Posts Tagged ‘Open Society Foundations’

Suspect In Six Murders Out On Bail Thanks To Soros-Backed Group

Thursday, December 7th, 2023

When news dropped about the six-body Austin-San Antonio murder spree, I thought “Should I do a post on that?”, but didn’t see any political angle. But now one has come to light: The accused spree killer was previously out on bail thanks to yet another George Soros-funded “criminal reform” group.

The 34-year-old male accused of capital murder in the deaths of six people in Travis and Bexar counties on December 5 was previously released on a bond paid by an interest group that favors more lax bond policies, reported San Antonio media outlet KSAT.

The outlet reported that it acquired court documents from Bexar County indicating that the Texas Organizing Project bailed Shane James out of jail in 2022 after he was arrested on misdemeanor family violence charges.

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar told the public during a news conference on Wednesday afternoon that the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office is working to create the “best case possible before we go to the magistrate” to make sure Shane is not released on bond again.

Salazar provided a timeline of events beginning with James’ arrest in January 2022 on misdemeanor family violence charges. The sheriff explained that James was released from jail on March 7, 2022 and cut off his ankle monitor. Salazar noted that cutting off one’s ankle monitor was not a criminal offense at the time.

Texas lawmakers enacted a law earlier this year making it a felony to cut off an ankle monitor.

Salazar described an encounter with James via a mental health call in which they discovered that he had active warrants on the misdemeanor charges due to removing his ankle monitor. However, the sheriff explained that their options were limited due to the fact that police can take fewer actions on misdemeanor warrants as opposed to felonies.

Want to guess who helped fund the Texas Organizing Project?

A nonprofit bankrolled by liberal billionaire George Soros provided over $1.2 million to the left-wing group that previously bailed out the individual charged with killing several people in Texas, including his parents.

Shane James, 34, is accused of killing six people and injuring others in Bexar County and Austin. James served as a U.S. Army Infantry officer from February 2013 to August 2015 and has been charged with several counts of capital murder.

In January 2022, James was charged with aggravated assault against his mother, father and sister, Fox San Antonio reported. Bail records showed he was bonded out by the Texas Organizing Project, a nonprofit focused on progressive issues that helped elect Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales and county Sheriff Javier Salazar.

Meanwhile, the Texas Organizing Project received hefty donations from Soros’ nonprofit before bailing out James.

“The Texas Organizing Project, like its major donor, Mr. Soros, thinks that our justice system is an arbitrary social construct that can be torn down and reshaped however they see fit with no consequences,” the Capital Research Center’s Parker Thayer told Fox News Digital. “There are always consequences, and this time, six people lost their lives because a billionaire wanted to feel morally superior by funding activists with too many college degrees and not enough common sense.”

The Open Society Policy Center, the advocacy nonprofit in the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations network, provided $700,000 to the Texas Organizing Project in 2019 for organizational support.

Later, in 2021, the policy center gave the group $565,000 to “support policy advocacy on democracy reform and government accountability in Texas,” according to its grant database.

Soros’ cash accounted for a sizable chunk of the group’s reported money in both of those years. According to the Texas Organizing Project’s tax forms, the group pulled in $2.3 million in donations in 2019, meaning the $700,000 from the Soros nonprofit accounted for roughly 30% of its cash that year. And in 2021, the Texas Organizing Project received $2.4 million, with the Soros contribution making up nearly a quarter of its contributions.

You may remember Texas Organizing Project because they were one of the Democratic-interest groups that Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo was funneling money to.

More on Shane James:

James was arrested in January 2022 for three misdemeanor assault charges. The victims were believed to be his parents and a sibling.

“The family said he doesn’t belong in jail; he has mental health issues,” said Sheriff Salazar.

According to Sheriff Salazar and Bexar County booking records, James was bonded out by the Texas Organizing Project on March 7, 2022.

On March 8, 2022, he cut off his ankle monitor.

The last altercation he had with law enforcement was in August 2023 when deputies received a call for a mental health episode at a home on Port Royal in San Antonio where it’s believed James lived with his parents.

It’s the same home where two people were found dead Tuesday night, “tentatively identified” as James’ parents, Phyllis James and Shane Matthew James, Sr.

When Soros prosecutors undercharge and let criminals and lunatics (James appears to be both) walk the streets, innocent citizens are the ones who bear the brunt of their misguided “reform.” In part thanks to Soros money, six people are dead because a psychopath was bailed out rather than kept in custody.

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Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 7 Comments »

George Soros Just Dropped Half A Million Dollars To Oppose Hiring More Police In Austin

Saturday, October 2nd, 2021

George Soros, the man whose money helped install radical leftist Jose Garza in the Travis County DA’s office, is so displeased with the push to put more police back on the streets of Austin that he’s dumped half a million dollars into the fight against proposition A.

The billionaire benefactor of progressive causes across the country, George Soros, has waded into the political fight over Austin’s police staffing — pumping a half-million dollars into a campaign to defeat Proposition A.

Among other reforms, Proposition A would establish a minimum staffing level for the Austin Police Department (APD) of 2 officers per 1,000. Earlier this summer, APD was floating around 1.2 officers per 1,000 residents. From current staffing levels, it’d require the hiring of roughly 500 officers.

APD is suffering not only from a dearth in approved positions compared with its staffing level two years ago, but also from rampant attrition within its ranks, averaging 15 to 20 departures per month this year.

According to the Austin American-Statesman’s Ryan Autullo, the Open Society Policy Center, one of Soros’ advocacy arms, gave $500,000 to Equity Austin which opposes Proposition A.

The proposition is on the November ballot for Austin voters and is openly opposed by Mayor Steve Adler, Councilmember Greg Casar, and the city’s numerous progressive activist groups who each pushed for the $150 million APD budget cut and redirection last year.

Here’s the filing document showing the filing. And they’re not the only ones opposing Proposition A:

As I’ve written before, the hard left opposes adequate funding for policing because it’s much harder for them to rake off money from policing than various “Social Justice” initiatives for which their bureaucratic functionaries control checkbooks. And because they view police officers (probably correctly) as competing institutions of legal force and legitimacy that stand in the way of complete overthrow of capitalism and the current American constitutional order and its replacement with the neo-Marxist/Social Justice/Critical Race Theory “successor ideology.” To them, soaring Austin crime rates are a sign of their success.

All the more reason for ordinary Austinites to show up and vote in droves for Proposition A.

(Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)

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Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 4 Comments »

Have Texas Troopers Secured The Border at Del Rio?

Tuesday, September 21st, 2021

It appears that Texas DPS Troopers have, for the time being, done what the Biden Administration seems actively hostile to doing: secure the border at the Del Rio crossing.

State troopers deployed to the border by Gov. Greg Abbott are being credited for doing the federal government’s job and stopping thousands more migrants in Mexico from illegally crossing into the United States after well over 15,000 made it through here late last week.

A swarm of Texas Department of Public Safety officers, known as troopers, descended on the riverbank Saturday afternoon as a show of force to deter people in Mexico from wading across the Rio Grande. Approximately 150 black SUVs were still lined up Sunday afternoon on the dirt road that runs parallel with the river.

Their arrival on the scene Saturday had an immediate impact, stopping foot traffic from primarily Haitian migrants who had been going back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico.

“With our DPS troopers, there have not been any crossings from that specific area,” Lt. Chris Olivarez, spokesman for the department’s South Texas Region, said in an interview on Sunday.

The impact DPS’s arrival has had on Border Patrol agents has been significant. Despite it being the responsibility of Customs and Border Protection to patrol the nation’s borders, virtually all agents have been pulled from the field to transport migrants to and from holding facilities and then process and care for them once in custody.

Those under the bridge are in an unusual go-between point as they are not in custody, but they are waiting under the bridge in hopes of being taken into custody and then released into the U.S. They may claim asylum to avoid being flown back to Haiti, though Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday that most families will be released into the country and adults will be repatriated.

I don’t believe this “catch and release into the U.S.” policy is actual law, but rather the Biden Administration’s perversion of the law in order to install as many illegal aliens in America as possible to amnesty them as future Democratic Party voters.

Fortunately, the footage of the giant illegal alien camp in Del Rio was enough for the Biden Administration to resume deportation flights to Haiti.

“Finally, the White House has directed appropriate U.S. agencies to work with the Haitian and other regional governments to provide assistance and support to returnees,” the press statement read.

While DHS added that “our borders are not open,” the Biden administration has faced criticism for making policy moves this year that have seemingly incentivized illegal immigration. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) argued last week that the rush on the border can be partially attributed to a decision to cancel deportations of Haitians on September 8.

After repatriated Haitians, many of whom have been in South America for years, began arriving Sunday in the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince, officials in the Haitian government were reportedly complaining about the deportations to their country, which is currently in poverty and disarray.

Haiti is always in poverty and disarray. Until the Biden Administration, this was never considered a legal rational to illegally transport Haitians to the United States.

One wonders if the same radical leftwing groups (Pueblo Sin Fronteras, La Familia Latina Unida, Centro Sin Fronteras, etc.) are responsible for the latest wave of illegal alien caravans like they were for the ones a few years ago. All three have money trails “lead back to George Soros’s well-funded Open Society Foundations.”

In recent years, OSF has given millions of dollars to other organizations that directly assisted the caravans with fundraising, legal assistance, and media support. These organizations included the American Constitution Society, Centro para la Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos (Center for Legal Action in Human Rights), Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Amnesty International, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights First, and Church World Service.

A bill adding $2 billion for border security passed during the last special legislative session, including $750 million for border wall construction.

As mention yesterday, Abbott’s potential Democratic gubernatorial opponent Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke isn’t just opposed to spending more on border security, he wants to tear down existing walls:

I’m glad the border appears to be secured at Del Rio for the time being. But for how long? And how many other border crossing points are receiving massive influxes of illegal aliens that we may not be hearing about?

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Posted in Border Control, Crime, Texas | No Comments »