For the last several presidential election cycles, media messaging has been consistent: candidates who capture the Hispanic vote will win. The suggestion, often unstated, was that GOP candidates need to promote an illegal alien amnesty, pledge to curtail interior enforcement and promote expanded immigration. In 2022, however, Hispanics could indeed hold the key to a GOP victory, but not because they endorse amnesty. Hispanics, realizing that an open border creates job competition, classroom chaos and disrupts their communities, oppose President Biden’s immigration agenda.
The Hispanic shift toward Republicans has been slowly, but steadily building. In 2004 and 2016, Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump scored well among Hispanics, 40 percent and 38 percent, respectively. Trump’s 2020 total was almost 10 points higher than his 2016 tally. But in the 20 months since Biden’s inauguration, the White House’s open borders agenda has accelerated the Hispanic shift to the GOP. Remember that Hispanics who vote are U.S. citizens, and their hopes and concerns are largely identical to other Americans.
In his new book, “Political Migrants: Hispanic Voters on the Move,” Jim Robb wrote that Biden’s refusal to enforce border laws, and instead to opt for catch-and-release, has been disastrous for all Americans, but especially legal immigrants and the 40-plus million American-born Hispanics.
This fall, indications are that Hispanics will vote Republican at a higher rate than they did in 2020: 41 percent plan to vote Republican against 45 percent who will support Democrats, with others undecided. Since only 29 percent of Hispanics voted Republican in the 2018 mid-term election, 41 percent would be a significant GOP move toward capturing an important demographic. In fact, 41 percent would be the highest mid-term election share Republicans have ever received from Hispanics.
On important life-affecting issues, Hispanics side with the GOP. Among likely Hispanic voters, 52 percent believe the government is doing “too little to reduce illegal border crossings and visitor overstays.” Only 15 percent believe the government is doing “too much.” Hispanic voters overwhelmingly agree that chain migration should be limited to spouses and minor children, that Congress should mandate E-Verify which helps assure that only citizens and lawfully present foreign nationals can hold jobs, that businesses should raise wages to attract American workers before hiring foreign nationals, and that legal immigration should be reduced from its current 1 million-plus annually inflow.
Other poll findings may vary, but tangible evidence exists that the Hispanic shift to the GOP is real and may represent the difference in November. In a special June election to determine who would represent Texas’ 34th congressional district in the illegal immigration-besieged Rio Grande Valley, Mayra Flores defeated Democrat Dan Sanchez. A citizen since age 14 and married to a border patrol officer, Flores represents a burgeoning breed of Hispanic officeholders who promote strict border enforcement. Flores is the first Republican to represent her historically blue district in 150 years, and the first woman born in Mexico ever elected to Congress. Just weeks after her victory, Flores called on her colleagues to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his abject failures to enforce immigration laws which have caused the ongoing border crisis.
Texas gubernatorial challenger Robert O’Rourke, trailing Republican incumbent Greg Abbott, explained why Hispanics have abandoned Democrats. O’Rourke, harkening back to 2020, blamed Biden who “…didn’t spend a dime or day in the Rio Grande Valley or really anywhere in Texas….”
Flores will be on the November ballot when she’ll face Democrat Vicente Gonzales who has consistently voted to support Biden’s open borders policy. Political forecasters maintain that the 34th still leans blue. But a Flores victory would confirm that the Hispanic trend to red is real.
Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Eugene Yu, the CEO of the U.S. election software company Konnech, was arrested Oct. 5 in connection to the storage of election data on Chinese servers as Kanekoa News succinctly sums up.
Happy birthday to me.
More will be coming out and we suspect that the Chicoms are not even going to be the greatest villains.
By the way, the New York Times “fact-checked” the claim that Konnech was sending data to China regarding poll workers and called it a “conspiracy theory”
The moment when you’re a working-class communist millionaire but you have to wait for the maid to finish making your bed so you can continue to imagine no possessions.
We can be pretty sure that Nov. 8 won’t begat Libertarian Governor Matt Hackenberg.
Pennsylvania’s next governor will either be Republican Doug Mastriano or Democratic Josh Shapiro and few, if any of Hackenberg’s Libertarian positions will be adopted.
So here is a chance to see them.
All quotes from his campaign tweets.
Matt Hackenberg
As long as you’re not hurting anyone, you have the right to choose how you live.
In Pennsylvania, even if you own your house, you’re still always renting from the State.
As parents know best how to raise our kids, and the State shouldn’t come between us.
We must end the theft of taxation and restore our prosperity.
We are not free if we don’t have bodily autonomy.
(I) don’t want to see our men and women sent overseas to die.
(I) won’t stand for our kids being muzzled and abused”.
And more than anything, he wants individuals be the ones that decide how (they) live our lives.
Matt describes himself as “a veteran against war”, married to “a nurse against medical tyranny”.
He is a computer engineer.
Matt will not be our next governor but, hopefully, like many of those we have profiled this fall, some of his ideas will be heard beyond the rarefied walls of Alternative Party politics.
Stop Proselytizing About Climate Change And Start Fixing It
By Maria Fotopoulos
Type in “climate change” in Google, and about 1,730,000,000 results are delivered in 0.72 seconds. Probably the only people on the planet who don’t know the term (in English or their native languages) from changement climatique (France) to cambiamento climatico (Italy) and изменение климата (Russia) are probably … well, is there anyone on the planet who doesn’t know the term at this point?
Climate change messaging is at mass saturation. Those who believe that burning coal, oil and gas for energy are changing weather patterns and temperatures, and causing wildfires in California, are convinced – too many, cultists and true believers – to the point of practicing climate change as a religion. And those who don’t hold that position likely never will. So the time for nonproductive stunts to draw attention to the issue is well past. The lines are drawn; minds committed one way or the other. Climate change activists who vandalize pipelines; glue themselves to famous works of art – a Botticelli, a da Vinci or McCulloch – and to roads and tankers; take over Trafalgar Square or vandalize in other “creative” ways (often using oil-based products in their stunts, an irony perhaps lost on them) need to just stop. Fortunately, on the “stolen childhood” end, the Friday climate change protests of Greta Thunberg and the entire Greta phenomenon seem to have faded, as has, on the octogenarian end, Jane Fonda’s “Fire Drill Fridays” to “stop the climate crisis.”
These new iterations of pseudo environmental activists are the successors to eco-terrorist groups such as ELF and ALF, who thought setting SUVs on fire at dealerships and burning down new construction were good ways to stop environmental destruction, and destroying university labs was a way to save animals, respectively. If today’s faux green activists continue on their path, if they’re not already, they will be today’s eco-terrorists. Of course, they’ve been useful tools in a political agenda, so, like the ANTIFA and BLM radicals, probably nothing will happen to them, even if they ramp up their terrorism, uh, activism.
A less polarizing and destructive path, and a more productive one, would be to actually do something positive that contributes to a sustainable world. What a concept!
In the documentary, “8 Billion Angels,” Terry Spahr, filmmaker and founder of Earth Overshoot, explores a multitude of problems created by humanity, problems mostly a result of there being too many of us. The “8 billion” is the number of humans on the planet now – a number expected to grow to 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to the United Nations. Looking at oceans, land, air and rivers, and population, a wide range of thoughtful people from academics to those working on the issues via the nonprofit world to businesspeople who care deeply about environmental issues and the kind of planet we will leave for future generations are featured in the film.
“One of the things my mother always taught me, when you borrow something, you give it back in better condition, and we’re not doing that,” says Bill Mook, who tells his story in the film. His Mook Sea Farm in Maine produces about 125 million “oysters on land” each year. The oyster hatchery of Mook, who has been in business for more than 30 years, grew out of seeing increasing water quality degradation and resultant diseases that wiped out oyster populations. With the devastation of oyster beds, Mook says oystermen started to see the value of figuring out “how to do the early stages of oysters on land” and then seeding the natural environment for the oysters to develop. Mook’s oyster hatchery sells to growers from North Carolina to Maine. The small business owner calls this providing environmental services.
Bill Mook with worker at his oyster hatchery.
Not just a tasty treat with a bit of lemon and horseradish, “Oysters in the wild take up a lot of excess nitrogen,” says Mook. “And we’re putting more and more nitrogen in our water; oysters combat the degradation of the water.”
In his free time, Mook works to educate his friends and neighbors to understand the issues. “What I’d like to see are other businesses, whose livelihoods depend on a healthy environment, make the case that having a healthy environment and a thriving, vibrant economy are not mutually exclusive; they are vital to each other.”
Mook’s story is a great example of a direct and positive response to address an environmental issue that helps people, biodiversity and the planet. We need more people like Mook. To have real change, a majority of individuals and businesses will have to work together to have the best practices for living and working to tread lightly on our planet, and ensure the safety and security of biodiversity, ultimately leading to lifestyles and work processes that don’t infringe on individual rights but provide a good quality of life for all.
It’s essential to know what the core problem is as well. Climate change is a symptom. Underpinning our environmental problems are too many people on the planet. We know our numbers can be reduced over the next generations in noncoercive ways by educating and empowering youth, creating better economic opportunities and by ensuring there is contraception education and availability, including in the many areas where there currently are unmet needs.
The pipeline vandals, “just stop oil” folks and other so-called environmental activists who want to destroy the village to save it might take a pause to watch “8 Billion Angels” as a starting point to charting a better path forward. We need solutions, not destructive PR stunts.
Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and from time to time other topics that confound her. On FB @BetheChangeforAnimals.
Stop Proselytizing About Climate Change And Start Fixing It
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
George Washington
Houck Supporters To Gather At U.S. Attorney’s Office Friday — Citizens and national leaders will gather, 11 a.m., Friday, Oct. 7, at the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 615 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19106, to protest the FBI banana-republic raid of Mark Houck.
The raid occurred the early morning of Sept. 23 and involved about 25 heavily armed FBI agents and 15 vehicles.
Houck, a pro-life activist, is accused of shoving anti-life activist Bruce Love in October 2021 during a dispute at a Planned Parenthood clinic. The feds say he violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which makes it a federal crime to use force with the intent to injure, intimidate and interfere with anyone because that person produces reproductive health care.
Houck says Love was harassing his 12-year-old daughter and the dispute was not about clinic access.
Houck was arrested in front of his family. His lawyer had months earlier contacted the feds and said Houck was willing to voluntarily surrender.
Emceeing the event will be WPHT talk radio host Dom Giordano. Among those scheduled to speak will be Dr. William Develin, international human rights advocate; Ashley Garecht, a pro-lifer harassed at Planned Parenthood by Rep. Brian Sims in 2020; Patrick Stanton, of Pro-Life Union, the offices of which were vandalized about what the feds have yet to investigate; FBI whistleblower Steve Friend, who was suspended after reporting political SWAT raids in Chicago; former Senate candidate Kathy Barnette; Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense League; and Peter Breen of Thomas More Society who is Houck’s lawyer.
Houck Supporters To Gather At U.S. Attorney’s Office Friday
Judge Cheryl Allen Zooms With Bucks Pro Lifers — Retired Pennsylvania Superior Court Judge Cheryl Allen spent two hours, Oct. 4, in a Zoom meeting with a diverse group of pro life activist in Warminister, Bucks County, Pa.
Judge Allen discussed a series of orchestrated anti-life ordinances and resolutions passed or pondered by several Democrat-controlled municipalities in the state including Upper Darby in Delaware County.
She noted that ordinances cannot trump state law and resolutions have no force of law anyway.
On a more serious note, she described the state harassment and intimidation of pregnancy crisis centers in an attempt to shut them down.
Judge Cheryl Allen
Ultrasounds are often performed at these centers. Judge Allen said that 80-percent of women considering abortion change their mind after viewing ultrasounds.
Judge Allen became the first Black woman to be elected to Superior Court in 2008 and served until her retirement in 2015. She now works with PA Family.
She said that during her election she found it difficult to gain traction with the Black communities in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. She said the vast majority of Black pastors in those cities were strongly in support of easy access to abortion.
Among the dozen or so in attendance was Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale. It was a miserable rainy night and Warminister is far from Joe’s constituency.
Serious props to him.
Judge Cheryl Allen Zooms With Pro Life Group In Bucks County
