Joe Schaeffer
Political Columnist at LibertyNation.com Joe Schaeffer is a veteran journalist with 20+ years’ experience. He spent 15 years with the Washington Times, including 8+ years as managing editor of the newspaper’s popular National Weekly Edition. Striving to be a natural health nut, he considers staring at the ocean for hours to be an act of political rebellion.
On October 2, Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX) was carjacked at gunpoint in the nation’s capital. That same day, progressive activist Ryan Carson was stabbed to death in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in NYC. In the wake of such crimes, news outlets declare tragedy and talking heads decry the lawless streets – but rarely do they question why America’s cities have devolved into lawlessness. One such recent murder highlights what some might refer to as the ‘root cause’ of heightened criminality.
“Convicted sex offender wanted in killing of rising tech star Pava LaPere,” read the headline to a Sept 26 article in The Baltimore Banner. LaPere, 26, was a heralded CEO of a software development company called EcoMap Technologies. At the time of publication, the suspect was still on the loose. Police warnings to the community were beyond alarming. Amazingly, this terrifying incident had roots in the philosophy of a Hungarian-American billionaire investor and philanthropist, George Soros.
Unleashed on the General Public
“This individual will kill and he will rape,” Acting Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley stated. “He will do anything he can to cause harm. Please be aware of your surroundings.” Fortunately, Jason Billingsley was apprehended one day later. This led to a far more pressing question: How was he ever released from prison in the first place? As the Banner related, Billingsley had a proven penchant for violence that should have kept him safely behind bars for decades:
Billingsley pleaded guilty to a first-degree sex offense charge in 2015, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison with all but 14 years suspended. Denied parole, he was released in October 2022 on good-time credits, according to parole commission Chairman David R. Blumberg. According to court records, Billingsley previously pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in December 2009 and second-degree assault in June 2011.
“According to the [state corrections] department, he was released on Oct 5, 2022 and is listed as ‘non-compliant,’ though it was unclear why,” the news site noted. “There’s no way in hell he should have been out on the street,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott declared.
Enter Soros
Scott’s words imply there is some mystery involved here. Baltimore has been at the forefront of a years-long big-money progressive activist campaign to deliberately weaken the American criminal justice system. Once again, notorious globalist progressive billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundations are center stage.
Soros’ persistent endeavors to elect soft-on-crime progressive district attorneys in major cities around the nation have been widely reported. Charm City is no exception. But in Baltimore, Soros has taken things even further.
“Open Society Institute-Baltimore [OSI] is the Open Society Foundations’ only US field office. We are intensely focused on creating transformative change on the local level that can inform transformation in the US and around the world,” an About page on Soros’ Baltimore shop proclaims. A 2020 Highlights page reveals the kind of ‘transformation’ Soros has in mind for American communities.
OSI “[w]orked with local advocates to launch a campaign to decrease the Baltimore City police department budget by $100 million (20%) over two years,” the field office boasts. Another page titled Accelerating Decarceration in Maryland is taken from OSI-Baltimore’s 2020 annual report. It fully answers Mayor Scott’s question about how Billingsley was allowed to run amok.
“In partnership with a national campaign supported by Open Society-US, OSI-Baltimore invested in efforts to reduce the number of people who are currently incarcerated for extremely long and punitive sentences in Maryland prisons,” the organization proudly states.
Tragically, LaPere was celebrated in the same progressive circles that have enthusiastically supported “criminal justice reform.” Forbes listed her as a “30 Under-30” honoree in 2023 in its Social Impact category. “These Forbes Under-30 Social Impact listers are embracing cutting edge science, creative technology and entrepreneurship to fight climate change, social injustice and food shortages,” the magazine stated.
As Liberty Nation documented in September, reality is now hitting home for so-called progressive ideas:
“Shivanthi Sathanandan, the 2nd Vice Chairwoman for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, ie the Democratic Party, in the North Star State … said she was ‘violently carjacked’ on Sept 5 while with her children ‘in the driveway of our home in Minneapolis … I have a broken leg, deep lacerations on my head, bruising and cuts all over my body. And I have rage.’
“[Yet] Sathanandan was among the progressives who fashionably called for the elimination of the Minneapolis Police Department in the wake of the death of George Floyd in 2020.
“‘Say it with me. Dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,’ she wrote in a Facebook post at the time. It has ‘systematically failed the black community,’ so it’s ‘time to build a new infrastructure that works for all communities.’”
Did comfortable progressives in upscale communities truly believe the mayhem they were unleashing on their fellow Americans would never reach their manicured lawns and guarded luxury apartment complexes?
Back in January 2019, in an article on the senseless death of a young Tennessean at the hands of an illegal alien driver, LN pondered this puzzling mindset.
“You know, elected politicians drive (or more likely are chauffeured in) automobiles, too. What in heaven’s name makes them think that a yellow line or two painted on a road is going to keep them safe from the consequences of the same grave dangers in which they have so callously placed their fellow citizens?” we wrote.
The same frustrating question now applies to the advocates of punishment-free crime. Sadly, it may get more attention now that a prominent young urbanite woman has been horrifically murdered in her guarded luxury apartment. As such events become more commonplace, the nation may well wonder why its cities do not reverse course on such a colossal and avoidable trend.