Tag: pennsylvania

Fetterman Predicts ‘Dramatic’ Overnight Comeback, Taps Clinton Lawyer To Fight PA Election Law

Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and Democratic US Senate candidate John Fetterman predicted on Monday that his Republican challenger, Dr. Mehmet Oz, will take an early lead on election day, only for a “dramatic” change to happen overnight as more ballots are counted, according to the Western Journal.

“Counting for ballots cast by mail and early in-person cannot begin until Election Day, thanks to the GOP-controlled legislature — an intentional move to help Republicans baselessly sow doubt about the election results when it suits them,” Fetterman wrote in a memo to “interested parties,” reads a memo from Fetterman, according to the Washington Post.

“Pennsylvania is one of only eight states that bans pre-processing of early mail-in ballots, forcing county officials to wait until 7 a.m. on Tuesday to begin opening returned ballots and scanning them into the system,” he added.

Fetterman pointed to the 1.4 million mail-in ballots requested, saying they will skew heavily Democratic when counted.

The journalistic consortium Spotlight PA reported that roughly 70 percent of the mail-in ballot requests came from registered Democrats. -Western Journal

“The biggest share of absentee and mail ballot requests came from Allegheny County [which includes Pittsburgh] and Philadelphia — nearly a quarter of the total,” Spotlight reports.

“Because Pennsylvania is one of the only states that reports Election Day totals first before ballots cast by mail, and because more populated counties around Philadelphia can take longer to report, we should expect one of the most dramatic shifts in the country from initial GOP support in early results to stronger Democratic gains as more votes are processed,” said Fetterman.

Meanwhile, Fetterman has tapped controversial Clinton lawyer Marc Elias’ firm to challenge Pennsylvania election provisions.

As Jonathan Turley writes;

Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman and other Democrats have filed a federal lawsuit to strike down parts of Pennsylvania’s election law after the state Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots with incorrect dates or no dates should not be counted.Fetterman is challenging the state law on constitutional and federal statutes. He has turned to a controversial former lawyer for Hillary Clinton to seek to strike down the provision.

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Pennsylvania Taxpayers Spent $16.7 Million On Trans Treatments For Minors Since 2015

A new public records request reveals how millions of taxpayer dollars have funded controversial “gender-affirming” medical treatments for trans-identifying minors in Pennsylvania. 

The Pennsylvania Family Institute, a non-profit representing family values, filed a right-to-know request with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services to find out exactly how much taxpayer money has been spent on medically transitioning children and adolescents in the state. The request revealed that since 2015 more than $16.7 million in tax dollars have been spent on puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and gender-related surgeries for minors.

“When Gov. [Tom] Wolf took office, he unilaterally changed state policy to cover things like double mastectomies to remove healthy breasts from minor girls and irreversible experimental hormones for children,” said Emily Kreps with PA Family Institute. “The same drugs used to chemically castrate convicted sex offenders are being funded by tax dollars for minors. This type of ‘care’ is happening right now at major institutions like CHOP, Penn State Health and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh—especially to children in foster care.”

In 2015, Democrat Governor Tom Wolf took office, nominating Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender pediatrician, as Pennsylvania’s physician general. Before becoming the Assistant Secretary of Health to the Biden administration, Levine worked for six years to advance “LGBTQ rights,” including access to “gender-affirming” care. Levine has pressed for insurance coverage for medical gender transition at the state and federal levels. From 2015 to 2021, Pennsylvania saw a nearly 5000% increase in spending on “gender-affirming” care for minors under 18.

The request included data from Fee-For-Service (FFS) paid claims, Physical Health (PH) HealthChoices paid encounters, and Behavioral Health (BH) HealthChoices paid encounters available in Pennsylvania DHS’ PROMISe from January 1, 2015, through October 21, 2022.

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The Media’s Cover-Up of John Fetterman

It should now be crystal clear why Democrat John Fetterman refused to take part in more than a single debate with his Republican Senate rival, Mehmet Oz, and why Fetterman insisted on pushing that debate to just two weeks before Election Day—after at least 500,000 Pennsylvania voters had already voted.

Last night’s debate was an unmitigated disaster. 

A disaster for Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor—who appeared confused and could barely manage a coherent sentence, let alone a complete paragraph.

And a disaster for Pennsylvania voters, who didn’t get the tough, substantive debate they deserved, one that would have pushed Oz to explain, among other things, why he was distancing himself from Donald Trump (without whom he wouldn’t be the nominee); his position on abortion; China; and how he plans to bring down gas prices.

Oz had some solid talking points, but they were just that—talking points. But Fetterman lacked even those.

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Pennsylvania Elementary School Training Introduces 5-Year-Olds To Transgenderism

A Pennsylvania elementary school held a training for educators to teach them how to create a “gender-inclusive” classroom and affirm LGBTQ identities, according to documents provided by No Left Turn in Education to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Fern Hills Elementary School in West Chester, Pennsylvania, hosted an Aug. 24 teacher training titled “An Intro to LGBTQ Education: Cultivating Gender Inclusive Classrooms” put on by LGBTQ activist Aneesah Smith, according to documents obtained by the DCNF. The training provided the elementary school teachers with picture books and lessons for kids as young as kindergarten on transgenderism to incorporate into their classroom.

“Why are our elementary school teachers focused on gender ideology rather than teaching our children reading, writing, arithmetic, history and science?” Yael Levin, chief communications officer of No Left Turn in Education, a group focused on parental rights in education, told the DCNF. “Why are our schools even touching on subjects that belong with the parents, especially in children ranging from 5 to 11? And more importantly, why are our children being evaluated based on whether they are using the term gender expression and if they understand the meaning of the word.”

Smith is a “queer, Christian, cisgender, woman of color” and the director of diversity equity and inclusion at Penn State Abington who has been in social justice activism for more than 12 years, according to her website. She hosts a variety of training sessions including “understanding & supporting your LGBTQ+ child” and “cultivating campus climate considering intersectionality,” a workshop on addressing unconscious bias within campus offices and programs.

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Pennsylvania Man Has Not Filed Income Taxes in 17 Years

The Pledge of Allegiance states that America is “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Liberty, the dictionary says, is living free from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.

Pennsylvania author Barry Durmaz says he is living his life in liberty. That means, among other things, he has not filed income taxes for the last 17 years, and recently he stopped licensing his car. Instead, he had a custom license plate made that says “Private, DOT exempt, for non-commercial use only.”

As a person of liberty, he no longer consents to disclosing private information to the government or filling out forms for taxes or for a car license.

The married father of five is soon to publish his first book, “What Is An American: How the Virtuous Government of America’s Unseen King Deals a Death Blow to the Evils of Socialism, Marxism, and Communism.” In it, he says the liberty of each individual household is the key to America’s freedom.

After considering the Bible, history, and the U.S. Constitution, Durmaz has come to believe that ultimate liberty is faith and self-government, or self-control. That comes from being independently dependent upon God.

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NBC News Asks Twitter, TikTok to Censor Videos of John Fetterman Speaking

NBC News falsely claimed that footage of John Fetterman struggling to speak during a recent rally was “doctored” and urged social media companies to censor. Fetterman, who suffered a stroke earlier this year, has struggled with public speaking while recovering, something the senate hopeful has himself admitted to. The outlet flagged videos of Fetterman speaking to Twitter and TikTok, baselessly claiming that they were in violation of their political misinformation policies. TikTok complied and removed the videos.

NBC News took issue with highlight reels of a recent Montgomery County rally in which Fetterman struggled through parts of his speech. The outlet accused one prominent conservative social media account of deceptively editing video of speeches to “create the perception that what he was saying was nonsensical.”

The report accused social media platforms of ignoring their own policies “against political misinformation” in allowing the videos to stay up.

NBC News Deputy Editor of technology Benjamin Goggin wrote, “Deceptively edited videos that have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter and TikTok exaggerate the speech issues that have plagued John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat, after he had a stroke in May.”

Explaining the alleged edits, Goggin claimed they consisted of “cutting out the sound of the audience to make it appear as if he had abruptly stopped speaking (some of the stops occurred when he was pausing during moments of applause and crowd reaction, according to unedited videos seen by NBC News).”

The NBC News reporter singled out popular digital strategist Greg Price, whose supercut of Fetterman’s speech had been 600,000 times when the report was published.

Goggin claimed that the videos violate Twitter and TikTok’s policies “against political misinformation,” and the outlet flagged these videos for the platforms itself. TikTok ultimately removed the videos from its platform.

“So NBC News decided to accuse me of doctoring videos of John Fetterman that I posted. (I didn’t doctor anything),” Price wrote in a tweet. “They also reached out to Twitter to try and get them censored.”

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War on churches: Pennsylvania town cracks down on feeding the homeless

A lot of powerful people in this country think it’s really important to put religion in its place. They reduce the free exercise of religion to the freedom of worship, and they argue that faith should be strictly private. They also believe that a church building must be exclusively for worship and not for any of the other aspects of people living out their faith.

Pottstown, Pennsylvania, is a working-class town of 20,000 between Philadelphia and Reading. It has more than its share of poverty, which is why Christ Episcopal Church and Mission First Church run robust aid programs, especially during and after the pandemic. The churches give out free meals to the public once a week, provide counseling and mental health support, and hand out groceries, toiletries, and other staples for free.

But the Pottstown government is having none of it. According to local law, a church building can be used only for worship and “those accessory activities as are customarily associated” with worship. In June, a zoning officer sent a violation notice instructing the churches that they must cease their good deeds or go through the zoning hearing board to seek a variance.

“Civil action will commence with the Districts Justice if these violations are not corrected,” the zoning officer wrote in a letter.

Local governments have a long and storied history of stopping religious congregations from serving the poor. Mike Bloomberg wouldn’t let a synagogue donate bagels to homeless shelters. Dozens of other cities have outlawed feeding the homeless.

Pottstown’s actions against the churches are particularly striking because they don’t even involve a safety or food regulation. Instead, the town is attempting to weaponize the very definition of what a church building is in order to prevent worshippers from using it to follow the command of Jesus Christ: “When I was hungry, you fed me.”

“It is the opinion of this office that the use of the property has changed and, by definition, is more than that of a Church,” the zoning officer wrote. He included the zoning code’s definition of a church: “A building wherein persons assemble regularly for religious worship and that is used only for such purposes and for those accessory activities as are customarily associated therewith.”

It’s a horribly crimped view of what a church is, and it’s a view the churches’ leaders reject.

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Former U.S. Congressman and Philadelphia Political Operative Pleads Guilty to Election Fraud Charges

United States Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams announced today that former U.S. Congressman Michael “Ozzie” Myers, 79, of Philadelphia, PA, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, bribery, obstruction of justice, falsification of voting records, and conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election for orchestrating schemes to fraudulently stuff the ballot boxes for specific Democratic candidates in the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Pennsylvania elections.

39th Ward, 36th Division

Specifically, Myers admitted in court to bribing the Judge of Elections for the 39th Ward, 36th Division in South Philadelphia, Domenick J. Demuro, in a fraudulent scheme over several years. Demuro, who was charged separately and pleaded guilty in May 2020, was responsible for overseeing the entire election process and all voter activities of his Division in accord with federal and state election laws.

The voting machines at each polling station, including in the 39th Ward, 36th Division, generate records in the form of a printed receipt documenting the use of each voting machine. This printed receipt, also known as the “results receipt,” shows the vote totals, and the Judge of Elections and other Election Board Officials at each polling place attest to the accuracy of machine results.

Myers admitted to bribing Demuro to illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections. Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons. Myers would solicit payments from his clients in the form of cash or checks as “consulting fees,” and then use portions of these funds to pay Demuro and others to tamper with election results.

After receiving payments ranging from between $300 to $5,000 per election from Myers, Demuro would add fraudulent votes on the voting machine – also known as “ringing up” votes – for Myers’ clients and preferred candidates, thereby diluting the value of ballots cast by actual voters. At Myers’ direction, Demuro would add these fraudulent votes to the totals during Election Day, and then would later falsely certify that the voting machine results were accurate. Myers is also accused of directing Demuro to lie to investigators about the circumstances of the bribes and the ballot-stuffing scheme.

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Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano Wanted Government to Publicly Report Identities of Everyone Who Got Coronavirus

Republican Pennsylvania State Senator and Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano proposed rolling back medical privacy protections during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Friday report from the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The Capital-Star located several of Mastriano’s memos and press releases from 2020 — which were reportedly removed from his website — through an Internet archival resource. In one such document from March 17, 2020, Mastriano said he was concerned that “existing HIPAA regulations are threatening the lives of our citizens…” He went on:

I am concerned that existing HIPAA regulations are threatening the lives of our citizens and depriving Pennsylvania residents of knowing if – and when – they were exposed to a contagious person. This emergency measure is necessary to share vital and life-saving medical information with those who may have been subjected to this dangerous virus. The new information that would become available would help us combat the spread of the Coronavirus.

Mastriano, who has since built his brand around “personal freedom,” introduced a measure calling up the federal government to temporarily suspend HIPAA and “allow for full disclosure of details that are currently considered private, and are not disclosed to the public.” He said:

It is deeply concerning that the federal government did not proactively roll back this dangerous policy, which endangers our people. This situation changes daily – it remains my top priority to do what is in the best interest of protecting public health, and this measure will increase transparency in an effort to quell the spread of this virus.

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YouTubers help find body of Pennsylvania man missing for nearly 20 years

A YouTube group reportedly helped find the body of a Pennsylvania man who was missing for almost 20 years. 

“It’s my brother,” the victim’s brother Stephen Amabile told The Philadelphia Inquirer when remains were found inside a car in a body of water Saturday. “They found him.”

The victim’s brother says a family member reached out to a group called Adventures with Purpose leading up to Saturday’s discovery. 

Adventures With Purpose runs a YouTube channel with over 2 million subscribers and is renowned for their ability to solve missing-person cases in bodies of water. They reportedly discovered a car at Darby’s Creek in Pennsylvania Saturday evening believed to be James Amabile’s. 

“I’ve gotten used to not expecting anything, and I tuned a lot of things out,” Stephen Amabile told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “But it didn’t take them very long to figure out there was an SUV down there.”

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