Posts Tagged ‘Heritage Foundation’

Democrat Voting Fraud Update For October 2, 2024

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024

The election season is upon us, which means it’s time for Democrats to try to win the only way they know how: Cheating. So here’s a roundup of links on some (but far from all) the ways Democrats will attempt to cheat in November.

  • There’s the already-in-progress illegal alien voting push.

    A network of left-wing organizations backed by billionaire George Soros is working to naturalize and mobilize immigrants and refugees in order to activate them as voting blocs in swing states, boasting that they could “sway the outcome of national, state, and local elections.”

    Chief among these groups is the National Partnership for New Americans, which describes itself as “a national multiethnic, multiracial partnership network of 60 of the country’s leading immigrant and refugee rights organizations.” The group received $560,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations from 2016 to 2021. The group had a total revenue of $4.11 million in 2023.

    “Our network has supported the naturalization of over 250,000 U.S. Citizens and has been a key driver of advocacy to make naturalization more affordable and accessible,” the National Partnership for New Americans states. Its website features an image of a t-shirt that reads “Naturalize 2 Million by 2022,” along with the phrase “New American Voters.”

    Democrats often rebut the Republican argument on illegal immigration — that the left encourages it to forge a path to permanent Democrat political power — by saying that illegal immigrants don’t have the right to vote. But the effort by the Soros-funded group to get as many immigrants as possible on the voter rolls as a way to “sway” elections indicates that the left does view immigration as a political tool.

    Figures suggest that mass immigration could be a boon for Democrats’ electoral chances. One analysis found that congressional districts with a higher-than-average foreign born population voted for Democrats in 90 percent of cases during the 2018 midterm election. The foreign-born population residing in the United States surged to 51.6 million — the highest level ever — under the Biden-Harris administration. An estimate from the Center for Immigration Studies found that illegal immigration accounted for approximately 58 percent of that spike.

    President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump by only 11,000 votes in Arizona in 2020, a fact that underscores the impact mass immigration could have on American elections. Biden beat Trump by just 12,000 votes in Georgia, another crucial swing state, in 2020. The New American Voters campaign notes that there are more than 86,000 individuals who have been naturalized in Georgia since the election.

    The New American Voters campaign, a project of the National Partnership for New Americans, maintains demographic reports on critical swing states and the country as a whole.

    “Since the last presidential election in November 2020, an estimated 62,179 voting age adults have become newly naturalized citizens in Arizona,” reads one such report, which also track the top ten countries of origin for new citizens in each state.

    National Partnership for New Americans Executive Director Nicole Melaku used the release of its demographic data as an opportunity to push Biden to swing further to the left on immigration, pressuring him to support “pathways to citizenship.”

    One 2020 report from the National Partnership for New Americans explains that “new American voters form critical voting blocks that can have the power to sway national electoral outcomes,” highlighting their growing share of the population in key swing states and calling them “a sleeping political giant.”

    A 2022 report from the group celebrated newly-naturalized voters as part of the “new American majority,” a term used to describe “all people of color, unmarried women, and young voting eligible Americans.” The National Partnership for New Americans directly compared the margin of victory in the 2020 presidential election to the number of newly-naturalized voters who had since gained citizenship within each state.

    The National Partnership for New Americans isn’t the only leftist organization working to leverage mass immigration to impact American elections, however. There’s also the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, an organization that’s received nearly $7 million from Soros between 2016 to 2022, and had $25 million in total revenue in 2022.

    Two of the most recent listed grants from the Open Society Foundations, which total nearly $4.3 million, are intended “to encourage naturalization among eligible immigrants, assist them with the process, and mobilize their civic participation.” The center is one of the organizations behind Citizenshipworks, an effort also funded by the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative to help non-citizens residing in the United States become citizens.

    The Immigrant Legal Resource Center isn’t exclusively concerned with naturalizing and mobilizing non-citizens. The organization also works to prevent the deportation of illegal aliens. It received $500,000 in 2021 from the Open Society Foundations to fund its efforts to “dismantle the infrastructure of criminalization, detention, and deportation of immigrants.”

  • And just last week we reported on Democratic schemes to get illegal aliens to vote in Arizona.
  • Then there’s the money-laundering campaign finance fraud.

    A coalition of 19 Republican attorneys general have launched a criminal investigation into the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue over allegations of money laundering.

    As American Greatness reported in April, multiple independent investigative journalists, including O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) and Election Watch have uncovered what appears to be illegal activity involving millions of dollars in campaign donations to Act Blue that have been laundered through unwitting small donors.

    The process of breaking up large donations and submitting them under the names of small donors to cover up illegal contributions has been dubbed “smurfing.” Suspicions that ActBlue routinely engages in this type of illicit fundraising have dogged the outfit since at least Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020.

    The Committee on House Administration, chaired by Congressman Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.), launched an investigation into Act Blue in November of 2023 to look into reports that the fundraising giant was skirting campaign donation laws and allowing rampant fraud on the site. The committee widened its probe in August 2024.

    In a letter sent to top officials on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on August 5, Steil urged them to “immediately initiate an emergency rulemaking to require political campaigns to verify the card verification value (‘CVV’) of donors who contribute online using a credit or debit card, and to prohibit political campaigns from accepting online contributions from a gift card or other prepaid credit cards.”

    In September, Steil sent letters to five states, urging them to launch criminal investigations into ActBlue’s alleged illicit activities, citing three specific areas of concern:
    – Donations significantly disproportionate to an individual’s net worth or previous giving history.
    – Uncharacteristic donations from party-affiliated registered voters suddenly contributing to candidates of the opposing party.
    – Unusually frequent donations from elderly individuals or first-time donors.

    The number of GOP AGs involved in the effort has since swelled to 19.

    On Tuesday, the 19 Republican Attorney’s General sent a letter to ActBlue CEO and President Regina Wallace-Jones demanding information and explanations regarding the suspicious donations.

    Recent reporting suggests that that there may be donors across the country who are identified in filings with the Federal Election Commission as having donated to candidates through ActBlue (and other affiliated entities), but who did not actually make those donations. That raises a host of concerns about whether ActBlue’s platform is being used to facilitate “smurfing”––a type of money laundering in which donors break up large donations and submit them under different names to disguise who the money comes from and thereby skirt contribution limits in violation of state and federal law.

    As one former FEC commissioner recently explained, wealthy donors—some of whom are foreign nationals and therefore barred from donating to federal candidates at all—can employ complicated schemes like this to make donations in others’ names. This concern is not hypothetical. Indeed, in an indictment filed last week in federal court, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged that a major U.S. political figure knowingly participated in such a scheme in a recent election cycle to receive contributions from a foreign national through straw donors. Further, the apparent irregularities in FEC filings also raise concerns about whether ActBlue’s fundraising methods are deceptive and properly safeguard donor’s data privacy.

    Some of us and our colleagues have raised these concerns with you directly, and at least one senator has raised these concerns with the FEC. Independent investigations have shown that there are donors across the country who show up on FEC filings as having donated to candidates through ActBlue (and other affiliated entities) but deny having made those donations. Given the prominent role it plays in our elections, it is incumbent on ActBlue to address the serious questions created by apparent irregularities in ActBlue’s FEC filings.

    ActBlue is one of the largest fundraising platforms for election-related donations. Already during the 2024 election cycle ActBlue has raised billions of dollars. But there are concerns about where those dollars came from. It is essential that we know whether political donations—particularly in such large volumes—are being solicited, made, and processed consistent with campaign finance, consumer protection, and other state and federal laws. We, the chief legal officers of Iowa, Indiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming ask that you explain what measures you have in place to ensure that donations made through your platform follow State and federal law.

    Just as important, we ask for clarification as to what measures you take to make sure that the donors identified as donating via the ActBlue platform are who they claim. If individuals are inadvertently donating to political campaigns, are misled into making repeat donations, or are having donations made in their name that they do not wish to make, that could violate election-related disclosures or state consumer fraud statutes. Our States’ citizens deserve to know that those facilitating election-related financing are following State and federal laws. Thus we appreciate the assurances that you will provide in answering our questions promptly before the upcoming elections in November.

  • To prevent voter fraud, many states require voter ID. But in California, Democrats enacted laws to outlaw it.

    On Monday, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill preventing local governments from requiring voters to present identification at the polls.

    Monday evening, X CEO Elon Musk posted in response to the legislation, “Wow, it is now illegal to require voter ID in California! They just made PREVENTING voter fraud against the law.”

    Snip.

    The new legislation is in a response to Huntington Beach residents passing a voter ID requirement in March. In April, California’s Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta and Democratic Secretary of State Shirley Weber sued the city to invalidate the law, claiming the legislation violated state voting protections.

    The bill was passed by the Democratic-controlled California Assembly and Senate earlier this year after members claimed voter ID laws disproportionately affect low-income, elderly and minority voters. The new bill goes into effect on January 1, 2025 when California will become one of 14 states that do not require voter ID for elections.

    Despite the bill being signed into law, Huntington Beach has yet to respond to the lawsuit. According to Newsweek, California’s Democratic lawmakers have introduced multiple bills to prevent conservative-leaning locations in the state such as Shasta County from adopting voter ID laws.

  • Here in Texas, a federal judge wants Democrats to be able to “harvest” ballots.

    Six progressive organizations were victorious in their lawsuit challenging a state law that prohibits paid ballot harvesting, with San Antonio-based federal Judge Xavier Rodriguez issuing a ruling on Saturday that declared the law unconstitutional and enjoined state officials from enforcing it.

    La Union Del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) was the lead plaintiff, along with the League of Women Voters of Texas, Texas American Federation of Teachers, the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and OCA-Greater Houston.

    The law in question, which was passed within Senate Bill (SB) 1 during the Texas Legislature’s first special session in 2021, creates an offense for “vote harvesting services.”

    Specifically, the law bans “in-person interaction with one or more voters, in the physical presence of an official ballot or a ballot voted by mail, intended to deliver votes for a specific candidate or measure” and only if it’s done for compensation or benefit.

    Volunteers are not prohibited.

    According to the plaintiffs that include LUPE, their paid canvassers are often invited into voters’ homes and asked for assistance with their mail-in ballots.

    LUPE staff members and volunteers have been asked for assistance with voting by mail and in-person at the polls by elderly and disabled voters, and have provided such assistance, the lawsuit says, adding, “LUPE often provides its volunteers with t-shirts or gas cards, particularly because there is little public transportation in the Rio Grande Valley.”

    According to the judge, confusion about the law’s applicability was not addressed by state officials in charge of enforcing it, such as whether the gas card or other items may qualify as compensation that makes ballot harvesting a crime, and he agreed with their position that the law chilled their First Amendment rights.

    In his holding, Rodriguez declared the canvassing restrictions in Texas Election Code Sec. 276.015 unconstitutional under the First and 14th Amendments, and ordered the state’s Office of the Attorney General and the Secretary of State not to investigate violations of the law and local prosecutors not to enforce it.

    State Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), who authored the legislation, reacted to the news on social media, arguing why the law is needed and adding that Rodriguez’s decision will be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

    “I’m glad the Fifth Circuit will be reviewing,” Hughes wrote.

    “I included this in SB1 to protect vulnerable voters — the elderly, first-time voters, voters with limited English proficiency. These are the voters most often preyed upon by vote harvesters and paid political operatives,” he explained.

    Note that politiqueras ballot-harvesting fraud has been a continuing concern in south Texas, something the law was meant to address.

  • In Georgia, democrats are trying to overturn a newly enacted rule requiring hand-counting of ballots. At least Republicans in Georgia are trying to do something after all the 2020 election shenanigans.
  • The Heritage Foundation has a voting fraud tracker. The page for Pennsylvania shows nine voting fraud incidents since 2020, two of which were for “Altering The Vote Count.”
  • Finally, remember that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued several search warrants for election fraud back in August.
  • This is just a sampler of how Democrats intend to commit voting fraud between now and election day. If you know of any others, feel free to share them in the comments.

    I’m sure they next month will provide many more examples…

    LinkSwarm For July 26, 2024

    Friday, July 26th, 2024

    More dirt comes out about the (intentionally?) shoddy security at Trump’s Butler rally, Netanyahu addresses congress, China bribes some Democrats, Israel hits the Houthis, Redbox users are screwed, and Sanrio upends the world with a shocking revelation. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Security at Trump’s Bitler rally was even worse than we thought.

    More whistleblowers are coming forward with damning allegations about the law-enforcement failures surrounding the failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.

    Whistleblowers with “direct knowledge” of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) handling of the Trump rally in Butler, Pa., last weekend came forward to Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) alleging that the rally was a “loose” security event featuring personnel drawn from a different wing of DHS who were not trained for such an event.

    “Whistleblowers who have direct knowledge of the event have approached my office. According to the allegations, the July 13 rally was considered to be a ‘loose’ security event. For example, detection canines were not used to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner. Individuals without proper designations were able to gain access to backstage areas. Department personnel did not appropriately police the security buffer around the podium and were also not stationed at regular intervals around the event’s security perimeter,” Hawley wrote in a letter sent Friday to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

    “In addition, whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations.”

  • After disastrously failing at her one job, Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle resigns.

    Embattled Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after her refusal to answer basic questions in front of a congressional committee drew bipartisan calls for her resignation.

    Cheatle stepped down ten days after the assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump, one of the most significant law-enforcement failures in American history, and the defining moment of her law-enforcement career.

    Snip.

    At a hearing with the House Oversight Committee Monday, Cheatle brought Republicans and Democrats together in calling for her resignation. She repeatedly failed to answer basic questions about what went wrong at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa., instead deflecting to the Secret Service’s ongoing investigation and the FBI’s separate investigation.

    Cheatle admitted the assassination attempt was the Secret Service’s most consequential failure in decades, but did not disclose much information, despite being under subpoena.

    She did not have a specific timeline of what law enforcement did after the shooter was first discovered, failed to explain why agents were not deployed onto the rooftop the gunman equipped, declined to comment on specific personnel assignments for the Trump rally, did not elaborate on why the rooftop was outside of the Secret Service’s perimeter, would not commit to firing anyone involved with the Trump rally, and deflected each time Trump’s requests for enhanced security came up.

    She did tell lawmakers that she had not visited the crime scene, nine days after Trump was wounded when a bullet grazed his right ear. After the attack, Cheatle said she called Trump to apologize.

    The Secret Service will have an internal report on what went wrong at the Trump rally in 60 days, a timeline multiple lawmakers told Cheatle is unacceptable given the intensity of the presidential campaign and America’s political climate.

  • Cheatle also helped hide Biden’s cognitive decline.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Which party threatens Democracy? It’s not the Republicans.

    Never in modern presidential history has a political party staged a veritable inside coup to remove their current president from his ongoing candidacy for his party’s nomination and reelection.

    Stranger still, the very elites and grandees, who now are using every imaginable means of deposing Biden as their nominee, are the very public voices that just weeks ago insisted that candidate Biden was “sharp as a tack” and “fit as a fiddle.” And they damned any who thought otherwise!

    They are also the identical operators whose machinations ensured that there would not be an open Democratic primary. They demonized the few on the Left who weakly challenged Biden in the primaries. Yet now they will select a replacement candidate who likely never received a single primary vote.

    Note further: Biden’s impending forced abdication is not because he is non compos mentis.

    Rather, the inside move is due to Biden’s disastrous debate exposure that confirmed his dementia could no longer be disguised by a conspiracy of leftist politicos and media.

    But far more importantly, the impetus for removal is driven by the admission that the cognitively Biden is headed for a climactic November defeat.

    Were Biden now ahead in the polls by five points, these same backroom machinists would be insisting that he was still Pericles.

    Yet now Biden is being un-personed and Trotskyized, as we prepare the new groupthink narrative of his likely surrogate—a soon to be praised eloquent, mellifluous, and articulate Cicero-Harris.

    That Biden will likely remain as president until January 20, 2025, should remind the country the Left is more worried about its own next four-year continuance in power than the fate of the country that now admittedly will be guided in the next six months by a president judged unfit by his own supporters to run for the very office that he will still keep holding.

    Further irony arises when those who, as supposedly guardians of democratic norms, pontificated to the country the last nine years about the Trump-Hitlerian threat to democracy. Yet now they so cavalierly work overtime on how:

    a) to pull off the removal of their candidate from the November ballot on grounds of senility,
    b) but not the removal of the same president from office (their own fate is more precious than our collective fate as a nation),
    c) while trying to select, rather than elect, a replace candidate,
    d) without ever offering any explanation, much less an apology, how a Democrat president from January 20, 2021, was daily declared vibrant, dynamic, and engaged but suddenly one day after June 27, 2024, was remanufactured as not?

  • This is quite a spicy accusation about the Trump assassination attempt.

    In this report on cell phone location (presumably from publicly-sourced advertising data, which should terrify you), the Heritage Foundation claims one device that regularly visited the Crooks home was tracked to DC near an FBI office.

    Also strange was the fact that a device linked to the Crooks home had visited Butler twice in the week or so before the shooting (an hour and twenty minute drive).

    Another device repeatedly visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, although how that connects to the Trump shooting is unknown.

    Going back to last August, one device visited a local gun shop (again, not suspicious for an American to visit a gun shop unless this was the visit where the AR was purchased).

    If this proves to be true link between the FBI and Crooks, the implications here are pretty frightening…

  • While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing congress, the pro-Hamas Useful Idiot Brigade was busy vandalizing national monuments.

    Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of downtown D.C. carrying signs with messages like “arrest Netanyahu” and “end all U.S. aid to Israel.” Groups waving Palestinian flags, and chanting “Free, free Palestine,” marched toward the U.S. Capitol.

    Outside Union Station, protesters removed American flags and hoisted Palestinian ones in their place. The Columbus Memorial Fountain in the circle outside the station was defaced with the words, “Hamas Is Coming,” written in red paint. Other monuments, like the Freedom Bell and various statues, also suffered damage. FOX 5’s Stephanie Ramirez says law enforcement is preparing for more possible protests Thursday.

    U.S. Capitol Police officers deployed pepper spray after they said some protesters became “violent” and “failed to obey” orders to move back from the police line.

  • Netanyahu won’t bend an inch for terrorist apologists.

    Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had harsh words for anti-Israel protesters in his Wednesday address to a joint session of Congress, slamming the activists as “useful idiots” for Iran and other bad actors even as they congregated outside the Capitol.

    “Defeating our brutal enemies requires both courage and clarity,” he said. “Clarity begins by knowing the difference between good and evil. Yet, incredibly, many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers. They stand with people who come into the kibbutzim — into the home — with the parents and the children, the two babies in the secret attic, and murder the parents, find the secret latch to the attic, find the babies, and they murder them. These protesters stand with them. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

    Netanyahu referenced the claims from many anti-Israel protesters that Hamas terrorism constitutes legitimate resistance while Israel’s retaliatory war is out of bounds.

    “They refuse to make the simple distinction between those who target terrorists and those who target civilians — between the democratic state of Israel and the terrorist thugs of Hamas,” he told the chamber.

    The prime minister stressed in his speech that anti-Israel protesters are not just opposed to the existence of the Jewish state but are anti-American as well.

    “These protesters burn American flags even on the Fourth of July.”

  • Dispatches from The Land of “Duh”: “Study Reveals That Giving Americans $1,000 Per Month Has Negative Consequences.”

    According to the 3,000-participant, three-year study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, giving people $1,000 per month increased leisure time, as recipients spent less time on sleeping, child care, community engagement, caring for others, and self-improvement.

    The study also found that recipients’ income, not including the free money, reduced their incomes significantly, as “for every one dollar received, total household income excluding the transfers fell by at least 21 cents, and total individual income fell by at least 12 cents.”

    “The takeaway from the best study done so far about UBI in the United States is that handing out money isn’t the solution to all our problems,” Daniel Di Martino, a economics researcher and graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Center Square. “In fact, sometimes it makes things worse.”

    Or they could have read pages 150-152 of Charles Murray’s Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 for his summary of the results of the SIME/DIME experiments, which were similarly bleak.

  • After letting camps of drug-addicted transients overrun his state for years, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom decides that he can finally start clearing out those camps, now that he has the cover of a Supreme Court ruling.

    California governor Gavin Newsom directed state officials to remove homeless encampments across the Golden State on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled in June that local governments have a right to ban public camping and impose fines for violators.

    Newsom announced the guidance in an executive order, advising cities to crack down on encampments on public property while providing social services and housing alternatives. The order, first reported by the New York Times, represents a sharp departure from the accommodative homelessness policies adopted by progressive state governments over the last decade.

    Note that “providing social services” means that the Homeless Industrial Complex will still be able to rake off the graft…

  • Food for thought:

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • CBS said nearly half of Americans can’t afford healthcare, but for some reason didn’t mention ObamaCare.

    Americans spend more money on health care on a per capita basis than people in any other developed nation, yet almost half say they’ve struggled recently to pay for medical treatment or prescription drugs, according to a new study from Gallup and West Health.

    About 45% of those polled by the organizations said they’d recently had to skip treatment or medicine either because of cost or lack of easy access. Of those, about 8% said they also wouldn’t have access to affordable care if they required it today, a group that Gallup and West Health termed ‘cost desperate.’

    Snip.

    The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, became law back in 2010, and President Obama promised Americans that his legislation would “reduce the costs of health care” and that “families will save on premiums.” He said Americans could even keep their doctors and health plans – over and over again, in fact.

    Instead, here’s what Obamacare did, according to America First Policy Institute:

    • Premiums have increased by 80%.
    • From 2010 to 2023, the average premium for family coverage increased 80%, from just over $13,000 to nearly $24,000.
    • Total healthcare costs for a family of four now exceed $30,000 per year — increasing from $18,000 per year when Obamacare was passed.
    • Deductibles have increased over 50% since Obamacare was implemented in 2013.
  • Speaking of Obama, he officially endorsed Harris, which presumably puts a surprise Michelle Obama nomination at the convention off the table.
  • “US Subsidiary Of Chinese EV Manufacturer BYD Donated Hundreds Of Thousands To Democrats.” Because of course they did.

    Well you can add this to a list of reasons Democrats just can’t seem to stomach Elon Musk any more.

    The U.S. subsidiary of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD and its top executive, Stella Li, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and organizations over the past decade.

    A review of federal and state political spending records by the Daily Caller News Foundation reveals these contributions.

    They found that between 2020 and 2023, BYD and Stella Li contributed over $40,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

    Additionally, they have invested more than $30,000 into organizations supporting President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.

    BYD, the world’s largest EV producer, was recently banned by Congress from selling batteries to the Pentagon due to security concerns, according to Bloomberg News.

    The report says that between 2018 and 2023, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom received about $60,000 from Li and BYD USA. Newsom faced criticism for awarding BYD a $1 billion no-bid contract for protective equipment during the pandemic and later test-drove a BYD vehicle in China in 2023.

    Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa received over $10,000 from Li for his unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, while the California Democratic Party got about $19,000 from Li and BYD USA between 2018 and 2020.

    In 2015 and 2016, BYD USA and its executives donated over $11,000 to Michael Antonovich, former Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who often supported BYD-friendly initiatives.

    Additionally, BYD USA contributed $25,000 in 2018 to Californians For Safe, Reliable Infrastructure, a group opposing Proposition 6, which aimed to repeal a gas tax.

    In 2017 and 2018, BYD USA and Stella Li donated over $19,000 to Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de Leon. De Leon, then President pro Tempore of the California Senate, praised BYD at a 2017 ribbon-cutting for its Lancaster manufacturing facility, emphasizing the company’s role in job creation.

  • “Why the Democrats can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together.”

    There’s an old saying in politics that “personnel is policy” which refers to a lot more than just having someone competent in the job. It’s a reflection that politics is about coalitions – building them and maintaining them. The coalition members get their cut of the government largess, and pay for it with loyalty to the guy at the top. If they’re not loyal, he gives them their pick slip and they lose the largess.

    This was actually Trump’s biggest mistake when he was president, not filling the Federal Government with his coalition. In his defense, he was in the middle of a Republican civil war, where there were multiple factions and multiple coalitions.

    That’s exactly what the Democrats face now, and why they can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together. Because there are multiple coalitions, whoever emerges on top won’t know if he (she?) can trust these coalitions because they aren’t his coalitions. They might be able to be integrated into his coalition, given time, but time is exactly what the Democrats do not have right now.

    It takes time to forge a governing coalition – just look at any parliamentary system: when the government is stable it is because the governing coalition is solid. Ministers can issue policy with a reasonable expectation that it will be supported and carried out by the coalition members. When the governing coalition is unstable, chaos results. Orders get ignored or slow walked or subverted because the Minister no longer has the loyalty of the coalition members.

    Eventually a leader emerges who can attract key talent from outside coalitions and integrate it into his. This will involve rewards like positions in the bureaucracy or some such – featherbedding is the name of this game. But until this all gets sorted out and the new coalition is filled with people who think they’re better off with the new leader than without, nothing is going anywhere.

    Even worse, there will always be serious back stabbing between different coalitions. Trust is not a virtue most politicians hew to, and quite frankly until they are in a position to remove perks as well as give them, they would be a fool to trust just about anybody.

    Some day a leader will emerge to stitch together the various coalitions that make up the Democratic party. It won’t happen in the next 100 days, sure as God made little green apples.

    The biggest implication of this is that it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to “fortify” the upcoming election via 2020-style shenanigans. Sure, the party bosses will want to, but how much do they trust the other coalitions to support them? Would other coalitions even go so far as to rat them out (with plausible deniability, of course) – leading to various party elders behind bars. That certainly would make it easier for other party elders to construct a winning coalition once they’ve taken out some of the competition.

  • Althouse: “Joe Biden seems bereft of the ordinary tools of human interchange.”
  • “Visibly Angry Kamala Harris Lashes Out At Israel After Netanyahu Meeting.” Of course she did. How dare Israel defend itself when she needs to suck up to all those pro-Hamas voters Democrats insisted on importing to Michigan?
  • Dispatches from the Biden Recession: Commercial real estate bond default rates hit “8.7% in 2024, nearly three times higher than two years ago.”
  • More shenanigans in Democrat-controlled Fulton County, Georgia: Nearly all of Fulton County Housing Authority board resigns over “accusations of money mismanagement, sexual harassment, and other issues.”
  • “Judge Rules for Musk’s SpaceX in Lawsuit Against National Labor Relations Board.” “Members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and administrative law judges (ALJ) employed by the board, are likely unconstitutionally protected from removal by the president, according to U.S. District Judge Alan Albright.”
  • Israel hits the Houthis. Looks like Israel is kicking just about all Iran’s catspaws in the nuts…
  • Ukrainian drones hit Tuapse oil refinery and Morozovsk air base.
  • They also hit Millerovo air base.
  • Some 200 dead in Bangladesh over government attempts to impose a hiring quota system.
  • France’s rail network paralyzed by coordinated arson attacks just as the Olympics begin.
  • Instagram Censors Team USA Rifle Shooter Ahead Of Paris Paralympics.”
  • Pro-Hamas organizer runs Jewish Voice for Peace Twitter account.
  • “Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and local law enforcement officers arrested 50 Houston-area residents Wednesday in relation to a fraudulent bail bond scheme that allowed suspects accused of violent crimes to remain on the streets of the city. The arrests reignited criticism of Harris County’s criminal justice practices and prompted calls for closer scrutiny of bail bond providers.”

    According to an indictment filed with the federal court, beginning in 2021 defendants working for or with AABLE Bonds of Houston created or co-signed fraudulent bond agreements that allowed non-qualifying suspects to obtain pre-trial release.

    “An integral part of the criminal justice system, as old as the system itself, is the bail bond – a device that allows defendants temporary release while awaiting trial by guaranteeing future court appearances,” said U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani in a statement. “Honesty in the underwriting of those bail bonds is essential to ensuring compliance and protecting the community. However, this indictment alleges employees of AABLE Bonds and many others conspired to violate that trust.”

    In addition to the 50 arrested, officials are seeking three fugitives: Tawana Jones, 44, Pamela Yoder, 60, and Amir Khan, 60.

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office stated that co-conspirators allegedly emailed or submitted falsified co-signer financial reports via electronic communications. The office noted that the government and insurance agencies rely on these financial reports to enter into third-party agreements known as surety bonds.

    Most of the 53 co-conspirators are charged in connection to alleged conspiracy to commit wire fraud, while AABLE Bonds CEO Sheba Muharib is charged with affecting persons engaged in the business of insurance.

    The 11 named criminal defendants who obtained release under the allegedly fraudulent enterprise include Curtis Holliday, who has pleaded guilty to killing his wife and stuffing her body in a freezer. Another is the man who shot to death 17-year-old David Castro as the teen rode in a car with his family after an Astros baseball game in 2021.

    David’s father Paul Castro noted on social media that Muharib had bonded out his son’s killer on a discount bond, but he also pointed to the role played by Harris County Justice of the Peace Angela Rodriguez.

    “Remember that Judge Angela Rodriguez voted to renew Muharib’s bond license after Muharib showed herself to be a danger to our community,” wrote Castro.

    Muharib has been the focus of investigations for several years. Her brother Wisam Muharib provided bail to a murder suspect who was later charged in the murder of Harris County Constable Deputy Omar Ursin.

    Andy Kahan, Victim’s Advocate for Crime Stoppers of Houston, emphasized during a press conference Thursday that there were victims impacted by the fraudulent releases of suspects.

    During the press event, resident April Aguirre said that after the man charged in the shooting death of her nine-year-old niece Arlene Alvarez was released on a bond by AABLE Bonds, her family became suspicious of some local bail bond companies.

    Aguirre, Castro, and others worked with elected officials to change Harris County’s rules in 2022 to require that suspects charged with violent offenses pay at least 10 percent themselves to ensure release from jail, but during a press conference with Crime Stoppers of Houston, she said they suspected fraud was continuing.

    “Murderers were still getting out on discounted bonds,” said Aguirre. “So, we started making complaints to the bail bond board and to our federal partners asking for help. We didn’t know what we were dealing with, and we could never have imagined how large this is.”

    “But I can say one thing, we need to stop making money off dead children and we need to stop making money off of homicide victims. This should not be a lucrative business, it’s sick.”

    Mario Garza, President of the Professional Bondsman of Harris County, said that there were bondsmen who followed the rules and helped support the criminal justice system but lamented that what was supposed to be a partnership between bondsmen and elected judges had broken down.

    “Judges used to take that discretion seriously,” said Garza. “What we have is what’s morphed out a soft-on-crime criminal justice system that’s allowed a company like this to do what they’ve done.”

    Kahan expressed concern that bail bond companies elsewhere may be operating similar schemes.

  • Cann’s files for Chapter 11 and will be closing 9 Texas stores, including one in Austin. When I was getting ready to move into my house in 2004, they were one of the stores I thought about buying appliances from, but people told me they hated dealing with Conn’s, so I ended up buying them from Lowes.
  • “Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting ‘All men are created equal.'”
  • Unclear on the concept: “California judge says school was justified in punishing 7-year-old who said all lives matter because ‘she’s too young to have First Amendment rights.'”

  • Southwest Airlines avoided the CrowdStrike outage because it runs Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.

  • Intel says it’s software, not hardware that is causing its latest generation of chips to fail. “Our analysis of returned processors confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor.” OK, microcode is embedded in the heart of the chip, but can be updated, which means that it doesn’t require expensive mask fixes.
  • The CDC is trying to keep people from importing dogs into the U.S.. This is going to impair the efforts of many dog rescue groups. A bipartisan group of senators is opposing. “The unprecedented requirements included in the final rule, such as the six-month minimum age requirement for dogs to enter the United States and the need for a microchip before a rabies vaccination and additional documentation and certification would create significant barriers to low-risk entry from Canada into the United States and have a disproportionate effect on border communities in our states.”
  • Everyone who “purchased” a movie from Redbox is now screwed because now that Redbox is bankrupt it turns out they’ve got nada.
  • If I’m reading between the lines here, Social Justice Warriors seized control of the Romance Writers of America, blew it up when they got caught, and left the organization $3 million in debt.
  • “Judge Refuses To Dismiss Trump Defamation Lawsuit Against ABC, Stephanopoulos. On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a motion by ABC News and George Stephanopoulos to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed against them by former President Donald Trump.”
  • Gina Carano’s lawsuit against Disney moves forward.
  • Hello Kitty is not a cat and doesn’t live in Japan.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • It begins.
  • If you have a spare $40,000 lying around, you can bid on the Necronomicon from Evil Dead II.
  • “Secret Service Director Resigns In Disgrace For Failing To Assassinate Trump.”
  • America Just Kinda Curious If President Alive.”
  • “Aides Struggling To Figure Out How To Break The News To Biden That He Dropped Out.”
  • Party Cheating In Primary Election Promises They Will Definitely Not Cheat In General Election.”
  • “Entire Microsoft Network Goes Down After Greg Removes USB Device Without Clicking ‘Eject’ First.
  • No one expects…spinning Ninja dog!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Mayorkas-Linked NGO Tells Illegals To Vote For Biden

    Wednesday, April 17th, 2024

    Conservative have been asserting for years that Biden’s illegal alien invasion is to create new Democratic voters. Now there’s more proof.

    The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project posted an image on X of what they say is a flyer from a non-governmental organization operating in Mexico encouraging migrants to vote for President Biden once they arrive in the United States.

    “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open,” part of the flyer read.

    The Oversight Project said the flyer was initially discovered by a Muckraker journalist while touring the site of Resource Center Matamoras in Mexico.

    “They [flyers] also appear to be handed out when illegal aliens use the RCM for assistance in coming to the USA,” the group said.

    RCM founder Gaby Zavala told one of Muckraker’s journalists that she is trying to flood the US with as many illegal aliens as possible before former President Trump is reelected.

    “RCM bills itself as an operation which houses functions for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which helps illegal aliens enter the United States,” Oversight Project said, adding that disgraced Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “is a former board member of HIAS, which received numerous grants from Soros’ Open Society Foundation over the years.”

    Soros! What are the odds?

    Given the lousy economy of the Biden Recession, Democrats know they can’t win this election without cheating, so they’re going all out on that front, and amnestying illegal aliens is a key part of their strategy, no matter how many black and Hispanic American voters it alienates in the process.

    China’s Chip Industry Is Doomed

    Monday, September 19th, 2022

    This is a story that’s been bubbling on for a while, but it looks like the U.S. government is about to slam down export restrictions on chipmaking equipment.

    The administration of US President Joe Biden next month is to broaden curbs on US exports to China of semiconductors used for artificial intelligence and chipmaking tools, several people familiar with the matter said.

    The US Department of Commerce intends to publish new regulations based on restrictions communicated in letters earlier this year to three US companies — KLA Corp, Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

    Every wafer fabrication plant in the world uses equipment from one of those three companies. Applied Materials and LAM Research (along with Tokyo Electron) have their fingers in almost all areas of chipmaking equipment (PVD, CVD, Etch, etc.), while KLA (formerly KLA-Tencor) dominates the wafer inspection equipment segment. Add ASML in the Netherlands, and those five absolutely dominate the semiconductor equipment market.

    The letters, which the companies publicly acknowledged, forbade them from exporting chipmaking equipment to Chinese factories that produce advanced semiconductors with sub-14 nanometer processes unless the sellers obtain commerce department licenses.

    This is where things get tricky. SMIC claims they can do 7nm, but everyone outside China doubts they can do it reliably, repeatably and profitably. SMIC announced they’re about to start manufacturing 14nm, and that they can probably do. Practically, they’re the only semiconductor manufacturer in China that can do sub-14nm, as just about everyone at the top of the next biggest semiconductor manufacturer, Tsinghua Unigroup, just got arrested in July.

    There’s even talk that they’re actually zeroing in on FinFET technology specifically, though they may also ban sales of older chipmaking equipment as well.

    Without a continued stream of machines, spare parts and technical know-how from those five semiconductor giants, China’s semiconductor industry is doomed. China’s domestic semiconductor equipment industry is essentially garbage, and they’re so far behind in so many areas that they can’t even steal their way to parity. The knowledge gulf is just too vast.

    Min-Hua Chiang at the Heritage Foundation notes just how badly China’s domestic semiconductor industry is screwed.

    According to World Trade Organization statistics, China’s trade deficit in integrated circuits and electronic components (including Hong Kong’s trade deficit) has almost doubled from the equivalent of $135 billion in 2010 to $240 billion in 2020.

    The growing trade deficit in integrated circuits reveals one crucial fact: Achieving technological self-reliance is still a faraway Chinese dream. To keep its exports growing, China has no other way but to keep importing advanced chips to assemble into consumer goods with high-tech intensity (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and the like).

    Although China (including Hong Kong) is also the largest exporter of semiconductor chips in the world, less than 7% of chips produced in China were made by Chinese semiconductor companies in 2021.

    More than 90% of chips produced in China are made by foreign firms. In other words, China’s exports of semiconductor chips are overwhelmingly dominated by foreign companies.

    Its inferior level of technology is the main reason for China’s chip reliance on foreign firms. While Chinese firms are stuck with advancing toward 7nm chips, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung are progressing towards mass production of 3nm chips this year. Intel plans to take over TSMC’s leading role in semiconductor technology by 2025.

    The competition among a few tech giants in the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea is clear, and the Chinese firms are not likely to jump into the global technology competition in the semiconductor industry anytime soon.

    The U.S. restrictions on exporting chipmaking equipment to China’s largest semiconductor firm, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., have not only deterred China’s technological advancement, but also exposed the fundamental mismanagement problems inside China’s semiconductor industry.

    Xi might not have noticed his industry’s poor performance had China been able to continue to produce chips with foreign equipment.

    Some parts about the Tsinghua scandal snipped.

    Several Taiwanese executives leaving China’s semiconductor industry last year is another major setback in the development of China’s semiconductor industry.

    China not only spent tremendously on building chip plants and purchasing expansive equipment, but also on recruiting talent from overseas. Over the past few years, China recruited more than 3,000 skilled workers from Taiwan to work in China’s semiconductor industry.

    China amassed enormous capital, talent, and foreign equipment, but the problem is with governance. Xi’s absolute authority encouraged a rush into China’s semiconductor industry. Moreover, the extraordinary integration of the public and private sectors in China has twisted industrial development toward short-term profit-making, instead of long-term accumulation of manufacturing strength and technological improvement.

    Xi’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy has further overshadowed the outlook of its semiconductor industry. China’s success relies on close partnerships with various suppliers and customers in different countries across the globe. Alienating them on the geopolitical front only undermines those relationships.

    The U.S. ban on exporting chipmaking machines to China was the straw that broke the Chinese semiconductor industry’s back.

    On top of that, the CHIPS and Science Act just signed into law bans semiconductor companies receiving U.S. government subsidies from investing in China for the next 10 years. There are major loopholes in that prohibition, but if Congress can manage to keep the administration’s feet to the fire—including by tightening the legal restrictions—it could have a major impact on China’s tech development.

    In addition, the U.S. has extended the export restriction to 14 nm chipmaking machines to the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. and other foreign chipmakers in China. A specific electronics design automation software for making advanced chips is also banned from exportation to China.

    Without foreign investment and inputs, China is only likely to deepen its reliance on importing advanced chips from overseas.

    Peter Zeihan notes (correctly) that China’s semiconductor industry has been singularly unable to fab advanced chips on their own.

    Not to mention that fraud still abounds. Chinese CPU semiconductor startup Quillion Technology closed up shop three months after raising $89 million.

    $89 million is probably enough to get you to tape-out for a fabless semiconductor house designing a smaller chip (or maybe even a low-power ARM-based CPUs for embedded markets), but it’s a woefully small sum for a real cutting-edge CPU company, and laughable if they intended to be an integrated design manufacturer fabbing their own chips, where building even a trailing edge fab starts in the billions.

    More on that topic:

    Takeaways:

  • “Money seems to have a strong corruptive power over CCP officials that they can’t resist. Like China’s real estate industry, China’s semiconductor industry is also plagued with corruption, over-construction, and highly leveraged capital maneuvers.”
  • She goes over the history of the Chinese “Big Fund” for semiconductors I covered here, and later talks about the indictments.
  • “The state-run Semiconductor Investment Fund was used more as an instrument to speculate in stocks than an institution for conducting basic R&D. The government-backed fund, aka the “Big Fund,” has investments in 2,793 entities within three layers of ownership.” Very few of them have the word “semiconductor” in their names. (Like I said before, shell games all the way down.)
  • From 1984 to 1990, the Ministry of Electronics Industry delegated the management of the vast majority of state-owned electronics enterprises to local provincial and municipal governments. While these state-owned enterprises (SOEs) obtained more autonomy, something strange happened. These companies imported outdated integrated circuit production lines that had no commercial value. The wasteful projects cost money, but people used the opportunities to take foreign trips, receive kickbacks, and send their children abroad. And this happened on a large scale.

    Pretty much classic ChiCom behavior.

  • China’s high-tech industry, like its financial industry, is dominated by powerful CCP families, and the Jiang Zemin family is one of them. In 1999, Jiang Zemin gave his oldest son, Jiang Mianheng, the reins of China’s “autonomous chip development.” As vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and president of the Shanghai branch for many years, the junior Jiang has long held the turf of China’s science and technology sector. He is also personally involved in the semiconductor business. His Shanghai Lianhe investment has holdings of Shanghai Zhaoxin Semiconductor Company.

  • Classic story:

    Chen Jin, a former junior test engineer at Motorola, joined Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2001 after returning to China.
    He was given the responsibility to develop the “Hanxin” chip, an important part of the state-run high-tech development program known as the “863 Program.” In just three years, Chen obtained 100 million in R&D funding and applied for 12 national patents. On Feb. 26, 2003, Chen’s team officially released the “Hanxin 1” chip. The Shanghai Municipal Government, the Ministry of Information Industry, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences all backed his work. The expert panel declared the “Hanxin 1” and its related design and application development platform as being the first of its kind in China and achieving an important milestone in the history of China’s chip development. Subsequently, Hanxin 2, 3, 4 and 5 chips were launched, all of which were claimed to have reached an advanced level globally. The Hanxin series of chips even entered the General Equipment Procurement Department of the Chinese military. However, 3 years later, on Jan. 17, 2006, “Hanxin 1” was revealed to be completely fake. Chen downloaded a Motorola chip source code through a former Motorola colleague. Then he secretly bought a batch of Motorola dsp56800 series chips, paid a peasant to scrape the original Motorola logo with sandpaper, and asked a local Shanghai print shop to print the “Hanxin” logo on it.

  • China correctly identified semiconductors and semiconductor equipment as key technologies for truly becoming the world’s preeminent technological manufacturing giant. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us), the CCP’s endemic culture of corruption and their top-down command economy are antithetical to the onrush of capitalist technological innovation that powers Moore’s Law.

    DeMint Out at Heritage Foundation

    Wednesday, May 3rd, 2017

    We now have confirmation of the rumors that were flying all weekend: Jim DeMint is out as head of the Heritage Foundation:

    The Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees, by a unanimous vote, has asked for and received the resignation of Jim DeMint as president and CEO of the organization. The Board elected Heritage Founder Ed Feulner as president and CEO while we conduct a thorough search for his successor.

    After a comprehensive and independent review of the entire Heritage organization, the Board determined there were significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation. While the organization has seen many successes, Jim DeMint and a handful of his closest advisers failed to resolve these problems.

    This was a difficult and necessary decision for the Board to take. As trustees, we have governance and oversight responsibilities for this organization and our 500,000 members. We were compelled to take action.

    Founder Ed Feulner will be reclaiming his old job, thought at 75 it remains to be seen how much gas he has left in the tank.

    Many believe that DeMint was ousted for reasons of organization and approach rather than ideology:

    DeMint isn’t being forced out because of his politics. The firebrand will be extinguished because of complaints about his leadership, several sources confirmed to the Washington Examiner.

    When DeMint left Congress for Heritage in 2013, it seems that he never left the Senate behind. “The reason why the board got upset with him was his mismanagement,” a source with knowledge of the situation explained. “DeMint and his people just tried running the place like a Senate office rather than a think tank. It didn’t work.”

    While few fault the South Carolina conservative for mixing it up with Capitol Hill, his critics complain that the former senator didn’t secure a proper policy footing before throwing political punches. That supposed disconnect manifested itself in the apparent disconnect between Heritage and Heritage Action, the organization’s 501(c)4 lobbying arm.

    “The board just wants Action to keep doing its job,” the source explained. “But that means they need to be backed up by the think tank side of things.”

    Ahead of a massive grassroots army, Heritage Action can easily blow up legislation they find ideologically unacceptable. But after the dust settles, those conservative politicos complain that their corresponding wonks haven’t equipped them with a policy substitute to offer lawmakers.

    Others pinned DeMint’s ouster on Mike Needham, CEO of Heritage Action for America, the organization’s political arm, and DeMint’s apparent coziness to the Trump administration. That Atlantic piece says Needham wanted to take over from DeMint. This Washington Examiner piece says no, he was just trying to restore Heritage, having seen it go off the rails. It also paints Heritage as an organization in (cue Scott Adams persuasion word) chaos:

    Just as Capitol Hill prepares to tackle healthcare reform, the biggest conservative voice in politics is choking on itself. Already DeMint’s influence seemed like it was waning. The Policy Services and Outreach Department (which DeMint founded and which regularly competed with Heritage Action for influence) curiously stood up congressional staffers for a meeting and inexplicably deleted its Twitter account.

    Finally, here DeMint defends his tenure. It’s a bit pro forma.

    This is all a shame, and a rather surprising outcome given that DeMint stepped down from the Senate to take the reigns at Heritage.

    Heritage was a real powerhouse in the 1980s, providing much of the intellectual underpinning of the Reagan revolution. Their various Mandate for Leadership documents provided blueprints for much of Reagan’s reforms.

    I rejoined Heritage as a supporter when DeMint in hopes that he could wake a sleeping giant. But I let my membership lapse because I never saw notable signs of action out here beyond the beltway.

    Hopefully whoever takes over Heritage next can restore it to some of its former glory.

    LinkSwarm for July 19, 2013

    Friday, July 19th, 2013

    Detroit went bankrupt. One stranger was acquitted for shooting another stranger. Which do you think the media spent more time covering?

  • “Progressive politicians, wonks, and activists can only blame big corporations and other liberal bogeymen for so long. The truth is that corrupt machine politics in a one-party system devoted to the blue social model wrecked an entire city and thousands of lives beyond repair. The sooner blues come to terms with this reality, the greater chance other cities will have of avoiding Detroit’s fate.”
  • The IRS scandal now leads to the chief counsel, one of only two Obama appointees at the agency.
  • The Democratic Party is a machine for inciting grievances in order to consolidate its power.”
  • The Wall Street Journal makes the case for dismantling ObamaCare piece by piece.
  • Republican Insiders are very, very upset that Jim DeMint is exposing them for the RINOs they are.
  • My precious snowflake is extremely gifted. He’s also 29 and unemployed because so many jobs are unworthy of his Promethean talents. Matt Walsh: SMACKDOWN.
  • The Democratic Party is a machine for inciting grievances in order to consolidate its power.”
  • Charles Barkley on the Zimmerman trial: “Just looking at the evidence I agreed with the verdict.”
  • A few facts about Marissa Alexander that may not be apparent from a two panel picture comparison with George Zimmerman.
  • “Reason for termination: Disabled veteran.”
  • “Negative perceptions of young black men are rooted in hard data on who commits crimes.”
  • Near empty New York hospital losing $3 million a week. Naturally, unions are demanding it stay open. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Charles Murray on American exceptionalism.
  • Marco Rubio was riding high. Then he became a shill for amnesty, and now his life is all sad trombones. I haven’t seen a serious national political aspirant fall so far since Gary Hart went boating.
  • Today’s serial Democratic Party groper who felt-up at least six women and who the state party forced their members to cover up for comes to you from California.
  • DeMint Leaves Senate to Head Heritage Foundation

    Thursday, December 6th, 2012

    Sen. Jim DeMint has announced that he’s stepping down from the Senate to head the Heritage Foundation. DeMint’s official statement is here.

    It’s big news when a Senator steps down to head a think tank, especially the granddaddy of all conservative think tanks, where founder Ed Feulner is stepping down at age 71.

    It will be tough to lose DeMint from the Senate, where he’s done so much to further the cause of limited government and recruited stalwart conservatives like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul to join him. But hopefully he can awaken a sleeping giant at Heritage, an enormously important institution before and during the Reagan Revolution, but almost invisible in the Internet era.

    Erick Erickson likes the move. “Jim DeMint’s power in the conservative movement just grew exponentially. A man who was going to retire in four years anyway, will now be leading the conservative movement from its base of operations for years to come.”

    Edited to Add: Ted Cruz joins the chorus of congratulations.