My weekly report to Montgomery County Republicans and Friends. Here we have illegal immigration, a congested tax, terrorism, and the fires in California. Best, Peter Huessy
California Dreamen’: The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times blasted the city’s mayor, Democrat Karen Bass, for her “poor planning” and “poor judgment” in slashing the budget for the fire department, which has been hamstrung while trying to contain the wildfires that have devastated entire neighborhoods. The Mayor sought $28 million in fire department cuts and got $17 million. She was travelling in Ghana during the fires. Hydrants had no water. The governor said water is a local issue while the mayor’s office said water is a state issue.
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Biden Administration Admits Defeat by Withdrawing 7 Woke Rule Changes __________ Fires of Incompetence: Gavin Newsom's Policies Turned California into an Inferno By Rudy W. Giuliani Let's start with the facts, folks. California is burning, and it's not just because someone dropped a cigarette. No, this disaster, the scale of which we're witnessing, is a direct outcome of Governor Gavin Newsom's egregious policy failures. As Mayor of New York City, I saw my fair share of mismanagement, but this is on another level of incompetent failure. First, let's talk about forest management—or rather, the lack thereof. Newsom promised the moon and the stars when he took office, claiming he'd address California's wildfire crisis with proactive measures. But what did he do? He cut the budget for fire prevention by a staggering $100 million. That's right, at a time when the state was crying out for more resources to combat the blaze, Newsom did the opposite. This isn't just a policy failure; it's a betrayal of the trust of Californians who expected leadership, not lip service.(available on Substack). |
An Ideological Agenda Leaves Californians Vulnerable to Wildfires
Mario Loyola | January 10, 2025
Mario Loyola is a senior research fellow for environmental policy and regulation at The Heritage Foundation.
While California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass blame this week’s devastating wildfires on climate change or claim that they did all they could to prepare, the evidence tells a different story. Their focus on a woke, climate-driven agenda has come at the expense of practical, effective wildfire prevention measures. The result? Lives lost, homes destroyed, and a state left unprepared.
Mismanagement of Forests and Water Resources
Decades of forest mismanagement have created a dangerous tinderbox across California. Overgrown vegetation, deadwood, and excess fuel such as dried leaves and fallen branches have accumulated unchecked, turning forests into powder kegs.
Proactive measures like thinning trees, controlled burns, and vegetation management have been deprioritized due to excessive regulations and litigation driven by environmental groups. Newsom’s administration has compounded the problem by slashing budgets for fire prevention and delaying critical water infrastructure projects.
Firefighters in Los Angeles battled this year’s blazes with insufficient water resources, a failure directly tied to Newsom’s inaction. Billions of dollars allocated for new reservoirs remain unspent while the state’s aging water infrastructure struggles to meet the growing demand. Bass worsened the situation by cutting $17.5 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department budget, all while jetting off to Ghana during peak wildfire season. These decisions reflect a troubling detachment from the practical needs of Californians.
Ideological Influence
The root of these failures lies in an ideological agenda that prioritizes performative politics over governance. Newsom’s Green New Deal-inspired energy policies have worsened California’s wildfire crisis by misallocating resources and overregulating essential infrastructure. Meanwhile, activists oppose vital measures like logging, controlled burns, and timber sales, labeling them as environmentally harmful. This shortsightedness ignores the essential role these practices play in preventing catastrophic fires.
California’s progressive leadership has also diverted resources away from wealthier neighborhoods under the guise of “antiracism,” a move that leaves all communities at greater risk. Instead of prioritizing public safety, they’ve fixated on initiatives like increasing diversity quotas and combating climate change—efforts that create more problems than they solve and do little to address the immediate threat of wildfires.
A Strained Insurance Market
Losses from recent wildfires are estimated to exceed $150 billion. Alas, insurers offering policies in the future will be hard to find. In recent years, their requests to increase premiums to reflect the soaring wildfire risk were denied by state regulators. Many left the state. And as they did, the burden has fallen on the state’s Fair Plan, a last-resort insurer now overwhelmed by surging policies. The lack of investment in fire prevention only exacerbates this problem, threatening the long-term affordability and availability of coverage in high-risk areas.
Federal and State Failures
California’s wildfire crisis isn’t solely a state-level failure. The federal government, which oversees much of California’s forestland, has also fallen short under the Biden administration. Effective wildfire mitigation requires state and federal cooperation, yet both levels of government have neglected their responsibilities.
By contrast, the previous Trump administration took decisive action with Executive Order 13855, promoting active forest management to reduce wildfire risks. This approach emphasized thinning, timber sales, and reducing regulatory barriers—practical solutions that California desperately needs to revisit.
Strengthening state-federal partnerships and encouraging public-private collaborations could provide the comprehensive strategy required to protect lives and property.
A Call for Responsible Leadership
California’s leadership crisis is not just about incompetence—it’s about priorities. Leaders like Newsom and Bass have chosen ideological distractions over practical governance, leaving millions of Californians vulnerable to preventable disasters. Their failures on wildfire prevention, water management, and public safety underscore the need for a new approach.
Californians deserve leaders who prioritize solutions over slogans. Proactive forest management, modernized water infrastructure, and adequate funding for first responders are not optional—they are essential. It’s time to reject ideology and demand practical, forward-looking leadership that protects lives and property.
Congestion Tax in New York City at $8000 a Year
In New York City, you can now pay $8000 a year in a congestion tax because by driving to work from outside New York City you are contributing to too many cars in the city. Charles Hurt of the Times explains.
By Charles Hurt - The Washington Times - Monday, January 6, 2025
OPINION on TAXES
It’s Jan. 6, and the government’s war on the innocent citizen rolls on.
The latest great battle in this long war comes from New York City. But it is part of the much broader campaign by powerful government enthusiasts across the country against American citizens.
If a nearby forest has been cut down for plastic solar panels from China, or you use a government-designed gas can to fill your lawn mower, or you live in a Democratic city where lawless prosecutors celebrate crime, you know what I am talking about.
Speaking of lawless prosecutors, President Biden just sold America’s highest civilian award to globalist George Soros, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars installing lawless Democratic prosecutors across the country to promote crimes committed against innocent Americans.
I mention that just in case you were wondering how deep Mr. Biden’s contempt is for the innocent American citizen.
The latest central planners’ assault on law-abiding, taxpaying citizens is an attack on anyone who would dare to work in New York City. Democrats, led by Gov. Kathy Hochul, have slapped workers with a new tax for driving to work in Manhattan that starts at $9 per day.
The new tax ranges up to more than $31 per day. That’s between $2,300 and more than $8,000 per year per innocent citizen who works in the Big Apple. Just for showing up to work.
This new tax is, of course, one of the most regressive taxes on the books. It will hit hourly workers, firefighters and other first responders, hotel maids, garbagemen and hot-dog vendors the hardest. The new tax will hardly even pinch if you are rich enough to have a car and driver.
Democratic politicians’ stated purpose of the new tax is to discourage people from driving into the city. They call it their “congestion pricing” plan. They want you to ride the subway or walk or ride your bike.
But if you are a big, gas-guzzling, traffic-jamming company that dispatches fleets of thousands of cars into the city every day, you will be just fine — so long as you spend millions of dollars paying off Democratic politicians.
Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft hired lobbyists in Albany and paid themselves a $1.50 fee for driving into lower Manhattan. It was such a sweet deal that the companies actually encouraged the new tax scheme.
Anyway, that $1.50 fee for driving in the city will just be passed along to the suckers who use Uber and Lyft.
“This is corporate greed at its worst,” a Democratic city councilman from Queens told the New York Post.
This scam is the most perfect Democratic solution ever devised. The big government central planners pitch it as a sensible way to reduce traffic congestion. In truth, it is nothing more than their latest scheme to rip off taxpayers after they have already spent all the proceeds from all their previous schemes.
And if you don’t want to be slapped with this new tax, just ride the New York subway system. Yet ridership is down because these very same lawmakers have turned the New York subway system into an underground insane asylum.
Subway cars have become sleeping quarters, drug-shooting dens and urinals for all the insane — including the “criminally insane” — who would rather live in New York City underground than in the harsh elements of a New York City winter sidewalk.
One of the obvious problems is that these same big government central planners have been so busy defunding the police and celebrating fare beaters that the subways are filled with not just the insane but also illegal riders bent on mayhem. And sometimes they are one and the same.
Last week, an innocent commuter was pushed onto the track in front of an oncoming train. Last month, a woman on the F train was lit on fire and burned to death as commuters and helpless cops watched.
In many ways, it is a perfect situation for the government enthusiasts who hate you.
Either pay us another $9 a day, or ride the subway, where you will be burned to death or shoved in front of a train. If you don’t like that deal, just wait until you see the next one they have for you.
Clifford May, my friend at FDD, explains why an open border is not good. He writes in the Wash Times:
“Throwing open the southern border and allowing — according to a recent House Judiciary Committee report — more than 8 million illegal immigrants from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America to stream into the country is “an extreme and dangerous policy,” writes Threat Status opinion contributor May. “It has been President Biden’s policy,” writes Mr. May, who points to “this uncommon sense from the economist and social philosopher Thomas Sowell: ‘The first responsibility of any government is to protect the people already in the country.’” “Reminder: One can oppose illegal immigration — especially on a massive scale — while also supporting legal and controlled immigration,” writes Mr. May. “When conventional politicians shirk their first responsibility, expect unconventional politicians to take up the mission.”
Illegal Immigration: Republicans tee up fast votes on Laken Riley Act to deport illegal immigrants who steal, shoplift
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Congressional Republicans are speeding their first immigration crackdown bill through Congress with an initial vote scheduled later this week on the Laken Riley Act, which would pressure Homeland Security to detain and deport illegal immigrants who shoplift or steal.
Sen. Katie Britt, Alabama Republican, announced a Senate version of the bill on Tuesday and Rep. Mike Collins, Georgia Republican, announced the House version.
House GOP leaders have already slated it for a floor vote on Tuesday, and given the backing of new Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the bill will likely see fast action in the upper chamber, too.
Riley, a nursing student in Georgia, was slain last year by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who was caught and released by the Biden administration and was protected by sanctuary-city policies that allowed him to amass a lengthy rap sheet while free in the U.S.
The killing helped elevate illegal immigration, already a simmering issue, into a crisis for the Biden administration and a powerful political message for Republicans.
“The American people did not just deliver a mandate on November 5; they delivered a verdict. They made it clear they want to remove criminal illegal aliens and protect American families. We will soon know whether Democrats hear, respect and obey that verdict,” Ms. Britt said.
Jose Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, was convicted of Riley’s killing and sentenced to life in prison. He sneaked into the U.S. on Sept. 8, 2022, and was released a day later under one of President Biden’s “parole” programs that catches and releases illegal immigrants.
- Laken Riley Act clears key filibuster test in Senate; bill pushes DHS to detain criminal migrants
- Premium Senate’s new GOP majority lines up first votes on immigration, Israel and abortion
In 2023, he tallied an arrest in New York City for endangering a child, then a month later racked up a shoplifting charge in Georgia. Two months after that, he failed to show up for court.
Despite those entanglements, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not move to arrest him — and Homeland Security actually issued him a work permit in December 2023, giving him a new tool to burrow into the community ahead of Riley’s murder.
“An illegal criminal came into my district and killed Laken Riley because our local law enforcement did not have the tools to stop him,” Mr. Collins said. “Laken fought until her last breath, and so will I until this bill crosses the finish line and lands on the president’s desk.”
The Laken Riley Act would push ICE to arrest and detain illegal immigrants who commit shoplifting, burglary, larceny or theft offenses.
It would also create an avenue for states to bring a civil case in court against federal officials who refuse to enforce immigration law.
More than 40 Senate Republicans are backing the bill, including Mr. Thune, of South Dakota, and Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina.
“As we turn the page from the disastrous open-border policies of Joe Biden, the Laken Riley Act will empower the Trump administration to enforce our laws, keep our nation secure, and prevent tragedies,” Mr. Budd said.
A version of the Laken Riley Act was approved in the GOP-led House last year in a 251-170 vote. More than three dozen Democrats backed it.
It never saw a vote in the Democrat-led Senate.
Its passage in the House this week is virtually certain.
Mr. Thune on Monday began the process of placing the Senate version of the bill on the calendar, which does not guarantee a vote but allows bills to skip committee and be brought directly to the floor.
It would have to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold to win passage in the Senate. That would require the support of at least eight members of the Democratic Caucus.
Sen. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania Democrat, is co-sponsoring the bill along with nearly every Senate Republican.
Allyson and John Phillips, Riley’s mother and stepfather, urged Congress to approve the bill, calling it a way to honor their daughter.
“Every single member of Congress should be able to get behind this purely commonsense bill that will make our country and communities safer,” they said.
[My update: The bill cleared the filibuster by a vote of 84-9.]
Now folks the next segment you have to read carefully. The clown Eric Swalwell defended his vote against the bill on Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) defended his vote against the Laken Riley Act by stating that “people are going to be targeted because they’re brown. “Read the exchange with the equally clueless Chris Hayes.
Host Chris Hayes asked, “[T]here’s a sort of a test of this happening now with this piece of legislation that would essentially make larger the category of immigrants who are here undocumented without status who can be put into the deportation queue if arrested, not convicted, for a set of category of crimes. So, it enlarges that. It also, in a more — well, a part that a lot of Democrats are very focused on, it gives state A.G.s unprecedented power to essentially intervene in immigration court proceedings. [37] Democrats voted for this piece of legislation sponsored by Republicans. It just passed over cloture, 8[4]-9. You voted against it. Why, and do you think it’s an ominous sign that this is getting Democratic votes?”
[Get it folks? Its an ominous sign if Democrats vote for law and order bills!!!] But now read this:
Swalwell answered, “Because people are going to be targeted because they’re brown. That’s what’s going to happen in America, because we’re not saying now that you have to go through the court process and be convicted of a violent crime — and I don’t want any undocumented individual who commits a violent crime to be here. I think they should be removed after they serve their sentence. But what this says is if the officer just says, you know what, that person looks like they’re undocumented, I’m going to pull them over, now, in the officer’s mind, whether it was a lawful detention or not, he’s got the person pulled over. And if they are undocumented, [not] having committed any crime, supporting their family, going to work, working in an agriculture field, working in hospitality, they’re gone. It’s the predicate now to deport. And I think that’s wrong. And by the way, we have a workforce crisis in America. So, if we can get rid of the most violent folks in America, secure the border, we don’t want to disrupt the people who are out in the fields doing these jobs that no one else will take, the people who are working in our restaurants, the people who are working in our hotels, because the cost for everyone else will go up
The Japan Steel Deal was a Good Deal
Japan, a usually reticent U.S. ally, is making it clear that it will not go quietly in its fight to overturn President Biden’s decision to block Nippon Steel’s $14.1 billion takeover bid of U.S. Steel.
Mr. Biden has cited “national security concerns” in denying Nippon’s offer. Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon offers an in-depth analysis of Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishida’s warning that the rejection could have real consequences for the bilateral relationship, where annual two-way trade topped $300 billion in recent years.
Mr. Ishiba says Japan deserves a “proper explanation on why there are concerns on national security.” Eiji Hashimoto, the chairman and CEO of Nippon Steel, seconded those concerns in a press conference in Tokyo Tuesday, the day after his company, in a joint action with U.S. Steel, filed a lawsuit seeking to nullify Mr. Biden’s veto in two U.S. courts.
Mr. Biden had been under strong political pressure from Democratic-leaning labor unions to nullify the sale of the iconic but troubled American steelmaker to a foreign rival. Mr. Trump, the president-elect, has said he, too, would have blocked the merger and vows to impose tariffs protecting U.S. Steel from foreign rivals.
Terrorism & The New York Times
Especially after Binghazi, the NY Times tried very hard to minimize the Islamic Jihad and ISIS inspired attacks. However, recently, the Times actually listed what they termed “The list of attacks and plots either inspired or aided by ISIS over the past five years is longer than many people may realize.” The Times then listed: a series of attacks but failed to list any of the attacks against Israel in October 2023!! Apparently the attacks carried out by Hamas and Iran as they seek to kill all the Jews is for some reason not related to the ISIS goal of killing all the Jews.
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- The fatal shooting of six people near a Shiite mosque in Oman last summer.
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Homegrown Terrorism in Our Military is a Problem
Shoshana Bryen • January 8, 2025 • Daily Caller
Family members and troops attend memorial service following the shooting at Fort Hood. (Photo: U.S. Army)
The U.S. military is under systemic attack by jihadist “influencers” trying to lure them into terror-related activities. Soldiers are not the only targets, but considering that our military contains young, healthy people, trained in weapons use, it makes sense that those wanting to infiltrate and radicalize people would see soldiers as fertile ground for a campaign to undermine American society.
And, to be clear, jihadist subversion is NOT aimed only at Muslims — one of the two former soldiers involved in the terror attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas (both of whom had ties to Ft. Bragg) plus the dual Irish-American arrested on December 20, were not Muslims.
The Department of Defense and the FBI have been reluctant to acknowledge the scope of the problem. To understand how far back it goes, remember “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” (SJS).
In the years after 9/11, the FBI identified SJS in a long list of men accused of terrorist activities, including the Fort Dix Six, the Lackawanna Six, Naveed Afzal Haq, Hesham Hadayet, Derrick Shareef, Sulejman Talovic and others in Portland, Lodi, and Northern Virginia. London, Madrid and Amsterdam were said to have outbreaks of the disease as well.
“Unrelated” attacks, they said. “Sudden” attacks, they said. “Unattached to any larger system,” they said. They were, of course, wrong. By 2007, the New York Police Department (NYPD) bravely staked out territory, studying the people, the plots and the background.
At the time I wrote about the report:
In a landmark report, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” experts studied 11 cases of homegrown jihadists, isolating specific factors that appear to move some people – primarily young men – to radical, violent activity even as most American Muslims remain unmoved by or even repulsed by the idea of violence committed in the name of religion. Among the NYPD’s findings:
–Salafist ideology combines Islam with a determination to solve problems through violence. Salafist institutions and literature are readily available in the West.
–Al Qaeda provides inspiration, but generally not operational assistance.
–Susceptible people seek an identity or a cause and often self-identify before finding compatriots. Radicalization has proceeded more slowly in the U.S. than in Europe, where even second and third generation immigrants have trouble assimilating into the local culture – but more quickly since 9-11.
–The Internet is an enabler, providing an anonymous virtual meeting place. Sites other than mosques can provide the sense of community otherwise isolated people may be seeking.
–A “spiritual sanctioner” and an “operational leader” are necessary to move people from the ideological phase to an operational terrorist cell.
–Not everyone who begins the process of radicalization becomes a terrorist; there are several points at which people drop out.
Move forward. A number of American soldiers have been arrested and charged with activities that are/or should be called terrorism, most notably, Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army Major who killed 13 people and injured more than 30 others in the Fort Hood mass shooting on November 5, 2009. Hasan’s jihad syndrome was anything but sudden. He was known to have corresponded with terrorist Anwar Al Awlaki, and his colleagues reported him several times for lectures and comments about Islam.
Nothing happened until it happened. In the end, Hasan was not tried on terror charges.
In 2011, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security held hearings on the case that resulted in a 2013 report entitled, “A Ticking Time Bomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government’s Failure in the Fort Hood Attack.” It said:
Although neither DoD nor the FBI had specific information concerning the time, place, or nature of the attack, they collectively had sufficient information to have detected Hasan’s radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it. Our investigation found specific and systemic failures.
They do get some of them.
Soldier Ethan Meltzer was arrested in 2020 and charged with sending sensitive details about his unit to the Order of Nine Angles, described as a Satanic left-hand path occultist and terrorist network, which apparently planned to pass the information to jihadists, who would then carry out an attack.
In 2021, Cole Bridges, a former U.S. Army soldier, was sentenced to 14 years in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release for attempting to provide material support to ISIS and attempting to murder U.S. military service members. Bridges pleaded guilty to terrorism charges.
They missed Shamsud-Din Jabbar, and even now, knowing that he visited Cairo - the home of the Muslim Brotherhood - but can’t say what he did there, insist, “all investigative details and evidence that we have now still support that Jabbar acted alone.”
America’s soldiers are our guardians; they volunteer to protect and defend us. They put their lives on the line for us. DoD should stop worrying about unvaccinated soldiers and DEI lapses and protect our soldiers by focusing on jihadist networks working to undermine and destroy our country.
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Peter Huessy is a Member of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee. Since 1981 he has been President of Geo-Strategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland. He was a former special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior and consultant to the US Air Force. He can be reached at [email protected]