The Rubicon
Crossing streams of no return
I closed last week’s article saying I would try and write something more upbeat this week…. Yeah, that was an epic fail! Enjoy(???)
A couple of weeks ago, when Mar-A-Lago was raided, there were several articles across conservative media about how the Biden Administration had "Crossed the Rubicon."
Oh, and before we go on any further, yes it was a raid... not a mostly peaceful search or whatever playful euphemism the media would like to make us use. We have the media on film using the word "raid" when they were so excited it was happening.
At any rate, it occurred to me that I had no idea of what "Crossing the Rubicon" referred to. I understood it was an idiom for going past the point of no return, but the reference was lost on me. As far as I know, it could have meant making a Luxe Off-Road Jeep Wrangler driver angry.
So I got on duckduckgo and did some searching. Turns out the story is as such:
Back in the good old days of 60-50 BC, some guy you've probably heard of named Julius Caesar was the Governor of Gaul (basically France). He had been governor of Gaul for roughly 10 years and accrued a significant amount of wealth and power during his time as governor of the region. As his power grew in Gaul, his opponents in Rome grew wary and distrustful of his increasing power in the north. After his few allies in the Roman Senate were driven off in early 49 BC, he was ordered to disband his army and return to Rome.
Knowing his recall to Rome was imminent, Caesar had been building up troops on the Italian border and when he crossed over the River Rubicon, the northern border of Italy, with his Army he was officially considered a traitor. It was a good old fashioned insurrection. By crossing the River Rubicon with his army intact, Caesar had passed a point of no return.
Do NOT go into a history class and repeat this. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a history teacher. Every single detail of what I just told you could be factually inaccurate other than the part where JC crossed the Rubicon. And I’m pretty sure that the part where he crossed with an Orange Julius in hand is a flat out fabrication. The only important take away from this story is that by crossing the Rubicon, Julius Caesar had crossed a line he couldn't uncross. He had committed himself and his army to the ensuing civil war. Hence the idiom.
OK, Let's jump forward around 2,100 years to a civilization that is technologically MUCH more advanced and as far as humanity is concerned... um, maybe we've taken a step back in that department???
Los Angeles is a city I've discussed here before. As a frequent visitor with family there, I'm aware of what is happening on the ground. Things have gotten bad there. Really bad. So much so that it is impossible not to notice for even the most protected of the residents. The decay is not just on Skid Row. It is in Malibu. In Santa Monica. In Beverly Hills.
Why are things falling apart in our cities (LA isn’t alone), and falling apart at such a rapid rate? Well much of this can be attributed to progressive District Attorneys such as George Gascón. He has used prosecutorial discretion as a way to avoid prosecuting criminals. For the uninitiated, prosecutorial discretion is the avenue by which district attorneys decide which cases to prosecute. Is there a law in place that the progressive Gascón feels is unjust? No problem, he will just direct the district attorney’s office to not pursue prosecution.
There are legitimate purposes for the practice of prosecutorial discretion. District Attorney Offices have finite resources and must choose which cases to prioritize in some instances and what resources to devote to those cases. For instance there may be two equivalent cases that are put in front of the DA. One case is a slam-dunk prosecution; the other has circumstantial evidence and is much harder to get a prosecution. In this case it may make sense to use prosecutorial discretion and put more resources into the imminently prosecutable case rather than the one where the case is weaker. Again, resources are finite.
Unfortunately progressive district attorneys have effectively used prosecutorial discretion in an unintended manner. They are using it as a method to circumvent laws that they believe are "unjust." This could mean that they feel specific crimes aren’t really crimes (victimless or too petty to prosecute) or the application of punishments for these crimes is unjust. Underserved communities may be prosecuted at lower rates to achieve more justice equity. Certain crimes that are more prevalent in underserved communities may be ignored. There are many ways that prosecutorial discretion could be applied such that Lady Justice doesn’t have her blindfold completely on.
California has been an interesting canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country as it pertains to leftist ideologies. It is so thoroughly captured by the Democratic Party that it has been at the bleeding edge of some of the more far left political ideas in the United States over the past few years. As a state with a super majority of democratic voters, they are able to get some of the most far-left leaning politicians into office.
California is so heavily populated with democrats that the traditional method of primaries to find candidates appealing across the aisle isn’t effective. It is more effective in a single party state to play the base of the majority party even if that may alienate some independent voters. For statewide political positions, open jungle primaries are held with all candidates running against each other in a primary with the top two advancing to the general election. Because of this system, General elections in California will likely not feature a Republican for many or all statewide political offices, but rather two Democrats. District Attorney elections are “non-political” and have differing rules (SF used ranked choice voting in 2020; LA used a jungle primary), but because of the leftward tilt of the political atmosphere in these cities, far-left decriminalization platforms were winning platforms.
Governor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, and George Gascón did not face serious ideological competition from their right in their election campaigns in far-left California. This is even more the case with Boudin and Gascón in far-left cities in a far-left state. But the interesting thing is that once they took office, people started to become more aware of the failure of their policies in action.
The hypocrisy of Gavin Newsom, unmasked at the French Laundry 5-star restaurant while locking down his state with covid restrictions was the spark that started a recall effort against him. Over 2 million signatures were gathered in a successful recall of Gavin Newsom in early 2021. In San Francisco the Asian Community fell victim to a staggering increase in anti-asian hate crimes. The failure of District Attorney Chesa Boudin to prosecute these crimes adequately led to a successful recall effort against him.
In Newsom’s case, he was still popular with covid lockdown fans (I find their existence to be bewildering, but they exist) and the open nature of the election meant that Newsom had 46 competitors running against him. Roughly 62% of the population decided to retain him as Governor. The fate of Chesa was not so kind and he was voted out of office in San Francisco.
Which brings us to Los Angeles. On August 15, 2022 it was declared that the group that was attempting to get a George Gascón recall initiative on the November ballot failed to get the proper amount of valid signatures. Of the 715,833 signatures that were submitted for the recall, it was “determined” that 195,783 of the signatures were invalid. They fell short of the 566,857 required signatures by around 46,000 signatures. Roughly 30% of the recall signatures were rejected for a variety of purposes.
99.38% of Los Angeles County votes by mail were accepted in the 2020 election (see the results for yourself). 12,135 were thrown out because of signature mismatch (a 0.3% mismatch rate). This recall had a rate 4 times higher than the 2020 general election for that one single purpose (1.3% mismatch rate). There were 2 address issues with 3,422,585 mail in ballots in 2020. There were 32,187 in the recall.
And if you are saying to yourself “this is a recall and the verification is different…” OK, then let’s compare to the recall of Gavin Newsom in 2021, that should have similar numbers…. 328,224 signatures gathered, 63,815 determined to be invalid. 19.4% rejection rate in Newsom’s recall… 27.3% rejection rate a year later. Guess who would have been recalled with a 19.4% rejection rate??? Gascón recall would have cleared signature requirement by around 10 thousand signatures. In fact, there was not one county in California that had a signature invalidation rate as high as 27.3% in Newsom recall effort.
Weird how many address issues they found in the recall when they were non-existent in the actual election. I wonder why statistics like this would make people question the presidential election results. And yes, I have some questions about 2020… and no I don’t feel like having questions makes you a conspiracy theory nutcase. It is FAR more dangerous to tell people they can’t question the results. People should ask questions, and they should be provided reasonable answers (“shut up idiot” doesn’t qualify). Here’s a 10 minute compilation of the last election being questioned by nearly everyone on the left.
And this is one of the biggest issues with a recall effort. Guess who has now likely acquired a list of all the people in Los Angeles that signed up to have him recalled? I’m sure there is some rule in place that is designed to prevent access, but how delusional do you have to be to believe corrupt politicians don’t ignore those rules? I bet it is in an excel spreadsheet on his desktop at work called “ProsecutorialDiscretion.xlsx”. And when Johnny Doe gets busted for speeding in Beverly Hills, Gascón can pull up that spreadsheet and see if Johnny Doe signed that recall initiative… and you can bet that prosecutorial discretion isn’t going to help Mr. Doe if his name is in that spreadsheet.
Meanwhile, the criminal element in Los Angeles just got the all go to continue their criminal mischief. Gascón is their ally… Don’t believe me? Here is just a sampling of the news on Gascón:
LA DA Gascón tried to reduce potential sentencing enhancements for mother accused of murdering daughter
Los Angeles deputy DA: Gascón is creating a 'ticking time bomb' by releasing murderers back on the streets
California mother of brutally beaten murder victim slams left-wing DA Gascon as 'pro-criminal'
LA DA George Gascon knew about trans child molester Hannah Tubbs jail calls before sentencing, deputy DA says
Los Angeles DA Gascon's office lands 5-month probation camp sentence for teen who mowed down mom and infant
California gang member pushes for plea deal ahead of potential Gascon recall
LA County DA Gascón won't seek death penalty for pair charged with torturing, killing boy, 10
These stories go on and on and on. Read some of them. They are horrifying. So, after the recall officially failed, the inevitable happened:
This is at a grocery store I frequent when I visit Los Angeles. For context, this is not in a bad neighborhood. This is the Ralph’s in Westwood, CA. Right across the street from UCLA Medical. Within walking distance of Beverly Hills. This is how brazen the criminal element knows they can be in today’s Los Angeles. In broad daylight. Walk in to any grocery store. Take whatever you like. There will be no consequences. Gascón has their back.
A couple days earlier this happened:
It is hard to see how this is not a direct consequence of the recall initiative failure in light of Gascón’s policies and the fact that he is now safe in office. This is the consequence of leftist governance. This is in LA, but it is happening in leftist controlled cities across the country. A lack of consequences for criminal behavior begets more criminal behavior. It is critical that we are aware of who the criminal element is in this country and punish it such that the innocent are spared. And voting in democrat politicians that aid and abet this behavior IS THE PROBLEM. They are not standing up to stop this. They are defending the DAs that are the root of this poison tree.
And so at this point it is incredibly important for us to know who the REAL bad guys are. And hold them accountable for their actions. Maybe the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) can help us out…
Oh good… it’s the Republicans. They’re worse than The Taliban… They’re worse than Al Qaeda…. They’re worse than ISIS…. In light of this maybe he could enlighten us on what we should do to "those bad guys” if they were, I dunno, accused of having nuclear secrets (through an apparently false FBI leak).
But don’t worry… if they disagree with your politics, they would never do whatever it took to gain and hold onto power forever…. They would never use that power to punish their political enemies. They’re the good guys!
Oh, that’s kind of embarrassing… But Sam is just saying that because ORANGE MAN BAD!!! Orange Man was unique in his evilness. Other Republicans are ok, right?
With scenes like those shown above occurring more and more frequently across the country, many people will reach their own Rubicon. The actions they take once they reach the banks are unforeseeable. How will they protect themselves and their property when the government has abdicated its responsibility to do so? What types of leaders will they choose to lead them to save them from this criminality? That is the government’s core responsibility. Protect the people. Serve the people. Prevent people from getting to the point of no return. Their duty is to preserve our Constitutional Republic.
They’re failing, and the Rubicon is very much in sight.