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From immigration to crime, energy and beyond, Democrats have the Midas touch in reverse: Everything they handle turns to manure.
Can the Left get anything right?
*Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas repeatedly has claimed that “the border is closed.” Regarding the illegal-alien surge through Mexico, “we have seen extreme progress over these last few months,” Vice President Kamala Harris insisted on June 25.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: HOW DID THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF JFK, BILL CLINTON TURN INTO A WOKE NEO-MAOIST MOVEMENT?
Really?
If “extreme progress” is an invading army of Future Democrats of America, then, yes. Things are boffo. But if the goal is border security, this bungle is breathtaking.
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Customs and Border Protection encountered 188,829 illegal aliens on the southern frontier in June, versus 33,049 a year earlier – up 471.4% since President Donald J. Trump’s tenure. On President Joe Biden’s watch, such apprehensions soared 469.2% between February and June 2021.
As Fox News’ industrious Bill Melugin reported July 19 from Del Rio, Texas, uninvited illegals reach the border and demand admission. Some 300 or so banged on a steel gate and, slowly but surely, entered America. Those who patiently wait worldwide for visas and others – already here – who navigate the federal naturalization Skinner box should be revolted.
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“It’s definitely irksome to see people just marching in like they own the place, especially when I’ll end up wasting my prime years languishing in America’s legal immigration system,” one 20-something European told me. He feels further behind the 822,680 who have barged into the U.S. since February alone.
“I probably couldn’t become a citizen until well into my 40s, no matter how hard I tried,” he added. “I have to admit that I seriously am considering Canada as an option for the next 40-plus years as a taxpaying, STEM-educated member of the workforce.”
Even worse, as Melugin discovered, illegals arrive from nations with poor-to-dismal COVID-19 vaccination rates. While America is 49.3% fully inoculated, according to Reuters, Melugin interviewed freshly admitted illegals from Brazil, which is 17% vaccinated, Ghana (1.3%), and Haiti (less than 0.1%).
In July’s first half, 135 illegals at the border’s Rio Grande Valley sector tested positive for COVID-19. Compared to the previous 14 months, this figure rocketed 900%. As the delta variant blows new wind beneath COVID’s wings, this is how “the pandemic president” protects his fellow Americans?
The Left’s “Defund the police!” battle cry of summer 2020 has yielded an endless winter of chaos and bloodshed.
The Left weeps that illegal aliens break into America because “they want better lives.” Well, who doesn’t? And if Haitians seek cheerier prospects, why leave their island? Haiti (2019 per-capita GDP: $2,905) shares Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic ($18,413). Why don’t Haitians bang on Dominican doors? Where is it written that America must accommodate these people?
*The Left’s “Defund the police!” battle cry of summer 2020 has yielded an endless winter of chaos and bloodshed. Rampant shoplifting, assaults, shootings and murders plague Democrat-mismanaged cities. “Bail reform” catapults criminals – including a New York-based serial synagogue attacker – back onto the streets with dizzying speed. Rather than jail criminals, far-Left PINOs – George-Soros-funded Prosecutors in Name Only – such as Chicago’s Kim Foxx, Los Angeles’ George Gascon, and San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin wave their social-justice pompoms on behalf of “oppressed” criminals.
*President Trump’s hard-won energy independence is going dark. Biden’s cruel cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline, his ghastly greenlight for Vladimir Putin’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany, and his strangulation of domestic petroleum production all have left America and Europe more dependent on foreign energy suppliers, some of whom hate us. This also has helped hike West Texas Intermediate petroleum from $53 to $72 per barrel under the Biden-Democrat Left – up 36%.
*Inflation, as 1970s as Studio 54, is back on the dance floor. Fear not! Biden proposes to fight higher prices with … even more robust federal outlays. Biden says that this will “take the pressure off of inflation” which hit 5.4% in June, year-on-year. The startling notion that exploding federal deficits tame prices would make even the late statist economist John Maynard Keynes drop his teacup.
*Texas Democrats already have earned 2021’s Nobel Prize for Boneheaded Political Gaffes. Several Lone Star State lawmakers fled Austin, to deny Republicans the quorum needed to adopt election-integrity legislation. These “parliamentarians of the people” then eschewed commercial aviation and, like the billionaires they hate, took a private jet to Washington. Unlike average Americans, they escaped the discomfort and indignity of purely theatrical federal in-flight mask mandates.
These Texas twits then created a COVID-19 super-spreader event on the national stage. After slamming GOP efforts to combat Democrat vote fraud, at least six Texas Democrats, a member of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s staff, and a White House aide all tested positive for COVID-19. This pathetic stunt could not have gone worse.
Moreover, if Republicans must abandon the U.S. Senate floor, to deny Democrats a quorum and doom the election-fraud-enabling H.R.1/S.1, the dinosaur media will roar: “The GOP killed democracy!” Republicans then should play non-stop video of Texas Democrats’ COVID-tainted catastrophe and ask: “Who do you think gave us this idea?”
*New York Democrats could not leave untouched the standard, centuries-old practice of asking primary voters to pick one nominee per public post. Instead, Democrats pushed for, and Gotham voters in November 2019 foolishly approved, an absurd and baffling ranked-choice system. Voters last month were asked for their top five contenders, in preferential order.
On Election Night, June 22, the first-choice tallies for the Democrat mayoral nomination suggested a comfortable victory for law-and-order candidate Eric Adams, a former NYPD officer.
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But wait! Tabulation of choices two through five did not begin until June 26. Then 135,000 test ballots were discovered among actual ballots and had to be deducted before 124,000 absentee ballots were added among the re-allocated votes of failed candidates. Thus, the losers helped choose the winner. Adams finally prevailed – two head-scratching weeks after polls closed.
These and countless other public-policy belly-flops prove that the Left cannot be trusted with anything beyond Broadway, if that.
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Bucknell University’s Michael Malarkey contributed research to this opinion piece.