PHOTO: Muscat_Coach via Pixabay (CC)
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) America’s largest organization dedicated to defending homeschool families said some public schools are preventing parents from withdrawing their children, Fox News reported.
T.J. Schmidt, a lawyer for the Home School Legal Defense Association, said parents are pulling their children from public schools in higher numbers due to the coronavirus, but public schools are creating difficulties for these parents.
“We see this across the country,” Schmidt said. “I’ve had school officials attempt to prevent or dissuade parents from pulling their kids out.” RealClear Opinion Research surveyed Americans and found that 40 percent of families were more likely to homeschool their children or enroll them in virtual education following the coronavirus.
Schools throughout the country have considered implementing coronavirus mitigation strategies, despite all available evidence indicating that COVID-19 is far less deadly to children than the seasonal flu.
Public schools don’t want to lose students and the funding that accompanies them, Schmidt said.
Schmidt said there were two main reasons for the slow withdrawal process.
“School officials are fearful of losing too many students to homeschooling, and the second reason is perhaps a staffing issue, just a lacking staffing issue to process these withdrawals,” he said.
“Not always an issue of trying to stop parents from homeschooling but there is a significant part of that involved,” he continued.
Schmidt, who homeschools his seven children, said he and his colleagues at HSLDA have worked on complaints in Oregon, Oklahoma, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, California and Florida.
“The most egregious situations I’ve had have been in Florida,” he said. “But I’ve had numerous parents in a couple of different counties told ‘we’re not allowed to withdraw students right now.’ They’re trying to hold onto these students.”
Public school advocates sent a letter to Joe Biden in which they said the coronavirus has put public education, which is already failing in many areas, at greater risk.
“It is no exaggeration to say that the future of public education itself is at stake,” they wrote, according to Fox News.
That is not to say that the former vice president and current Democrat presidential hopeful is likely to make the situation better.
Biden’s brother, Frank, is known to have been deeply involved in a scam to defraud Florida public education system, according to conservative journalist Peter Schweizer in his Profiles in Corruption.
By investing in companies that use federal grants to purchase real-estate and develop the facilities for charter schools, he and his business partners can overcharge the government for renting the facilities, regardless of whether the schools are successful.
Frank Biden previously has used his brother’s name as a way of selling localities in the Sunshine State on the investment with assurances that he would be held accountable if the schools failed.
‘It is our feeling that the most likely way for us to find out where Mr. Eckles is is to contact the person that was in possession of his vehicle…’
Law enforcement in Washington undertake a manhunt for Jorge Alcantara-Gonzalez, who was suspected in the disappearance of Ian Eckles / IMAGE KING 5 via YouTube
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington state joined the Kittitas County Sheriff’s Office in search of a criminal illegal alien who is believed to be connected to the disappearance of a 41-year-old man, according to Border Report.
Ian Eckles, of Kent, went missing on May 18 in Cle Elum while he was hunting, KING5 reported.
Kittitas County authorities released a “Be on the Lookout” flyer on May 27 for the Mexican citizen, 34-year-old Jorge Omar Alcantara–Gonzalez. ICE began to search for Alcantara–Gonzalez on May 28.
Local authorities have arrested, charged and released Alcantara-Gonzalez “on multiple occasions,” even though federal immigration officials have lodged immigration detainers for his arrest, ICE reported.
Kittitas County’s alert describes Alcantara–Gonzalez as “connected with a missing person, stolen vehicles and multiple burglaries and thefts.” He is possibly armed.
The Kittitas County Sheriff’s Office found Eckles’ truck in the woods. He abandoned the truck in the Mineral Springs Campground on May 26.
“It is our feeling that the most likely way for us to find out where Mr. Eckles is is to contact the person that was in possession of his vehicle,” said Inspector Chris Whitsett of the Kittitas County Sheriff’s Office.
Ten agencies, including the FBI, are searching for Eckles and Alcantara-Gonzalez, in hopes that he can lead them to Eckles.
Eckles’ family and friends said they have searched the area every day since he went missing.
“No leads on Ian at this point. Based on everything we’re seeing we really don’t expect to find Ian. It’s very hard,” said Dan Linn, a longtime family friend.
‘A Klan member could not have been better trained…’
Van Jones/Photo by Center for American Progress (CC)
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) In response to a viral exchange between a white woman and a black man in Central Park, CNN contributor Van Jones said on Friday that white people, “even the most liberal, well-intentioned white” people, have a racist “virus” in their brain that can “activate” at any time.
“It’s not the racist white person, who is in the Ku Klux Klan that we have to worry about,” Jones said. “It’s the white, liberal Hillary Clinton supporter walking her dog in Central Park who would tell you right now, ‘Oh I don’t see race, race is no big deal to me, I see all people the same, I give to charities'”
Jones made these comments about white people as violent riots that started in Minneapolis, Minnesota spread throughout the country’s major cities, Fox News reported.
Christian Cooper, a black man, was birdwatching in Central Park last week when he saw Amy Cooper walking her dog through the Ramble without a leash. The two Coopers are not related.
Christian asked Amy to put the dog on a leash, as the park’s rules require, said Christian’s sister, Melody Cooper, who posted a video of the interaction on Twitter.
Amy refused to leash her dog, so Christian responded, “Look, if you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it,” Ben Shapiro wrote for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
She asked what he meant, and he said, “I pull out the dog treats I carry for just such intransigence.”
Amy called the police and told them that “an African-American man” was threatening her.
Oh, when Karens take a walk with their dogs off leash in the famous Bramble in NY’s Central Park, where it is clearly posted on signs that dogs MUST be leashed at all times, and someone like my brother (an avid birder) politely asks her to put her dog on the leash. pic.twitter.com/3YnzuATsDm
Following the incident, Amy lost her job at Franklin Templeton, an invesment firm, and many have called her a racist.
Jones said that white people become racist as the “Aryan Nation” as soon as they see black people who they do not “respect” or who they have “a slight thought against.”
“A Klan member could not have been better trained to pick up her phone and tell the police it’s a black man,” he said.
Amy Cooper apologized, saying that she “reacted emotionally and made false assumptions about his intentions,” even though he made strange comments.
Jones said recent incidents have exposed racism in the United States.
“What you’re seeing now is a curtain falling away,” Jones said. “Those of us who have been burdened by this every minute, every second of our entire lives are fragile right now… we are tired.”
‘The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In a blistering criticism of China, President Donald Trump announced a raft of responsive measures, including a withdrawal from the World Health Organization.
“China has total control over the World Health Organization, despite only paying $40 million a year compared to what the United States has been paying, which is approximately $450 million,” Trump said during a press conference Friday at the White House.
Despite early praise for China’s response to the deadly coronavirus pandemic due to the Asian superpower’s promotion of false data, supported by WHO officials, Trump has increasingly focused on China’s deception and cover-up since the virus hit U.S. shores, prompting him in early March to declare a national emergency.
Trump already had cancelled many flights to and from China in late January, after the communist government there finally acknowledged publicly the health crisis. For at least a week, and likely longer, it had known about the severity and kept the information from its own people and other at-risk country.
As of Friday, four months since the first confirmed case hit U.S. shores, it has killed more than 100,000—many of them vulnerable elderly nursing home patients or those with pre-existing conditions.
The resulting commercial shutdown likewise has wrought economic havoc and created political uncertainty for Trump, who stood poised to cruise to re-election despite Democrats’ impeachment effort on the back of a historically bullish economy.
“The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government,” Trump said during the press conference.
Trump had earlier threatened to withdraw from the WHO, criticizing it for its complicity in the Chinese propaganda and cover-up.
“We have detailed the reforms that it must make and engaged with them directly, but they have refused to act,” Trump said.
“Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving, urgent, noble, public health needs,” he continued. “The world needs answers from China on the virus.”
While Trump left open-ended the possibility of reconciliation with the country, who recently had agreed to renegotiate a major trade deal, the deterioration of U.S.–China relations is likely to continue in the foreseeable future.
China has made increasingly aggressive and territorial overtures recently, including a suppressive crackdown in Hong Kong and an incursion on international maritime borders in the South Sea.
“The United States wants an open and constructive relationship with China, but achieving that relationship requires us to vigorously defend our national interests,” Trump said.
The country also has threatened previously to interfere in the upcoming U.S. election in November and to impose travel sanctions on GOP congressional leaders who have criticized its policies.
Democrats, meanwhile, have faced a dilemma in wanting to reap the benefits of Trump’s Chinese tensions while not appearing too cozy with the foreign rival, which has faced a litany of international criticism for its human-rights abuses, espionage and other hostile measures.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democrat nominee for president, recently has sought to downplay his own relationship with China while criticizing Trump for having “rolled over” for it.
Biden’s son Hunter had a longstanding partnership with a Chinese state-run equity and investment firm that maintained billions in assets. Although he announced his resignation from its board last fall, as of December the Chinese government still listed him on it.
Joe Biden also is known to have benefited from Chinese donors in several of his pet projects, including a foreign policy center based at the University of Pennsylvania.
‘When a company willfully and openly violates the law after receiving formal notice… the federal government should take action…’
Ted Cruz / IMAGE: screenshot via Project Veritas
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Ted Cruz wants Twitter investigated for violating sanctions against the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.
The Texas Republican sent a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Friday asserting that the social media giant was “willfully” violating U.S. law by providing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif with social media accounts.
The letter comes a day after Twitter began censoring President Donald Trump.
Both Khamenei and Zarif have been officially sanctioned by the United States government for supporting of Iranian terrorism that has often been aimed at American soldiers in the Middle East.
According to Cruz, providing them with access to Twitter affords them the use of an American company, which is illegal. It also allows them to use the social media platform for anti-American propaganda while simultaneously forbidding the Iranian people from using Twitter.
“To this day, Twitter continues to provide services to these covered individuals,” Cruz wrote.
In February, Cruz, along with Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., sent a separate letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey alerting him to the violations.
“Twitter and its principals face criminal liability and sanctions exposure for providing social media accounts to Iranian persons designated as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control,” the Feb. letter said.
But the warning fell on deaf ears. In response, Twitter claimed, “regardless of the political agenda of a particular nation-state, to deny our service to their leaders at a time like this would be antithetical to the purpose of our company…”
For many people, “the purpose” of Twitter is increasingly unclear. Allowing top leaders of the world’s leading sponsor of violent terror to use the social media site unfettered, along with members of Al Qaeda, ISIS and domestic terror groups like Antifa is especially confusing at a time when the company is censoring tweets from the president of the United States.
One day after Trump introduced an executive order to hold Twitter and other Big Tech companies accountable for censorship, the social media giant added a warning label to one of his tweets about violent riots in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A few hours later, Twitter censored another tweet.
“When a company willfully and openly violates the law after receiving formal notice that it is unlawfully supporting designated individuals, the federal government should take action,” Cruz concluded.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez / IMAGE: The View via Youtube
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) The Reuters international news organization recently fact-checked a satirical article that ridiculed four left-wing Democratic congresswomen known as “The Squad.”
The article was published by Bustatroll.org and Reuters admits that it was “clearly labelled as satire.”
Reuters also admits that Bustatroll.org describes itself on its About Us page as a “parody, satire and tomfoolery” site. The site’s logo includes the label “Satire Rated.”
But fact-checkers at the famed news agency took the article to task because “it appears to be taken seriously,” a write-up explains.
The satire article humorously claims that Squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) want to declare the Bible hate speech.
Like all satire, the rib is meant to poke fun at real-life absurdities and abuses. In this case, progressive censorship and anti-Christian left-wing bias are the subjects.
The article claims that Squad members issued statements to Bustatroll.org explaining their ridiculous social justice accusations against Biblical texts.
“It promotes slavery, sexual assault, and murder. It’s basically an incitement to violence. How can we call ourselves a civilized society when we allow this garbage to be used as a reference for morality?” Ocasio-Cortez is supposed to have said.
“The bible is racist,” claims Tlaib in the satire. “I am a victim of the bible’s hate!” said Omar.
The faux-story continues with Pressley saying, “What did the others say? I agree with them.”
Reuters seized upon several social media comments as evidence that the satire was spreading misinformation. Now, the news agency’s fact-check shows up on social media postings of the satirical Bustatroll article.
A Facebook post hyperlinked in the Reuters fact-check is now accompanied by the fact-checking piece itself, beginning with the bolded word “False.”
Another Facebook post cited in the fact-check links to a group called “Friends Who Like Rush Limbaugh.” The Bustatroll spoof was shared 158 times from the group’s Facebook page and had 150 laughing emojis as of Friday afternoon, indicating that readers overwhelmingly understood it was satire.
But Reuters targeted the article and its readers anyway, perhaps in a pre-November election warm-up aimed at censoring politically undesirable content.
“False. An article claiming ‘The Squad’ wants the Bible to be deemed as hate speech is intended as satire and is fiction,” the Reuters concluded.
Like other liberal fact-checks of satire news sites, the joke is often on them for believing that readers cannot distinguish satire from reality — a point Bustatroll makes abundantly clear.
In its About Us section, the Bustatroll website reads: “Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.”
“Any similarities between this site’s pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental, and all images should be considered altered and satirical. See above if you’re still having an issue with that satire thing,” it continues.
Benefits of a social-media-free world range from resolving terrorism to literacy to homelessness…
Twitter / IMAGE: myoldtechchannel via YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) On Thursday, President Donald Trump, smarting from a new Twitter policy of arbitrarily—and inaccurately—fact-checking his tweets, pushed back with an executive order to hold Silicon Valley more accountable for its biased and unethical practices.
Liberals, not surprisingly, offered knee-jerk opposition to the idea. But given the pernicious role that tech companies have played in creating or exacerbating many of America’s biggest 21st-century challenges, those objections may be misguided.
The list below shows a solid argument could be made to sell both sides on curtailing the influence of our social-media overlords and the benefits that would likely result:
10. Increase Productivity and Economic Growth
Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit. From the first days of MySpace, employers have struggled with the disruptions caused by those daily social-media breaks. Schools, likewise, now face the scourge of inattentiveness and distraction, which has helped to amplify the downward trends in intellectual rigor and accountability. Many households probably feel the same way.
As the post-pandemic economy works to regain its footing, the challenges of overcoming shutdown sloth will be great. But a society free from social media would enjoy a greater sense of focus and purpose, while helping to ween folks from their doorstep deliveries back into the world at large.
9. Reduce Polarization
Another obvious side-effect of the online culture, universally experienced by anyone who has ever encountered Facebook and Twitter feeds, is the acrimonious divisiveness of our current political and cultural views.
Kathy Griffin / IMAGE: Twitter
In our virtual existences, we have become the curators of our own realities, filtering and hiding all that we find objectionable, challenging or just plain annoying.
While it is nice to be able to tune out Kathy Griffin, the mass silo effect has resulted in greater tribalism, sending everyone to their polar extremes.
The loss of healthy conflict, in turn, has driven civility out of the picture when those forces do, inevitably, collide.
8. Discourage Mass Shootings/Violent Extremism
It isn’t the guns but the glory that has led to our sporadic epidemics of mass, public violence.
The deepening sense of social alienation, paired with the prospects of an enduring (albeit heinous) legacy, create a toxic brew for the disaffected, psychologically disturbed or mentally vulnerable portions of the populace. Often, mass shootings are not random acts of spontaneous terror but carefully calculated cries for attention, replete with manifestos.
Meanwhile, the media mantra “if it bleeds it leads” has only been amplified by click-driven social-media-based models (more on that below) that pander to the morbid curiosity of audiences.
But not all evil-doers fit the lone-gunman profile. Sites like Twitter have aided and abetted violent extremism, even becoming a valuable recruiting tool for terrorist groups to radicalize impressionable young fanatics.
7. Protect Children
Mass shootings and terrorism are not the only unspeakable horrors that can befall today’s young people. Social media also has provided powerful platforms for things like sex-trafficking and pedophilia.
It’s no longer as simple as telling kids to avoid strangers with candy and white, windowless vans. Catfishing and sextortion have become all-too-common phenomena in the headlines.
Of course, cyber-bullying alone can be bad enough with the powerful megaphones that a massive social-media following entails.
In a world where teenagers can garner millions of fans and become instant celebrities from the comfort of their rooms via outlets like the Chinese spying/video app TikTok, social ostracism by one’s peers is a lot scarier than the bathroom graffiti of yore.
6. Improve Literacy
Reading scores nationwide have plummeted. While not exclusively to blame, social media and texting definitely are not helping people to become better communicators.
To be fair, language has always been an ever-evolving organism. A strong case could be made—and has been—that emojis are the new hieroglyphics.
While the shorthand acronyms of textspeak that once seemed like Greek to adults have become more commonplace in our vernacular, today’s Zoomer generation may come to regard cursive writing as all but extinct.
Likewise, the reliance on autocorrect, when it is working properly, has shifted the paradigms for spelling and typographical errors. And the character counts on platforms like Twitter have encouraged syntactical sloppiness.
A world without grammar nazis may, arguably, be a good thing, but the sacrifice of linguistic complexity and tonal nuance mean it is only a matter of time before Dr. Seuss is the new Moby Dick.
5. Prevent Foreign Election-Meddling
Of the many things Russia was accused of doing during the 2016 election, only one has proven to be unequivocally true: Its coordinated misinformation campaign using false articles and bots to manipulate public discourse and sow chaos.
Some have questioned the impact that the Kremlin’s 2016 efforts had on voters—or noted that the supposed failures within the system were endemic to the limitations of democracy. After all, discerning voices of reason have always been drowned out by slander, sensationalism and demagoguery in the public discourse.
Either way, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others have been unsuccessful in containing the spread, and their overtures to do so often create even greater problems by censoring valid points of view.
4. Save the Legacy Media
Coronavirus shutdowns may finally have signaled the death knell of many legacy media outlets, a protracted process reminiscent of Monty Python’s Black Knight.
Journalism elites have only themselves to blame for losing touch with the needs and demands of news consumers, leading sites like the one you are reading to splinter off from the once-monolithic mainstream media.
If those niche audiences were like the knight’s various extremities, hacked off one by one, then social media was the sword. But while tech companies typically do not compensate content creators, they haven’t hesitated to poach the advertisers that previously sustained them, the industry’s gushing lifeblood.
Despite offering a greater potential to reach large than ever before, Google, Facebook and the like have also declared themselves the gatekeepers of information. By constantly tweaking the algorithms that determine when and how content appears, they make it impossible to adapt long enough to develop a lucrative business model that relies upon them—and that’s assuming the sites aren’t capriciously blacklisted, shadow-banned or otherwise censored.
Alternative media solutions, such as crowd-sourced or patron-backed funding—or worse yet, government-subsidized news—will do greater damage to media independence and diminish the quality of reporting so long as social media maintains its stranglehold on the market.
3. Block Out ‘Big Brother’
Google Location History / IMAGE: Liberty Headlines
No longer is it possible to live “off the grid” in our interconnected world. However, the degree to which our lives are intruded upon by government and corporate interests remains staggeringly shocking. Some track our every move; others monitor our searches and clicks and eyeball movements and emotional responses, developing composite dossiers of our lives that it then markets to the highest bidder.
Demands that claim to serve our best interest as public safety measures, such as facial recognition software and coronavirus tracking, undeniably come with a dystopian dark side, even under the best of intentions. But, of course, who’s to say that those entrusted with the information have our best interest at heart?
2. Curb California’s Homeless Epidemic
Just as social media has succeeded in crowding out the virtual market to monopolize the media, so has it done literally in parts of California, where tech billionaires have driven up real-estate in the more desirable regions like San Francisco and Los Angeles.
But these playgrounds for the wealthy have become unaffordable for those making less than six figures, and even while the Golden State’s massive tax-and-spend policies drive out the wealthy to refuges like Lake Tahoe, the income gap has become more pronounced for those left behind.
Sanctuary-state immigration policies and other social-engineering programs that incentivize welfare abuse have also made things more difficult for the indigent population that most needs it.
1. Restore Mental Health
Facebook/photo by Book Catalog (CC)
Casting aside all of the added stress-factors above, studies have long shown the link between social media and depression that results from the innocuous act of trying to keep up with the Jones in an artificial cyber-landscape where everyone else appears to be wart-free and thriving.
On the other hand, it may also be that social media is deliberately trying to manipulate your emotions as part of a mass psychological experiment it was never given permission to conduct.
Trying to figure out whether your paranoia is justified will simply take you deeper down the rabbit hole. But while the debate rages over how to rein in the enemy that probably knows more about you than you do, take comfort in knowing that everyone else you connect with is probably in the same boat.
‘Under no circumstances should a hospital discharge a patient to a nursing home that is not prepared to take care of those patients’ needs…’
Andrew Cuomo / IMAGE: CBS News via YouTube
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blamed the “Republican administration” for his decision to put coronavirus-positive patients in nursing homes, but an administration official said he is wrong, Fox News reported.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said neither her agency nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instructed nursing homes to take COVID-19 patients.
Instead, President Donald Trump’s administration put rules in place to subsidize the hospital stays of elderly patients who cannot safely return to their nursing homes.
“Under no circumstances should a hospital discharge a patient to a nursing home that is not prepared to take care of those patients’ needs,” Verma said.
Cuomo was referring to a March 13 directive from the CDC, which states that “nursing homes should admit any individuals that they would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COVID-19 was/is present.”
“What New York did was follow what the Republican administration said to do,” Cuomo said. “That’s not my attempt to politicize it. It’s my attempt to depoliticize it. So don’t criticize the state for following the president’s policy.”
Verma said she disagrees with Cuomo’s interpretation of the guidance, “that somehow federal guidance said you should put people who are COVID-positive in the nursing home.”
She said nursing homes “will have COVID-positive people,” but only nursing homes that are prepared to contain those patients and prevent the virus from spreading to other healthy elderly people.
More than 6,000 elderly people have died in New York state’s nursing homes. Plus, an unknown number of nursing-home residents died at hospitals, while away from their nursing homes.
“President Trump took very early actions when it came to nursing homes,” Verma said. “We prohibited visitors [and] put out guidance to both nursing homes and states.”
‘Money talks in this business and bulls**t walks…’
MIchael O. Myers / PHOTO: NBCUniversal Archives via YouTube
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) Who is campaign “Consultant No. 1”?
That’s a question many have been asking since the U.S. Department of Justice announced election fraud charges against a top Philadelphia election supervisor last week.
As judge of elections, Domenick DeMuro was supposed to monitor the integrity of the election process in the city’s 39th Ward. But according to court records, he accepted bribes from an unnamed campaign consultant in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
DeMuro pleaded guilty to committing fraud on behalf of favored Democratic candidates and the mysterious political consultant who paid him.
“DeMuro fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear,” said William M. McSwain, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Federal authorities have declined to comment on the identity of the person who bribed DeMuro, but two sources have now come forward to the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the newspaper’s own independent analysis has all but confirmed, that “Consultant No.1” is likely ex-Democratic congressman Michael “Ozzie” Myers.
Myers represented Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District between 1976 and 1980 and has since built a powerful consulting network that has made him a “must-hire operative” for aspiring office-seekers in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, according to the Inquirer.
Myers has a long history of corruption. His congressional career ended with a three-year prison sentence for bribery, and the House of Representatives formally voted to expel him in disgrace.
The “Abscam” sting operation that implicated Myers and several other Democrat congressmen received the Hollywood treatment in 2013’s American Hustle.
More recently, federal prosecutors sought information about his labor union ties that involved search warrants and charges filed against a prominent labor-union ally in 2016.
But Myers is perhaps best known for saying, “Money talks in this business and bulls**t walks,” on an undercover FBI recording moments before accepting a $50,000 bribe from federal agents disguised as Arab sheikhs.
If Myers is indeed “Consultant#1” then, as per the DeMuro indictment, he allegedly solicited payments from Democratic candidates and classified them as “consulting fees” for financial-disclosure purposes.
The payments ranged from $300 to $5,000 and were allegedly used to pay Election Board officials, like DeMuro, in exchange for ballot stuffing and potentially other illegal voting activities meant to benefit his clients.
“If even one vote is fraudulently rung up, the integrity of that election is compromised,” said McSwain in a statement.
“I want the public to know that this investigation is active and ongoing, and my office is taking every possible step that we can to ensure the integrity of the upcoming primary and general elections in the nine counties of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,” he continued.
Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs are widely recognized as the linchpin to whether the swing state of Pennsylvania turns for the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden or President Donald Trump in November.
Campaign finance records show that Myers is the only political operative to accept so-called consulting fees in the 39th Ward, where he lives.
He’s also the only consultant who has relatives that have run for elected office in the 39th Ward. His brother Matthew Myers is currently the Democratic leader of Ward 39B, and his nephew Jonathan “J.R.” Rowan holds the same position in Ward 39A.
‘Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) One day after President Trump introduced an executive order that would hold Twitter and other Big Tech companies accountable for censorship, the social media giant added a warning label to one of President Trump’s tweets early Friday morning.
The company accused Trump of “glorifying violence” by warning that violence in Minneapolis would lead to even more violence.
I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right…..
“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let this happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you,” Trump tweeted.
Just a few hours after Trump’s tweet was posted, Twitter added a disclaimer to the second tweet that forces users to click “view” in order to see the tweet.
“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible,” the disclaimer states.
Twitter did not take the post down, though, adding that it is in the public’s interest that the tweet remain accessible, since it is timely and relevant.
However, the company warned that the “historical context of the last line” and its “connection to violence” could “inspire similar actions today.”
In other words, Twitter is accusing the president of encouraging violence.
This restrictive disclaimer is a first for Twitter, which has also begun adding fact-check labels to tweets from Trump that Twitter deems false.
Trump responded with an executive order that would prevent Twitter and other notoriously left-leaning social media companies from enforcing a double standard against conservative views.
“In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick the speech that Americans may access and convey online,” the executive order reads.
“This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic,” it says. “When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.”
