Tag: new york

Led By “Fat Activists”, New York Considering Bill To Ban Weight Discrimination

As if being overweight wasn’t already enough of a virtue in the United States nowadays, New York will soon be looking to approve a bill that would ban “weight discrimination in hiring and housing”.

Victoria Abraham, referred to multiple times as a “fat activist” by the New York Times, who reported the story, says her cause isn’t to lose weight – but rather to make sure people don’t get the wrong perception about fat people.

A proponent for the legislation, she told the Times: “There is a perception that you’re lazy or unable to do the work. People don’t even realize that they have that bias.”

She said she proudly displays her body on her LinkedIn profile, so “prospective employers know whom they are considering hiring.”

The bill will add weight to the list of protected groups, which also includes race, gender, religion and disability, the report notes, stating that obesity rates are up over the last 2 decades and accelerated during lockdowns, when people were forced to stay home. More than 40% of Americans are obese, the Times writes.

We have to ask, though: if that number breaches 50%, can’t obese people no longer be considered a minority? We digress.

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NYPD officers brag about milking overtime, call detainees names in accidental recording

Jonathan Wohl’s arrest last September was about as routine as they come.

The 35-year-old construction worker was staging a one-man protest against his union, recording himself on his phone as he stood in the lobby of the Midtown offices of Laborers Local 79. When security asked him to leave, he refused and the building called the cops.

In a strange twist of technological fate, Wohl’s phone, which was at that point in the possession of the police, kept on recording.

For nearly eight hours, as Wohl paced around a holding cell in the Midtown South precinct, his phone picked up conversations among dozens of cops who did not appear to know they were being recorded.

The tape, which was reviewed by Gothamist, offers a rare window into the daily work of a police officer behind closed doors – and the ways that a number of recent criminal justice reforms have changed the way officers process arrests and collect overtime.

In contrast to comments from top NYPD officials, who have spent years lobbying against bail reform, rank-and-file officers offered another perspective, suggesting the additional paperwork required by the new law had been a boon to their paychecks.

“Bail reform sucks. But it’s also one of the best things that’s ever happened, too,” Wohl’s arresting officer, Shaun Enright, said to a coworker in the recording. “God is great, bro.”

The NYPD declined to make Enright available for comment on this story and declined to comment as an agency. The Police Benevolent Association, the union representing rank-and-file police officers, did not respond to a request for comment.

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Here’s All the Crimes Alvin Bragg Shrugged Off to Go After Trump

While police are catching criminals on New York City’s unsavory streets, Soros-tied Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has caught a chronic case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). The politically ambitious Bragg, whose self-styled crowning achievement is indicting a former U.S. president for the first time ever in American history, is using what he alleges to be a federal campaign-finance violation as a means to upgrade an otherwise-misdemeanor charge to a felony via an untested legal theory.

Simultaneously, as Bragg seeks to prosecute President Donald Trump, the GOP’s top 2024 contender, to the fullest extent of the law no matter the cost, the soft-on-crime DA has downgraded felonies to misdemeanors in a majority of his cases, handing get-out-of-jail-free cards to hordes of hardened criminals with little regard for the victims of these violent crimes in his own jurisdiction.

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New York Lawmakers Want To Use a ‘Netflix Tax’ To Pay for the Subway

After New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) approved a budget authorizing a 5.5 percent fare increase to address chronic budget shortfalls, the state assembly flew into action coming up with ways to avoid that. New York’s latest tax scheme would attempt to pay for the MTA by hiking taxes on everyone from streaming services like Netflix to small delivery businesses to digital workers —basically, on everyone except the actual riders of public transportation.

Under its 2023 budget, the MTA is set to run a $600 million deficit, even after using nearly $1.8 billion in federal pandemic-related aid. Things will get even worse once that federal aid runs out—in 2025, the MTA is set to run a $3 billion deficit. 

In place of fare increases, Gov. Kathy Hochul has now proposed an increase on the top payroll tax rate paid by employers: from 0.34 percent to 0.5 percent in New York City and surrounding counties served by MTA trains and buses. State legislators have countered with a hodgepodge of proposals, including a 2 percent increase on the top statewide corporate tax rate, applying state and local sales taxes to streaming services, and a new $0.25 “delivery fee” on delivery transactions within New York (with some exceptions).

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Gov. Hochul Proposes Heavy Fines for Illicit Cannabis Shops

Illegal cannabis sellers could see sky-high fines under new legislation proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday, giving state officials greater power to crack down on New York’s illicit pot market.

The bill would set fines up to $10,000 a day for shops that sell cannabis without a license, and businesses found possessing illegal marijuana plants or products could be hit with penalties as high as $200,000, according to the proposed rules.

It would also give the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), the state agency overseeing marijuana retail licensing, the authority to seize illegal products and allow OCM to shut down unlicensed cannabis retailers. 

“The continued existence of illegal dispensaries is unacceptable, and we need additional enforcement tools to protect New Yorkers from dangerous products and support our equity initiatives,” Hochul said in a statement.

Under the proposed law, OCM could investigate any location growing, distributing or selling cannabis that has not been sourced from a legal distributor and taxed. OCM, the attorney general or local police would be able to enforce a preliminary injunction to stop businesses suspected of selling cannabis without a license, according to the bill.

Hochul’s proposal is the latest move in a state and city effort to shutter the thousands of illegal pot shops that have cropped up in New York City, threatening its fledgling legal market. 

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New York City Spending $5 Million PER DAY on Housing and Feeding Illegal Immigrants

New York City is reportedly spending five million dollars a day on the feeding and housing of illegal immigrants now living on the city.

In what world is this kind of figure acceptable or even sustainable? How long can this possibly go on?

Think about the size of that number and imagine what could be done with that money to help American citizens.

If New York City has that kind of money to spend on illegal immigrants, why are there homeless people in the city? How is anyone in the city going hungry?

The New York Post reports:

NYC official says city is spending an estimated $5M a day on housing, feeding migrants

New York City is spending nearly $5 million a day to house and feed thousands of migrants — but the Big Apple is still barely getting a dime in aid from President Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The mind-blowing cost of the crisis was revealed Friday afternoon after city Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol told a City Council panel that Gotham’s Department of Homeless Services and Health & Hospitals each spend an average of $363 daily to provide food and shelter for just a single migrant.

Given that there are more than 30,000 migrants currently being housed in city taxpayer-funded facilities, that would amount to a daily staggering bill of $10.89 million.

City Hall then waited until Friday night to officially correct Iscol’s comments.

After Mayor Eric Adams’ administration refused for several hours to go on the record, a spokeswoman, Kate Smart, finally wrote in an e-mail to The Post that “$364 per household is the per diem for asylum seekers.”

Based on what City Hall would only say on background earlier, “there are 12,700 households currently in our care,” that puts the daily migrant cost for the city still at a colossal $4,622,800.

This is insanity.

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NYPD Wants Businesses to Require Customers Remove Masks

The New York Police Police Department is advising businesses to ask patrons to take off their masks before entry in light of the high number of thefts and robberies across the city.

Removing face masks should be made a “condition of entry,” NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said at a press conference last week, noting that criminals have been taking advantage of masks to avoid detection on surveillance cameras.

“People are coming up to our businesses, sometimes with masks, sometimes masks, hoods and latex gloves, and they’re being buzzed in, they’re being allowed to enter into the store and then we have a robbery or some kind of property being stolen,” Maddrey said.

“We are asking the businesses to make this a condition of entry: That people, when they come in, they show their face, they should identify themselves,” he continued. “And if they feel like they want to put their mask on after they identify themselves for their safety, by all means, they should do so.”

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, most businesses in the city would block customers from entering the premises with masks on, according to the police chief. But taking in masked customers is now “a way of life.”

“Since the pandemic, this is a way of life for us, where people wear masks regularly,” he said. “But we’re seeing this being used too much as a ruse to enter into businesses and to victimize our businesses.”

“We need our businesses to be proactive and do their due diligence. We need to make sure people are identifying themselves,” Maddrey said.

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Dumping 1M gallons of radioactive water in Hudson is ‘best option,’ per Indian Point nuclear plant owner

The owner of the defunct Indian Point nuclear facility says it’s planning to dump about 1 million gallons of radioactive water into the Hudson River. The move, which the company describes as the “best option” for the waste, could happen as early as August.

A Feb. 2 meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board heated up when the plant’s owner Holtec International disclosed the plan as part of its lengthy closure process. The contaminated water could just naturally — and safely — decay in storage onsite.

Environmental groups and residents are also concerned this could harm their community, as the Hudson River is already a federally designated toxic Superfund site. Rich Burroni, Holtec’s site vice president for Indian Point, agreed to give the community at least a month’s notice before any radioactive discharge into the Hudson River begins.

But Holtec is well within its legal rights and permits to discharge waste at the same rate as it did when operating, and it does not need federal, state or local approval to dump the contaminated water. This practice is standard for nuclear plants.

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The New York City Department of Health created “Misinformation Response Unit” to monitor social media

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene set up a “Misinformation Response Unit” to monitor what it would determine to be “dangerous misinformation” posted on social media, non-US sites, and non-English media in the US.

This “misinformation” mostly had to do with Covid vaccination – the Department was determined to drive vaccination rates up by spreading its word, and in this gathered over 100 partners whose job was to craft positive messaging around the controversial subject.

Among those the dedicated new unit is working with is Public Good Projects, otherwise known for receiving funding from a lobbying group representing two major Covid vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna.

Their “good” work here also included sending Twitter, on a weekly basis, lists of posts slated for censorship.

In an article published by the NEJM Catalyst journal, those behind the effort are now assessing the Unit’s work as successful, what with it being able to “rapidly identify messages” deemed as containing inaccurate information about the virus, vaccines, treatment, etc.

And although admitting that “vaccine hesitancy” remains high around the world even two years after the vaccines were first introduced – and this is something attributed to “disinformation and misinformation” and continues to worry the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Surgeon General, as well as “medical experts” – the New York City Health Department thinks that it did well in getting its own narrative out, particularly in traditional media.

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New York Assembly Bill Would Prohibit Geolocation Tracking and Geofencing Warrants

A bill introduced in the New York Assembly would ban geolocation tracking and geofencing warrants. Passage of the legislation would not only protect privacy in New York; it would also hinder the growth of the federal surveillance state.

Asm. Michaelle Solages (D) and a large coalition of fellow Democrats introduced Assembly Bill 3306 (A3306) on Feb. 2. The bill is a companion to Senate Bill 217 (S217) introduced last month. The proposed law would ban the search of geolocation data or keyword data of a group of people who are under no individual suspicion of having committed a crime but rather are defined by having been at a given location at a given time or searched particular words, phrases, character strings, or websites. It would also bar courts from issuing reverse location search warrants and create a process to suppress any evidence gathered in violation of the law.

In effect, the passage of A3306 would end a process called “geofencing.” Reverse search warrants authorize police to search broad geographical areas to determine who was near a given place at a given time. In practice, these warrants give police permission to use Google location data to engage in massive fishing expeditions and subject hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people to police location tracking. According to the New York Times, federal agents first utilized the practice in 2016. According to the report, these broadly construed warrants help police pinpoint possible suspects and witnesses in the absence of other clues. Google employees said the company often responds to a single warrant with location information on dozens or hundreds of devices. Police can gather similar information using cell-site simulators, often called “stingrays.”

According to the New York Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), concerns about how location data collected during the state’s battle against COVID-19 could be used by police. The Wall Street Journal reported that federal, state and local governments were partnering in a warrantless cellphone tracking program to gather information on Americans’ movements in over 500 cities.

“We are deeply alarmed by federal, state and local officials’ growing use of warrantless location tracking and so-called ‘reverse search warrants,” STOP executive director Albert Fox Cahn said. “While this type of tracking may be appropriate for some public health officials, it’s outrageous that this information is being shared with police. COVID-19 cannot grant New York’s police departments a blank check for surveillance. Even when police gain a warrant, wide-area geolocation searches make a mockery of the Constitution. When a single court order okays searches on hundreds or even thousands of individuals, it undermines the entire purpose of requiring warrants in the first place. The judges approving these orders simply can’t know how much data they’re handing over to law enforcement when they approve the request.”

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