Sometimes a ratio is so out of whack that you know something is seriously screwy, such as Hillary Clinton’s 100x return on cattle futures. Such is the case with Coffee City, Texas, which had 50 police officers for a town of 250.
After raking in enough cash from traffic citations to pay a king’s ransom, Coffee City in Henderson County shuttered its police department last week after the mayor criticized the management of the small town’s law enforcement.
Coffee City is a small town on the shores of Lake Palestine on State 155 between Palestine and Tyler. It’s about 110 miles southeast of Dallas.
Mayor Jeff Blackstone published a news release on the city’s website on September 1 explaining the city council’s decision to suspend Chief JohnJay Portillo amid questions about his management of the police force.
“After being informed of the recent allegations against our Chief of Police and the city’s reserve officer programs, the city council and myself felt it necessary for us to place Chief Portillo on a thirty-day suspension,” Blackstone said.
“During this time, we will be investigating this matter internally as well as seeking counsel from an independent investigation firm to validate our findings. Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve this issue.”
The investigation did not last long. Allegations of poor hiring practices by Portillo and numerous concerns about misconduct by officers in the Coffee City Police Department meant the council’s simplest option was to shut it down.
The department had 50 officers for a town of only about 250 people, an extraordinary ratio of one officer for every five residents.
CBS affiliate KHOU reported in late August that the city received more than $1 million in a single year from approximately 5,100 traffic citations, more than any other city of that size.
Speaking of KHOU, here’s their roundup report on Coffee City, where they talk about how a lot of Coffee City officers had problems on other police jobs:
“More than half of Coffee City officers had been suspended, demoted, terminated or dishonorably discharged from their previous jobs.”
“Their prior discipline ranges from excessive force to public drunkenness, untruthfulness, and association with known criminals. Criminal charges include DWI, theft, aggravated assault, family violence and endangering a child.”
Many Coffee City officers worked extra jobs…including the police chief. “Portillo was working security for a Southeast Houston apartment complex. Nearly 200 miles away from Coffee City.” And he demanded that Harris County Constables file charges on people. Indeed, Coffee City officers demanding Harris County constables file charges became a drain on resources.
When Portillo applied for the Coffee City job, he failed to mention that he had active warrants in Florida for DWI and failure to appear.
“Turns out there are a half dozen full time Coffee City police officers who don’t even work in Coffee City, Texas. Instead they work from home more than three hours and nearly 200 miles away in Houston.” There are some police administrative jobs that can be worked from home, but I can’t imagine a town Coffee City’s size having more than one or two. But that’s because it’s for the warrant division from the speed trap operation. And they’re being paid on “performance based” commission revenue of $150 for each warrant cleared.
Are speed trap legal in Texas? Yes, but they’re discouraged, as municipalities and counties are required to remit traffic ticket revenues exceeding 30% of the previous year’s total revenue to the state. It’s unclear whether this was done in the case of Coffee City.
The Biden economy continues to batter ordinary Americans, CIA’s bribing experts to protect China and the deep state, Ukraine makes Russian ships and air defense systems in Crimea go boom, UAW goes on strike, and sanctuary city chickens come home to roost. Plus a personal update at the end. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Joe Biden continues to work his special brand of magic on the economy: “Real household income suffers biggest drop since Great Recession.”
Nominally, households earned more money in 2022 than they did in 2021. But thanks to inflation caused by Bidenomics, real household income (that is, income adjusted for inflation) not only fell, but fell by an amount not seen since the Great Recession.
According to Census Bureau numbers released Tuesday, median household income fell from $76,330 in 2021 to $74,580 in 2022, a decline of 2.3%. This is the biggest drop in real household income since 2010, when it fell 2.6%. Even at the height of the pandemic, when millions of people couldn’t work, real income only fell 2.2%.
The decline in real income was driven entirely by near-record-high inflation. According to the Census Bureau, inflation rose 7.8% between 2021 and 2022, which was the largest inflation increase since 1981.
Isn’t not being able to feed your family a small price to pay for our elites not having to deal with mean tweets? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
A ‘senior-level’ CIA whistleblower has come forward to allege that the agency bribed analysts to change their opinion that Covid-19 most likely originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, according to the NY Post.
The whistleblower told House committee leaders that his agency ‘ tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans,’ according to a Tuesday letter from the chairmen of two House subcommittees investigating the pandemic response and US intelligence, Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) and Mike Turner (R-OH).
The pair have requested all documents, communications and pay info from the CIA’s Covid-19 Discovery Team by Sept. 26.
“According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” reads the letter from the House panel chairmen.
“The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis.
“The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” the letters continue, adding that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”
Hunter Biden indicted on federal gun charges. A whole lot of observers think this is just an excuse to avoid indicting him (and his father) on bribery and corruption charges.
Washington refused to fully fund construction of a wall along the Mexican border as Congress obeyed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — whom Republicans bow to — and the galaxy of gangs, drug cartels, pedos, Chinese spies, terrorists and Methodists who back Democrats. There are some overlaps. My point is, Democrats cannot destroy the nation without help.
There seemed to be no stopping the onslaught. What to do? What to do? What to do?
Well, they were messing with Texas and as Texans say, don’t mess with Texas.
Its governor’s press office said in June, “In April 2022, Governor Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to charter buses to transport migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C. The Governor added New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia as additional drop-off locations last year and most recently added Denver as a busing destination last month. Since beginning the migrant busing strategy last spring, more than 21,600 migrants have been transported to these self-declared sanctuary cities while providing much-needed relief to Texas’ overwhelmed border communities.”
Battles are usually fought with horses, tanks or aeroplanes. Greg Abbott used buses. As of June, he shipped 500 busloads of illegal aliens to sanctuary cities. The shipments continue.
Virginia Democratic statehouse candidate Susanna Gibson is complaining that there are videos of her having sex with her husband online. Gee, how did they get online? “Gibson had an account on Chaturbate, a legal website where viewers can watch live webcam performances that feature nudity and sexual activity…The videos show Gibson and her husband, John David Gibson, having sex and at times looking into the camera and asking viewers for donations in the form of ‘tokens’ or ‘tips’ to watch a private show.” It did not take Columbo to crack this case. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The Democrat Party has a latent disaster on its hand vis a vis one RFK Jr.
On the one hand, they are fully dedicated to sabotaging his campaign. Under no circumstances whatsoever will he be permitted to win the nomination.
Even if he had 80%+ support from the electorate, the sick truth is that party leadership (influenced by the consultant and donor classes) would rather lose with Brandon than win with RFK Jr. because of what he’s liable to do to the Deep State and D.C. largesse were he ever to assume office. It would be a proverbial bloodbath for the administrative state and all of the grifters who feed on it.
On the other hand, they need to keep RFK Jr. within the Democrat Party fold because if he were to go rogue and run third party — which he, frankly, should have been doing all along — it would be a veritable death knell for the Brandon entity’s prospects in 2024, which are wafer-thin as it is.
Whatever perceived threat Cornel West poses to Brandon’s re-election with his Green Party run, magnify that threat by 10x, 100x and you’re in the ballpark of what RFK Jr. would do to the party. It’s not outlandish to speculate that a strong third-party run by RFK Jr. might literally break the Democrat Party for years or possibly forever. That’s how sick of the party’s BS its own members, not to mention independents and non-voters (the largest, unserviced voting bloc in the country), are.
RFK Jr. has already proven himself nearly bulletproof from relentless Democrat Party and corporate state media attacks — arguably on the same level in this regard as “Teflon” Don.
There’s a petition to have the Hays County district attorney removed from office.
The person who filed it? The Hays County district clerk.
The petition was filed by Hays County District Clerk Avrey Anderson on Tuesday, Sept. 12. I
It alleged that Hays County DA Kelly Higgins implemented and executed a policy or policies that refused to prosecute a class or type of criminal offense under state law.
The petition said DA Higgins has made public declarations that he would not prosecute the following:
simple drug possession offenses
simple cannabis possession offenses
procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case that they are treating transgenders
procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case they are performing abortions
According to the court documents filed, there’s been an excessive amount of felony possession of cannabis, methamphetamine and cocaine cases being declined for “random and nonspecific reasons.”
I know one of the first questions in your mind: Is Higgins a Soros-backed DA? Answer cloudy. She got $2,000 from Chip Shields in Portland, OR. Shields founded Better People, a pro ex-con thing, but I can’t find a direct Soros link to Higgins. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Things that make you go Hmmmm: “A representative of the Harris County attorney’s office told a district court judge that the county would use all legal means to prevent the deposition of the deputy director of election technology Jason Bruce.”
National Review looks back at Simon and Garfunkel. Don’t agree with everything here, but they did make some great music Back In The Day…
“14-year-old son died after attempting the ‘One Chip Challenge.’ You don’t want to jump into that sort of thing without building up your resistance first. Me, I’m pretty sure I could do it, especially if I could find a way to make money off it. Maybe I could get 100,00 people to pledge a buck for every one I eat, and then then see how many I can eat on a live-stream…
Ever wanted to hear The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz do an album of REM covers? Yeah, me neither, but here’s “Shiny Happy People.”
Also, my most recent job just ended. So here’s the tip jar, if you’re so inclined:
I don’t usual rattle the jar, because I make good money when employed, and I’m hardly destitute, but every bit helps. If you know of any remote Senior Technical Writer positions, let me know.
A massive manhunt is underway for two suspects in relation to a shooting of a Harris County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop Wednesday night. Both men were free on bond for other charges and had a history of not complying with the conditions of their release.
According to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, the deputy went on patrol at about 7:40 p.m., but within minutes emergency dispatch received calls about an officer down on Homestead Road just inside Houston’s Beltway 8 and the Eastex Freeway.
Law enforcement agencies have issued a Blue Alert for Terran Green, 34, and James Green, 37. Although Gonzalez announced the suspects’ vehicle had been found overnight, the two men remain at large.
Harris County records indicated that Terran’s criminal history dates to at least 2007 and includes five felony convictions and three separate stints in state prison. In May 2022, he was sentenced to two years for Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon.
Democrats love to talk about “gun crime,” but deep blue Democratic Party prosecutors seem loath to actually prosecute the criminals who commit crimes with guns.
Terran was charged in March 2023 with Felon in Possession of a Firearm and Aggravated Assault of a Family Member, for which the Harris County District Attorney’s Office requested no bond, but Judge DaSean Jones of the 180th District Criminal Court approved bonds of $55,000. Terran was released on April 1, but after failure to appear in court his bonds were forfeited. He has been a wanted fugitive since May 30.
James also has a criminal history, dating back to 2011. He was given personal recognizance (PR) bonds requiring no payment for Carrying a Handgun in a Motor Vehicle in 2020 and 2022 and possession of one to four grams of cocaine on June 7, 2022. He was rearrested on August 7 after bond forfeiture but released on a $5,000 surety bond just last Saturday.
A self-proclaimed socialist, Jones has often drawn media attention for awarding bond release to violent, repeat offenders. In 2021 he reduced bond for a suspect facing felony charges of human trafficking, assault, sexual assault of a child, and compelling prostitution of a child.
Sexual predators of children seem very near and dear to the hearts of the Democratic Party’s cadres of social justice activists.
Harris County began shifting release policies in 2019, when local judges adopted new bail guidelines and a federal judge approved a consent decree in the ODonnell v. Harris County lawsuit over misdemeanor bail. The decree has formally governed misdemeanor bail policy and mandated county spending on pretrial services for defendants, but a ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in a similar lawsuit against Dallas County earlier this year overturned ODonnell, leaving the future of the consent decree uncertain.
Crime Stoppers of Houston’s Andy Kahan has tracked the number of persons murdered in Harris County by suspects out on multiple bonds and PR bonds since 2018, noting there have been at least 197 such victims.
Independent journalist Wayne Dolcefino alleges that Lina Hidalgo’s hand-picked election coordinator Clifford Tatum deliberately shorted paper ballots to Republican precincts.
“If you’re a Democrat, you didn’t like the KHOU investigation that cites more than 120 locations that were under supplied with ballot paper, while millions of ballot sheets were available in a warehouse.”
Lots of precinct judges, of both parties, testified that locations ran out.
“It’s not just ballot paper problems. Election judges reported 119 polls, nearly 15%, that didn’t open up on time on election morning. Late in the day, a district judge ordered that polls stay open until 8 PM, but a lot of election judges either didn’t get the message, or didn’t care when they did. 64 polls closed at 7 PM even after the judge’s order.”
“It should force judge Hidalgo to release all remaining public records.”
Of course, she’s waging a lawsuit to prevent just that…
Remember Democratic County Judge and de-facto Queen of Harris County Lina Hidalgo, she of the numerous staff corruption charges? There have been a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests coming her way over all the alleged crooked dealings, so she went to her legal counsel to thwart transparency.
With the state’s largest county already facing at least one lawsuit over refusal to comply with public records requests, a leaked memo from Harris County officials appears to outline a strategy for avoiding the release of documents related to County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s travel and taxpayer-funded expenses.
Investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino reported this week on a leaked chain of emails that began with a January 25, 2023 open records request from Houston Chronicle reporter Jen Rice seeking travel records for Hidalgo and “her entourage” between January 2019 and January 2023.
After requesting clarification, Hidalgo’s legal counsel Kathryn Kase forwarded the request and instructions for handling it to several Hidalgo staffers and Glenn Smith of Affinity Dynamics. The county auditor’s office lists payments totaling $35,000 to Smith’s company in 2020, but none this year.
“The law does not require us to create documents in response to this PIA request and I ask that you not create such documents,” wrote Kase. “For example, if we do not have a list of the Judge’s trips outside Harris County that the County paid for in whole or part between 1/1/ 2019 and 1/25/2023, then the law does not require us to create such a list, nor do I want you to create one.”
Kase also stated that staffers do not have to ask other departments for documents responsive to the request.
“If, for example, the Auditor or the Treasurer have copies of reimbursements to Judge Hidalgo, do not ask the Auditor or the Treasurer to provide them to you.”
Rice’s request likely stems from reports of Hidalgo taking private security, paid for by Harris County taxpayers, on her personal vacations to Mexico, Columbia, and according to sources familiar with the matter, Thailand, earlier this year.
Until last April, the Precinct 1 constable’s office provided security for Hidalgo, but in a 3 to 2 vote the commissioners court approved a no-bid contract to private security company XMi Protection at a price of $121,524 for three months. The commissioners later approved a budget of up to $500,000 for XMi, although reportedly Hidalgo’s security is now provided by the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office while XMi continues to cover other employees.
Remember that Queen Lina’s previous legal troubles stemmed from handing out contracts to connected Democrat firms and not wanting public scrutiny for that either.
As far as I can tell, XMi Protection seems to employee exactly one person: Cortez Emilio Richardson. (Maybe he hires temps to round out his team?) Also strange: The listed address for XMi protection is 9900 Spectrum Drive, Austin, TX, 78717, which is the address of Integreon, a “global outsourcing partner” that doesn’t list “executive protection” among its services, as well as LegalZoom, which seems to be a “one stop set-up-your-business” shop. (Maybe he set up his LLC through them?) However, Richardson’s LinkedIn profile says that he’s in Houston, and XMi Protection is based in nearby Spring. Two other LinkedIn accounts that show XMi Protection entries are a Paquita Bailey who lives in Detroit and is evidently working four different jobs at the same time (lot of sidehustle they’ve got going on there), and the following private listing:
Which is for a pharmacy technician from Anna, Texas (which is north of Dallas), both of whom would seem to be deeply unlikely to be working a protection detail in Houston.
$40,000 a month is an awful lot of cheddar for one guy.
Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale and Dolcefino have also filed a lawsuit against the county, seeking access to public election records that the county has refused to release on the grounds that they are related to litigation and a criminal investigation of Tatum and the elections department.
In response to multiple complaints over delay and evasion tactics employed by government agencies across the state, Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) has pushed legislation that would punish those using the appeals process to delay compliance. His Senate Bill 1579 has been approved in committee, but it has not yet been scheduled for a vote on the Senate floor.
According to attorney Bill Aleshire, public information requests must be carefully tailored so as not to offer any loopholes. Aleshire opined that instead of asking for a “list,” Rice should have requested specific documents and included multiple departments in her original demand.
“Having said that, a public office devoted to transparency would not quibble with a requestor seeking travel records; it would just provide the records they’ve got, in good faith,” Aleshire told The Texan.
Snip.
In another leaked internal Harris County memo, legal fees approved by the Harris County Commissioners Court last March totaling $671,383 are described as covering legal costs for Kase, [County Commissioner Rodney] Ellis, and other county employees related to the investigation of a since-canceled $11 million COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract and allegations that Ellis had stored an African art collection at taxpayer expense.
The memo also includes “talking points” from “GS” that former Justice Administration Director Jim Bethke and other county officials, including Tatum, have been harassed by District Attorney Kim Ogg.
Payments for legal expenses appear to have been approved for McClees Law Firm, PLLC; Rusty Hardin and Associates, LLP; and Khalil Law PLLC. In addition to Ellis, Hidalgo, and other employees, the memo notes expenses were also covered for Commissioner Adrian Garcia (D-Pct. 2).
Something stinks in Harris County government, and there are a whole lot of questions about how Lina Hidalgo is spreading around taxpayer money that she really doesn’t want to answer…
As George Soros-backed leftwing Democrats started capturing District Attorney offices across the country, a dangerous soft-on-crime ethos has taken hold in many blue-controlled cities. Prosecutors are letting violent felons back on the streets for minimal bond, no bond, or even failing to charge them entirely. Just this week comes news that Harris County Democratic Judge Josh Hill let a convicted felon accused of kidnapping, beating, and choking a woman out on $2 bail.
The Texas Republican majority in the statehouse has had enough.
In his victory speech on the first day of the Legislative session, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) said that “rogue district attorneys” who refuse to prosecute certain criminal offenses must be “rein[ed] in.” Legislation filed this week provides an initial glimpse at Texas Republicans’ plan to do that.
“Carte blanche public pronouncements by district attorneys that laws we have on the books will be ignored renders the authority of the Legislature to determine what is and isn’t a crime, moot,” state Rep. David Cook (R-Mansfield) said in a statement provided to The Texan. “It is my intention to rein in renegade district attorneys and ensure the rule of law is respected in Texas.”
Cook’s House Bill (HB) 1350 — with an identical version filed in the Senate by Sen. Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound) — would forbid district or county attorneys with criminal jurisdiction to “adopt or enforce a policy under which the prosecuting attorney prohibits or materially limits the enforcement of any criminal offense … [or] as demonstrated by pattern or practice, prohibit or materially limit the enforcement of any criminal offense.”
Enforcement of the law would be granted to the Office of the Attorney General, and violators may face civil penalties up to $1,500 for an initial offense and then up to $25,500 for ensuing ones. Offending prosecutors may also be removed from office and their replacement would be appointed by the governor.
Prosecutors and judges have a certain amount of discretion on when and what crimes to charge suspects with. But by ignoring the law entirely for far-left ideological reasons, Soros-backed DAs and judges are violating the equal protection rights of Texas citizens who are victimized by soaring crime. Securing the life, liberty and property of its citizens is the most basic and essential function of government.
If they can’t do their job, they need to be removed from office.
Blue cities bleed, more Democrats violating election laws, another Democratic congressional staffer exposed for carrying water for Red China, Elon Musk takes over and immediately starts cleaning house at Twitter, and more transexual lunacy. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
As polling continues to show crime is a top issue for voters, the number of homicides has skyrocketed nationwide.
In fact, homicide rates rose by an average of nearly 10% in 50 of the most populated U.S. cities between the third quarter of last year and the third quarter of this year — and are still rising — according to a new study.
WalletHub compared 50 of America’s largest cities based on per capita homicides for the third quarter (July through September) of each year since 2020, using locally published crime data to compile its findings.
According to WalletHub, these were the ten cities with the highest homicide cases per 100,000 residents from July through September:
St. Louis, Mo. (19.69)
Kansas City, Mo. (14.86)
Detroit, Mich. (13.24)
Baltimore, Md. (12.45)
New Orleans, La. (10.99)
Milwaukee, Wisc. (10.46)
Memphis, Tenn. (9.99)
Philadelphia, Pa. (9.36)
Norfolk, Va. (7.78)
Chicago, Ill. (7.71)
The top prosecutors in most of these cities are backed by progressive megadonor George Soros, a billionaire who’s spent the last several years injecting tens of millions of dollars into local district attorney races nationwide, backing candidates who support policies such as abolishing bail, defunding the police, and decriminalizing or deprioritizing certain offenses.
In St. Louis, for example, Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner is one of the first prosecutors bankrolled by Soros’ financial network of organizations and affiliates, heavily funded by these sources in 2016 and again in 2020.
Amid high homicide figures, Gardner has declined more cases and issued fewer arrest warrants than her predecessor, charging fewer felonies and prosecuting thousands of fewer cases as a result. She has also deferred prison sentences for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies as part of her reform initiatives.
Gardner has said this is part of her “platform to reduce the number of cases unnecessarily charged in order to focus on the more difficult cases for trial.”
Last year, Gardner came under fire after three murder cases under her purview were dismissed in one week due to prosecutors in her office not showing up for hearings or being unprepared.
Her campaign website boasts that she’s “made jail and prison a last resort, reserved for those who pose a true public safety risk,” while limiting “the arrest and detention of people accused of misdemeanors and low-level felonies.”
Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner is another Soros-funded prosecutor.
Soros spent almost $1.7 million through the Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC to help Krasner in 2017, pouring more than five times as much money into the race as Krasner himself. Four years later, Krasner received a combined $1.259 million from Soros-funded groups for his reelection.
During his tenure, Krasner has cut the future years of incarceration by half and slashed the length of parole in probation supervision by nearly two-thirds compared to the previous DA. He has also made a priority of not prosecuting people who are illegally in possession of guns unless they hurt or kill people.
The top prosecutors in New Orleans, Milwaukee, Norfolk, and Chicago have also been backed by Soros-linked money. Many of the others are self-described progressive prosecutors.
According to some experts, progressive prosecutors pursuing soft-on-crime policies have contributed to the spike in homicides and other violent crime.
“Prosecutors in most major cities have failed the people they serve by refusing to prosecute criminals, including those charged with violent crimes,” Tristin Kilgallon, associate professor of pre-law and history at the University of Findlay, told WalletHub. “Countless violent crimes have been committed by those who have been released back into the streets due to recent ‘bail reform’ initiatives or by prosecutors who declined to pursue charges.”
“Texas Secretary of State Finds ‘Serious Breaches’ in Harris County 2020 Election Audit. Auditors found multiple chain of custody issues and violations of state and federal law requiring maintenance of records in the state’s largest county.”
Issues found by auditors relate primarily to the county’s extralegal “drive-thru” voting initiated by then-interim County Clerk Chris Hollins.
Auditors found that for at least 14 polling locations the county does not show chain of custody for the Mobile Ballot Boxes (MBB) and that there were multiple MBBs created for some voting locations. Auditors say the MBBs from the polling locations “were not the MBBs ultimately tabulated.” They also note that they have been able to locate some missing MBBs, but have not been given an explanation as to why the originals were not tabulated. Each MBB can hold 9,999 ballots.
Another issue found by auditors is that poll book and provisional voting data provided by the county do not match the number of cast vote records on some of the devices.
Ennis also noted that after upgrading voting systems the county does not appear to have retained “any equipment or computers that provide relevant reports or alternatively, can read the MBBs” from 2020 or recover the cast vote records stored in them as required by both state and federal election codes.
Why, it’s almost like the Democrats running Harris County wanted to commit election fraud…
Speaking of election fraud, Facebook has been fined $25 million for breaking Washington State election law.
According to court documents, King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North found Meta to be in violation of Washington’s political disclosure law 822 separate times between 2019 and 2021 and issued the maximum possible fine for each instance, which totaled up to $30,000 per violation.
Meta was also ordered to “come into full compliance” with the state’s election transparency laws within the next 30 days as well as pay the attorney’s fees for the case, which Ferguson has requested be tripled for a total of $10.5 million. The final total will be decided by North at a later date.
According to The Seattle Times, the state’s election transparency laws, which have been in place since 1972, require ad sellers to “disclose the names and addresses of political buys, the targets of such ads and, the total number of viewers of each ad.” The judge found that Meta had intentionally violated the standards.
Washington Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson said “that he had “one word for Facebook’s conduct in this case – arrogance.”
He told the Times, “It intentionally disregarded Washington’s election transparency laws,” Ferguson said. “But that wasn’t enough. Facebook argued in court that those laws should be declared unconstitutional. That’s breathtaking.”
When Pennsylvania Democrats insist that a candidate who suffered a life-threatening stroke in May is recovering well and “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office,” that candidate must look and sound fine to prove they’re telling the truth. Last night, in the lone debate in the Pennsylvania Senate race, John Fetterman looked and sounded very, very far from fine. But you can judge for yourself by watching the whole debate here.
I expected Fetterman’s debate performance to be a Rorschach test, with Democrats insisting that he was fine and hand-waving away any problems, and Republicans pointing to every verbal misstep, pause, or oddly worded answer. But by the end of the hour, there was little debate, no pun intended. John Fetterman’s ability to hear, understand, process information, and speak appears to still be severely impacted by his stroke. Perhaps the worst moment of the night came when one of the moderators asked him about a statement he made in 2018 opposing fracking, and how he could square that past stance with his current claim that he always supported fracking. After a long pause, presumably from reading the moderator’s question from the monitor, Fetterman said, “I, I, I do support fracking and . . .” and then for a moment, Fetterman’s head shook, and his mouth moved, but no words came out. Then he picked up again: “I don’t . . . I don’t. I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.” With everyone watching likely mortified and embarrassed to watch Fetterman struggle to finish the sentence, the moderator mercifully moved on to the next question.
Elon Musk took over Twitter late Thursday and fired company CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, senior legal representative Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett.
Musk, the world’s richest man, acquired the social media giant through a $44 billion purchase. He reportedly had until Friday to complete the deal.
In a video tweet that went viral, Musk appeared at Twitter’s corporate offices Wednesday carrying a sink, implying that employees would need to accept that he was now in charge.
This is a good start, but all the people on the Safety and Trust Council need to be fired, and all accounts suspended or banned need to be restored.
Rishi Sunak is the new UK Prime Minister, and Nigel Farage is not impressed:
A House Democratic staffer was fired after her outreach to other congressional aides allegedly on behalf of the Chinese embassy was revealed this week, National Review has learned. After an investigation found that the staffer had acted improperly, her boss, Representative Don Beyer, swiftly removed her.
“Congressman Beyer was totally unaware of these activities prior to being contacted by the House Sergeant At Arms,” Aaron Fritschner, his deputy chief of staff, told National Review in a statement this morning. “As soon as he learned of them, he followed every directive he was given by security officials. The staffer in question is no longer employed by the office of Congressman Beyer.”
Fritschner added that Beyer, who has a hawkish record on China, was “deeply upset” upon learning about the activities of the now-former staffer, Barbara Hamlett.
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr, a Democrat, was found to exhibit such misconduct that comprise more than 100 incidents over a period of about two years.
The misconduct “encompassed repeated acts of dishonesty; the blatant and systematic disregard of due process, the law, court orders, and local rules; the disrespectful treatment of court staff and litigants; and the abuse of capias warrants and the court’s contempt power,” stated the court’s per curium opinion. “That misconduct warrants an indefinite suspension from the practice of law.”
According to auditor’s records, Harris County has not yet recovered more than $1 million paid for a since-canceled COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract tied to the felony indictments of County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s staff.
In addition, invoices indicate that the contractor paid more than half a million of the taxpayer funds to data firms assisting progressive candidates with campaigns and voter turnout.
In 2021, the county awarded an $11 million contract to Elevate Strategies, owned by highly-connected Democratic strategist Felicity Pereyra. Pereyra had previously worked for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and Commissioner Adrian Garcia’s (D- Pct. 2) campaign when he ran for mayor of Houston.
After revelations that Hidalgo’s staff had sought to alter experience requirements for potential vendors, and had instructed the purchasing department to disqualify the University of Texas Health Science Center, Hidalgo announced she would cancel the contract. But the public later learned that the county paid out $1.4 million to Pereyra’s firm after the date of cancellation.
During a March 2022 meeting of the Harris County commissioners court, First Assistant County Attorney Jay Aiyer told commissioners that Elevate Strategies had repaid about $200,000 and he expected another $1 million in repayment soon.
In response to queries from FOX26 political reporter Greg Groogan, the county attorney’s office responded that they had recovered $600,000, but refused to comply with an open records request and appealed to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office in an effort to keep the repayment amounts out of the public eye.
Attorney and former Houston mayoral candidate Bill King sought records from the county auditor, which showed that while the county had paid $1.425 million, Elevate Strategies has only returned $208,000.
Among invoices Elevate Strategies submitted to the county are expenditures of $538,057 for software and canvassers from known Democratic voter turnout groups Civis Analytics and NGP VAN EveryAction.
Founded by Dan Wagner, former chief analytics officer of Obama for America, Civis Analytics has worked to increase voter turnout for a variety of progressive candidates and organizations including Battleground Texas. The group touts data collection that can be compiled into individual voter records for use in political campaigns.
Likewise, NGP VAN’s website advertises the company as “the leading technology provider to Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations.”
Last year, Hidalgo defended the use of political campaigning groups, saying they had the tools to conduct the outreach. But Rice University professor and political analyst Mark Jones told The Texan there is not a great deal of overlap between the kinds of residents targeted.
“Those are companies focused exclusively on likely voters, which is not the same thing as a vulnerable population that would be the target of a COVID vaccine outreach campaign,” said Jones. “The Civis Analytics and NGP data sets are not designed to reach those targets. They are designed to reach people who are likely to turnout in the 2022 county judge election.”
Jones also noted that Elevate Strategies contract lists as a sub-contractor the Texas Organizing Project, which is another group that conducts canvassing and campaigning on behalf of Democratic candidates, including Hidalgo.
Go that? Lina Hidalgo approved over $1 million in funding for a company who’s primary job is getting Democrats (including herself) elected, paid them money after the contract was cancelled, and when told to give the money back, the Democrat company kept more than $1 million, and then Hidalgo’s office tried to cover it up.
Hidalgo doesn’t just need to be voted out of office, she and her cronies need to be sent to prison for abusing taxpayer money by spending it for partisan political advantage.
Democrats flee, lettuce wins, a flood of extra executives, and Musk gets out the hatchet. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
People leaving the Democratic Party describe it as cancer:
While Democrat voters have been leaving the party for years, their reasons have become more urgent.
“When people were feeling pushed away years ago, to the point where they were starting to walk away, there was more of a casual tone about it,” former liberal Democrat Brandon Straka, founder of #WalkAway told The Epoch Times.
“People were beginning to feel the effects of leftist, communism, Marxism infiltration into our society, our culture, and our politics.”
Straka founded #WalkAway in 2018 after making his personal decision to leave the party public while inviting others to join him. Since then, thousands of exiting Democrats made social media videos explaining why they were choosing to #WalkAway, giving Straka a window into the minds of these voters.
At that time, people were just noticing changes in the party, he said. They weren’t always identifying what it meant, but they knew they didn’t like how it felt, and quietly left.
“But now, it’s akin to cancer. Cancer doesn’t stop growing and spreading just because people don’t like it. And what’s happening with the left is no different,” Straka said. “Particularly with them getting rid of Trump, installing Biden, and the Democrats taking full control of the government. This is a cancer that’s rapidly growing and spreading now. And it’s becoming not just uncomfortable, but I think intolerable, for a lot of people.”
Drugs dealers openly selling on Broadway. Thinks to mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams, and the feckless actions of Soros-backed DA Alvin Bragg, Democrats have undone not only all the hard-won law-and-order gains of Rudy Giuliani’s broken windows police, but they’ve actually brought NYC back to the nadir of the crime-ridden New York of the 1970s. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke is heading to his third high-profile defeat in five years. But he and Planned Parenthood have an ace of their sleeve: registering dead voters.
A Texas firearms dealer is suing the Biden administration for weaponizing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to shut down law-abiding gun retailers over paperwork errors discovered during audits.
President Joe Biden ordered the Department of Justice in June of 2021 to enforce “zero tolerance for willful violations of the law by federally licensed firearms dealers that put public safety at risk,” but after a 500 percent increase in federal firearm license revocations for retailers over the last year, it’s clear the Biden administration isn’t just going after gun sellers who intentionally violate the law.
Punishing minor slip-ups, the lawsuit argues, draws on a drastically different interpretation of the law than the definition federal courts have held based on the Gun Control Act of 1968.
The lawsuit, to which the federal government has 60 days to respond, also argues that the Biden administration’s new policy sets an unreasonably high standard that is not applied to any other industry.
That’s why Michael Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, chose to bring this case.
Those energy-hostile Democratic Party policies just keep paying dividends: “New England facing natural gas shortages, rolling blackouts this winter.”
The reality is that the normal flow of natural gas into the region is limited and has been unable to keep up with increasing demand levels over the past decade. That means that utility operators have to rely on liquid natural gas (LNG) imports to make up the difference during peak demand periods. During such times, LNG accounts for as much as one-third of the total natural gas used for heating and electricity.
But why is that? You won’t need an ace detective to figure that out. Utility companies in New York, Connecticut, and other New England states projected supply shortfalls more than a decade ago. Fortunately, New York and Pennsylvania sit on some of the richest natural gas resources in the country, found in the Marcellus shale deposits. The companies requested new, higher-volume pipelines to carry natural gas to meet the spiraling demands of New York City, particularly at the furthest end of the gas lines in Long Island. They also urged the development of local gas production to feed those lines. Similar situations were noted all across New England.
Instead of doing that, New York refused to approve new gas lines and passed a moratorium on natural gas drilling in the state. This brings us to the current situation where the same amount of natural gas is being used, but increasing amounts of it come in the form of LNG that has to be imported either from other regions of the country or from overseas. The energy crunch in Europe is eating up a lot of the available LNG, so there may not be enough for New England this winter.
A star reporter for ABC News has been missing since an April 27 FBI raid at his Arlington, Virginia apartment.
Emmy award winner James Gordon Meek – a deep-dive journalist who was also a former senior counterterrorism adviser and investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee, abruptly quit his job of 9 years and “fell off the face of the earth,” after the raid, one of his colleagues told Rolling Stone.
A recent proliferation of phony executive profiles on LinkedIn is creating something of an identity crisis for the business networking site, and for companies that rely on it to hire and screen prospective employees. The fabricated LinkedIn identities — which pair AI-generated profile photos with text lifted from legitimate accounts — are creating major headaches for corporate HR departments and for those managing invite-only LinkedIn groups.
Last week, KrebsOnSecurity examined a flood of inauthentic LinkedIn profiles all claiming Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) roles at various Fortune 500 companies, including Biogen, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Hewlett Packard.
Since then, the response from LinkedIn users and readers has made clear that these phony profiles are showing up en masse for virtually all executive roles — but particularly for jobs and industries that are adjacent to recent global events and news trends.
Does the Federal Reserve swapping some $6 billion worth of dollars for Swiss Francs with the Swiss National Bank mean a global financial crisis is coming? Boiling down his argument: A.) The Swiss National bank has a weekly dollar auction every Wednesday. 99%+ of the time, no one shows up for them. B.) Last Wednesday, 15 parties (meaning banks) showed up for them to the tune of some $6 billion. C.) The only reason they would do that is if they don’t trust their current repo counterparties, and D.) This is what happened when Flu Manchu hit and before the Subprime Meltdown in 2008. If it’s any consolation, they first started showing up for the latter in December of 2007, so you might have nine months to buy gold, ammunition and canned goods…
“According to the latest campaign finance reports, Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer has raised a record-setting $4.9 million dollars in support of her campaign for Harris County Judge, outraising Democratic incumbent Lina Hidalgo 4 to 1.”
Related: “Hidalgo Booed Exiting Meeting Where GOP Commissioners Continue Boycott of Tax Increase.”
Woke reporter: Are you just super excited to coach against another black coach? Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles: “We don’t see color…the minute you guys stop making a big deal about it, everyone else will as well.”
It looks like the Democrats running Harris County are finally going to face some consequences for defunding law enforcement.
Texas Comptroller Glen Hegar has ruled that Harris County reduced funding for some law enforcement agencies and will be subject to sanctions under a new state law enacted last year.
According to a letter addressed to Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, Hegar said that his ruling is in response to complaints filed by Constables Mark Herman (Pct. 4) and Ted Heap (Pct. 5) regarding funding changes last year and in a proposed budget for next year.
One of the key allegations Hegar is investigating is the county’s move to take away more than $3 million in so-called “rollover funds” from constables’ offices. Last year, commissioners voted 3 to 2 along party lines to remove these funds from the eight elected constables as well as the district attorney’s office, based on a recommendation from County Administrator David Berry.
Hegar notes that the proposed budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 will reduce funding to the constables’ offices by over $12 million as compared to Short Fiscal Year 2022, which covers March through September of this year. Although the county appears to be revising the proposal, they are still poised to reduce overall funds for constables by $3 million.
“The budgeting practices of Harris County may not provide the Constables Office with full authority to expend their allocated budget to meet public safety needs,” wrote Hegar.
Signed by Abbott last year, the state’s “Back the Blue” legislation punishes cities or counties with populations of greater than 250,000 people if they reduce allocations for police, by either freezing property taxes or forcing cities to revisit any annexation done in the last 30 years.
Thus, Hegar writes, if Harris County proceeds with the constable’s budget as proposed “without obtaining voter approval, the county may not adopt an ad valorem tax rate that exceeds the county’s no-new-revenue tax rate.”
Snip.
Last week, Hidalgo and County Commissioner Adrian Garcia (D-Pct. 2) held a press conference to tout increases in “public safety spending” that included non-traditional expenditures such as $1.5 million for public Wi-Fi, $8.4 million for new trails, and $50 million to address blight and add sidewalks and street lights.
With the possible exception of streetlights, none of that makes anyone safer, but does provide nice conduits of graft to shovel to left-wing cronies via rigged bidding contracts (a Hidalgo specialty). We know from an in-depth dive into the Austin defund effort’s Reimagining Public Safety document that letting leftwing activists steal money from police funding to line their own pockets is one of the primary goals of the “defund the police” movement.
The interesting thing about this ruling is that, compared to Austin’s defunding push, Harris County’s defunding efforts were relatively modest at-the-margins stuff. No showy reductions in headcount or refusals to let new cadet classes move forward, just a quick raid to hoover up some loose cash from the constables while no one was looking. That this was enough for Hegar to drop the hammer indicates that defunding the police is a dead letter in Texas.
Does this mean the state government can nail Austin for their much more egregious defunding efforts? Probably not. The worst of that happened in 2020, while the law wasn’t passed until 2021. So unless the Austin City Council stupidly tries to stick their hand in the APD cookie jar again, I doubt they can be held to account for that under this law, unless they try the same trick again. On the other hand, time has proven again and again that there are few limits to Austin City Council stupidity…
