Tag: corruption
Officials knew about sexual abuse at Lowell prison —and did nothing. System must have independent oversight
A horrifying new report by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reveals that, for more than a decade, Florida’s political leaders and the state Department of Corrections (FDC) have ignored the sexual abuse by staff, including rape, of incarcerated women at the Lowell Correctional Institution.
The report is shocking, but not surprising to anyone who’s paid attention to Florida’s prison system. Its findings should, at a minimum, finally prompt the Legislature to establish independent oversight of Florida’s prisons.
According to DOJ, Florida Corrections was made aware of systemic sexual abuse of Lowell prisoners by staff as early as 2006, but failed to take action to remedy the problem. In fact, the report notes the Department created a safe harbor for some of the worst offenders.
One sergeant at Lowell was accused in 2017 of sexually abusing a prisoner, “causing lesions on the prisoner’s throat from oral sex, and then retaliating against the prisoner when she refused his sexual advances.” FDC confirmed the prisoner’s injuries, but failed to complete the investigation into the allegation. That sergeant remained employed until his arrest earlier this year — for sexual misconduct with a different woman.
Far from an “isolated incident,” DOJ found a “long-standing pattern” of such incidents at Lowell. In 2018, a sergeant allegedly raped a prisoner in a storage area, “pull[ing] [her] pants down and forc[ing] his penis in anally.”
DOJ found it is common for employees at Lowell to bribe women with contraband in exchange for sex, compel women into abusive sexual “relationships” and watch women shower and use the toilet. Then they threaten the women with solitary confinement if they report the abuse.
Fauci says he altered public scientific estimates based on opinion polls
At the outset of the pandemic, Fauci — like most public health authorities — advised against wearing face masks, telling the public that doing so was unnecessary unless an individual was showing symptoms of COVID-19.
Fauci in subsequent weeks and months made a sharp 180-degree turn on the subject of masks, advocating their universal usage and arguing that mask-wearing is critical to stopping the spread of COVID-19.
When pressed in June on why he had initially argued against masks, Fauci said that the public health community was “concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply.”
“And we wanted to make sure,” Fauci continued, that the scarce PPE was reserved for “the people, namely the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in [harm’s way], to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.”
In a September interview with ABC, Fauci repeated this admission.
“Very early on in the pandemic, in the very early months, before we even had many cases,” he said, “… there was a shortage of PPE and masks for health care providers who needed them desperately since they were putting their lives and their safety on the line every day.
“So the feeling was that people who were wanting to have masks in the community, namely just people out in the street, might be hoarding masks and making the shortage of masks even greater. In that context, we said that we did not recommend masks.”
Fauci claimed that, in addition to allegedly discovering that masks were effective at stopping the spread of viruses, scientists earlier this year also reportedly discovered that “cloth coverings worked as well as surgical masks.”
“So the idea of a shortage of masks that would take it away from those who really need it was no longer there because anybody could get a mask,” he said.
Fauci’s office did not respond to emails over the weekend seeking comment.
We’re being played…
The Top ‘Owners’ Of America’s President-Elect Joe Biden
Top Contributors, federal election data for Joe Biden, 2020 cycle
totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.
- Bloomberg LP [Michael Bloomberg] $56,796,137
- Future Forward USA [largely Dustin Moskowitz] $29,917,229
- Priorities USA/Priorities USA Action [Hillary backers] $25,841,199
- Asana [Moskowitz & Rosenstein] $21,937,902
- Sixteen Thirty Fund [dark money] $19,874,655
- Democracy PAC [George Soros] $19,000,000
- Senate Majority PAC [Democratic billionaires] $12,371,874
- American Bridge 21st Century [largely Soros] $10,260,573
- Paloma Partners [Donald Sussman] $9,016,248
- Euclidean Capital [James Simons] $7,006,805
Tens of million in CARES Act loans went to the families of just 28 Congresspeople
A new analysis from Sludge Magazine shows that Washington nepotism is just as unsurprisingly nepotistic and grossly disappointing as ever:
18 congressional Republicans and one Libertarian have received $21.7 million for 38 businesses with which they are associated. Nine Democrats received $6.1 million for 11 of their own businesses. An additional roughly $54 million went to nonprofits, think tanks and policy institutes, congressional caucuses, and higher education institutions tied to members of both parties.
[…]
• Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), net worth $77 million, received a $135,800 loan for his Geniecast, LLC.
• Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), net worth $73.9 million and the fourth-richest member of Congress, received $2.8 million in loans for four of his 27 companies.
• Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), net worth $60.9 million, received a loan of $1,070,000 for his KTAK Corporation. Hern, who owns 97 percent of the company, estimated its value at between $5 and $25 million last year.
• Norman, net worth $43.4 million, received $306,520 for four of his 20 companies.
• Mitch McConnell and wife Elaine Chao, with a combined net worth of $34.4 million, are tied to a loan for the Chao-family owned Foremost Maritime Inc. of $417,700.
• Roger Williams (R-Texas), net worth $27.7, received $1,430,000 for his JRW Corporation. Last year, he valued the company at more than $50 million.
• Greg Pence, net worth $12.6 million, received a loan of $79,441 for his Pence Group, LLC, which he valued on his financial disclosure as worth between $5 and $25 million.
• T.J. Cox (D-Calif.), net worth $11.8 million, received $609,825 for two of his 26 businesses.
• Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), net worth $10.9 million, is tied to a loan of $1,100,000.00 that went to her husband’s law firm, Lowey Dannenberg P.C.
• Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), net worth $10.4 million, received $974,100 for four of his car dealerships.
• Ralph Abraham (R-La.), net worth $4.8 million, received loans of $38,300 for two of his four companies.
• Earl Blumenaeur (D-Ore.), net worth $4.5 million, received $432,734 for his two companies.
• Vicki Hartzler (R-Mo.), net worth $3.8 million, is tied to $451,200 for her husband’s Heartland Tractor Company, which she valued at between $1 and $5 million and from which he claimed as much as $1 million in income last year.
• Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), net worth $3.7 million, received $988,700 for his two family plumbing businesses.
While this kind of nepotistic corruption is always bipartisan, it is frustrating to note that Republicans were twice as likely to partake in such behavior. And of course, many of these same people also voted against giving more than $600 to citizens in the most recent round of COVID relief efforts, even after voting to provide immense relief to big businesses instead of smaller mom-and-pop shops.
Did Fauci Just Admit He Lied About Herd Immunity To Trick Americans Into Vaccine?
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Democrat-approved ‘science’ in ‘trust the science,’ appears to have just admitted to lying about COVID-19 herd immunity in order to goad more people into taking the vaccine, according to a new report in the New York Times.
At issue is the percentage of the population which must require resistance to the coronavirus – through infection or vaccination – in order for the disease to disappear.
Early into the pandemic, Fauci repeatedly claimed ‘60-70%‘ herd immunity was required to achieve herd immunity. Beginning around a month ago, however, Fauci’s estimate drifted higher – to “70, 75 percent,” and more recently telling CNBC “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”
Things that make you go hmm…
2020 exposed the teachers unions for the frauds they are
The coronavirus pandemic has brought too many failures of leadership to count. But chief among them is remote learning and teachers unions’ continued lobbying against reopening schools.
When the virus was still a novel concept and schools shut down in response, we understood why. There was too much we did not know about COVID-19, and the risk of endangering students and teachers was too great. As time went on, however, the science became overwhelmingly clear that COVID-19 posed little risk to children and that schools were not a major source of transmission. It also became clear that distance learning has been a disaster both for students and for parents, especially those with limited resources.
Over the course of the year, it has become glaringly obvious that unions insisting on long-term school closures were not concerned about their students’ health or teachers’ safety so much as they were interested in what they could gain from the shutdown.
In Los Angeles, for example, one of the largest teachers unions in the state released a reopening proposal in July that was accompanied by a list of demands. These included — we kid you not — defunding the Los Angeles Police Department, implementing “Medicare for all,” increasing taxes on the wealthy, and placing a moratorium on charter schools in the county. The purpose of this ultimatum was purely political, yet Los Angeles’s public schools remain closed to this day.
New York City’s public schools made progress this fall by gradually reintroducing students to the classroom. But teachers unions sabotaged this, too, demanding that Mayor Bill de Blasio close public schools again because coronavirus cases in the city had risen above a certain threshold. Never mind that the schools themselves were nowhere near this threshold, or that viral transmission among students had been proven nonexistent. New York’s teachers wanted to work from home, so the teachers unions flew into action.
Anyone who questions the teachers unions — health officials, other educators, even parents — is accused of recklessly endangering lives. The truth, however, is that the unions have behaved utterly selfishly while camouflaging their dishonorable conduct in the garb of social concern. The head of the country’s largest teachers union went so far as to say teachers are “being bullied into returning back to the classrooms.” The science, however, shows there is nothing unsafe about in-person education. Several studies have confirmed that infection rates among students and teachers remain extremely low, and health precautions that most schools have mandated make sure they stay that way.
COVID-19 RELIEF BILL DOUBLES HEALTH CARE BUDGET — FOR CONGRESS
IN A FLURRY of last-minute legislating over coronavirus relief, congressional leaders abandoned hazard pay for essential workers and emergency funding for local governments that may be on the brink of municipal bankruptcy.
But lawmakers did find funding to dramatically increase the budget for the exclusive government-run health clinic that serves Congress.
The Office of Attending Physician, which provides medical services to lawmakers, received a special boost of $5 million, more than doubling its annual budget, which is currently around $4.27 million.
Hellbound and Down 
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