Tag: pennsylvania

FBI announces massive indictment against 33 alleged members of drug trafficking organization

The FBI and Justice Department on Friday announced a massive indictment against over two dozen alleged members of the Weymouth Street Drug Trafficking Organization in Kensington, Pennsylvania.

The indictment accused 33 alleged gang members of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and dozens of related offenses. The organization was known for peddling and distributing fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine.

FBI Director Kash Patel said the operation should serve as an example of law enforcement reclaiming violent corridors from gangs, and touted the years of collaboration between the bureau, Philadelphia Police Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Fox News reported.

“This takedown is how you safeguard American cities from coast to coast,” Patel said. “We have permanently removed a drug trafficking organization off the streets of Philadelphia.” 

The crew allegedly used violence to enforce its territory with shootings, murder and assaults. Despite the alleged use of violence, no substantial murder or shooting charges have been filed so far.

Prosecutors said the organization was allegedly led by 45-year-old Jose Antonio Morales Nieves, of Luquillo, Puerto Rico, known as ‘Flaco,’ Ramon Roman-Montanez, 40, of Philadelphia, known as ‘Viejo,’ and 33-year-old Nancy Rios-Valentin of Philadelphia.

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Radical Pennsylvania Bills Could Allow Public Funding Of Abortion Up To Birth

he Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee votes on a package of six bills Wednesday that will make it possible for pregnant Pennsylvania women to kill their unborn babies up to birth. It will also turn Pennsylvania into an abortion tourism destination, allowing women from states with stronger pro-life rules to kill their babies in Pennsylvania with no legal entanglements.   

Currently Pennsylvania bans abortion after 24 weeks (six months), though even then state law makes an exception “when the pregnancy poses a serious health risk or threatens the life” of the mother.

The main legislation is HB 1957, which aims to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution, making abortion a state constitutional right. HB 1957 would have to be approved by voters on a statewide ballot, and the committee hearing is the first step in that long process to amend the state constitution. First it must be approved in committee, then it moves to the House. The Pennsylvania House has a slight Democrat majority over Republicans, 102-101, so there is a good chance the constitutional amendment (and the entire six-bill package) will be approved by the committee and could pass the House.

The Republican-led Senate is less likely to approve the amendment, but if it did, the General Assembly would need to pass the proposed amendment again in the next legislative session, and it would then be placed on the ballot for statewide voter approval. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a strong and tacky proponent of abortion (often making cutesy posts about “protecting access”), would not be involved in the amendment process.

“They have no restriction on abortion in the language,” Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation Legislative Director Maria Gallagher told The Federalist, speaking of measures. “These bills are incredibly bad for women and babies in Pennsylvania; they would do everything from establish taxpayer funding of abortion to establishing late term abortions, to taking away the 24-hour waiting period for abortion, to taking away the counseling requirements for abortion. And what that would mean, is that women would not be told the risks of abortion or alternatives to abortion before an abortion takes place. This is really turning back the clock on protections for pregnant women and their babies.”

The bills would return Pennsylvania to the Kermit Gosnell era, providing legal protections for abortionists and late-term abortions without restrictions. Gosnell was an abortionist who killed babies after they were born in his filthy Philadelphia abortion mill.

The Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on HB 1957, the constitutional change, at 10 a.m. Wednesday, then vote on the full package of bills at 11 a.m.

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Mom Placed on Child Abuse Registry for Letting 13-Year-Old Babysit

When single mom of two and home health aide Alice (a pseudonym) needed to run a brief errand, she tasked her 13-year-old brother (whom she is also the caretaker for) with babysitting her nearly 1-year-old child. For this, she was placed on the state’s child abuse registry.

Mariel Mussack, an attorney with Community Legal Services, told Alice’s story during testimony before the Pennsylvania House Children and Youth Committee in favor of H.B. 1873—known as Reasonable Independence for Children—on October 6. Similar bills have been passed in 11 states to date, clarifying that neglect is when a parent puts their child in obvious, serious danger, not anytime they simply take their eyes off of them. 

As in most of the other states, the Pennsylvania bill has bipartisan sponsors: Rep. Jeanne McNeill (D–Whitehall), who is majority chair of the committee, Rep. Rick Krajewski (D–Philadelphia), and Rep. David Zimmerman (R–Reinholds). Krajewski opened the hearing by noting that he’d grown up with a single mom who worked two or three jobs, and therefore, he had to get himself to school and help care for his younger sister. “It really does chill me to think that, in the eyes of our state statutes, that could be seen as neglect,” Krajewski said. 

Zimmerman recalled growing up on a farm. “We’d be gone all day,” he said. “And we really would look out for each other.” 

Peter Gray, a research professor of developmental psychology at Boston College and a co-founder with me of Let Grow, a nonprofit fighting for childhood independence, testified that an independent childhood helps inoculate kids against despair. 

“Over the last 60 years, we’ve seen a gradual but overall huge decline in children’s opportunities to play, roam, and generally engage in activities independent of adults,” Gray said, adding that “we’ve seen a gradual but overall huge increase in anxiety, depression, and…suicide among young people.” 

That’s due to a shrinking “internal locus of control,” the sense that you can handle things alone, said Gray. The way you build a robust internal locus of control is by being trusted to decide some things for yourself, like how to spend your time, and what you can handle on your own. “But,” Gray said, “we’re not allowing [kids] to do that.”

As constant adult supervision becomes the norm, more and more kids are being reported to the authorities. Diane Redleaf, a civil rights lawyer and Let Grow’s legal consultant, says that 37 percent of American children will be the subject of a hotline call—that number soars to 53 percent for African-American children.

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Terminally Ill Patients Would Be Able To Use Medical Marijuana In Pennsylvania Hospitals Under New Bipartisan Bill

Bipartisan Pennsylvania senators have introduced a bill that would allow terminally ill patients to use of medical marijuana in hospitals.

Similar to a law previously enacted in California, the Pennsylvania legislation from Sen. John Kane (D) and 17 bipartisan cosponsors aims to ensure that cannabis patients with severe illnesses such as cancer retain access to regulated products as an alternative treatment option.

“Hospitals are incredible places where patients receive top notch care,” Kane wrote in a cosponsorship memo in August. “They need guidance and legal protections to provide terminally ill patients with options to manage pain, while providing settings that support family and friends who are saying goodbye to a loved one.”

The policy that’s being proposed in the bill filed on Friday is known as “Ryan’s law,” a reference to Ryan Bartell, a cancer patient who inspired the legislation.

“During his treatments in California the hospital provided him with opioid medications that caused him to be sedated and unable to interact with family and friends,” Kane said. “Ryan and his family wanted to ensure that his remaining days could be filled with visits from his loved ones. So, Ryan moved to a hospital in the State of Washington where he used medical marijuana to manage his pain effectively and allow him to stay awake and alert to spend time with family and friends during hospital visits.”

“Ryan’s law would allow terminally ill patients to use non-smoking forms of medical marijuana in Pennsylvania hospitals,” he said. “Right now, the use of medical marijuana in hospitals is a gray area due to marijuana being a Scheduled I Narcotic, while also being legal for medicinal purposes in Pennsylvania.”

The four-page bill would amend the state’s existing medical cannabis law to make it so terminally ill patients can use non-smokeable marijuana products at hospitals, create storage requirements for the medicine and require health facilities to develop guidelines about the regulated use of cannabis for qualifying patients.

It also stipulates that a “health care facility is not required to provide a patient with a recommendation to use medical marijuana in compliance with this act or include medical marijuana in a patient’s discharge plan.”

Additionally, the measure says that, if the federal government initiates enforcement actions against a hospital regarding the cannabis policy or issues rules expressly prohibiting the medical marijuana allowance, the health facility is empowered to suspend the practice.

However, the proposed law “shall not be construed to permit a health care facility to prohibit patient use of medical marijuana due solely to the fact that cannabis is a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act or other Federal constraints on the use of medical marijuana that were in existence prior to the effective date of this paragraph,” it says.

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Report: PA Dem House Candidate Funneled Money Meant to Help Recovering Opioid Addicts to Bring Kids ‘LGBTQ+ Youth’ Center Offering ‘Medical Transition’ Seminars

According to a disturbing report from the Washington Free Beacon,  Democratic House candidate in Pennsylvania, Bob Harvie, funneled money away meant to help recovering opioid addicts and instead sent them to push an LGBTQ agenda.

According to the report, the funds went to transport minors to an “LGBTQ-youth” center that offers “medical transition” seminars for kids as young as 14.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

The Bucks County, Pa., Board of Commissioners, which Harvie chairs, approved a $13,500-grant in December to Planned Parenthood Keystone for “Expanding Services and Transportation” to the Rainbow Room, a local center that caters to gay and trans youth. The grant was used to transport high school students to Rainbow Room functions, the Delaware Valley Journal reported earlier this year. Its funding came from the county’s Opioid Settlement Fund, which is due to receive $70 million from drug distributors and pharmacy chains over the next 18 years.

Rainbow Room functions include seminars like “SEX ED NIGHT / M*STURB*TION,” which the center held in May 2024. A pamphlet advertising the event shows a photo of a woman’s hand massaging a watermelon designed to represent the female anatomy. In 2023, the Rainbow Room hosted a “Queer Prom,” where attendees as young as 13 were given goody bags with condoms, lubricant, and dental dams, used to prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases during oral sex.

Earlier this week, meanwhile, the center held a “translating transition” seminar meant to teach kids as young as 14 “the basics of transgender identities, social transition, medical transition, and more!” In 2020, it hosted representatives of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Gender Clinic to discuss “transition issues for trans kids.” The hospital has faced intense scrutiny for providing hormone treatments like puberty blockers to young trans children, and for performing “gender-reassignment” procedures, more commonly known as sex-change operations.

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PA Governor Shapiro Says Kamala Harris ‘Is Going to Have to Answer’ for Covering Up Joe Biden’s Rapidly Declining Health

“Loyal” Kamala Harris, who hinted that Joe Biden was racist when she first threw her hat in the presidential race, slammed Biden in her new book and also discussed why she kept quiet about Joe’s obvious, rapidly declining health.

In an excerpt obtained by The Atlantic from her upcoming memoir, ‘107 Days,’ Harris calls Biden’s decision to run for a second term ‘reckless’ and says it should not have been “left to an individual’s ego” or “ambition.”

Writing about her decision not to try to convince Biden to drop out, Harris writes, “’It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness?”

“In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high.”

“This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”

He typical word salad was not enough for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) who said Harris “is going to have to answer” for being honest with the American people and letting the public know about Biden’s fitness to serve in the White House again.

Shapiro joined Stephen A. Smith on Thursday.

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91-Year-Old Pennsylvania Woman With Dementia Loses $247,000 Home Over a $14,000 Tax Debt

In yet another example of what is colloquially known as home equity theft, a 91-year-old Pennsylvania woman has lost her home—and all of its worth—over a small tax debt. But the case just outside of Philadelphia is a particularly vivid illustration of a predatory and gruesome practice that the Supreme Court broadly ruled unconstitutional in 2023.

In 2020, Gloria Gaynor (not the disco queen) forewent her yearly trip to the tax office during COVID-19, recounted Jackie Davis, her daughter, to the local ABC affiliate for its excellent report on the story. Gaynor’s faculties noticeably declined around then, according to Davis. Even still, the Upper Darby resident returned in 2021 to pay her property taxes, her attorney said, under the impression that the pause in enforcement meant the government would apply her money toward the previous year. Instead, it went to 2021, and her debt from 2020 remained intact.

As these things go, it continued to grow. Her $3,500 bill ultimately reached $14,419 with penalties, interest, and fees. The government sold that debt to a real estate firm, the CJD Group, which then acquired the deed to the home.

The rub is that the home is worth over 17 times that. Yet Gaynor—who had nearly paid off the mortgage—will not see a dime in equity, despite that she owed the government $232,000 less than what the home is ultimately worth.

Regular Reason readers may be familiar with Tyler v. Hennepin County, the 2023 Supreme Court case that ruled home equity theft illegal. The plaintiff, 94-year-old Geraldine Tyler, fell behind on her property taxes after some unsettling neighborhood incidents prompted her move from her Minneapolis condominium to a retirement home. She subsequently struggled to pay both her rent and her property taxes. So the local government seized the condo, sold it for $40,000, and kept the $25,000 in excess of her tax debt, which included steep penalties, interest, and fees.

“A taxpayer who loses her $40,000 house to the State to fulfill a $15,000 tax debt has made a far greater contribution to the public fisc than she owed,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts. “The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more.”

It was a good decision. But Gaynor’s plight highlights one way governments are getting around it: by selling properties for the value of the debt—instead of putting it on the market or selling it at auction—so that there is no excess equity to speak of.

That doesn’t mean, of course, the equity doesn’t exist. It does. It is just now in the hands of a private company, as opposed to the elderly woman who spent the last 25 or so years paying off the mortgage, and nearly finishing.

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Pennsylvania Mayor Sparks Outrage After Saying He Is ‘Glad’ Charlie Kirk Is Dead

Bernville, Pennsylvania Mayor Shawn Raup-Konsavage (D) sparked outrage after posting on social media that he is “glad” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk is dead.

“This is what MAGA represents, This is what Trump lowered flags for. If this represents you then I don’t want to hear that you are offended that I’m glad he is gone,” the Bernville mayor posted.

This is not the first time that the mayor has enflamed controversy.

After the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, he posted, “Try harder.”

“That Trump post that he had posted, there was a lot of controversy with that in this town, a lot of hatred towards him after that,” Mark Rodriguez, a Bernville resident, said.

“Me, I really don’t care honestly, but it’s sad when everybody judges this man based on his opinion. He’s done great things for this town; he’s helped a lot and with all this going on it seems like he just shelters himself now,” Rodriguez continued.

Wayne Lesher, the Bernville council vice president, said, “He said what he wanted to on his own Facebook page which is freedom of speech and all that, but I certainly don’t agree with it and I think what he said was terrible. You’re celebrating the death of somebody; that’s nothing to celebrate.”

“It does have consequences. Several people have lost their jobs because of what they said, and you have freedom of speech to say what you want but you can pay for it too,” Lesher continued.

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Man who killed 3 officers in York County was camouflaged, shooting from cornfield: report

New developments surrounding the shooter who killed three police officers reveal he allegedly ambushed officers from a nearby cornfield, according to a report from CNN.

Officials state three police officers were shot and killed while serving a warrant at a residence on the 1800 block of Haar Road Wednesday afternoon. Another two law enforcement officers were injured.

The shooter was reportedly the ex-boyfriend of a woman who lived in the farmhouse on the 1800 block of Haar Road, according to multiple law enforcement officials in communication with CNN.

The ex-girlfriend had previously alerted police about the shooter on Tuesday, saying that he was in a nearby cornfield stalking the residence, according to CNN. Northern York Police then got a search warrant and restraining order for him, but were unable to serve him on Tuesday night.

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Of Buggy Whips And AI Chips In PA

The buggy whip endures. Not, of course, as a commonly used piece of equipment to spur on a steed or two on your daily travels, but as a short-hand epithet deployed in conversations about the need to adapt or perish in the face of technological change and innovation.

“It’s really easy to see, in a big breakthrough, that the horse-and-buggy guys are going to go out of business,” said White House AI czar David Sacks at Sen. Dave McCormick’s historic AI and Energy Summit this past July in Pittsburgh. What wasn’t easy to see, said Sacks, was greater access to affordable housing in the suburbs, new jobs for auto workers and mechanics, and wholly new industries like F1.

Sacks’ comment is in line with how the buggy-whip metaphor has traditionally been used, since it was first entered into the common lexicon in the 1960s in a marketing textbook – as reference to one technology (the personal automobile) quickly subsuming another (the horse and buggy).

The record player, the cassette player, the VCR, the camcorder, the handheld radio, and the dashboard GPS system – buggy whips, all of them, as the home computer and the cell phone consolidated many individual components of consumer technology.

But there’s a problem with this metaphor, which stands on a surprisingly soft foundation of a just-so story about rapid change from horse to car, on two accounts – it ignores both the ongoing change in transportation more broadly (by not giving proper account to the mass adoption of passenger boating and rail in the late 1800s) and just why it was that the automotive industry was built up in Michigan and the Midwest in the early 1900s.

If artificial intelligence is truly going to be deployed at scale, it will be through adoption by everyday Americans and the industries they work in, demonstrating that technology can solve problems in the real world, overcoming the many frictions of daily life in key industries. And as Pennsylvania finds itself at the center of the data center construction boom, it’s worth re-examining the history of Detroit and the auto industry.

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