American Groomer: An Interview with Elena Barbera

 

Camp Constitution’s Hal Shurtleff had the opportunity to interview Elena Barbera, producer of the powerful documentary American Groomer.   In this short call to action documentary, Elena goes into the history of groomers, and who funds them from Alfred Kinsey to the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) to today’s groomers who have access to promote their perversion in many of our nation’s schools.   From her website:

American Groomer is a documentary revealing the disturbing truth about sexualization of children in American schools.

The average citizen is totally unaware of the societal, physical, emotional, and behavioral dangers of this appalling, astonishing fetish.

Kids are being introduced to kink, taught incomplete science behind STDs, and are being encouraged to make dangerous choices.

And in the majority of states, it’s perfectly legal to show your kids the filthiest porn available in school. Yes, really.

Please join our mailing list below for behind-the-scenes updates on filming, release dates, and more.

Produced by Elena Barbera (of SonnyFaz and Elena The Based Mother on YouTube and Rumble).

https://americangroomerfilm.com

(A link to an audio version of the interview:  https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2025-01-31T15_26_38-08_00      

We encourage readers to host showings of this documentary.

Mine, baby, mine! Western and Alaskan mineral exploration is key to American defense, security and resurgence



President Trump is determined to make America not just energy self-sufficient, but energy dominant. The USA already produces more oil and gas than any other nation, and he intends to unleash its full potential – for energy and for petrochemical feedstocks for 6,000+ pharmaceutical, plastic, paint, fabric, cosmetic and other products. As he puts it, “Drill, baby, drill!”

Abundant, reliable, affordable energy is the lifeblood of modern industrial societies. But they also need hundreds of metals and minerals, because nothing can be manufactured or grown, and no wells can be drilled, without them. That’s why the President has also launched similar initiatives for those treasure troves in Alaska and the Lower 48.

That call to action is “Mine, baby, mine!” and before that “Explore, baby, explore!”

The Stone Age didn’t end because our ancestors ran out of stones, nor the Bronze Age because they exhausted copper supplies. They ended because societies needed weapons and goods that were better, stronger, more durable – and innovators discovered iron substitutes, iron deposits and techniques for converting ores into finished products.

Indeed, every technological transformation throughout history required finding and mining previously unknown and unneeded metal and mineral deposits that suddenly became essential for progress.

Trump-47’s Executive Orders for drilling and mining – and ending offshore wind, Green New Deal and electric vehicle mandates, subsidies and programs – will dramatically reduce the need for millions of tons of copper, steel, cobalt, lithium, rare earths and other materials. However, they won’t end that need.

But now America can simply build more coal, gas and nuclear power plants – instead of 10,000 wind turbines and 10,000,000 solar panels, backed up by fossil-fuel generators … or huge battery warehouses like the one that recently became yet another conflagration in California.

However, today’s rapidly evolving server, artificial intelligence, aerospace, military and other technologies still mean we must find and produce materials that almost no one ever mined or even heard of until recently: rare earth elements, cobalt, lithium and scores of other critical strategic minerals.

China controls 60% of global rare earths production and processes 90% of it – including ores mined in the USA and other countries. It also controls cobalt and lithium production and processing, and almost all the processed graphite used in lithium-ion batteries for cell phones, EVs and grid-scale backup batteries.

That means the United States is dependent on this adversarial nation for numerous technologies; even Navy SEAL equipment requires 20+ minerals that are at least 50% imported, many from China.

This untenable situation was underscored last December, when China severely restricted exports of antimony, gallium and germanium, especially to the United States, because they are essential for both civilian and military technologies. The Middle Kingdom could block many more such exports, using exports as a weapon of diplomacy, extortion or war.

The situation makes no geologic sense either. The plate tectonic and geologic history of Alaska and the western states in particular have blessed America with countless, often enormous deposits of metals and minerals across the periodic table of elements. Some are well-known, while others have yet to be discovered, mapped or developed to serve changing, growing and increasingly strategic needs.

Even the 1964 Wilderness Act recognized this. Section 2 permits prospecting to gather information about mineral resources and requires “planned, recurring” mineral surveys, if those activities are conducted in a manner consistent with preserving “the wilderness environment.” There is no “end” date for this work.

Section 3 permitted mining claims and mineral leasing, exploration, drilling, roads, production, mechanized equipment, and other necessary operations and facilities, until midnight December 31, 1983. The only stipulation was that disturbed areas be reclaimed and restored “as near as practicable,” once mineral extraction had ceased.

However, federal bureaucrats ignored this clear language and stalled, stymied or prohibited all requests for permits to conduct such work, including recurring government mineral surveys and assessments.

Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rupert Cutler’s comment to me in 1978 encapsulates their attitude, then and now. “I don’t think Congress should have enacted that provision,” he said. “But Congress did enact it, and you are obligated by your oath of office to follow the law the way it was written, not the way you think it should have been written,” I responded. Dr. Cutler simply walked away.

Successive generations of federal land managers – in consort with preservationists, courts, presidents and legislators – have banned or severely restricted even minimally intrusive exploration in huge wilderness, wilderness study, wildlife refuge, Antiquities Act, and even undesignated forests, deserts and grasslands –  regardless of critical national needs or clear legislative language.

National parks should be off-limits. In most cases, these other lands should not.

By 1994, when I helped prepare perhaps the last detailed analysis, mineral exploration and development had been banned in federal land areas equal to Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined. That’s 420 million acres – 19% of the USA; 66% of all federal/public lands.

It’s gotten “progressively” worse, even though processes unleashed by plate tectonics, volcanism and other forces created some of the most highly mineralized deposits in North America, and the world.

State and local legislators, regulators, judges and activists have treated non-federal lands the same way. Even world-class deposits have been deep-sixed, often on questionable grounds.

This cannot continue. These areas must be surveyed and explored by government agencies and private companies. Vital and high-quality deposits must be made available for mining, under sound environmental principles, to meet the requirements of current and future generations.

Failure to do so violates the most fundamental principles of national defense, national security, responsible government and societal need.

Alaska’s Pebble Mine prospect has an estimated 55 million tons of copper ore, 3.3 billion tons of molybdenum, plus other metals needed for wind turbines, solar panels, EVs and other technologies; yet Biden’s EPA rejected permit applications even before mining plans were submitted. Other world-class Alaskan deposits of copper, cobalt, zinc, titanium, gold, silver, zinc and other metals also sit in limbo.

PEBBLE PROSPECT — Photos from around the Pebble Prospect Alaska

taken in March 2008.


Biden officials also reversed mining permits for the world’s largest copper-nickel deposit, in Minnesota, and President Biden himself banned all mining in 225,000 acres of the state’s Iron Range.

The fate of the Kings Mountain lithium deposit (possibly 5,000,000 tons of Li) in North Carolina is likewise uncertain, as is that of many other excellent prospects, even though modern US laws and technologies would ensure far better environmental practices than elsewhere worldwide.

Some concerns are certainly valid, others exaggerated, still others reflective of a determination to block mining anywhere in the USA, or even de-develop and de-industrialize America and the West.

However, environmental and other considerations must always be balanced against needs for critical metals, minerals and energy to sustain modern societies and living standards. Making America Great Again – and responding to today’s national security threats and needs – requires changing federal and state perspectives, policies and laws to recognize this. It’s a simple matter of reality and common sense.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues. 

Contact me: pkdriessen@gmail.com

The Problems with the 14th Amendment: A Presentation by Pastor David Whitney

 

President Trump’s recent executive order con concerning birthright citizenship — Executive Order —  has been challenged by the Left.  Pastor David Whitney gives a presentation on the original intent of the 14th as well as its questionable ratification.  This presentation was conducted at our 16th annual family camp that took place in July of 2024 at the Singing Hills Christian Camp in Plainfield, NH

 

Pastor Whitney will be an instructor at this year’s camp which runs from July 13-18:  https://campconstitution.net/camp-registration/

The Weekly Sam: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PARENTS OF NORTH CAROLINA by Samuel L. Blumenfeld

The North Carolina State Department of Education has mandated, through state law, a program for the first three grades of North Carolina’s public schools calculated to turn your children into reading and learning failures. The instruction methods being used in these grades to teach reading and “communication skills” are based on the theories of behavioral psychology and are known as psycholinguistics. The nation’s leading proponent of psycholinguistics, Prof. Kenneth Goodman of Arizona State University, has called reading “a psycholinguistic guessing game.” This instruction method, originally known as “look-say,” “the sight method,” or the “whole-word method,” is known to cause severe reading and learning disability.

In 1929 Dr. Samuel T. Orton, in an article entitled “The ‘Sight Reading’ Method of Teaching Reading as a Source of Reading Disability,” warned the educators of America that introducing this teaching method in the schools of America would “not only prevent the acquisition of academic education by children of average capacity but may also give rise to far reaching damage to their emotional life.” The educators disregarded Dr. Orton’s warning and proceeded to introduce the “sight reading” method in our schools, with the result that our schools are now turning out millions of functionally illiterate and learning disabled young adults every year. Not only is all of this costing the taxpayer billions of dollars in instructional and remedial costs, but it is causing untold emotional damage to millions of Americans whose ability to pursue careers requiring high or merely competent literacy has been severely limited.

I have read through the reading and communication skills program mandated by the state of North Carolina and can predict that at least one-third of the children now entering kindergarten and first grade in the state’s public schools will be permanently damaged and handicapped by these methods. I am urging the parents of North Carolina to demand the teaching of intensive phonics as the sole method of teaching reading in these early grades. That is the only way to prevent your children from becoming reading and learning disabled. If the state will not respond to your demand, then I urge you to remove your children from the public schools and place them in private or church schools where intensive phonics is taught. If you cannot afford private education, but are at home, then I urge you to home-school your children, using readily available phonics materials for home tutoring. I also urge churches to create scholarship funds to help parents who cannot afford to send their children to a private school.

However, if you keep your children in the public school then I strongly advise you to keep records of your children’s progress, accounts of your conversations with teachers and principals, and records of the materials being used in the classroom to teach your children. If your children become reading and learning disabled you may want to sue the school system, the state department of education, and the legislators who voted for this program. Heretofore, the only people who have sued public schools for educational malpractice have been high school graduates who have come out of twelve years of schooling functionally illiterate.

None of these cases has been won by the plaintiffs because the courts have refused  to hold the schools responsible for their own malpractice. However, by serving notice on your legislators, educators, and state bureaucrats that you intend to hold them responsible for the results produced by the instruction methods they have voted for or have used in their classrooms, the courts will be unable to deny their accountability.

If you are a parent who has put a child in a public school, kindergarten or first grade, we urge you to write to us and supply us with the following information: name, age, grade of your child; name of the school, teacher, and principal; titles of the instructional materials used in the classroom. In three years, we shall know which children have been damaged by the school’s teaching methods, and we shall institute a class-action malpractice suit against the North Carolina State Department of Education, the legislators who voted for the program, the teachers and principals who used these methods, and the publishers who produced them. Only with your cooperation will we be able to stop the abuse of your children in the public schools of North Carolina by means of faulty instructional materials developed by behavioral psychologists. Send the information requested to The Blumenfeld Education Letter, P.O. Box 39850, Phoenix, Arizona 85069.

(The above letter was written back in the early 1980s.  We don’t know how many parents responded to Sam’s letter.  But today the homeschool movement is flourishing.  This letter is in the Sam Blumenfeld Archives.  It is free to join:  http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/main.htm

The Blumenfeld Archives

Devout Catholic teacher ordered to purge workspace of crucifix or get fired

School officials claim symbol means not all students would ‘feel respected’

First Liberty Institute has dispatched a letter to a Connecticut school district suggesting that it reconsider its demands that a devout Catholic teacher purge her workspace of a crucifix – or get fired.

“Requiring a teacher to purge their workspace of anything religious is blatant discrimination that violates the First Amendment,” explained Keisha Russell, a senior counsel at the legal organization.

“The Supreme Court said in the recent Kennedy decision that teachers have the right to engage in personal religious expression under the Free Exercise Clause, including when students are present.”

The institute said it sent a letter to officials at the New Britain School District on behalf of Marisol Orroyo-Castro, who has been a teacher for three decades.

The letter calls on the district to reinstate her, after she was placed on administrative leave for refusing to “remove a small crucifix from her workspace.”

The legal team explained:

Marisol has taught in the Connecticut public schools for 32 years. For the last 10 years, she has placed a crucifix by her desk along with other personal items such as student artwork and a church calendar. As a devout Catholic, the crucifix reminds her to pray and helps her remain calm throughout the day as she faithfully teaches her students.

On Friday, December 6, 2024, she was brought into a meeting with the vice principal and abruptly told that unless she removed the crucifix by her desk by Monday morning she would be disciplined for insubordination. She was later told she could put the crucifix in a drawer or under her desk, so students wouldn’t see it.

After she did so, Marisol started to sob, feeling as though she “hid it under a bushel,” rather than let her light shine. After many tears and prayer, she returned the crucifix to its original location. She was then suspended without pay for two days during the holiday season as the school waited for her to comply and hang the crucifix under her desk in a place the school administration called her “private space.” Now, she is on administrative leave during the grievance process. The school district said it is considering whether to terminate Marisol.

The lawyers noted that other teachers are allowed to display photographs of family and friends, images of Wonder Woman and Baby Yoda, a miniature of the Mona Lisa, promotions for the New England Patriots football team, inspirational quotes and much more, including a mug referencing a Bible verse.

ADVERTISEMENT

But the district won’t tolerate a crucifix.

In the letter, the attorneys explain, “Under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and under the Connecticut Constitution, the District may not abridge its employees’ free speech rights, nor their rights to freely exercise their religion.”

Then the letter cited the Kennedy precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Fewer than three years ago, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court held that a public school football coach could not be fired for engaging in personal prayer, even when he did so visibly at the 50-yard line of the stadium after home games.”

First Liberty Institute also represented Kennedy in that case.

Fox reported First Liberty Institute is working with WilmerHale law firm on the case.

Castro had been teaching at DeLoreto Elementary & Middle School.

First Liberty Institute said while on leave, Castro has been “pressured to resign or retire early and sign an agreement not to sue the district.”

The threats also have included her termination.

The school district told Fox the allegations were “misleading.” Officials claimed the symbol was “on the front wall” of the classroom and was “infringing on the religious freedom of our students.”

Tony Gasper, the superintendent, claimed, “We will not allow any teacher to use their position of authority to impose their personal religious beliefs or infringe on the civil rights of students. Our commitment is to ensure a learning environment where all students feel respected.”

Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@wndnewscenter.org.

Bob Unruh

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially. Read more of Bob Unruh’s articles here.

(Reposted with permission from WND.)

Time to Re-Evaluate the Legacy of Martin Luther King by Vincent Ellison

 

Originally published at American Thinker

After finding evidence that the “man of God” and “moral conscience of our nation,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., participated in the rape of a parishioner, engaged in numerous sex orgies, received cash payments from known communists, and admitted that he was a Marxist, King biographer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Garrow wrote of King, “There is no question that a profoundly painful reckoning and reconsideration inescapably awaits.”

Black Democrats and White liberals rail about the gains derived from the Civil Rights Movement.  I ask, “What gains?”  If murder, poverty, and mass incarceration are gains, you may have a point.  In an attempt to make him untouchable, liberals have protected King’s counterfeit legacy by sealing his FBI files until 2027.  Nevertheless, his reckoning is here.

But that reckoning shouldn’t occur exclusively because of King’s immoral behavior.   It shouldn’t happen because the “Good Reverend’s” best friend, Ralph Abernathy, in his book And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, described King beating a woman and sleeping with two others at the Lorrain Motel the night before his death.  Or because Arthur Schlesinger recorded Jackie Kennedy saying he was “terrible, phony, and tricky.”  Or that Black Major League Baseball player Don Newcombe reported to the FBI that King was a “drunk” and had an illegitimate child by a woman married to a sterile Los Angeles dentist.  Or because King allowed the dirty world of politics to turn the Black church into a puppet of the atheist and racist Democrat party.

No.  This reckoning should happen because Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement have failed Black people.  They managed only to elect many Black Americans into office, with most of them belonging to the same evil Democrat party that had necessitated the Civil Rights Movement by enslaving, raping, castrating, and oppressing Black Americans for over one hundred and fifty years.

After fifty years of following King’s failed ideology, consider these results.  On June 4, 2020, the Washington Post reported “no decrease in Black and White citizens’ wealth gap since 1968.”  The Brookings Institution reported that in 1965, only 24% of Black children were born out of wedlock.  In 2020, it was 69.4 (approximately a 300% increase).  Between 2019 and 2020, Blacks made up 11% of the population but 50% of all murders.  In May 2019, Penn State and UCLA reported that school segregation is getting worse.

This is King’s legacy.  Why are we celebrating it?

In explaining how to recognize a false prophet, Jesus said, “A tree is known by the fruit it bears.”  He said you cannot get bad fruit from a good tree.  The fruits of the Black community, almost unanimously, are rotten to the core.

What good has come from Martin Luther King’s movement for Black America?  The American Black community is at the bottom of nearly every socio-economic statistic.  The Black family is weaker.  The Black church is more apostate. The Black economy is nonexistent.  Black government is corrupt.  Black education is terrible.  Are we celebrating failure, or was this their intention?

To have been a Christian minister, it is illuminating that King’s ideology is anathema to Christianity, manliness, and American freedom.  Consider this: after attempting to integrate an all-White hotel in 1965, when asked what he wanted, King reported replied, “My dignity.”  I hate this story.  God gave all of us our dignity, but King and his minions taught America that White people held the dignity of Black America in their hands, and we had to beg them to release it.

His low opinion of Black people was on full display when he said Black people could not pull themselves up by their bootstraps because “they did not have boots.”  He told us non-violence is a Christian virtue.  That is not true.  There is no virtue in strong Christian men allowing their wives and children to be beaten, raped, and murdered as King demanded.  Non-aggression is a Christian virtue, not non-violence.

Forced integration or forcing others to allow you to be where you are not wanted or not invited is not a Christian or manly virtue.  It is offensive to force your presence upon another, and Jesus taught that we should never offend unless it is for his sake and never our own.  To do otherwise defines you as a stalker.  A stalker can never be loved — only pitied, as most Black Americans are today.

In his epic “I Have A Dream” speech, reportedly written by his White communist handler, Stanley Levinson, King planted a sense of perpetual slavery in the minds of every Black person when he said, “One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Negro is still not free.”  That is not true.  I was born free.  God gave me my freedom.

In that speech, he placed in the Black mind the blasphemous idea that government is above God when he said we have come here to cash a check from America guaranteeing our unalienable rights.  That isn’t true.  Our unalienable rights are given to us by God.  According to John Locke, these rights are irreversible, unsellable, and nontransferable.

Cementing in the minds of Black Americans and America the belief in Black inferiority, he delivered his most quoted line: “I have a dream that one day my four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin.”  You wish not to be judged only by something that shames you.  One should never be ashamed of something that God gave him.  Furthermore, Christianity teaches that we cannot and should not try to control the actions of others.  The stupid, ignorant racist should not be concerned about me.  I am never concerned about his judgment or bigotry.  We can only control ourselves.  There’s nothing wrong with the color of my Black skin.  You are welcome to judge me by it.  Underestimate me at your peril.

He ended this epic speech by doubling down on the fact that Blacks were not free, and we needed the permission of White people to be free by saying “knowing that we will be free one day” and on a certain day we can say, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last.”

Let me reiterate:  I was born free.  No man can set me free.  I just am.

His speech set in motion decades of Black victimization and White guilt.  It is recited from every classroom in America, indoctrinating future generations to believe the lie of Black inferiority and the goodness of government dependency.  Instead of being recited, it should be re-evaluated, condemned, and placed in the trash bin of history beside the Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson rulings.

These King statements that have long been a part of America and are canon in Black American thought must be pulled up, root and stem.  White Americans are not responsible for and cannot solve the problems of Black people.  No other racial group in America carries this badge of inferiority, depending for all their future success on the actions of another racial group.  Most comprehend the insanity of this ideology, and the present condition of Black society testifies to its epic failure.  Therefore, King’s reckoning is at hand, and as with the old Confederacy, it’s time for a reconsideration.

Regarding King, Jim Tott wrote, “Toward the end of his life, a major poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans held an unfavorable opinion of the civil rights icon.”  On March 4, 2015, CBS News ran a story titled “Have the goals of the civil rights movement been achieved”  Fifty-four percent of all Americans and 72% of Black Americans say no.

With all the speeches, marches, and pieces of legislation, with no success, it is time to understand that King was wrong.  Black Americans cannot garner love and respect through legislative coercion.  History has proven that it is a waste of time even to seek it.  We should spend our time trying to control and improve ourselves, praying for and protecting ourselves from people who mean us harm, while cherishing the people we love.

There is evidence that King’s new society that teaches pity, not esteem, begging instead of earning, and stalking instead of standing has bred an insidious self-hate among Black people.  Sadly, wherever Black people live in close proximity with one another, they hurt, disrespect, and kill each other on an industrial level while aborting their children at three times the level of white women.

When stalking, begging, and pity didn’t work, King resorted to violence.  He contracted out his violence to a third party.  He used the gun of the federal government to force the racist Democrats to allow Black Americans into their presence.  Intentionally or unintentionally, King placed Black America into the sad position where they are now not respected, but pitied; where they are not wanted, but tolerated; where they do not earn, but are “given” — thus leaving too many of these Black people filled with hate, pride, envy, and grievance, devoid of gratitude, never satisfied, always complaining, and never saying “thank you” or thanking God.

This line of thinking has produced a generation of Black people where there exist mostly victims and their victimhood-supporters and allies: Black Lives Matter, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP — all marvelous beggars, cowards, and thieves.

Taylor Branch, in his book Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, called Martin Luther King, Jr. “a pawn of history.”  He is that and much worse.  He is a weapon the left wields in the Democrat party, designed to keep America in condemnation and Black people in their place.

King’s aforementioned amoral actions are germane only in the sense that they match the amoral outcomes of the Civil Rights Movement.  Blacks must take their place as free men and women, complete with all of its dangers and glories.  Black men of honor must reject all condescending overtures of affirmative action, the pity of Critical Race Theory, and the weakness of “anti-racist theory” from our former oppressors.  We must compete, earn, and defend as all free men do.

Because of King’s abusive behavior toward women, David Garrow concluded his piece on King by saying these actions “pose[] so fundamentally a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible.”  This may be true.  But the wretched condition of Black America is the primary black mark on King’s legacy and the ultimate reason for his re-evaluation.

Until Black Americans reject King’s ideology and accept that we should be esteemed by instead of ashamed of the color of our skin; that we, not White America, hold our dignity in our hands; that our rights come from God, not government; that we are and always have been free, and that we should never stalk, beg, and compare ourselves to White America or anyone ever again other than our former selves, Black America will remain at the bottom of every socio-economic statistic in the Western world.

Dangerous freedom over safe slavery; justice over equality; strength and honor over pity, envy, and stalking.  This is the true face of America and what God intends for all people.

 

 Vince Ellison is the author of several books including Crime Inc and the producer of the documentary “Will You Go to Hell For Me.  Please visit his website https://vinceeellison.com/

 

 

Scapegoating climate to hide callous government malfeasance Abject failures from Biden, Newsom, LAFD and others can no longer be ignored 

Wildfires near Los Angeles have left Pacific Palisades looking like Dresden after the WWII fire-bombings. Over 12,000 homes, schools and businesses have been incinerated, dozens of people have died, at least 70,000 have been left homeless, and fires still rage.

AccuWeather estimates that just two of the fires will destroy $135-150 billion in property!

It’s a doubly horrific tragedy, because most of the death and devastation could have been prevented.

California has 33,000,000 acres of federal, state and private forestland – equivalent to Wisconsin. As the state’s population expanded, forests and wildlife increasingly merged with human habitats. And yet federal and state land managers – compelled by ideology, activists, legislators and judges – have steadfastly refused to permit timber cutting, tree thinning or brush removal, or take other actions that would reduce the likelihood of conflagrations.

So many trees are so jammed together now that they’re starved for space, water, nutrients and sunlight. Many are diseased. They are skinny matchsticks, primed to erupt in flames. Some 36,000,000 trees died just in 2022, across just 8% of these forestlands. But even dead and diseased trees are rarely removed.

Rainy fall and winter months stimulate tree, brush and grass growth. Parched summers dry everything out. Extended dry periods leave all this fuel ready to ignite for more months.

Lightning, sparks from cars or power lines, campfires and arsonists set areas aflame. Dry Santa Ana winds (40-70 mph, with gusts of 120-150 mph) whip fires into infernos. Depleted, defunded fire departments often arrive long after they could extinguish fires in their infancy.

The conflagrations generate still more powerful winds that carry embers, branches, even small trees thousands of feet – often into communities that are ill-prepared to cope.

This barely begins the litany of California government failures that help cause repeated fire calamities. However, state and local politicians adroitly avoid responsibility.

Their most common excuse is manmade climate change. They even have a new fear-inducing term: hydroclimate whiplash! Fossil-fuel-driven climate change supposedly brought two exceptionally wet winters, spurring unprecedented plant growth – and then caused unprecedented arid conditions and previously unheard-of Santa Ana winds that made these infernos unpredictable but inevitable.

Calling the massive, repeated government failures “incompetence” is too generous. Deliberate, callous, destructive malfeasance is more apt. Criminal may be appropriate.

Governor Gavin Newsom wants a special session to discuss spending $25-50 million to “Trump-proof” state policies. He wants to use a new $10-billion “climate bond” to reduce farm and ranch greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, improve “equitable access to nature,” build more parks in “disadvantaged communities,” upgrade ports to handle deepwater offshore wind projects, and more.

California is still pouring billions into EV subsidies, its “clean” energy transition, and the $100-billion “bullet train to nowhere.” It’s spending more billions supporting “sanctuary” status for illegal immigrants, maintaining gender and DEI programs, and ministering to America’s largest number of homeless people – which will now include 70,000+ who’ve lost everything to the 2025 wildfires.

One wonders whether they’ll treat these now-homeless taxpayers as well as they have illegal populations.

Legislated restrictions on how companies may conduct fire-risk assessments and what rates they can charge for homeowners insurance in high-fire-risk areas have caused insurers to leave the state or stop issuing new policies. Hundreds of thousands of families are now uninsured, underinsured or dependent on the state’s FAIR Plan, which has only $385 million in reserves.

Meanwhile, California devoted only $2.6 billion to “forest and wildfire resilience” across all state-managed forestlands, including Topanga State Park, where the fires started, right next to what once was Pacific Palisades – versus $14.7 billion for EVs and “clean renewable energy.”

With memories of the horrific 2018 Paradise (Camp) fire still causing nightmares, Mayor Karen Bass cut $17.6 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department budget, fired 100 firefighters who didn’t get Covid vaccines, and was partying at an embassy reception in Ghana as the fires erupted

LA Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley (salary: $654,000) has spent millions on DEI programs and hiring more women, gays and minorities. Deputy/Diversity Chief Kristine Larson (salary: $307,000) says victims want to see emergency responders that “look like” them, and if she isn’t strong enough to carry your husband out of a fire, he “got himself in the wrong place.”

They then failed to keep extra firefighters and firetrucks on duty as winds picked up just before the first forest fires were spotted – apparently to avoid paying overtime. That meant the LAFD couldn’t get there before fires roared out of control.

Exhausted firefighters trying to save multi-million-dollar homes in Palisades ran out of water. A major reason was that LA Water and Power Department CEO Janisse Quiñones (salary: $750,000) had the 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir drained to repair cracks in its base. A full reservoir would have replenished huge storage tanks that feed and pressurize local fire hydrants.

Quiñones has said her “number one” priority is equity and social justice. Does that explain why the reservoir was drained in February 2024; no contractor was hired until November 2024; and even then no workers, equipment or materials were in place for 24/7 repairs?

Just as callously incompetent, why was there no plan (or no action taken) to utilize fireboats, tugboats, barges and other vessels from Long Beach Harbor and the San Diego Navy Base? Many are equipped with water storage, pumps, hoses and nozzles. They could spray seawater directly on coastal homes or run hoses ashore to connect to fire hydrant systems.

Some salt would remain in soils and kill some plants. However, the choice should be easy. Lose some prized vegetation to lingering salts – or have prized vegetation, homes, priceless heirlooms and artworks, and everything else incinerated by raging infernos. Homeowners never got to make that choice.

The incineration of these forests and communities released far more greenhouse gases than all the state’s now-shuttered coal- and gas-fired power plants would have over many decades.

Further complicating matters, the fires sent ash and pollutants into skies and left toxic chemicals behind – from plastics, paints, batteries, solvents and other materials in homes, buildings and vehicles. They’ve contaminated waters and soils, which could result in long cleanup and rebuilding delays.

Governor Newsom says he wants to expedite rebuilding. But LA health officials say debris removal and reconstruction are prohibited until licensed officials have carefully examined sites for toxics – dangerous or barely detectable levels? New building codes for fire resistance? Or homeowner demands for them?

Citizens need to discuss all this at town hall meetings, before the next conflagration strikes – inevitably, if proper forest and water management and personnel hiring are not implemented immediately. Put simply, the woke idiots responsible for this rampant destruction and loss of life must be replaced with people who understand their Number One Job is protecting citizens from crime, fires and other natural disasters.

Mr. Newsom also wants an investigation into the loss of fire hydrant water pressure. Californians have good reason to suspect he’s merely trying to find excuses and scapegoats, so that he and his favorite legislators can save their political hides.

Golden Staters need to revamp their political, bureaucratic, policy and woke systems. They need to rely less on government – and more on themselves, the way the Getty Villa and several neighbors did in Malibu, thereby saving homes, treasures and lives. Otherwise, these needless tragedies will be repeated.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

Contact me: pkdriessen@gmail.com

The Weekly Sam: WHY NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA ABANDONED CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS IN FAVOR OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

Sam Blumenfeld wrote this 18-page double spaced essay back in the 1970s:

http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Transcripts/Why%2019th%20Century%20America%20Abandoned%20Christian%20Schools%20In%20Favor%20of%20Public%20Education.pdf

Sam ended the essay with this:

“The choice for Christians today is quite clear. They cannot continue to put
their children in Satanic schools if they wish to preserve the values,
the unalienable rights derived from God, on which this nation’s
origin is based and on which its future survival depends. America
abandoned its early Christian schools for the wrong reasons. It
must now get back to them for the right reasons. The purpose of
life is still and will always be the glorification of God, and the
function of education, in the words of R. J. Rushdoony, is the
“preparation of man to glorify God, to enjoy Him, and to serve Him
in and through a chosen calling.” This is the knowledge we should
be imparting to our children, at home or in school, and that is the
only way we shall be able to preserve the priceless heritage of
freedom our founding fathers bequeathed us.”

The Blumenfeld Archives

  5th Annual Camp Constitution Ladies Spring Fling

                                                              5th Annual Camp Constitution Ladies Spring Fling

Camp Constitution Ladies’ Fifth Annual “Spring Fling” will be held at the Alton Bay Christian Conference Center, Alton Bay, NH https://altonbay.org/ from Friday May 2 to Sunday May 4, 2025

Activities include arts and crafts, classes on gardening, Bible studies, optional marksmanship training, and an evening campfire. The cost for the weekend which includes two nights of lodging, five meals and materials will be $200. per person. Payments can be made via our PayPal account accessed from our website’s homepage https://www.campconstitution.net or by check payable to Camp Constitution and mailed C/O Hal Shurtleff146 Powder Mill Rd. Alton, NH 03809. To get an application, bring list, or have any questions, please E-mail or call Hal Shurtleff at campconstitution1@gmail.com Tel (857) 498-1309.

Photos from last year’s Spring Fling:

Twitter
Facebook
Website