Tag: new york

New York Dispensary Launches ‘Illegal Cannabis Buyback’ Program, Enticing Consumers To Transition To Legal Market With Discounts

A New York marijuana dispensary is taking steps to help eradicate illicit cannabis businesses that have proliferated in the state by offering discounts and benefits to people who transition to the legal market.

Housing Works, the parent company of the state’s first legal adult-use dispensary Housing Works Cannabis Co, announced the “illegal cannabis buyback” program on Thursday. As regulators continue their push to shut down unlicensed operators, the company is providing consumers with incentives to transition to the legal market.

From July 1 to September 1, any person who provides proof of membership at an illicit operator will get a free membership at Housing Works Cannabis Co’s “co-conspirator program,” which includes 25 percent off their first purchase and a 10 percent discount on all their purchases for the next year. The membership normally costs $25.

“This buyback initiative is crucial not only for the health and safety of our customers, which is always our top priority, but also for the legal business operators and those who have fought hard for a place in New York’s legal cannabis market,” Sasha Nutgent, director of retail at Housing Works Cannabis Co, told Marijuana Moment.

Keep reading

Another “vaccine passport” bill FAILS to pass in New York where medical legislation is disguised so the nanny-state can impose vaccine mandates later

New York is the city and state where legislation to remove medical rights and privacy masquerades as “options” so the medical-police-state can later impose vaccine mandates and perform gender mutilation surgery on kids without parental consent. The latest attempt to remove medical privacy in New York comes as lawmakers tried to make it so that anyone 19 and older must “opt out” of having their vaccination information automatically recorded and shared with health departments on their vaccine registry. Currently, only patients under 19 years of age have this data in registries, as required by healthcare providers.

A civil rights attorney, Sujata Gibson, who represents New York plaintiffs who challenge vaccine mandates, calls this new legislation a “Trojan Horse” that paves the way for broader mandates, saying “The only reason to know every single vaccine given to adults in New York is to know who did not get them.” That type of database would be the “central nervous system” she said, for what would surely amount to a “state-wide digital vaccine passport system.”

Vaccine registries can lead directly to vaccine mandates and medical-police-state tyranny

If you did not recognize it, Big Pharma’s main goal of the whole pandemic was to get as many people injected with cell-mutating mRNA “technology” as possible, then you got swept up by the vax cult frenzy, like 270 million other Americans. The mad, mad push is far from over, even though the “novel” virus still barely lingers, supposedly. In New York, right now, vaccine-cult legislators are trying to get everybody on a database, vaccinated or not, so they can plan better for the next “plandemic.”

Keep reading

Trans-identified male felon awarded $350,000 by NYC after suing for being housed with male inmates on Rikers Island

Ali Miles, a biological male felon who identifies as a Muslim woman, has been awarded $350,000 in a settlement after suing New York City over officials’ decision to hold Miles in pre-trial detention on Rikers Island with male inmates. Miles spent one month in the facility before being transferred back to Arizona, where Miles was found guilty on numerous charges.

Miles, formerly known as Dylan Miles, alleged in the lawsuit that the inmate had informed the court that Miles was transgender, and that the refusal to house Miles with female inmates amounted to “gender identity discrimination.” As part of the settlement, the city maintained that Miles’ allegations were untrue, and did not accept any blame.

According to Reduxx, Miles was held on Rikers Island from June to July 2022 after being arrested in New York on an Arizona warrant. After being found guilty of two counts of aggravated harassment per domestic violence, a Class 5 felony, as well as disorderly conduct, harassment, threatening or intimidating, and false reporting to law enforcement, Miles was sentenced to 312 days in jail and three years of supervised probation. 

Keep reading

The girl who never came back: New York socialite who vanished in 1910 is America’s oldest missing persons case – here are the top theories about her disappearance

Dorothy Arnold was 25 when she disappeared from her Upper East Side mansion with today’s equivalent of $1,000 on an icy Monday morning in December 1910. 

The eldest daughter of perfume importer Francis R Arnold left her jewelry and passport at home and strolled towards Central Park, never to be seen again, according to The Charley Project which tracks missing persons cases. 

Her disappearance has stumped detectives for more than 100 years, making her case the oldest recorded missing persons case in American history and what the Times has called ‘one of New York’s greatest mysteries’. 

‘A hundred years later, I don’t expect any kind of resolution,’ Jane Vollmer, Dorothy’s great-niece told the National Geographic last month. 

Full name Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold, the socialite’s last words to her mother were ‘I’ll telephone you’ as she stepped out of their Manhattan mansion on East 79th Street. 

Arnold gave different accounts of her plans for the day to different people – telling one friend she was shopping with her mother, and her mother that she wanted to go by herself. 

She set off toward Fifth Avenue and stopped at the Park and Tilford’s candy store where she paid for some chocolates using her father’s credit card at 1.45pm. The clerk told investigators at the time that she had appeared to be in high spirits. 

Arnold went on to purchase a book at Brentano’s on 27th and Fifth, before bumping into a friend who she chatted with for a few minutes, telling them she was headed for Central Park. 

Her mother waited to meet her for lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel that day, but she never turned up. 

When she didn’t return home that night, the family grew concerned. Fearing bad publicity from contacting the police, they hired a private investigator.   

Keep reading

Fight Erupts When City Takes Private Property for ‘Park’

A fight has erupted over a decision by the Long Island town of Southold to take private property that the owners of a chain of hardware stores bought for a new location.

The problem is that the town took the land against the wishes of the owners using eminent domain, but it had no legitimate reason for doing that.

According to officials at the Institute for Justice, that’s known because the city insisted it needed the land for a “park,” but that turned out to be a “passive park” with no cleanup, no improvements, and the remnants of an old home and greenhouse left there.

The IJ explained, ‘When every legal effort to stop someone from using their property has failed, can the government simply take the land using eminent domain? That is the question at the heart of a new U.S. Supreme Court petition filed by a family-owned hardware store business whose property was taken by a small Long Island town.”

It is the Brinkmann family whose members already have five Long Island stores and obtained the Southold property for another.

“The town did everything it could to stop construction. After failing to drive the Brinkmanns away by attempting to interfere with the Brinkmanns’ land purchase, then imposing an exorbitant fee for a market impact study that the town never performed after being paid, and even deploying a selectively enforced moratorium on building permits to stifle the Brinkmanns’ permit application; the town voted to take the land by eminent domain for a park,” the IJ said.

At the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the judges said, “the government can take your property for almost any reason at all—including because it just doesn’t like you—so long as the government lies about why it is using eminent domain,” explained IJ lawyer Jeff Redfern.

“This is a dangerous precedent, and the Supreme Court should take this opportunity to clarify that it is unconstitutional to use eminent domain in bad faith, simply to stop someone from making a lawful use of their property.”

Keep reading

New York governor proposes face-mask ban to combat anti-Semitism

New York state’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed a legislative ban on face masks on the NYC subway system to combat acts of anti-Semitism, claiming criminals are concealing their identities using the face coverings.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, New York had a law banning face masks in public. However, that rule was suspended in 2020 in light of the pandemic and the city’s authorities made face coverings mandatory for all subway riders until September 2022.

Speaking to reporters during a news conference in Albany on Thursday, Hochul stated that she was in talks with lawmakers over details of a bill once again banning masks, noting that the policy has to be clearly defined to include “common-sense exemptions” for the use of face masks for health, cultural or religious purposes. 

“We will not tolerate individuals using masks to evade responsibility for criminal or threatening behavior,” Hochul said, adding that her team is “working on a solution.”

The Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, had also mentioned reviving some version of a mask ban and returning to the way things were before the pandemic, insisting that people should not be able to wear masks at protests.

Hochul explained that she was moved to propose the ban after receiving a report earlier this week about a group of people donning face masks that “took over a subway car, scaring riders and chanting things about Hitler and wiping out Jews.”

Keep reading

New York Senators Call For Investigation Of State’s Marijuana Social Equity Fund After Exposé Of ‘Predatory Deals’

Citing an investigation by THE CITY, two state senators have called for New York’s social equity cannabis fund to cease issuing loans to dispensary operators and for any “trapped in these predatory deals to be made whole.”

“What this story describes is not a social equity fund. We must get to the bottom of this,” State Sens. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) and Gustavo Rivera (D-The Bronx) asserted in a joint statement that pointed to the high interest rates and start-up costs highlighted in the article.

They called for an investigation by the state’s inspector general of the public–private fund, which was designed to finance a form of reparation for people whose lives had been disrupted by decades of racially discriminatory drug laws.

The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The office has repeatedly refused to answer detailed questions from THE CITY seeking greater clarity about the fund’s operations.

THE CITY’s investigation found that officials of the state’s Office of Cannabis Management, or OCM, had repeatedly warned the governor’s office for months about how the cannabis investment fund was being managed. They raised red flags about how dispensary operators were being loaded with steep costs and trapped in loans with strict terms that they believed were likely to lead to defaults. And OCM’s own counsel warned in an email that the licensees would likely default on their loans under the proposed terms.

The story was based on more than 500 internal agency emails, memos and presentations from July 2022 to July 2023 when the state was having trouble opening more than just a handful of dispensaries.

Calling the fund’s practices “unscrupulous,” the legislators said, “We must take action to redress these loan agreements.”

Keep reading

New York Rolls Out Digital IDs Following New Online Digital ID Law

It’s surely just a coincidence that New York has passed its online digital ID law, just as the state has joined the ranks of states adopting mobile ID technology, enabling residents to convert their traditional driver’s licenses or non-driver IDs into digital formats.

As of this week, New Yorkers can download the New Longyear Mobile ID app from both the Apple App Store and Google Play. This digital version allows users to verify their identity at airports and other locations requiring ID. To set up their mobile ID, users must initially scan both sides of their existing physical ID card using their smartphone.

The launch was unveiled at a media event at LaGuardia Airport, where Robert Duffy, the federal security director for the Transportation Security Administration, and other officials were present. During the briefing, it was stated that the introduction of mobile IDs is a significant step towards modernizing identity security and airport screening processes. Officials highlighted the optional nature of the digital IDs, noting they offer greater convenience without being mandatory.

Currently, there is no mandatory requirement for businesses or law enforcement to accept mobile IDs, and acceptance is entirely voluntary. Businesses, including bars, may begin accepting mobile IDs immediately, provided they install a state-sanctioned verifier application.

According to a press release from Governor Kathy Hochul’s office, the New York Mobile ID app is operational in nearly 30 airports nationwide, including all terminals at LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports. New York is now among a growing list of states such as Arizona, Colorado, and Utah that have embraced mobile driver’s licenses.

Keep reading

New York Passes Online Age Verification Digital ID Law

Lawmakers in New York have passed the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and the Child Data Protection Act.

Assembly Bill A8148A and Senate Bill S7694A (that became the SAFE Act) were introduced as aiming to prevent social platforms from showing minors “addictive” (i.e., algorithmically manipulated) feeds, among a host of other provisions.

Parental consent is now required for children to have access to the latter versions of the feeds – which in turn means that the controversial age verification for adults must be introduced into the mix.

The new rules will not prohibit children from searching for particular keywords but social platforms will not be able to send notifications to their phones “regarding addictive feeds” from midnight to 6 am – again, this will be possible, but only with parental consent.

Could this be the true impetus behind the two bills – to usher in age verification and digital ID, some skeptics might wonder.

Keep reading

Judge Alerts Trump, Manhattan DA of Possible Jury Confidentiality Breach

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan on June 7 alerted counsel for former President Donald Trump and the Manhattan District Attorney of a potential juror confidentiality breach.

“Today, the Court became aware of a comment that was posted on the Unified Court System’s public Facebook page and which I now bring to your attention,” Justice Merchan wrote in a letter.

“In the comment, the user, ‘Michael Anderson,’ states: ‘My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted  Thank you folks for all your hard work!!!!’”

The post was made on May 29, the day the jury began deliberations, one day before the guilty verdict on May 30.

The comment had been made on a post unrelated to Justice Merchan’s courtroom, for the appellate division in the New York Supreme Court.

The comment, and others made by the user on the New York Courts Facebook page, have since been deleted. They came from an account describing itself as a “professional [expletive] poster,” raising questions about the validity of the comment.

Keep reading