My family was Democrat. My father, an honorable man was a Democrat politician. All of my siblings were Democrats. I was a Democrat. In years past Democrats were identified as people that respected everyone’s rights. Growing up in the 60’s was the heyday of Democratic power. JFK’s speech where he passionately plead, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, was a mantra that we as Democrats fervently and proudly believed. Today, we all are conservative Independents, some registered as Republicans, many as Independents, but no one of us are Democrats anymore, and for good reason!
Fast forward to the first primary debate for the Democrat hopefuls. It was 2 days where we learned a lot about how the Democrat party has morphed into something unrecognizable. These 20+ candidates for the Presidency were advocating a very radical agenda. Open borders, decriminalizing illegal aliens, giving them “free healthcare”, giving all of us single payer health care, making private insurance illegal, embracing abortion to the point that even female trannies can have one for free (would like to see that!), a full-on embrace of identity politics, basic income for all, free college, forgiveness of student loan debt, and many more PC positions. JFK must have been spinning in his grave!
The party now, instead of asking what you can do for your country, is now telling us what they want to do for us. Further, they want to do even more for illegal aliens, who they say are “true Americans”. They want to do it with our money, and they say that we will be happier for it? I think not! In fact, they have just exposed themselves for what they are! They are not of the Democratic Party. They are Socialists and Communists! I hope to God that Khrushchev was wrong, and that we would be conquered from within!
We have a lot of good things happening in our country! The economy is very good. More people are participating in the work force, and minority employment is at all time highs. Wages are gravitating upward for the first time in decades. Our trade deals are being seriously re-negotiated and the effort is showing success. Our porous border is being addressed as best as it can be with a do-nothing congress fighting the President on protections. Bad treaties are being reviewed and re-negotiated, and success is at least hopeful. All this is the result of our President, Donald Trump.
I wonder how these hopefuls expect to win an election? No one that has 1/2 a brain can believe what they espouse. No true American can embrace their values. They have run off the tracks and do not represent America. Instead they simply represent the worst of us, those that expect others to take care of their personal problems, those that come in illegally to our country and expect us to take care of their lives, and those that would take away our freedoms in order to capture and maintain power. This is a defining moment in our country, and I pray that we can survive it!
My wife and I have been chastising ourselves for being
very focused on national politics, to the detriment of what happens
locally. As our penance, we decided to
attend the town hall in our city highlighting our new Los Angeles County
Sheriff. Neither of us knew much about
this man, and our homework on him and local law enforcement issues were sketchy
and incomplete as we entered the venue.
Our new Sheriff is Alex Villanueva. He was a relatively obscure Lt. Deputy Sheriff
that retired in 2018, prior to the election.
He spent 30 years with the department, but never managed large
groups. He never went higher than
Lieutenant in his career, which made him a lower level mid-manager at
best. He was a “dark horse” in the election,
running against incumbent James McDonnell, a seasoned veteran that previously
was Chief of the Long Beach police department and at one time was second in
command of the Los Angeles police force.
That was all we really knew about him when attending the town hall, but
insight into his policies and beliefs became very transparent during the
Q&A session that followed his introduction.
Everyone in attendance was given the option of asking
questions when signing into the event.
Question cards were available and if desired, one could submit one or
more questions for the new Sheriff. Both
my wife and I submitted questions. To
the Sheriff’s credit, he answered every submitted question without hesitation,
and his answers were very telling.
He was asked repeatedly about what his department was
going to do differently to address the growing illegal alien problem. His answer to these questions were firmly in
line with the “California Values Act” passed by the state government giving
cover for all illegal aliens. Simply
stated he said that there are over 1 million “undocumented migrants” in his
jurisdiction, and they are, by his account for the most part law abiding and
productive residents that have rights.
His position is that they need to be treated with the utmost respect,
never put in a position to harbor fears of deportation. In fact, he claims that his policy of respect
makes the job of policing much more effective, because these “undocumented
migrants” will co-operate with the department with information on criminal
activity in their neighborhoods. It was
evident that he sees the illegal alien invasion as a net benefit to our
community, and wholeheartedly supports the Liberal Progressive “California
Values Act”.
There were many questions about how he was going to
handle the burgeoning problem of homeless camping out in our
neighborhoods. His position was
unwavering. He stated this; “You talk as
if these people are not yet in your back yards, but they are already
there. We manage the problem with deputies
trained to interact positively with the homeless, working in concert with
social service and mental health personnel to assess the needs of those living
on the street. The big question is what
are you as citizens going to do to make it better for these individuals?” In other words, he bounced the problem back
on us, as if that is where it belonged.
I brought up crime directly to him. Neighborhoodscout.com has put Lakewood CA at
13 in their rating for crime safety.
This means that out of 100 being completely safe, only 13% of USA cities
are less safe than our town. I asked him
what his plan was to reduce the crime rate in our town (Lakewood contracts out
to the Sheriff’s department for police protection). He came up with statistics showing that crime
in Lakewood is down compared to what it was in 2018, but he used annualized
statistics for 2018, and only YTD statistics for 2019. Yes, he compared apples to oranges, and took
a pat on his own back for “community-based policing”, a policy where he will
attempt to hire deputies who live in the same communities where they will be
stationed. In other words, he skirted
over the question to make it go away.
Neither my wife or I voted for the new Sheriff. We voted for the incumbent, as he was doing a
good job of reforming a very corrupt organization where the previous leadership
was actually sent to jail for their activities.
He was the right man for the job, having previously been in charge of
large police organizations, and he was also tough on crime. It came to us that something happened to have
this dark horse succeed in unseating this highly qualified man. Looking into this issue was an eye opener.
It turns out that after the California jungle primary,
where he came in a distant 2nd to McDowell, he went full bore
focusing on the groups that he thought would be most supportive of him. His Liberal Progressive beliefs and his
Latino surname were his strong points.
He lobbied every Hispanic political group he could find, putting himself
up as one of them (his father was Puerto Rican, his mother
Polish-American). He also lobbied every
Democrat Club in Los Angeles County, every Progressive organization with voter
rolls, and pushed hard that he would support all Liberal Progressive ideals
that they held dear, in spite of the Sheriff’s election purportedly being
“non-partisan”. He continually told all
that wanted to hear that he would be an active resister of Trump and the
Federal Government in their efforts to deport illegal alien criminals, making
the LA County Jail system “off limits” to Ice and Homeland Security. He promised to evict them from office space
given to these agencies by Sheriff McDowell.
He became the darling of those that embrace just about everything that
is wrong with California, and that propelled him to his win.
The left is organized and active in California
politics, much more so than Republicans and Conservatives. They fight hard and dirty, and that is their
winning strategy in this state. If we
are to take this state back, we need to have the focus and design to do so, and
that necessitates paying great attention to local politics. We have positive messages, but in order to
win, we need to translate that into understandable sound bites for the public,
and most of all, we need to get out the vote.
If we don’t California, and for that matter the nation will be
permanently transformed into something unrecognizable. Our inaction would produce Liberal Progressive
Socialism, open borders, the end of the nation, and the push for Global
Governance. We have to remember that all
politics starts local. If we ignore that
fact we will lose!
