties, the U.S. firm that resulted from a merger between Brigham Minerals and Sitio Royalties in December 2022, has an ESG rating of 0 out of 10 for the environment, 2.8 out of 10 for social, and 6.8 out of 10 for governance. Thus, in 20 months, Sitio has seen its environmental rating decline to 0.0 from 0.8, its social rating decline from 3.5 to 2.8, and its governance rating increase slightly from 6.4 to 6.8 — meaning, Sitio’s overall rating has declined, while environmentally dirty, slave-labor using, Chinese Communist Party-controlled, and likely insolvent Chinese stocks have seen their composite ESG rating increase over the same span.

What an absolute crock. MSCI’s corporate leadership should be ashamed of continuing to shill for China even as Jinping breathes threats of war and bullies his neighbors. MSCI ESG scores are no more valid than the daily horoscope.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Weekend Read – The Western Ruling Elite: Its Development and Its Betrayal thumbnail

Weekend Read – The Western Ruling Elite: Its Development and Its Betrayal

By Finn Andreen

The Western ruling elite has become oligarchic in nature; its political and economic influence is disproportionate and even harmful to society. It is necessary, therefore, to review its historical evolution and expose its current goals.

Firstly, it must be recognized that it is natural and necessary for society to have an elite. Murray Rothbard wrote about the ideal of “natural aristocrats” who “live in freedom and harmony with their fellows, and rise by exercising their individuality and their highest abilities in the service of their fellows, either in an organization or by producing efficiently for the consumers.”

A free society needs such “natural aristocrats” because they are its main drivers and inspirations. Major entrepreneurial initiatives are generally taken by those who are farsighted and motivated, willing to make more sacrifices and take more risks than the average person. The whole of society indirectly benefits from the initiatives of these people.

The problem, therefore, is not the existence of an elite per se, but the fact that it is no longer composed primarily of “natural aristocrats.” Today it is composed of what Rothbard called “artificial aristocrats”—“those who govern by means of coercion”; that is, with the help of the state. The “Machiavellian” thinkers were the first to describe this oligarchic elite in a systematic way; they referred to the “organized and ruling minority,” as opposed to the disorganized and controlled majority.

As Gaetano Mosca wrote in his work The Ruling Class, “Political power never has been, and never will be, founded upon the explicit consent of majorities. It always has been, and it always will be, exercised by organized minorities, which have had, and will have, the means, varying as the times vary, to impose their supremacy on the multitudes.”

Indeed, when it becomes oligarchic, the ruling minority uses coercion to influence political decisions and even social values, in its own economic and ideological interests. However, it is not all-powerful and omniscient; its power is never fully acquired, and it does not always exercise its influence very skillfully.

As elsewhere, Western societies have always had “organized minorities,” but these have evolved over time. The political power of this elite has constantly increased, together with the expansion of the state and the crony capitalism that it facilitates. To quote Mosca again, “To the extent that the state absorbs and distributes a greater part of public wealth, leaders of the ruling class have more means of arbitrary influence over their subordinates and more easily escape anyone’s control.”

It must not be assumed that the introduction of “democracy” has reduced the influence of this ruling minority on society, for this political system has inexorably been accompanied by a considerable development of state power. Indeed, even in a “liberal democracy,” the disorganized and generally uninformed majority has virtually no influence over, for instance, the foreign and monetary policies of their governments.

Three Phases of Development

It is possible to identify three phases in the evolution of the ruling minority. During the nineteenth century, this minority was quite close to the ideal natural elite described above. In the absence of strong states and supranational institutions, the ruling minorities (in plural), were thus initially more national than international in outlook, sought economic rather than political power, and were more industrially than financially oriented. In France, the Count de Saint-Simon wrote about the “industrialists,” whom he described in an open letter to King Louis XVIII as “the natural and permanent leaders of the people.”

These minorities naturally always thought of their own interests first (although they were also philanthropists). Nevertheless, the investments of these ruling minorities contributed greatly to the increase in prosperity enjoyed in the West during the “long” nineteenth century.

Their relationship with the rest of society was thus rather symbiotic, despite real tensions related to the social conditions of early industrialization. For example, until World War I, these ruling minorities were committed to deflation and free trade and maintained a certain level of monetary control via the gold standard.

The modern ruling minority then consolidated, with the development of financial capitalism in the late nineteenth century, around the growing and increasingly political power of “international bankers” and their extended families. The historian Carroll Quigley described them, the Rothschilds, the Morgans, the Rockefellers, and the others, thus:

These banking families remained different from ordinary bankers in distinctive ways: they were cosmopolitan and international; they were close to governments and were particularly concerned with questions of government debts; . . . they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of financial influence in political life.

In this second phase, the Western ruling minority emerges, international, politicized, and mainly financially oriented. This description of the core of the Western ruling minority is still the same today, despite major changes in the financial system over the last half-century. Around this nucleus, of course, need to be counted political leaders and senior civil servants, as well as publishers and editors of mainstream media and the leaders of many Western multinational companies.

As mentioned, this politicization of the ruling minority is closely linked to the rapid expansion of the role of the state in society from the end of the nineteenth century, which first increased its control over production (state control over key industries), then over money (giving up the gold standard), then over consumption (introduction of price controls). As Albert Jay Nock wrote, “It is easier to seize wealth (from the producers) than to produce it; and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.”

Phase 3: Messianic and Nefarious Globalism

With the Second World War and the rise of Keynesianism, monetary inflation—this artificial scourge upon the majority—became an important tool for the enrichment of the large banking institutions. With the financialization of the Western economies in the 1970s, the interests of the ruling minority began to clearly diverge from the interests of the “real” production-based economy in which the majority participates. The Western oligarchic elite then entered its third phase.

In recent decades, this Western ruling minority has become much more ambitious and aggressive than it once was. It is now fully imbued with an ideological mission, even a messianic one, to change the world. Return on investment and control of resources are no longer the only or even the most important objectives; the current ruling minority has a technocratic desire to shape societies, to control and direct their evolution. Indeed, its purpose today can be summed up in one word: control. It’s about controlling everything: people, finance, food, energy, health, and even nature.

This means weakening the nation-states by accelerating the transfer of national sovereignty to supranational authorities. In order to convince the majority that political globalism is the only hope for mankind, crises have been fabricated, and presented as insoluble at the level of the sovereign state. The three main crises created for this purpose are the climate “crisis,” the pandemic “crisis,” and the immigration “crisis.” The latter also serves to dilute ethnically homogeneous nations, and thus to diminish natural social and cultural resistance to political globalism.

The United Nations and the governmental institutions and nongovernmental organizations that orbit around it all play a key role. To name of few examples, the World Health Organization must be given the power to introduce a digital health tool that will allow the control of populations under pretexts of public health concerns. The European Union must impose obligations and restrictions on the behavior of European individuals and companies (see the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, the Digital Services Act, and the Green Deal). The introduction of digital currencies by central banks will allow the control of all individual economic transactions. The digital wallet will allow the introduction of a system of social credits, Chinese style.

All these initiatives are coordinated by the World Economic Forum and are progressive steps toward the goal of establishing a world government under the control of the Western ruling financial minority.

Opposing an Enemy of the People

These nefarious plans of the Western ruling minority obviously represent a significant threat to individual freedom on a global scale. Unfortunately, they have already been partially implemented. It is nothing less than a betrayal by the Western ruling minority of its own societies. The Western ruling minority has become over time an enemy of the people, which the majorities have no choice but to oppose.

It is mandatory to return to the situation that prevailed during part of the nineteenth century, when the Western ruling minority was mostly an economic elite. That is, the ruling minority should be composed essentially of Rothbard’s “natural aristocrats.”

When freedom is at such risk as it is today, these words of Ludwig von Mises come to mind: “Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. . . . Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.”

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

WEEKEND READ: The Western Ruling Elite: Its Development and Its Betrayal thumbnail

WEEKEND READ: The Western Ruling Elite: Its Development and Its Betrayal

By Finn Andreen

The Western ruling elite has become oligarchic in nature; its political and economic influence is disproportionate and even harmful to society. It is necessary, therefore, to review its historical evolution and expose its current goals.

Firstly, it must be recognized that it is natural and necessary for society to have an elite. Murray Rothbard wrote about the ideal of “natural aristocrats” who “live in freedom and harmony with their fellows, and rise by exercising their individuality and their highest abilities in the service of their fellows, either in an organization or by producing efficiently for the consumers.”

A free society needs such “natural aristocrats” because they are its main drivers and inspirations. Major entrepreneurial initiatives are generally taken by those who are farsighted and motivated, willing to make more sacrifices and take more risks than the average person. The whole of society indirectly benefits from the initiatives of these people.

The problem, therefore, is not the existence of an elite per se, but the fact that it is no longer composed primarily of “natural aristocrats.” Today it is composed of what Rothbard called “artificial aristocrats”—“those who govern by means of coercion”; that is, with the help of the state. The “Machiavellian” thinkers were the first to describe this oligarchic elite in a systematic way; they referred to the “organized and ruling minority,” as opposed to the disorganized and controlled majority.

As Gaetano Mosca wrote in his work The Ruling Class, “Political power never has been, and never will be, founded upon the explicit consent of majorities. It always has been, and it always will be, exercised by organized minorities, which have had, and will have, the means, varying as the times vary, to impose their supremacy on the multitudes.”

Indeed, when it becomes oligarchic, the ruling minority uses coercion to influence political decisions and even social values, in its own economic and ideological interests. However, it is not all-powerful and omniscient; its power is never fully acquired, and it does not always exercise its influence very skillfully.

As elsewhere, Western societies have always had “organized minorities,” but these have evolved over time. The political power of this elite has constantly increased, together with the expansion of the state and the crony capitalism that it facilitates. To quote Mosca again, “To the extent that the state absorbs and distributes a greater part of public wealth, leaders of the ruling class have more means of arbitrary influence over their subordinates and more easily escape anyone’s control.”

It must not be assumed that the introduction of “democracy” has reduced the influence of this ruling minority on society, for this political system has inexorably been accompanied by a considerable development of state power. Indeed, even in a “liberal democracy,” the disorganized and generally uninformed majority has virtually no influence over, for instance, the foreign and monetary policies of their governments.

Three Phases of Development

It is possible to identify three phases in the evolution of the ruling minority. During the nineteenth century, this minority was quite close to the ideal natural elite described above. In the absence of strong states and supranational institutions, the ruling minorities (in plural), were thus initially more national than international in outlook, sought economic rather than political power, and were more industrially than financially oriented. In France, the Count de Saint-Simon wrote about the “industrialists,” whom he described in an open letter to King Louis XVIII as “the natural and permanent leaders of the people.”

These minorities naturally always thought of their own interests first (although they were also philanthropists). Nevertheless, the investments of these ruling minorities contributed greatly to the increase in prosperity enjoyed in the West during the “long” nineteenth century.

Their relationship with the rest of society was thus rather symbiotic, despite real tensions related to the social conditions of early industrialization. For example, until World War I, these ruling minorities were committed to deflation and free trade and maintained a certain level of monetary control via the gold standard.

The modern ruling minority then consolidated, with the development of financial capitalism in the late nineteenth century, around the growing and increasingly political power of “international bankers” and their extended families. The historian Carroll Quigley described them, the Rothschilds, the Morgans, the Rockefellers, and the others, thus:

These banking families remained different from ordinary bankers in distinctive ways: they were cosmopolitan and international; they were close to governments and were particularly concerned with questions of government debts; . . . they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of financial influence in political life.

In this second phase, the Western ruling minority emerges, international, politicized, and mainly financially oriented. This description of the core of the Western ruling minority is still the same today, despite major changes in the financial system over the last half-century. Around this nucleus, of course, need to be counted political leaders and senior civil servants, as well as publishers and editors of mainstream media and the leaders of many Western multinational companies.

As mentioned, this politicization of the ruling minority is closely linked to the rapid expansion of the role of the state in society from the end of the nineteenth century, which first increased its control over production (state control over key industries), then over money (giving up the gold standard), then over consumption (introduction of price controls). As Albert Jay Nock wrote, “It is easier to seize wealth (from the producers) than to produce it; and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.”

Phase 3: Messianic and Nefarious Globalism

With the Second World War and the rise of Keynesianism, monetary inflation—this artificial scourge upon the majority—became an important tool for the enrichment of the large banking institutions. With the financialization of the Western economies in the 1970s, the interests of the ruling minority began to clearly diverge from the interests of the “real” production-based economy in which the majority participates. The Western oligarchic elite then entered its third phase.

In recent decades, this Western ruling minority has become much more ambitious and aggressive than it once was. It is now fully imbued with an ideological mission, even a messianic one, to change the world. Return on investment and control of resources are no longer the only or even the most important objectives; the current ruling minority has a technocratic desire to shape societies, to control and direct their evolution. Indeed, its purpose today can be summed up in one word: control. It’s about controlling everything: people, finance, food, energy, health, and even nature.

This means weakening the nation-states by accelerating the transfer of national sovereignty to supranational authorities. In order to convince the majority that political globalism is the only hope for mankind, crises have been fabricated, and presented as insoluble at the level of the sovereign state. The three main crises created for this purpose are the climate “crisis,” the pandemic “crisis,” and the immigration “crisis.” The latter also serves to dilute ethnically homogeneous nations, and thus to diminish natural social and cultural resistance to political globalism.

The United Nations and the governmental institutions and nongovernmental organizations that orbit around it all play a key role. To name of few examples, the World Health Organization must be given the power to introduce a digital health tool that will allow the control of populations under pretexts of public health concerns. The European Union must impose obligations and restrictions on the behavior of European individuals and companies (see the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, the Digital Services Act, and the Green Deal). The introduction of digital currencies by central banks will allow the control of all individual economic transactions. The digital wallet will allow the introduction of a system of social credits, Chinese style.

All these initiatives are coordinated by the World Economic Forum and are progressive steps toward the goal of establishing a world government under the control of the Western ruling financial minority.

Opposing an Enemy of the People

These nefarious plans of the Western ruling minority obviously represent a significant threat to individual freedom on a global scale. Unfortunately, they have already been partially implemented. It is nothing less than a betrayal by the Western ruling minority of its own societies. The Western ruling minority has become over time an enemy of the people, which the majorities have no choice but to oppose.

It is mandatory to return to the situation that prevailed during part of the nineteenth century, when the Western ruling minority was mostly an economic elite. That is, the ruling minority should be composed essentially of Rothbard’s “natural aristocrats.”

When freedom is at such risk as it is today, these words of Ludwig von Mises come to mind: “Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. . . . Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.”

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

Please click the following link to learn more.

Mr. Bean Was Right About EVs And So Was Toyota thumbnail

Mr. Bean Was Right About EVs And So Was Toyota

By Duggan Flanakin

When auto (even EV driving) enthusiast Rowan Atkinson – Mr. Bean to his fans – last June wrote in The Guardian that there are “sound environmental reasons” why “keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV,” he was vilified as an eco-traitor.

Atkinson had added, “We’re realizing that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created.” These include, he said, hydrogen fuel cells and synthetic fuels that would extend the lives of older vehicles long after governments are demanding they be scrapped.

Atkinson, who has a bachelor’s in electrical and electronic engineering and a master’s in control systems, urged Britons to “look at a bigger picture” to include greenhouse gas emissions during the manufacture of electric vehicles and to evaluate the whole life cycle of motor vehicles.

Relying on a dash of common sense, Atkinson noted that pushing so heavily so soon for EVs that have major flaws will result in “millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries.” Technological developments with hydrogen and synthetic fuels, which can power existing internal combustion engines, may prove a better long-term solution. For one reason, the owners of the world’s 1.5 billion ICE vehicles could continue enjoying them.

For sharing his insights, Atkinson was immediately smacked around by snarky reporters and EV “experts”. Simon Evans, deputy editor at Carbon Brief, slammed Atkinson for not adhering to Carbon Brief’s own “evidence” from years back stating that EVs cut “planet-warming emissions” by two-thirds on a life cycle basis and calling EVs “an essential part of tackling the climate emergency.”

How dare he?

Michael Coren, writing in the Washington Post, portrayed Atkinson as an iconoclast clinging to his petrol car, lampooned hydrogen and synthetic fuels as expensive and impractical, and compared ICE vehicles to hobby horses. Coren argued that “making every car burn [hydrogen] is not a good idea,” yet implied that forcing every driver to buy an EV is a very good idea.

Eight months later, though, the detractors who had hoped to make Atkinson an example of a troglodyte were singing a different tune in the wake of a collapse in the British EV market.

Mr. Bean was condemned in the House of Lords by the Green Alliance as “partly at fault for ‘damaging’ public perceptions” of EVs and as a dangerous enemy of Britain’s drive to Net Zero. The Guardian, which published Atkinson’s tome, was accused indirectly of failing to adhere to “high editorial standards around the Net Zero transition.”

[Translation: ONLY glowing reports on EVs are acceptable public speech.]

It couldn’t have been the exorbitant cost of auto insurance for EVs, their tendency to catch fire and burn for days, or the high cost and long wait times for parts and repairs – or the long waits at charging stations to plug in and wait for enough charge at least to reach the next destination. Nor could it be that people are uncomfortable enriching China as their own auto companies face bankruptcy.  No – it was allowing someone to publicly question the rush to electrification.

Halfway around the world, Toyota, which “lagged behind” its major competitors in ditching their ICE vehicle fleets for all-EV production lines, “is riding a windfall of hybrid vehicle sales on its way to posting projected net profits of more than $30  billion.” While Ford lost $4.7 billion trying to create an EV market, dropping its net profit to just $4.2 billion, Toyota now appears to be in better financial shape than its American and European competitors.

Over a year ago, then-Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda had cautioned that the EV transition would “take longer than the media would like us to believe.” Ford, GM, Stellantis, and many other automakers worldwide played nice with the political and financial giants while Toyota’s management stepped away from the rhetoric, looked at the numbers, and chose a commonsense approach to the evolving world auto marketplace.

The company did sell 15,000 pure EVs in the U.S. in 2023, but they also sold 40,000 plug-in hybrids and more than 600,000 non-rechargeable hybrids out of total U.S. sales of 2,248,477 vehicles, a 6% increase from 2022 levels. Ford fell short of its goal to produce 300,000 EVs a year by 2023 and has revised its earlier forecast of 2 million EVs by 2026. Worse, Ford now expects to lose as much as $5.5 billion on EVs in 2024.

Over in Europe, Volvo just announced it is withdrawing support for its marquee electric vehicle Polestar and hopes to sell its 48% stake, possibly to a Chinese buyer. Just days earlier, Polestar had cut 450 jobs, about 15% of its workforce.

Elsewhere in Europe, EV sales are expected to decline in 2024 in Germany, Europe’s largest auto market, and Renault just scrapped plans to spin off its Ampere EVs, blaming a lack of interest from investors and a slowdown in sales.

EV sales in the United Kingdom also flatlined in 2023, and prices for used EVs fell sharply, raising questions about their residual value. Even EV-friendly Switzerland admits it will take at least 20 years to fully electrify its fleet; while EVs and hybrids today comprise about 30% of Swiss new car sales, these vehicles amount to less than 4% of the total national fleet.

Oil and gas companies are getting the message, too. BP, which once billed itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” has been encouraged by an activist investor to reduce its investments in renewables and recommit to oil and gas. A major reason – oil and gas investments in recent years have boomed while investments in renewables have faltered. Bluebell Capital Partners asserted that BP’s commitment to renewable has left its stock price undervalued by 50% compared to ExxonMobil and Chevron.

President Biden’s demand that the U.S. comply with his EV mandates was dealt a major blow last month when auto rental giant Hertz, heretofore the nation’s largest fleet operator of electric vehicles, announced it was selling all 20,000 of its EVs and not buying any more. The company cited high repair costs and weak demand for EV rentals. Karl Bauer of iSeeCars.com, noting that mainstream consumers were already hesitant to buy an EV, said, “The larger impact of the Hertz EV fire sale is the perception hit to the technology.”

The fictional Mr. Bean is known (and revered) for his original and often absurd solutions to problems and, his total disregard for others while solving them, and his pettiness and occasional malevolence. Had the British press mocked Mr. Atkinson for a Bean-like performance, the climate emergency propagandists might have laughed him off successfully.

But they are not able to laugh without derision.

The real Mr. Atkinson, like the decision makers at Toyota, is espousing commonsense wisdom such as “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” Extending the lifespan of existing vehicles, even with currently high-cost hydrogen or synthetic fuels, is far better for the environment than junking them for electric vehicles that require diesel fuel to power charging stations.

If, as we are told, EV batteries will soon be smaller, cheaper, and stronger, that day has not yet come. Just as likely, the cost of hydrogen and synthetics will also drop significantly, and those fuels can power existing ICE vehicles. Most of all, if there truly were a “climate emergency,” diplomats would be quicker to end military conflicts and end the rush by China and India to build more and more coal-fired power plants (needed, of course, to charge EV batteries).

What Mr. Bean and Toyota are truly saying to the world is that mandates – the government deciding what can and cannot go to market – and the huge subsidies that go along with them (which would be unnecessary in a true emergency) are at war with the wisdom of the market, which relies on true public opinion as to what is best for the consumer.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot

TAKE ACTION

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

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

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

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