Going To Church Becomes A Crime In The Age Of COVID-19

With Easter coming on Sunday, the faithful want to go to church.

But if they do, they could be charged with a criminal offense and face a year in jail and/or a $2,500 fine.

All across the country, police are cracking down on churches, sometimes raiding the houses of worship and issuing summonses.

At the Temple Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, the faithful packed into the parking lot on Wednesday night for a service, the Delta Democrat-Times reported.

The people gathered in parked vehicles — with their windows rolled up — “to listen to Pastor Arthur Scott’s sermon broadcast on a low-power FM frequency radio,” the paper said.

Lee Gordon, who has been going to the church for 23 years and serves on the Washington County Board of Supervisors — told the Democrat-Times the church has been broadcasting sermons in the parking lot for the last three weeks.

“The preacher is in the church at the pulpit, and we are streaming the service live as well,” Gordon added to the paper. “But a lot of our membership is elderly and doesn’t have access” to streaming technology.

Gordon told the paper he and his wife were each issued $500 tickets for violating social distancing orders and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves’ shelter-in-place order issued on April 3.

“I think somebody called the police,” Gordon told the paper. “And we were just doing the same thing we’ve been doing the last three weeks.”

One of the churchgoers posted a video on YouTube.

The same sort of thing happened in Virginia.

“Police in Chincoteague, VA, served a summons to the pastor of the Lighthouse Fellowship for holding a church service for 16 people spaced far apart in a sanctuary that seats 293,” CBN News reported on Thursday.

The charge is for violating Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s COVID Order 55 with a penalty up to a year in jail and/or a $2,500 fine. Liberty Counsel, a religious rights law group, is representing Pastor Kevin Wilson and Lighthouse Fellowship Church.

Last Sunday before the service, a local police officer entered the church. He gave no introduction and did not ask for the pastor. He abruptly said they could not have more than 10 people spaced six feet apart. Then after the service, two police officers entered the church in full mask and gloves and asked to speak with the pastor. They issued him a summons and informed him that if he had service on Easter, all attending would receive the same summons, according to the Liberty Counsel.

Meanwhile in Kentucky, state police plan to record the license plates of residents who attend church on Easter — and report them to local health departments for quarantine, Gov. Andy Beshear said Friday.

“We’re having to take a new action, and I hoped that we wouldn’t, and it’s that any individual that’s going to participate in a mass gathering of any type that we know about this weekend we’re going to record license plates and provide it to local health departments,” Beshear said, according to the New York Post. “Local health departments are going to come to your door with an order for you to be quarantined for 14 days.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blasted the plan, writing on Twitter: “Taking license plates at church? Quarantining someone for being Christian on Easter Sunday? Someone needs to take a step back here.”

 

via The Daily Wire

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Facebook’s Fact Checkers Decline to Correct Coronavirus Misinformation from Verizon-Owned HuffPost

Were Facebook’s fact-checkers asleep at the wheel, or was it just politics as usual?

Facebook’s nine official fact-checking partners, including such allegedly prestigious outlets as the Associated Press and Reuters, collectively failed to conduct a single fact check on an erroneous post from the Huffington Post, which repeated the misleading claim that President Donald Trump has a “stake” in a hydroxychloroquine drugmaker. As explained by Breitbart News Economics Editor John Carney, Trump’s family trust has a small investment in a mutual fund that owns shares of drugmaker Sanofi. How small of an investment? $1,485 at the maximum, but possibly as low as $99.10.

The Huffington Post also falsely claimed that there is a “lack of medical evidence” supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment against the coronavirus. In actuality, a series of physicians have publicly stated that they witnessed Chinese virus patients recover after taking the anti-malaria treatment.

HuffPo’s post has been live on Facebook for more than two days and has had 2 million interactions despite containing these factual inaccuracies. So far, Facebook has failed to flag the post as erroneous or to demote it, thereby allowing the article to be cross-posted by Yahoo News and amplifying its reach.

Breitbart News reached out to all nine of Facebook’s official fact-checking partners. As of Friday afternoon, only two had responded. A Politifact spokesperson replied: “Your email is the first question or notice we’ve received about the Huffington Post claim. We will consider it along with all the other requests we get.”

Lead Stories, another official Facebook fact-checker, said that they would “immediately” look into the matter.

Facebook gives its fact-checking partners the freedom to pick and choose user content that they review for accuracy. “All fact-checking organizations have the total editorial independence on their selections,” said Baybars Örsek, director of Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network, which oversees Facebook’s network of fact-checkers, in a statement to Breitbart.

Facebook will also queue up content for its partners to fact check, but they are not obligated to pull from the list. The social media giant didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Facebook’s fact-checking program has faced criticism that it is unfairly weighted against conservative and right-of-center points of view. Of its nine U.S. fact-checking partners, only one is a conservative outlet — the Daily Caller’s Check Your Fact.

In recent weeks, hydroxychloroquine has become a contentious political football after President Trump repeatedly expressed his optimism that it could be an effective treatment against the coronavirus. “We’re just hearing really positive stories, and we’re continuing to collect the data,” he said at a White House press conference.

Among the mounting medical evidence (albeit not proof) is Michigan State Rep. Karen Whitsett, a Detroit Democrat, who had Wuhan coronavirus and said she recovered after taking hydroxychloroquine and an antibiotic. Other testimonies include doctors in Los Angeles, Hawaii, and Denver. 

The FDA recently issued an Emergency Use Authorization for the drug that will allow patients suffering from the Chinese virus to take advantage of the treatment.  On Monday, the American Thoracic Society issued guidelines that suggest COVID-19 patients with pneumonia receive the anti-malaria drug.

Some media outlets have sought to portray the president’s remarks as irresponsible, with The Washington Post accusing him of giving “false hope” and selling the public “snake oil.”

The AP and Reuters — which are both official Facebook fact-checkers — have run stories casting doubt on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine as a potential Wuhan coronavirus treatment. Their role as fact-checkers has raised conflict-of-interest concerns in the past because they are allowed to fact check articles from competing news organizations.

In 2018, the AP ran a fact-check of a Breitbart News story, labeling it “false” when in fact the article truthfully reported on an illegal alien being appointed to a state office. As a result, Facebook directed users away from Breitbart and to a similar story from the AP. After Breitbart lodged a complaint, the AP rescinded its “false” label, but only after a few days.

Neither the AP nor Reuters responded to Breitbart News’ requests for comment.

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com

 

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Bokhari: Facebook’s Fact-Checkers Have Failed To Fact-Check HuffPo’s Anti-Trump Coronavirus Disinformation

It will come as no surprise to Breitbart News readers that Facebook’s vaunted fact-checking system does not stop, or even appropriately label, fake, misleading claims from the left-wing media about President Donald Trump.

A story from Verizon-owned Huffington Post claims that the President has a stake in a drug company that produces hydroxycholoroquine, the drug being promoted by himself and many in the administration as a potential treatment for the Chinese virus. The article is currently on Facebook without any labels alerting users that the information is false or even just misleading.

This is despite the fact that Snopes, a left-leaning fact-checker that until February 2019 was one of Facebook’s fact-checking partners, has rated the claim that Trump benefits financially from promoting hydroxychloroquine as “mostly false.”

Although Snopes eventually caught up, its fact-check trailed Breitbart’s. As economics editor John Carney explained several hours before Snopes:

The report cited by the HuffPost is from a New York Times story that said: “Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.”

Trump’s personal financial interest, however, does not include a stake in Sanofi–and the New York Times did not claim it did. Instead, Trump’s financial disclosures show that his three family trusts each had investments in a $10.3 billion Dodge & Cox mutual fund that owns shares in Sanofi, the world’s fifth-largest drugmaker by prescription sales. As of its latest disclosures, those holdings amount to just 3.3 percent of the fund’s holdings.

Trump’s most recent financial disclosure forms lists holdings in the Dodge & Cox International Fund valued between $1,001 and $15,000. That means Trump holds a maximum stake in the mutual funds of $45,000, giving him an indirect interest in Sanofi of $1,485 at the most.

His “financial interest” in Sanofi, which has a market capitalization of nearly $58 billion, could be as low as $99.10.

None of the other “third-party fact-checkers” relied on by Facebook to decide on behalf of the platform’s billions of users what’s true and what’s false, have displayed any interest in the fact that left-wing media is spreading provably misinformation about Trump allegedly profiting from hydroxychloroquine. As of writing, the misleading Huffington Post story has gained over 24,000 shares on Facebook.

It’s not the first time the mainstream media has been allowed to get away with spreading falsehoods about the Chinese virus. Yesterday, the Pentagon debunked an ABC news story alleging that military intelligence warned the Trump administration about a “cataclysmic disease” as early as November.

As Breitbart’s Kristina Wong reported, Col. (Dr.) R. Shane Day, director of the National Center for Medical Intelligence said that no such assessment took place in November — a rare departure from the NCMI’s policy of not commenting on specific intelligence matters.

And yet the original ABC report, now debunked, remains in circulation on Facebook — without any “misinformation” or “fact check” warnings.

Another false ABC story, repeating false claims from an Instagram influencer who claimed to be a nurse at Northwestern Medical (she later admitted that she does not work there for over a year) was also allowed to circulate on Facebook without any fact-checks. ABC put up comments clarifying the story four days after it was originally posted.

Given that Facebook is paying its third-party fact-checkers for their services, it seems like they’re not getting value for money. Or perhaps they’re getting exactly what they paid for — biased, liberal-leaning, mainstream media backed fact-checkers that appease Democrats and the establishment.

The social network is now in a compromised position. Because none of the company’s third-party fact-checkers have done their job, the false claim is now being allowed to circulate freely on the platform, again reminding conservatives (and conservative lawmakers) that only one side has to play by the rules on Facebook.

This comes just a week after Facebook allowed Chinese propagandists to flood the platform with ads blaming Trump for the Chinese virus, and attempting to downplay its origins in the communist-run country. Not only were the ads allowed to run, but Facebook initially didn’t even label them “political,” only correcting the so-called “error” when journalists reached out.

This is from a company that has been in a four-year panic over Russian misinformation on the platform, purging swathes of accounts that promote Russian media on the ground of “inauthentic behavior.” It’s not as if the company has no experience in detecting alleged misinformation from foreign sources. It’s just that they only seem to care about foreign propaganda that the Democrats care about.

But let’s get back to the Huffington Post’s un-fact-checked story.

When Facebook, based on the advice of its third-party fact-checkers, places a “fact check” label on your post, it’s more than just a warning label. As Facebook explains, if enough of your posts are marked with the fact-checking plague cross, they will suppress your content and may even excommunicate you from Facebook’s protected journalist caste.

Such Pages and domains will see their distribution reduced as the number of offenses increases. Their ability to monetize and advertise will be removed after repeated offenses. Over time, Pages and domains can restore their distribution and ability to monetize and advertise if they stop sharing false news.

Third, Pages and domains that repeatedly publish or share false news will also lose their ability to register as a news Page on Facebook. If a registered news Page repeatedly shares false news, its news Page registration will be revoked.

Of course, if Facebook’s fact-checking network dislike you enough, you’ll be banned from the platform altogether. Facebook executives have admitted to having a “three strikes” policy before they will ban your page — and you don’t get second chances. Except for the corporate-owned media, like Huffington Post and Disney-owned ABC — then, it appears, you get unlimited chances.

There are no readily-apparent major examples where this has happened to a mainstream, liberal publication. Left-wing misinformation pandemics, like Covingtongate, are allowed to spread freely on social media platforms. Facebook’s system isn’t designed to check whether you’re factually accurate or not — it’s designed to check whether you’re too conservative or not.

Are you an insider at Google, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.

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WSJ: China Floods Facebook and Twitter with Chinese Virus Disinformation

In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal outlines how China has begun spreading viral messages in an attempt to shape the narrative of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. The communist country’s state-run media outlets have been allowed by Twitter and Facebook to flood their platforms with posts disparaging American efforts to stop the Chinese virus pandemic, as well as posting misinformation about the Wuhan coronavirus itself.

The Wall Street Journal writes in an article titled “China Pushes Viral Messages to Shape Coronavirus Narrative,” that China has been purchasing ads on U.S. social media sites adopting online tactics similar to Russian disinformation campaigns in an attempt to shape the international narrative about the coronavirus response.

Breitbart News recently reported that Chinese state media has been posting undisclosed political ads to Facebook and Instagram in an attempt to downplay China’s role in the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and blaming President Donald Trump. Three Chinese state media outlets, Xinhua, China Central Television, and the Global Times, have targeted ads towards users across the world in English, Chinese, and Arabic.

The ads have reportedly been seen millions of times and extol China’s efforts to fight the coronavirus while downplaying the countries domestic outbreak. The articles portray President Trump as misguided and racist and suggest that the virus may have originated in the United States. “[China] has taken stringent and forceful measures, and turned the tide on coronavirus,” said one ad. Another states: “Trump’s disruption to China has severe consequences.”

All of the ads initially ran without a political disclaimer which allowed them to hide information about who the ads were targeting and where they originated from. Several of the articles focused on President Trump’s use of the term “Chinese virus” to describe the coronavirus while others highlighted statements from Chinese president Xi Jinping.

Now, the WSJ states that China has further increased its propaganda efforts, writing:

The efforts include ad purchases on Facebook Inc. promoting the English-language arms of Chinese state-media outlets, as well as posts there and on Twitter Inc.’s platform that in some cases disparage U.S. efforts to fight the global pandemic, the researchers say.

From mid-February until early March, social-media sites linked to Chinese state media posted more than 3,300 times a day, triple the normal rate, according to Recorded Future, a Somerville, Mass.-based cybersecurity consulting firm. Those outlets were principally active on Facebook and Twitter, the research showed.

 

The WSJ  spoke with Vanessa Molter, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who outlined how China was spreading disinformation:

 

As recently as Sunday, China Plus News, an English-language website operated by state-run China Radio International, was running ads promoting a podcast entitled “Coronavirus: What’s Really Going On.” The podcast, which began airing regular episodes on March 8, features information and opinions on the coronavirus pandemic, offered from China’s perspective.

In one episode, the podcast states that none of the 42,000 medical workers operating in Hubei Province to combat the pandemic was infected with the virus. That health claim contradicts The Wall Street Journal’s reporting, which found medical workers in China were infected because they lacked proper gear and training.

Read the full report at the Wall Street Journal here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

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Kentucky Officials Will Report License Plates of Easter Churchgoers

Officials in Kentucky will document the license plate numbers of individuals attending mass gatherings over Easter weekend and turn the information over to health officials, who will require the individuals to self-quarantine for 14 days, Gov. Andy Beshear (D) announced Friday.

Beshear sent the warning on Friday as a means to discourage parishioners from attending in-person religious services, or mass gatherings of any kind, over the weekend.

“Even on a weekend like this, we cannot have any in-person gatherings of any type,” Beshear said on Friday.

“We absolutely cannot bring people together in one building like that, because that is how the coronavirus spreads, and that is how people die,” the governor continued. “Understand that this is the only way that we can ensure that your decision doesn’t kill somebody else.”

He said that they “shouldn’t have to” take such extreme measures, adding, “I think it’s not a test of faith whether you’re going to an in-person service.”

“It’s a test of faith that you’re willing to sacrifice to protect your fellow man, your fellow woman, your fellow Kentuckian, and your fellow American,” the governor stated.

The vast majority of churches in the state are not holding in-person churches, although Beshear indicated that seven are still considering holding such services.

“The governor did not clarify how the state will verify which people were correctly identified as being at the mass gathering. He also said the quarantine does not apply to drive-in services complying with CDC guidelines,” WHAS reported.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron affirmed on Friday that he, personally, takes no issue with drive-in services as long as churchgoers adhere to the CDC’s social distancing guidelines.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer also advised against mass gatherings of any kind over the weekend, even in homes.

“It hurts me to say again that, in order to save lives, we must not gather for Easter this year,” Fischer said. “Not in groups in our homes. Not in public spaces. And we can’t gather in our houses of worship, either.”

Kentucky had 1,693 cases of the coronavirus as of Friday afternoon.

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CNN Accidentally Displays ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ Question During Coronavirus Town Hall

CNN Accidentally Displays ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ Question During Coronavirus Town Hall

CNN‘s dozens of viewers were surprised last week when a viewer’s question about Trump Derangement Syndrome – or "TDS" made it onto live television during a coronavirus town hall.

During a panel with Anderson Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and CDC Director Robert Redfield in which they were answering questions from viewers, a graphic at the bottom of the screen displayed: "Is Stage-4 TDS considered an underlying morbidity?"

TDS is a label commonly given to liberals who can’t cope with the fact that Donald Trump is their president – sending them into rabid diatribes about nazis, fascists, and other words they don’t understand.

Attributed to James Fox, the question remained on the screen for only a few seconds and Cooper did not ask his guests to address it, according to Fox News.

Watch:

While CNN’s gaffe may have entertained a few airport janitors, the slip-up didn’t go unnoticed on Twitter:


Tyler Durden

Sat, 04/11/2020 – 13:10

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Sweden and Brazil Kept Their Economies Open and Their COVID-19 Numbers Are No Worse than US

While the US shuts down all commerce for weeks and destroys the economy, other countries like Sweden and Brazil are doing the opposite and allowing the China coronavirus to run its course. 

Data indicates there no material differences in fatalities between the three countries leading the casual observer to question why is the US killing its economy?

The US continues to prevent nearly all commerce from occurring to combat the China coronavirus.  Many other countries are following suit.  But some countries like Sweden and Brazil are keeping their countries open for business. 

Data shows that the fatalities related to the coronavirus in these countries are very similar to those in the US.

Numbers from Worldometer 4-0-20

Coronavirus deaths in Sweden appear to have peaked.

Coronavirus deaths in Brazil may have peaked.

Coronavirus deaths in US may have plateaued but not peaked.

President Trump got duped by Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx and the so-called coronavirus experts.
It’s time to open the US economy before the damage is too great to reverse.

The post Sweden and Brazil Kept Their Economies Open and Their COVID-19 Numbers Are No Worse than US appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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It has started: Convict let out on coronavirus concerns arrested for assault and robbery

The nation’s thugs rejoiced when the coronavirus plague hit the U.S., giving anti-incarceration social justice warriors just the push they needed to find a reason to let them out of their prisons.

Lefty city and state leaders ensured it happened, and predictable as sunrise, the released thugs went back to doing what got them incarcerated in the first place:

According to the New York Post:

A Bronx man released from prison by Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month amid the spread of the coronavirus has been charged with beating and robbing a 62-year-old man …

Daniel Vargas, 29, was being held on $50,000 bail on robbery, grand larceny and assault charges after allegedly approaching the elderly victim on Valentine Avenue in the Bronx shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday, according to a criminal complaint.

Vargas allegedly demanded $80 that the man, who was leaving a local bodega with a cane and began punching and kicking him when he refused.

“Give me your money,” he allegedly told the man.

Vargas allegedly then slugged the victim in his body, pushed him against a wall and shoved him to the ground, the complaint said.

Sounds like just the violent brute you’d want to let out of jail to keep him safe and protected from the coronavirus. As if a guy like that would socially distance and wash his hands as health officials direct, and use a mask — for anything other than a crime tool to protect against identification. Only to a leftist would any of this make sense. This one got let out on March 28 and took less than two weeks to get back to business, and those are only the violent crimes we know about. He’s been out for several days and we can guess. And what he did may have even been reported as crimes, given that cops are no longer making a lot of arrests.

It’s a textbook example of social justice warrior leftists taking the coronavirus crisis and using it to advance their long-held agendas.

The far left, including the Soros front groups, Angela Davis, Chesa Boudin, and other extemists have long advocated for getting rid of prisons and letting their denizens all out to prey upon us, under the tangled rubric of ‘social justice,’ a social justice that always finds itself devoid of laws. The real game of this bunch is more likely to inflict criminals upon law-abiding citizens, the better to restrain their freedoms, which is always their real agenda. If law-abiding citizens can no longer walk about on the streets in any safety, (nor use weapons in self-defense, another hobbyhorse of this bunch) we all should be more controllable by the state. The late, unlamented Hugo Chavez of Venezuela first introduced this “concept” of socialist control to the world, as Venezuela descended into the world’s foremost socialist crime hellhole.

This Vargas criminal is hardly the only one New Yorkers need to worry about. He been joined in the Great Uncaging by charmers like this:

 At the request of the Legal Aid Society, Justice Mark Dwyer freed 18 Rikers Island inmates, including accused murderer Pedro Vinent-Barcia, who allegedly stabbed his girlfriend to death.

…and according to the New York Post, some 329 other violent ones, as well 207 ”non-violent” felony detainees, probably drug traffickers, porno perverts, and other social plagues. 

New York in fact has released 1,500 of these thugs from its Rikers Island prison, the hellhole where they take the really thuggy convicts and detainees, a place so bad it’s used as a threat to force cooperation with prosecutors. New York’s prosecutors tried to do that to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and until they got called out for sleaze tactics and were forced to backtrack.

But instead of using common sense, such as testing everyone, giving prisoners personal protective gear, or getting rid of visitors and isolating the sick ones, maybe even moving them to some other lockdown, they’ve indiscriminately let Rikers’ finest out, so now the plague of crime is beginning in New York City to accompany the pandemic.

According to the Post’s second report on prison let-outs:

 “Largely through efforts from judges, district attorneys, defenders, DOC and New York State DOCCS, over 1,500 people have been released from jail since March 16,” the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice touted in a fact sheet posted online. “Today the jail population is at a number last seen in 1949.”

The 20 percent decline from 5,447 city inmates to 4,363 reflect data through April 6, the sheet says.

Mayor Bill De Blasio’s office sounds pleased as punch at that one. Fewer jailings of criminals, happier social justice warriors.

Tell that to the guy who got beaten and robbed for $80, or the family of the woman who had to have stared in disbelief as her accused killer got let out scot-free.

And don’t think it isn’t selective and political, either. How is it Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer now in the pokey, got denied a pass from prison, even though it would be unlikely he’d be out knocking over old people for their billfolds, while this maggot got let out? His appeal to get let out, was roundly denounced as publicity seeking by the judge last March 24, while the thugs who got let out got no such scoldings. How is it that thugs can get let out of prison to plague the citizenry while non-violent criminals with the wrong political associations are told to stay in the hoosegow? Public safety didn’t figure in either of these cases.

Yet public safety is what jailings are all about. They’re also about citizen participation – as it’s juries who decide on the guilt of these denizens and render the verdicts with consequences for the perpetrators. Nullifying that and letting the hoods out is another reason people don’t want to serve on juries. It’s a violation of the public trust by public officials — and like China’s leaders, they need to be held accountable by the public for the acts of those they let out. If not, justice becomes a complete shadow puppet show, not an ultimately democratic act with the power of the people behind it. 

There shouldn’t be any such let outs at all, and especially not of the violent ones. Just as society needs to be protected from the airborne plague of the coronavirus, so does society need to be protected from the human plague of violent criminals. The one does not outweigh the other.

New York is going to learn this the hard way as the era of Mick Jagger’s ‘Shattered‘ becomes the model for life in New York once again. They can console themselves by knowing that the thugs didn’t catch the coronavirus in prison.

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of Pixabay public domain images.

 

The nation’s thugs rejoiced when the coronavirus plague hit the U.S., giving anti-incarceration social justice warriors just the push they needed to find a reason to let them out of their prisons.

Lefty city and state leaders ensured it happened, and predictable as sunrise, the released thugs went back to doing what got them incarcerated in the first place:

According to the New York Post:

A Bronx man released from prison by Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month amid the spread of the coronavirus has been charged with beating and robbing a 62-year-old man …

Daniel Vargas, 29, was being held on $50,000 bail on robbery, grand larceny and assault charges after allegedly approaching the elderly victim on Valentine Avenue in the Bronx shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday, according to a criminal complaint.

Vargas allegedly demanded $80 that the man, who was leaving a local bodega with a cane and began punching and kicking him when he refused.

“Give me your money,” he allegedly told the man.

Vargas allegedly then slugged the victim in his body, pushed him against a wall and shoved him to the ground, the complaint said.

Sounds like just the violent brute you’d want to let out of jail to keep him safe and protected from the coronavirus. As if a guy like that would socially distance and wash his hands as health officials direct, and use a mask — for anything other than a crime tool to protect against identification. Only to a leftist would any of this make sense. This one got let out on March 28 and took less than two weeks to get back to business, and those are only the violent crimes we know about. He’s been out for several days and we can guess. And what he did may have even been reported as crimes, given that cops are no longer making a lot of arrests.

It’s a textbook example of social justice warrior leftists taking the coronavirus crisis and using it to advance their long-held agendas.

The far left, including the Soros front groups, Angela Davis, Chesa Boudin, and other extemists have long advocated for getting rid of prisons and letting their denizens all out to prey upon us, under the tangled rubric of ‘social justice,’ a social justice that always finds itself devoid of laws. The real game of this bunch is more likely to inflict criminals upon law-abiding citizens, the better to restrain their freedoms, which is always their real agenda. If law-abiding citizens can no longer walk about on the streets in any safety, (nor use weapons in self-defense, another hobbyhorse of this bunch) we all should be more controllable by the state. The late, unlamented Hugo Chavez of Venezuela first introduced this “concept” of socialist control to the world, as Venezuela descended into the world’s foremost socialist crime hellhole.

This Vargas criminal is hardly the only one New Yorkers need to worry about. He been joined in the Great Uncaging by charmers like this:

 At the request of the Legal Aid Society, Justice Mark Dwyer freed 18 Rikers Island inmates, including accused murderer Pedro Vinent-Barcia, who allegedly stabbed his girlfriend to death.

…and according to the New York Post, some 329 other violent ones, as well 207 ”non-violent” felony detainees, probably drug traffickers, porno perverts, and other social plagues. 

New York in fact has released 1,500 of these thugs from its Rikers Island prison, the hellhole where they take the really thuggy convicts and detainees, a place so bad it’s used as a threat to force cooperation with prosecutors. New York’s prosecutors tried to do that to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and until they got called out for sleaze tactics and were forced to backtrack.

But instead of using common sense, such as testing everyone, giving prisoners personal protective gear, or getting rid of visitors and isolating the sick ones, maybe even moving them to some other lockdown, they’ve indiscriminately let Rikers’ finest out, so now the plague of crime is beginning in New York City to accompany the pandemic.

According to the Post’s second report on prison let-outs:

 “Largely through efforts from judges, district attorneys, defenders, DOC and New York State DOCCS, over 1,500 people have been released from jail since March 16,” the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice touted in a fact sheet posted online. “Today the jail population is at a number last seen in 1949.”

The 20 percent decline from 5,447 city inmates to 4,363 reflect data through April 6, the sheet says.

Mayor Bill De Blasio’s office sounds pleased as punch at that one. Fewer jailings of criminals, happier social justice warriors.

Tell that to the guy who got beaten and robbed for $80, or the family of the woman who had to have stared in disbelief as her accused killer got let out scot-free.

And don’t think it isn’t selective and political, either. How is it Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer now in the pokey, got denied a pass from prison, even though it would be unlikely he’d be out knocking over old people for their billfolds, while this maggot got let out? His appeal to get let out, was roundly denounced as publicity seeking by the judge last March 24, while the thugs who got let out got no such scoldings. How is it that thugs can get let out of prison to plague the citizenry while non-violent criminals with the wrong political associations are told to stay in the hoosegow? Public safety didn’t figure in either of these cases.

Yet public safety is what jailings are all about. They’re also about citizen participation – as it’s juries who decide on the guilt of these denizens and render the verdicts with consequences for the perpetrators. Nullifying that and letting the hoods out is another reason people don’t want to serve on juries. It’s a violation of the public trust by public officials — and like China’s leaders, they need to be held accountable by the public for the acts of those they let out. If not, justice becomes a complete shadow puppet show, not an ultimately democratic act with the power of the people behind it. 

There shouldn’t be any such let outs at all, and especially not of the violent ones. Just as society needs to be protected from the airborne plague of the coronavirus, so does society need to be protected from the human plague of violent criminals. The one does not outweigh the other.

New York is going to learn this the hard way as the era of Mick Jagger’s ‘Shattered‘ becomes the model for life in New York once again. They can console themselves by knowing that the thugs didn’t catch the coronavirus in prison.

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of Pixabay public domain images.

 

via American Thinker Blog

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Here’s Why Obama Wants Mail-in Voting: 16.4 Million Mail-in Ballots Went Missing in 2016, 2018 Elections

Partisan hack and ABC News reporter Jon Karl asked President Trump about mail-in voting at the daily coronavirus press briefing last week.

Karl and his Democrat colleagues are using the current crisis to push for mail-in voting. This is something Democrats desperately want to make into law because they know it’s easier to cheat that way.

President Trump told Karl “no” because people cheat with mail-in voting.

Jon Karl: Do you think every single state in this country should be prepared for mail-in voting?

President Trump: No, because I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting. I think people should vote with voter ID. I think voter ID is very important. And the reason they don’t want voter ID is because they intend to cheat. When you buy something you look at your cards and credit cards and you have your picture on many of them. Not all of them but many of them. You should have a picture for voting. It should be called voter ID. And it shouldn’t be mail-in. Excuse me. It shouldn’t be mail-in voting. You should go to a booth and you proudly display yourself. You don’t send it in the mail where all sorts of bad things can happen by the time they sign it, if they sign it. By the time it gets and its tabulated. No, it shouldn’t be mailed in. You should vote at the booth and you should have voter ID. Because you have voter ID that’s the real deal.

If the coronavirus is still killing thousands of people a day in October this country’s economy will be finished.
Democrats won’t have to worry about mail-in voting.

President Trump was right!

According to federal data around 16.4 million ballots went missing during the 2016 and 2018 elections.

Via Breitbart.

About 16.4 million mail-in ballots went missing in the 2016 and 2018 elections, data provided to Breitbart News reveals.

The data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and the Election Administration and Voting Surveys for 2016 and 2018, provided by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), shows that between the 2016 and 2018 elections, roughly 16.4 million ballots mailed to registered voters went missing.

In the 2018 election, about 42.4 million ballots were mailed to registered voters. Of those mailed, more than one million were undeliverable, more than 430,000 were rejected, and nearly 10.5 million went missing.

The 2016 election showed similar discrepancies. That year, about 41.6 million ballots were mailed to registered voters. Of those mailed, more than 568,000 were undeliverable, nearly 320,000 were rejected, and close to six million went missing.

“Putting the election in the hands of the United States Postal Service would be a catastrophe. In 2018 and 2016, there were 16 million missing and misdirected ballots,” PILF President J. Christian Adams said in a statement.

The post Here’s Why Obama Wants Mail-in Voting: 16.4 Million Mail-in Ballots Went Missing in 2016, 2018 Elections appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

via The Gateway Pundit

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