Tag: california

Husband & Wife Beaten with Flashlight, Stomped On Over Selling Tacos Without Permit

 In the land of the free, attempting to earn money in certain professions without first paying the state for the privilege of doing so can and will get you kidnapped and extorted. These laws are applied to children behind lemonade stands as well as adults selling flowers. The state callously and with extreme prejudice has been documented arresting people, or even beating up women to enforce these licensing laws. As the following case illustrates, even couples attempting to make money to keep from sleeping on the streets can and will become fodder in the war on earning without permission.

Thanks to hypocritical governor Gavin Newsom’s tyrannical lockdown in the state of California, 1 in every 3 California restaurants will be permanently closing their doors. Other states, like New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota face similar fates while most states across America have suffered massive layoffs in the restaurant industry.

The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed employment in leisure and hospitality is down by 3.4 million jobs since last February. About 17,000 jobs in “food services and drinking places” were cut in November alone. As the following incident illustrates, the few folks who survived the government’s orders are facing harassment and even police brutality for simply trying to earn a living.

The following incident unfolded on Sunday in El Monte, Calif. as health inspectors along with multiple El Monte police officers responded to a report from a “see something, say something” citizen that Fermin Martinez and Sylvia Aguilar were operating their taco stand without a permit. The fact that people are snitching on their neighbors for trying to do anything they can to stay on their feet during these lockdowns is disheartening but the police enforcing it with violence takes it to another extreme.

As the video shows, the couple is upset that they are being harassed. They are verbally protesting when all of the sudden, the couple is tackled to the ground and savagely beaten. Aguilar is being kicked and stomped while Martinez is getting repeatedly hit with an officer’s flashlight.

Martinez explained that the health inspectors target him for some reason, despite a myriad of other stands doing the exact same thing.

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Justices: California can’t enforce indoor church service ban

The Supreme Court is telling California that it can’t bar indoor church services because of the coronavirus pandemic, but it can keep for now a ban on singing and chanting indoors.

The high court issued orders late Friday in two cases where churches had sued over coronavirus-related restrictions in the state. The high court said that for now, California can’t ban indoor worship as it had in almost all of the state because virus cases are high.

The justices said the state can cap indoor services at 25% of a building’s capacity. The justices also declined to stop California from enforcing a ban put in place last summer on indoor singing and chanting. California had put the restrictions in place because the virus is more easily transmitted indoors and singing releases tiny droplets that can carry the disease.

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California keeps key virus data out of public sight

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has from the start said his coronavirus policy decisions would be driven by data shared with the public to provide maximum transparency.

But with the state starting to emerge from its worst surge, his administration won’t disclose key information that will help determine when his latest stay-at-home order is lifted.

State health officials said they rely on a very complex set of measurements that would confuse and potentially mislead the public if they were made public.

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California halts injections of Moderna Covid vaccine batch due to ‘higher-than-usual number of adverse events’

California health officials are asking vaccine providers to stop administering a batch of Moderna’s Covid-19 jab, after an unusually high number of adverse reactions were linked to the drug.

Doses from Moderna Lot 041L20A are suspected of causing a “higher-than-usual number of adverse events” and should be shelved until a proper investigation can be conducted, the California Department of Public Health said on Sunday. 

State epidemiologist Dr. Erica S. Pan said in a statement that “fewer than 10 individuals” suffered “a possible severe allergic reaction” and required medical attention over the past 24 hours after being injected with the specific batch of vaccine. All of the incidents appear to have occurred at a single community clinic that was administering the lot. The site reportedly closed for several hours after the string of adverse reactions occurred, before switching to a different batch of the drug.

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Second California hospital busted for giving COVID-19 vaccine to relatives

A second California hospital has been busted for giving the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to its employees’ relatives — instead of using the doses for the elderly or frontline workers.

Southern California Hospital allowed its workers to invite relatives to get vaccinated — just as another area hospital did last week, sparking criticism.

“The hospital had planned on vaccinating all of their employees, but a large number of their staff declined and they were sitting on a lot of thawed vaccines,” a woman vaccinated at Southern California Hospital told the Orange County Register. “‘They offered police officers, firefighters and first-responders to get vaccinated and also told employees they could invite four family members.”

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She Noticed $200 Million Missing, Then She Was Fired

Earlier this year, the governing board of one of California’s most powerful regulatory agencies unleashed troubling accusations against its top employee.

Commissioners with the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, accused Executive Director Alice Stebbins of violating state personnel rules by hiring former colleagues without proper qualifications. They said the agency chief misled the public by asserting that as much as $200 million was missing from accounts intended to fund programs for the state’s blind, deaf and poor. At a hearing in August, Commission President Marybel Batjer said that Stebbins had discredited the CPUC.

“You took a series of actions over the course of several years that calls into question your integrity,” Batjer told Stebbins, who joined the agency in 2018. Those actions, she said, “cause us to have to consider whether you can continue to serve as the leader of this agency.”

The five commissioners voted unanimously to terminate Stebbins, who had worked as an auditor and budget analyst for different state agencies for more than 30 years.

But an investigation by the Bay City News Foundation and ProPublica has found that Stebbins was right about the missing money.

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California’s Health Secretary Concedes There Is No Empirical Basis for the State’s Ban on Outdoor Dining

This week a Los Angeles County judge ruled that a local ban on outdoor dining at restaurants, ostensibly aimed at reducing transmission of the COVID-19 virus, was “not grounded in science, evidence, or logic.” Around the same time, California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly admitted that the same thing is true of a state ban on outdoor dining that currently applies to all of Southern California, including Los Angeles County. Ghaly said that ban, which is one of many restrictions that are triggered when a region’s available ICU capacity drops below 15 percent, is “not a comment on the relative safety of outdoor dining” but is instead aimed at discouraging Californians from leaving home.

“The decision to include, among other sectors, outdoor dining and limiting that, turning to restaurants to deliver and provide takeout options instead, really has to do with the goal of trying to keep people at home,” Ghaly said during a briefing on Tuesday. He noted that “we have worked hard with that industry to create safer ways for outdoor dining to happen.”

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HOLLYWOOD DEPLOYED LOBBYISTS TO WIN EXEMPTIONS TO STRICT CALIFORNIA LOCKDOWN

LAST MONTH, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was caught violating his own warnings against multiple households dining together indoors. The Democratic governor was spotted at the French Laundry, an exclusive restaurant north of San Francisco, where he was celebrating the birthday of longtime friend Jason Kinney.

The dinner controversy was more than just an opulent display of political double standards — it also highlighted the backroom efforts to maintain special treatment during the pandemic. Kinney, a veteran political operative, is a lobbyist for a number of interests seeking to shape the rules governing life under the pandemic, including what kind of economic activities are deemed essential in order to stay in business.

The inside track may have paid off. One of Kinney’s clients, Netflix, has been allowed to continue to operate during the latest round of forced closures that began last week as intensive care hospital capacity has dwindled across the state.

The entertainment industry has been given extensive leeway to operate during the pandemic, even as California now faces a stay-at-home order. The state has deemed the television and movie production industry as “critical infrastructure” and has allowed Hollywood studios to continue filming projects, including in Los Angeles, which is facing the most strict lockdown order.

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