Vivek Ramaswamy opened his remarks at the Republican National Convention this week with a familiar diagnosis: “We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis.” The entrepreneur-turned-politico proposed Trump as a unifier capable of bringing the country together “not through empty words, but through action,” through success, and through excellence. National unity may be a tall order, but this year’s Republican Party is not your father’s GOP — and Ramaswamy, the only millennial to run for president this cycle, is pretty happy about that.  In his remarks, Ramaswamy directly addressed Gen Z, a number of whom will vote in their first presidential election this year. “You’re going to be the generation that actually saves our country,” he said. “You want to be a rebel? Show up on your college campus and try calling yourself a conservative.”  In 2024, the counterculture is conservative, though it’s been that way for years now.  The Right has long lifted up its young adherents. Take, for instance, William F. Buckley, Jr., who first rose to prominence with the publication of his critique of rapidly liberalizing higher education in God and Man at Yale. As campus culture continued its leftward slide over the following decades, the GOP became the counterculture to progressive hegemony, and older Republicans recognized the utility of identifying and supporting younger adherents to their movement.  Ironically, the longevity of the Right’s attention to campus skirmishes has been fueled by the Left’s inability to refrain from making a scene when a student publicly dissents from liberal orthodoxy.  Most of the time, their tactics work. College campuses are filled with students who, as they begin to encounter the world on their own terms, conform or slip into silence when confronted with the opinions of the liberal elite. It’s easier to keep the peace, nod along, and get by.  But some people aren’t interested in keeping the peace by staying quiet — and that’s when things get exciting. Faced with a young conservative who won’t back down amid peer pressure, liberal students and professors simply can’t help themselves. Liberal pushback begets conservative media attention, which further strengthens the student at the heart of the controversy. Suddenly, the lone voice has allies and the student becomes part of the movement.  Year after year, the pattern repeats. Like the 1960s liberal counterculture, however, the Right’s counterculture eventually became hegemonic — all reactionary movements eventually do. So a counterculture slowly formed within the GOP.  If it’s reactionary to dissent from the liberal worldview, it’s even more rebellious to go further and dissent from the reactionaries.  Ramaswamy’s exhortation is careful. Say you’re a conservative, for this may carry a different meaning than the title “Republican.” After all, the Republican “formers” of yesteryear — former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Mike Pence, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, former Rep. Liz Cheney, and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan — aren’t in Milwaukee this week.  Ramaswamy obliquely paints a picture of further rebellion. After all, he took the RNC stage as a relatively recent disciple of that counterculture, which cut its teeth during Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign before prompting and sustaining Trump’s ascendance. It’s a conservative cultural message — not an economic one — that Ramaswamy believes to be persuasive to the younger generation: “Say you want to get married, have kids, and teach them to pledge allegiance to your country. Give it a try, I bet it’ll be pretty liberating.” Now the political party that has long seen its countercultural bent as an asset against progressive hegemony must confront an internal rebellion that wasn’t just a phase in 2016. Republicans have rewarded young dissenters on college campuses, but now they must grapple with the dissenters in their ranks. (RELATED: In Defense of Cancel Culture) The MAGA movement is an odd, imperfect, syncretic organism, but it’s here to stay. Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate proves as much. Ramaswamy, for one, is willing to play ball. “We’re the country where we can disagree like hell and still be friends at the end of it,” he reminded the audience.   There’s still work to be done. The Right’s ascendant counterculture needs to prove itself through action, not mere “empty words.” It needs to win the presidency and flip the Senate. But new generations bring new life to settled politics, and new movements rejuvenate existing parties. Amidst a national identity crisis, Ramaswamy encourages Gen Z to join the counterculture that has grown within the Republican Party for decades. Today, the rebels hold the reins.  Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.  READ MORE by Mary Frances Myler:  Poland Caves to Foreign Pressure, Introduces Bill to Allow Same-Sex Unions  Six States Put Abortion on the Ballot, With More to Follow Pornhub Blocks Access in Five States with New Age-Verification Laws The post Want to Be a Rebel? Be a Conservative. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I don’t know or care what Joe Biden’s golfing handicap is. The details of his putting stammer got lost at The Great Debate as he double-bogeyed through a tough night, leaving his Democrats bug-eyed. But one Biden handicap always has been clear, what one might gingerly call his “Wizard of Oz Scarecrow Factor.” His latest is his biggest doozy yet, a lame-brained proposal from one with an eponymous handicap. After holding America, its economy, its borders, its energy and fuel, and its military hostage the past three years and seven months, he now wants to radically alter the United States Supreme Court. Consider: Most Americans — especially Republican conservatives and believing Christians — support Israel strongly, but they do not follow its day-in/day-out news as I do. Even so, perhaps you may recall that — before Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis, raping women, cutting off heads, grabbing babies and baking them alive in kitchen ovens, and seizing hostages — Israeli civilian society was enmeshed in a vigorous, robust, and increasingly nasty national debate over an effort by the governing conservative Likud coalition to reform Israel’s Supreme Court. Over the course of time, that court has become a corrupt appendage of the Marxist–Socialist class who set up its governing rules decades ago to ensure that, no matter what happens politically in Israel’s future, the Left always will dominate the Supreme Court. Thus, they begin with a heavily leftist court, with justices to the left of Obama judges. Then, when a justice retires, the replacement is named by a committee dominated by the other leftist justices sitting on that same court. That committee also includes (i) a non-judge lawyer who practices in front of those very jurists and therefore needs to remain on their good sides and is beholden to them, and (ii) a few representatives of the majority coalition and the opposition. There is more to say, and you can read it here. But, for the immediate purpose of this discussion, know that the duly elected democratic governing conservative coalition of Israel undertook to reform their corrupt Supreme Court. Israeli leftists burst into an uproar at the time, desperately trying to save their last relic of power, and they turned to international anti-Semites like Soros-funded institutions to finance regular mass street demonstrations and more, aiming to take down the duly elected government by means of street riots that make our Jan. 6 incident seem like Christmas. Amid all that craziness in Israel, Joe Biden decided to butt in personally, sticking his nose where it did not belong. We Americans do not want Putin or Trudeau or Macron telling us how to run our courts, and Israelis were shocked that Biden had the temerity to boss them around, sticking his unwanted two cents into Israel’s internal matter. The thrust of Biden’s unwarranted interference was that, if Israel wanted continued support from his administration, they better not reform or alter their Supreme Court in any way. Jump ahead a year, with Biden sinking like the Bismarck to the bottom of the sea, and suddenly he now is grasping at new straws above the surface to induce disgusted Democrats to rally to his candidacy and to stop demanding that he quit. As a result, he suddenly wakes up during a moment of cognizance and announces that, if elected again, he will mangle America’s Supreme Court and will impose term limits. In fact, actually let’s impose those limits right now, before he gets term-limited in four months. That’s Biden’s latest brainstorm (so to speak). Smart, huh?  Yeah. Smart by half. Let’s say Biden and the Democrats were to win this November, which can happen by means of month-long voting, social media manipulation and censorship of conservatives, balloting by mail, vote harvesting, unchecked ballot box stuffing, no identification needed, and illegals voting. And then they change the Supreme Court to switch life tenure to term limits. Biden is evil by suggesting that we alter the Supreme Court’s constitutional life tenure paradigm. If life tenure bothers him and his Democrats so much, why have they never demanded an end to academic tenure among university faculty? Why did Democrats never demand Supreme Court term limits during the Clinton and Obama years or during the Warren Court’s reign of the 1960s? They never imagined the court would enter a period of conservatism. After having blasted and threatened legitimate conservative efforts in Israel a year ago to reform their left-biased courts, Biden is hypocritical by advocating a dramatic change in the American judiciary that overturns his unconstitutional edicts. He manifests desperation now by grandstanding in such an obscene way four months before the election. And he is a fool for signaling his intentions now to destroy our democracy’s critical judicial buffer instead of waiting patiently until after the election. Justices and judges must be as impartial as possible. They are human, and we all know that they enter the court with personal ideals and beliefs. They are supposed to be above their own predilections and to adhere objectively to the law. Some do it better. Some do it a bit. Some never do. Regardless, the goal is to keep judges as objective as possible. Likewise, that is a problem with having local judges attain office by popular vote. Many wrestle with knowing that, if they adjudicate honestly but unpopularly, they will inherit reward in Heaven but reap a whirlwind of disaster at the ballot box. Many local judges compromise their judicial integrity to remain in office, playing to the voters. That is why our Founding Fathers ensured that, at least, Article III federal judges would have life tenure to protect their integrity from pressures by the mob. If politics is about reading tea leaves, all the tea in China won’t get Biden congressional passage of such a radical departure now. The GOP controls the House. The Democrats have a 51–49 edge in the Senate. If two Democrat senators vote against, the proposal will be dead on arrival. Every Biden sycophant engaged in a tough reelection campaign in a red state — like Jon Tester (Montana), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), and others — will be tainted if voting as a Biden lapdog just these remaining few weeks before the November elections. Very importantly, there is a profoundly urgent takeaway amid all this. If the Republicans win the presidency and both houses this November, then the GOP absolutely must make a top priority of legislating a constitutionally conforming ban on any future tinkering with the Supreme Court — perhaps even a constitutional amendment to that effect. (They also should restrict future Democrat shenanigans aimed at packing the electoral college by adding carefully targeted leftist polities as new states.) It took a lame-brained proposal by a sadly lame-brained president to signal the Republicans that they must secure a nine-justice, life-tenured Supreme Court for the long haul. Subscribe to Rav Fischer’s YouTube channel here at bit.ly/3REFTbk  and follow him on X (Twitter) at @DovFischerRabbi to find his latest informative and inspiring classes, interviews, speeches, and observations. The post Limited Biden Goes Terminal: Prepping a Supreme Court for Republican Feasting appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The New York Times reported this of then-new President Donald Trump’s first day in the Oval Office in 2017: The president spent a part of Tuesday poring over artwork from the White House collections, settling on a portrait of Andrew Jackson — America’s first populist president, who has been invoked by Mr. Trump’s aides as inspiration — to hang in the Oval Office. The Trump–Jackson parallel has been made often enough, as both are fierce populists with a loyalty to what Jackson described as “the common man.” Now there is one more quite notable similarity between the two. Both presidents have narrowly escaped assassination attempts. The History Channel records this of the attempt on Jackson: On January 30, 1835, Andrew Jackson becomes the first American president to experience an assassination attempt. Richard Lawrence, an unemployed house painter, approached Jackson as he left a congressional funeral held in the House chamber of the Capitol building and shot at him, but his gun misfired. A furious 67-year-old Jackson confronted his attacker, clubbing Lawrence several times with his walking cane. During the scuffle, Lawrence managed to pull out a second loaded pistol and pulled the trigger, but it also misfired. Jackson’s aides then wrestled Lawrence away from the president, leaving Jackson unharmed but angry and, as it turned out, paranoid. Trump is not the paranoid type, to say the least. But, like Jackson, he responded instantly. Jackson responded by attacking his attacker and clubbing him with his walking cane. As the world saw the other day, Trump’s attacker was nowhere in sight, but the former president had the sense to duck instantly. As Jackson was surrounded by aides, Trump was instantly covered by the bodies of Secret Service agents who hustled him, bleeding, to his waiting limo. But there is more to this Trump–Jackson connection. Each man was, in their day, the very embodiment of the common man. One was a military man, an actual general. The other was a businessman, a business general if you will. Both brooked no nonsense when dealing with political opponents. And both had a thoroughgoing commitment, as mentioned, to the “common man.” The New York Times headlined Trump this way shortly after his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton: Donald Trump Rode to Power in the Role of the Common Man It was duly noted that Trump pledged to defend:  the laid-off factory workers and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals the forgotten men and women of our country … people who work hard but no longer have a voice. The Times wrote: He pledged: “I am your voice.” The message resonated especially in the Midwest, where a stunning victory in Ohio helped give Mr. Trump the Electoral College votes he needed to win. Note that what the Times called his “stunning victory in Ohio” stands now to be replicated with the choice of Ohio’s thoroughgoing populist senator, JD Vance, as his running mate. And the Vance selection reminds of an earlier GOP ticket. That would be the 1952 election when GOP nominee Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower picked young California Sen. Richard Nixon as his running mate. Like JD Vance today, Nixon was 39. And perhaps most importantly, his youth made it possible for Nixon to have a seriously long career at the very top of the political world. Nixon served two terms as vice president, won the 1960 GOP nomination, lost narrowly to John F. Kennedy, lost a race for governor of California two years later, and finally scored his comeback in 1968, being elected twice to the presidency. Nixon’s shadow loomed large for almost three decades of American politics. In Vance’s case, a reelected Trump will be able to serve only one more term, setting up Vance for a 2028 nomination race that, as a young vice president, he would surely dominate. Even more to the point is that a Trump–Vance administration would be able to seriously rework both the Republican Party and the presidency to represent the decidedly pro-working man populism that has in fact become a mainstay of the Trump campaign. In short? As the accident of an attempted assassination has clearly shown, Donald Trump has come to represent a populist tidal wave that is flooding the country. With a young vice president and potentially future President Vance at his side, it may well stay at flood-tide levels for a very long time to come. And doing it in a manner Trump’s long-ago populist predecessor Andrew Jackson would surely approve of. READ MORE: A Modern Colossus: Donald Trump What Does JD Vance Actually Believe About Abortion? The post Andrew Jackson, Donald Trump — and JD Vance appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I think it was 2019 when I first interacted with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio). I had just finished my judicial clerkship and begun my career in media. J.D., just a few years older than me, was already a bestselling author and a tech venture capitalist. We were both interested in some of the energetic and ascendant elements of the Trump-era Right, and had followed each other on social media accordingly. We messaged about meeting up on the sidelines of the first-ever National Conservatism Conference (“NatCon 1”), held in Washington, D.C., in July 2019. I don’t think we actually met up amid the fracas, but J.D. gave a memorable speech. We’ve remained in touch ever since. He published two op-eds at Newsweek during my tenure as opinion editor. We have remained active with national conservatism and both spoke at last week’s NatCon conference (“NatCon 4”). We are two of the founding advisory board members for American Moment, which seeks to “identify, educate, and credential” young New Right leaders. We have both been active with American Compass, a think tank that aims to reorient conservative economics away from doctrinaire libertarianism. We both spoke at the Restoring a Nation Conference in Steubenville, Ohio, in Oct. 2022; we got dinner before his keynote speech, nerding out on public policy. Like a true American, J.D. downed two Miller Lites. We have also taken a similar path when it comes to former President Donald Trump. J.D. and I were both critical of Trump during the 2016 election but quickly came around as we saw the great achievements he secured in short order. We became vocal proponents of a more pragmatic, nimble, and dynamic Right — a Right, that is, which rejects the dog-eared playbook of yesteryear, and which prefers prudent statecraft to blindly following abstract dogma. We have been influenced by many of the same people and count a number of the same people as friends. It is somewhat surreal to watch a friend be coronated as a major party’s vice presidential nominee. But J.D. is not merely a spokesman for our particular corner of the American Right. Rather, he is an authentic voice for all those tens of millions of forgotten Americans who have been sold out by globalism and left in a cloud of dust by neoliberalism’s “free movement” of goods, labor and capital. (Anyone who thinks neoliberalism has been “free” ought to walk around a town like Steubenville.) And he is the best possible voice for frustrated Millennials and Gen Z-ers who have inherited a country, following decades of boomer malpractice, where the social fabric is tattered and the American Dream of upward economic mobility is all but dead. Our current predicament may seem dire, but J.D. was made for this moment. Out of the new American Right’s motley band of brothers, vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has emerged as the chosen one — the one uniquely capable of giving voice to an entire disaffected generation or two and permanently transforming America’s cultural and political landscape. Trump would be wise to give J.D. an outsize role on the campaign trail, and an even more outsize role in the presidential administration that is to come. In J.D. he will find someone who is not merely a talented communicator with an inspiring personal biography. He will also find someone who is highly thoughtful and has his finger squarely on the pulse of America’s economic and cultural ailments — and, perhaps most importantly, a keen sense of what public policy can actually do to tangibly improve Americans’ everyday lives. Vice President J.D. Vance will help advance a trade agenda and economic statecraft that meaningfully prioritizes the interests of places like Steubenville — not Wall Street. He will pursue policies that enable others to rise up through the economic ranks and live their own American dreams — just as he did. He will advance a realistic foreign policy that views every geopolitical issue and every global hotspot through the prism of the American national interest and the American way of life. Ultimately, as the now clear heir to the throne in a post-Trump Republican Party, J.D. Vance will have a unique opportunity to effectuate transformative change in American political life by scrambling arbitrary old political lines and building a durable, generational coalition of the broader center. Just as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and the post-Berlin Wall neoliberal “Washington consensus” helped define the parameters of “consensus” American political life in their own times, so too can J.D. Vance’s Republican Party — and the broader movement he will soon lead — usher in a new American epoch of cultural restoration, civilizational sanity and material prosperity. J.D. Vance is only 39 years old. He has been Trump’s vice presidential nominee for less than a week. But to set the bar any lower would be a disservice to his prodigious talent. To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post The Chosen One appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Not long ago, Democrats dreamt of replacing Kamala Harris; now they dream of replacing Biden. Ah, “such stuff as dreams are made on.” Wakeful reality tells us that Biden and Harris help keep each other in place, just as Democrats’ weaknesses put both there in the first place. Four years ago, Joe Biden was put atop the Democrat ticket because the party’s top presidential contenders (and really the party itself) were too far-left. So, they plucked from their history the only non-extreme leftist they had. Biden had made a career out of simply being there. The political version of Chauncey Gardner, he had spent six unmemorable terms in the Senate, then two equally overshadowed terms as Barack Obama’s vice president. By 2016, he was seemingly done, and the party equally so with him. But Joe had other ideas — or rather, dreams. Despite his obscurity, which was only punctuated by repeated presidential failures, hope sprang eternal. His defeat in 1988, his withdrawal in 2008, and his being passed over by Obama for Hillary Clinton in 2016 had not dimmed his desire. Even two early losses in 2020 would not dissuade him. Nor could it deter Democrats from nominating him — even with Obama’s admonition ringing in their ears: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” Yes, Biden was a poor campaigner — as evidenced by three presidential rejections. Yes, he was a walking malaprop, at best — calling himself a “gaffe machine.” And yes, he was without serious legislative accomplishments — even with almost four decades in the Senate. But in 2020, Democrats needed his moderate reputation too badly — even as their other presidential contenders rejected him for it, with Kamala Harris stingingly slapping down his exhibition of those moderate credentials in a 2019 debate. Still, such pointed rejection could not stop Democrat stars from aligning around Biden in 2020. Even so, he still nearly blew the presidency once again. A global pandemic, lockdowns’ severe economic fallout, nationwide civil unrest, and his opponent’s divisiveness were still almost insufficient: while Biden racked up a 4.4-percentage-point margin in the popular vote, in the determinative electoral vote, just 77,000 votes (spread across four states) were what won him the White House. Yet perhaps the greatest of the Biden presidency’s many ironies was that in spite of all Biden’s liabilities, Democrats insisted his administration embrace their leftist policies. It was of course the very opposite of what had qualified him — him, and him alone — for their presidential nomination. Biden obliged. It was seemingly a small price to pay for fulfilling his lifelong presidential dream. He turned left with the fervency of the converted, and his administration became American history’s most left-leaning. It adopted DEI throughout, it spent big, it was green to the extreme, it adopted a supine foreign policy, it threw open the southern border, and it used all means available to pursue political opponents. In its No. 2 slot was Kamala Harris. She had been tapped because Democrats’ diversity mandate demanded it — and they needed a lot of diversity to compensate for Biden’s profile. Harris checked a lot of boxes and, most importantly, she was someone who didn’t threaten Joe at the ticket’s top. She too was inarticulate. She too was a poor campaigner (as her 2020 run’s inability to even make it to 2020 proved). She was seemingly well on her way to being Joe Biden — holding a safe Senate seat for as long as she wanted it — in another form. Once in office, Harris promptly disappeared. Like Biden, she had fulfilled her role of getting Trump out and Democrats’ extremist policies in. Nonetheless, negative Harris stories still emerged. Looking at the establishment media’s yearslong coverup of Biden’s problems, the mind reels at what has been ignored with Harris. Today, we see Democrats’ past finally catching up to their present. Biden has, unsurprisingly, played down to his level. His debate with Trump did not reveal so much as it ensured Biden’s failings could no longer be denied. Now, Democrats and the establishment media, who orchestrated and enabled Biden’s placement and presidency, want him to step down. Growing numbers of both have even called on him to do so. However, the exquisite irony is that they can’t do so en masse because of Harris. Were anyone but Harris vice president, Biden would already be gone. The charade would never have gone into 2024. But Harris is there, and Democrats cannot remove her, even though she is viewed less favorably than Biden (or Trump) and just as negatively as a candidate. Democrats must keep her because she is Biden’s most logical replacement (when President Lyndon B. Johnson didn’t run in 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey took his place). Passing over her would be an affront to the groups she was picked in 2020 to represent and open a chaotic free-for-all within the party. She is the only Democrat who has been nationally elected; she is also the only one with a clear claim to Biden’s $91 million war chest. Rarely is justice so swift, so clear, and so circular. Democrats stuck themselves with Biden and Harris in 2020. Four years later, they still are stuck with Harris — and because they are, they are also still stuck with Biden. Harris has gone from being someone who protected Biden from being shown up to being someone who prevents Biden from being easily shoved out. Democrats have done both Biden and Harris to themselves. In the process, they have pumped up Trump beyond where he was four years ago: In RealClearPolitics’ July 15 average of national polling of a two-way race, Trump stands at 47.1 percent (slightly above his 2020 46.9 percent popular vote share) and in a five-way race, he leads Biden by 4.1 percentage points (over an 8-percentage-point swing from 2020’s popular vote deficit). They have also pumped up the presidency’s executive powers. And, because Trump can only serve one term, with the youthful Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate, Republicans could be in a position to hold the presidency for multiple terms. J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023. The post Biden, Harris, and DEI (Democrats’ Exquisite Irony) appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

California’s 2014 “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” so named by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, transformed a number of felonies into misdemeanors, including thefts of property valued at under $950. Sacramento’s city attorney has warned Target that the retail chain could face public nuisance charges due to phone calls to police to report theft from one of its stores in the California capital. City attorney Susan Alcala Wood earned a degree in “philosophy-ethics and public policy” from UC Santa Barbara and a JD from Whittier College, School of Law. Wood began credits her work as a law clerk with “embedding her with a deep desire to serve communities.” She has served as an assistant city attorney in Stockton, city attorney in Modesto, and calls the Sacramento job her “dream work.” At this writing, Wood has declined interview requests from local media on Target’s alleged nuisance calls. State Attorney General Rob Bonta has not spoken out on the issue, and, based on his record, is not likely to do so. Bonta failed to bring charges against an illegal Chinese bio-lab in the city of Reedley, freighted with pathogens and hazardous chemicals. On the other hand, the attorney general, a Yale law alum, did go after Quest Diagnostics for “unlawfully disposing of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information at its facilities statewide.” As California’s lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom supported Proposition 47 and recently came to witness its consequences. On a shopping trip to a Target store last December, Newsom spotted a shoplifter walking out with merchandise. When he asked employees why they didn’t stop him, they said “We don’t stop them because of the governor,” who went unrecognized. Newsom told the employees that Proposition 47’s $950 limit was the “10th toughest in the nation.” As UCLA economist Lee Ohanian notes, Google “shoplifting in San Francisco” and you get “more than 100,000 hits” plus many videos of thieves in the act. Why is shoplifting so rampant? “Because state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won’t bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let it go.” A measure to reform Proposition 47, the Homeless, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, has qualified for the November ballot. Now-Gov. Newsom scrapped plans for a competing ballot measure and instead supports a raft of bills he thinks will do the job. Newsom, who is not a lawyer, has yet to speak out on Sacramento’s threat to fine Target for reporting theft. According to the California Globe, in organized retail theft Los Angeles ranks first, Oakland second and Sacramento seventh. The Sacramento city attorney’s effort to criminalize Target for reporting theft could be a first, and for the Globe’s Katy Grimes, “We have officially entered George Orwell’s 1984.” It is true that in California all the clocks seem to be striking 13, but the author’s Animal Farm could be more pertinent. Once the revolutionary animals take over the farm, they must decide what to do with the wild non-domestic creatures, so they agreed by an overwhelming majority that “rats are comrades.” In the view of  “progressives,” criminals are victims of oppressive capitalist society, to be rectified by pro-criminal measures such as Proposition 47. So-called “property crime” affects the people who own the stolen property, and drives up prices for consumers, so “people crime” might be more accurate. There’s no question that it’s totally out of control in the Golden State. California Proposition 36, the measure to fix Prop. 47, will be on the November ballot. While the vote awaits, another issue has failed to get the attention it deserves. The 2017 Senate Bill 54, the “California Values Act,” protects illegals from deportation, but there’s more to it. Through the “motor voter” plan, California automatically registers illegal aliens to vote when they get their driver’s license. Voting by illegals violates the law, but state officials won’t say how many illegals voted for the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” or for Newsom in the recall election of 2021. Anyone who supports illegals voting in American elections has no claim to support the rule of law. In 2024 moving forward, Californians have plenty to ponder. Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. The post California Capital Targets Target appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Are Trump Scandals Just Endless Hours of Noise?

The Chosen One

Echoes of History in This Year's Campaign

Why Would Any Legit Dem Presidential Prospect Jump Into This Mess?