The Media Took Millions in Loans Meant for Small Businesses - Daniel Greenfield

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by Daniel Greenfield

And politicians are lobbying to give the media billions.

Even while the media is blaring stories about the abuse of the Payroll Protection Plan loans from the Small Business Administration, its own industry took millions in loans and wants billions more.

Unlike many small businesses which were forced to shut down because of the lockdown, the media has been wrongly listed as ‘essential’ and exempted from the shutdowns, but that hasn’t stopped it from taking money that should have been used to compensate small business owners who can’t stay open.

Even when the media operations cashing in on the SBA loans aren’t anyone’s idea of a small business.

The Seattle Times maxed out its PPP loan with a $10 million payout. The Seattle Times is not only Washington State's largest daily, but its parent company, the Seattle Times Company, owns two other papers, and had, as recently as 3 years ago, put out 7 papers. It also owned multiple newspapers in Maine which it sold off for over $200 million. It had two printing plants, one of which it sold. The Rotary Offset Press, which it still owns, continues to print a variety of magazines and newspapers.

But while the Seattle Times is, like the New York Times, a multi-generational family property, the McClatchy Company owns 49.5% of voting stock and 70.6% of voting stock in the Seattle Times Company. McClatchy has dozens of papers and had revenues of over $800 million in 2018.

While McClatchy has operated at a loss and filed for Chapter 11, it’s not a small business. Neither is the hedge fund likely to run it which is partially backed by, among others, CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest and most politically correct pension fund in the country.

Is this really a small business?

Despite the façade of family ownership, national chains have owned much of the Seattle paper business since the Great Depression with McClatchy taking over from Knight Ridder. Even if you ignore all the wizards behind the Emerald City paper’s curtain, the Seattle Times Company has 849 employees.

How was the Seattle Times able to max out the SBA’s PPP loan? Double and triple standards.

If you deal in fresh fruit and have over 100 employees, according to the SBA, you're not a small business. If you supply toys, you're limited to 150 employees. But if you're a newspaper publisher, you can have up to 1,000 employees and still be considered a small business.

That’s how a company that owns 3 papers, a printing plant, and its silent partner is one of the largest news publishers in America, was eligible to grab loans intended to keep small businesses afloat.

The Seattle Times wasn't unique among the media in seizing loans meant for shuttered small businesses.

The Tampa Bay Times got an $8.5 million loan, close to the max. The Times Publishing Company also puts out 10 papers, a few magazines, and Politifact, a site which claims to 'fact check' politicians, but frequently makes false claims, puts out spam, and smears conservatives.

The Company is owned by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which is funded by leftist billionaires like George Soros and Pierre Omidyar.

And just to make matters worse, the Poynter Institute, which is officially a non-profit, also got a stimulus loan of $737,400 to cover its coronavirus "business losses".

Poynter notes that as, "a nonprofit with under 60 employees, Poynter qualified for the loan." But Poynter’s documents suggest that its newspaper business had $123 million in revenues with assets of $43 million.

That’s not a small business.

The Tampa Bay Times and its shady operations, the intermingling of non-profits and for-profits, is already suspect on its own. It should not have been taking money meant for small businesses.

But the media has been eager to pig out on small business loans even as it attacks public companies that took PPP loans.  Axios, a media venture by Politico bigwigs, with around 200 employees, funded by venture capital and investment firms, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood tycoon with a net worth of $750 million, and NBCUniversal, scored a $5 million PPP loan.

But this obscene piggery isn’t enough for the media which wants a much bigger exemption.
Senator Maria Cantwell, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Senator John Kennedy dispatched a letter urging a waiver on the affiliation rule "which restricts assistance to companies owned or controlled by larger entities." This would potentially allow huge multi-billion-dollar conglomerates like Gannett to raid money intended for small businesses even as they lobby politicians to shut those businesses down.

The senators falsely claimed that keeping the media going was "essential to public health".
Affiliation waivers would lift the 1,000-employee limit and allow newspapers owned by national chains to apply for loans as if they were small businesses. It's the equivalent of having every Starbucks outlet claim that it's just a small business serving the local community and won’t pass the money upward.

The media has been shaming other corporations that took PPP loans, yet it is entirely without shame.

There ought to be no more sanctimonious lectures about corporate bailouts from Democrats who want to bail out billion-dollar corporations while small business owners can’t get inside the front door. If affiliation rules are waived for the media, Gannett’s thousand plus newspapers would be ready to raid the SBA for loans that would likely never be repaid, while justifying the looting by arguing that the media is suffering because small businesses can’t afford to take out as many ads in local papers as before.

The media has already managed to loot at least $23.5 million meant for small businesses. Affiliation waivers would turn PPP loans into a bailout for media conglomerates that would be worth billions.

The media has already been allowed to operate while actual small businesses were shut down, even though there’s been a coronavirus infection spike in the media which, as far as we know, killed several people. It’s used its megaphone to push for more shutdowns of local businesses as non-essential even as it demands the right to raid the money intended for those businesses to fund its massive operations.

Enough.

National media chains on the verge of bankruptcy want to exploit small business loans intended for coronavirus relief to keep their broken business model going for another few years before they fold.

The PPP loan program was not designed as a bailout for media giants and their pension fraud.

The Seattle Times, the Tampa Bay Times, Poynter, and Axios ought to be pressured into returning the money they took. And while that may never happen, any effort by politicians to apply affiliation waivers to the media ought to be fought as an obscene cash grab from small businesses to lefty corporations.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/media-took-millions-loans-meant-small-businesses-daniel-greenfield/

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Comrade de Blasio starts blaming Jews for New York's huge coronavirus death toll - Monica Showalter

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by Monica Showalter

This from the guy whose state foisted COVID-19 patients onto unwilling nursing homes.

For Comrade Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City, blaming Jews for plagues, same as Medieval Europe in the past, is back.

According to the New York Post:

"Something absolutely unacceptable happened in Williamsburg tonite: a large funeral gathering in the middle of this pandemic," de Blasio wrote on Twitter.
"When I heard, I went there myself to ensure the crowd was dispersed. And what I saw WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus," he said.

He then threatened to arrest them all:

"My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed," the mayor wrote.
"This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period."

This, given the size of New York's Jewish population, has the odor of Jew-hatred.

De Blasio was referring to a onetime funeral event in New York's Williamsburg neighborhood where grieving members of a tight-knit Jewish congregation came out on the streets to mourn the death of their rabbi, and yes, they stood too close together in numbers too great, even as they were all wearing masks. We've seen similar with some Christian congregations, and as with this Jewish congregation, there were social distancing efforts that weren't entirely successful.

But de Blasio decided that Jews were to be singled out for New York's huge coronavirus problem. 

Part of the problem was that de Blasio was lumping all Jewish people all into a monolithic, undifferentiated group. What happened in Williamsburg hardly reflected what is going on at all Jewish congregations. Three days ago in Poway, Calif., for instance, at a memorial for a victim of a murderous mass shooting at the synagogue a year ago, the event was held entirely online. 

But instead of complaining about street gatherings in general, as if that's a big ongoing problem, he complained about the Jewish community in particular, painting it as a monolith, singling them out as problematic. There are a lot of Jewish people in New York, and they come in every size, shape, style, level of observance, and ideological tinge. As with Christians (think of how many varieties there are there), Jews span the spectrum. And yes, there was one community that didn't seem to sufficiently socially distance at a onetime outdoor event for a funeral, same as we have seen with some Christian congregations elsewhere, as if that were the real problem. 

All it is is a smokescreen for some far bigger issues.

We didn't hear anything from de Blasio about the huge crowds that gathered in Central Park when the sun came out in recent days — no threats of arrests — nor did we hear anything from him regarding the city's packed subway cars, which spread COVID-19 pretty significantly without anyone doing anything about it. It may even be something de Blasio can't do anything about, even if he were a creative man instead of a comrade. Worse still, he didn't say anything as the mayor of a city when his state was forcing New York's nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients in the name of "fairness." That's the biggest reason for New York's high coronavirus death toll: the man-made government-caused disaster at the nursing homes.

Much easier just to blame Jews and that one odd congregation that effectively held a temporary masked gathering on the streets in New York? Much easier than confronting government failures. 

It comes against a bad background of anti-Semitic attack surging in the city based on Democrat policies.

And what the hell was he doing traveling there himself, spreading his own germs into the area, just to see something for himself? As he points the finger at Jews, he then goes and does his part to violate social distancing himself.

That's because the name of his game is not safety; it's blaming Jews.

Image credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

UPDATE FROM ANDREA WIDBURG: John Cardillo reminds everyone that de Blasio has a very different approach for Islam:

Monica Showalter

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/comrade_de_blasio_starts_blaming_jews_for_new_yorks_huge_coronavirus_death_toll.html

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Netanyahu calls for Hezbollah to be banned worldwide - Lahav Harkov

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by Lahav Harkov

Germany outlaws Hezbollah, raids mosques and local leaders’ homes

SUPPORTERS OF Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah wave flags and pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad during a rally marking al-Quds Day in Maroun Al-Ras, near the Israeli border in southern Lebanon, on June 8, 2018.  (photo credit: REUTERS)

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer ordered that Hezbollah’s activities be banned due to violations of criminal law, he announced on Thursday.

Police in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bremen and Berlin began searches in mosques and residences tied to Hezbollah, “due to their financial support and propaganda for the terrorist organization,” after the ban was announced at 6 a.m.

Israel and the United States have long pushed for Germany to ban the Shi’ite terrorist group. Germany previously drew a distinction between Hezbollah's political arm and its military units, which fought alongside President Bashar Assad's army in Syria.

Hezbollah symbols may not be used publicly in any assembly, or in print, audio and visual material in Germany, and its assets will be confiscated “to the benefit of the Federal Republic of Germany,” the Interior Ministry’s press release read.

The ban is because Hezbollah is a terrorist group, and also because it “calls for the violent elimination of the State of Israel and questions the right of the State of Israel to exist.

“The organization is therefore fundamentally against the concept of international understanding, regardless of whether it presents itself as a political, social or military structure,” the ministry said.

“Its violent denial of the right to exist of the State of Israel also fundamentally opposes Germany’s national ethos,” another Interior Ministry document states.

The order allows German authorities to “use all available instruments of the rule of law to crack down” on Hezbollah and its German sub-organization, the statement reads.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz praised the decision, saying it is “very important and values-based.”

Banning Hezbollah is “significant in the world battle against terror,” Katz added. “I want to express my appreciation to the German government for this step and am certain many governments in the Middle East and victims of Hezbollah’s terrorism share my gratitude.”

Katz called on additional European states and the EU to follow Germany’s lead and say that “Hezbollah, its military and political arms, is a terrorist organization and must be treated that way.”

“This is a welcome, much-anticipated and significant German decision,” said American Jewish Committee head David Harris. "We now hope other European nations will take a close look at Germany’s decision and reach the same conclusion about the true nature of Hezbollah.”

Yesh Atid-Telem leader Yair Lapid, who has long advocated for European countries to ban Hezbollah, praised Germany on Twitter.

"This is an important step in the fight against terror, and the time has come for all of Europe to follow Germany, the Netherlands and the UK," Lapid wrote. "The money Hezbollah raises abroad turns into weapons against Israel. This requires an international effort and it is good that Germany is committed to it."

Security officials believe that up to 1,050 people in Germany are associated with Hezbollah.

The German Interior Ministry explained that there is no "Hezbollah Germany," but its followers in the country meet at local mosques and try to keep their association secret to avoid detection by the authorities. However, supporters – especially the younger ones – declare themselves as such on social media and online forums, using the terrorist group's symbols.

In addition, Hezbollah has used Germany as a base for recruitment and fundraising.

Ministry documents quote Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and others at length in demonstrating the Shi’ite terrorist group's aim of destroying Israel.

The ban includes images of Hezbollah symbols that may not be displayed. First is its yellow flag with a green logo and a stylized text of the word "Hezbollah" with a hand grasping a gun. Another is the Imam al-Mahdi Scouts, the Hezbollah youth movement, which looks similar to the international scouts' fleur-de-lis logo, but with a hand and a Lebanese cedar on it.

“Germany’s long-awaited action today is significant for many reasons. It underscores that even while the world is seeking to address health threats posed by Covid-19, it is not ignoring national security threats. Germany’s decision accentuates the need for all of Europe to counter the malign activities of Iran-backed proxies wherever they may act, “ said Toby Dershowitz, Senior Vice President for Government Relations and Strategy at the non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who has written about Hezbollah’s illicit activities. 

She notes that “Many parts of the US government have worked with their counterparts in Europe to take this action.” 

In 2019, Congress once again urged Germany to designate the entire organization as a terrorist entity, not only its military. Representatives Ted Deutch, Grace Meng, Gus Bilirakus and Lee Zeldin wrote a letter to Chancellor Merkel in June 2019  saying in part: “The alliance between our two countries, whether for combating terrorism or supporting democracy, has been a cornerstone of the transatlantic relationship and NATO alliance, and our coordinated efforts have been critical to our collective national security. That is why we hope that Germany will consider this decision to, once and for all, fully designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.” The letter came after the Bundestag failed to pass a resolution that would refer to the entire organization as a terrorist group.

 

On a trip to Berlin last year, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he hoped Germany would follow Britain in banning Hezbollah. The UK introduced legislation in February of last year that classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.Pompeo commended Germany's "strong action against Hezbollah" and called on other "EU member states to follow suite in holding Hezbollah accountable."

Reuters contributed to this report.

Lahav Harkov

Source: https://www.jpost.com/international/germany-bans-hezbollah-conducts-police-raids-on-possible-members-626364

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White Coats, Brown Shirts - Lloyd Billingsley

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by Lloyd Billingsley

Psychiatric bigots shrink-wrap hatred for the people.

Doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx have become familiar features on television, and behind the scenes the CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier refers reporters to the World Health Organization for information on China. Long before the coronavirus arrived from Wuhan, the American whitecoats were deploying on another front.

“Trump’s manifest grandiosity and disregard for facts, beginning with failure to accept clear evidence about the size of the crowd attending his inauguration, has put mental health professionals in the spotlight from Day One of his presidency,” charges Psychology Today.

“Psychologists and commentators from all ideological camps early converged on a label of narcissistic personality disorder as the condition that ‘explains’ Trump’s behavior.”

Among those making this assertion are “more than 70,000 mental health professionals who signed a petition warning of Trump's potential dangerousness, despite longstanding professional injunctions against ‘diagnosing’ public figures whom experts have not personally examined.” In December 2019, the whitecoats were mounting a surge.

“A group of 350 psychiatrists and other mental-health professionals are set to submit a petition to Congress on Thursday claiming that President Donald Trump’s mental health is rapidly deteriorating amid the impeachment inquiry,” reported Tom Porter in Business Insider, citing psychiatrists Brandy Lee of Yale, former “CIA profiler” Jerrold Post, and psychiatrist John Zinner of George Washington University. The trio was speaking out because “as the time of possible impeachment approaches, Donald Trump has the real potential to become ever more dangerous, a threat to the safety of our nation.”

Back in 2017, Zinner told Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, “Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder,” was “deluded and compulsive,” and this was an “existential issue.” Jerrold Post cited “serious questions” about Trump’s “temperament and suitability,” and Dr. Brandy Lee took it to another level.

“I think we can now accept how deadly his symptoms are, and that mental pathology is different from health,” Lee told Salon. “We are facing a democide of genocidal proportions, because we have handed power to someone who is anti-human in psychology.” Yale students should know that Dr. Lee is hardly the first to deploy psychiatry against people she doesn’t like.

“The activities my dad engaged in could land a Soviet citizen in the gulag or a psychiatric hospital for decades,” writes Jamie Glazov, in a tribute to his father, Yuri Glazov. He was a scholar at the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a professor at Moscow State University, specializing in Oriental languages and cultures. When Yuri Glazov began attending human rights demonstrations, the Communist regime targeted him.

“In Soviet society, it was a given that you’d have to be mentally ill to oppose socialism,” Stella Morabito noted last year in the Federalist. So psychiatry, “quite easily became molded into total subjugation to the needs of the existing political order.” The regime locked up Vladimir Bukovsky on grounds of “sluggish schizophrenia,” a bogus diagnosis applied to all dissidents.

Under threat of expulsion for such abuses, the Soviet Union resigned from the World Psychiatric Association in 1983. For further reference, see Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union, congressional hearings from the same year.

The largest-scale offender these days, Morabito explains, is the Communist regime in Beijing. The political abuse of psychiatry in China has “deep roots in the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong, with the official view that politically deviant thoughts cause mental illness.” Doctors Lee, Post, Zinner et al may lack the power to imprison, but they quite easily turn on President Trump and those who support him.

“The leader is the creation of his followers,” explains Jerrold Post. Trump’s followers suffer from the “mirror-hungry personality,” which “comes from a wounded self.” They all “feel incomplete without a great inspirational leader to attach themselves to, someone to venerate.” And so on, a veritable basket of deplorables with all their various “phobias.” Dr. Post thus validates the hatred typical of the drunk at the end of the bar. As it happens, this brand of white coat supremacy is not a new development in America.

Shortly before the 1964 election, Fact magazine asked psychiatrists if Barry Goldwater was psychologically unfit for the presidency. More than 2,000 psychiatrists responded, even though they had not examined the candidate. Goldwater sued the magazine for libel and won. As the 2020 election approaches, the whitecoats ramp up a virulent hatred for President Trump and the people who support him.

This surge is a belch from Soviet psychiatry and an echo of what the Chinese Communists are doing now. If American shrinks are so skewed on politics, the deplorables might wonder, why listen to them on anything else? The profession does owe a great deal to a Viennese coke head, but there’s more to it.

“Sadly, psychiatry has a capacity for abuse that’s basically built in,” Stella Morabito explains. “According to the late psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, the whole field is so susceptible to being used as a means of social control that it does people far more harm than good.”

Lloyd Billingsley

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/white-coats-brown-shirts-lloyd-billingsley/

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Albania signs deal with Turkey to bring 30,000 Muslim migrants to area where 120,000 Greeks live - Robert Spencer

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by Robert Spencer

“Albania plans to replace Greeks in Northern Epirus with jihadists and Turkish intelligence officers”

Demographic jihad: the refugees and jihadists “will be used by Rama for demographic alteration of the Greek population of the region […] as has happened historically, it is very likely that gangs will be organized independently or led by agents who will ravage Greek homes and villages. In this way, they will force the Greek population to leave so that they can permanently change the demographic composition in Northern Epirus.”


“Albania plans to replace Greeks in Northern Epirus with jihadists and Turkish intelligence officers,” by Paul Antonopoulos, Greek City Times, April 14, 2020:

Albanian media has exposed Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s deal with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to relocate illegal immigrants and refugees in Turkey to Albania.
Recently, Tirana and Ankara signed a defence co-operation plan, with many in Albania and Greece believing that the issue of relocating migrants and refugees from Turkey to Albania is also included. Details of the plan have not been made public, but a part of the deal includes “activities that the two countries’ defence ministries are committed to completing by 2020 in order to strengthen and intensify security and defence interaction.”
According to Albanian media, there is an agreement between Rama and Erdoğan to relocate 30,000 refugees and illegal immigrants from Turkey to Albania in the region of Northern Epirus where up to 120,000 Greeks live. Although Greece liberated Northern Epirus during the First Balkan War (1912-13), the Great Powers gifted the region to the new Albanian state. Greece would once again liberate the region in World War Two, but it was once again gifted to Albania by the Great Powers.
The Greeks in Northern Epirus have always lived in persecution by the Albanian state with their schools constantly closed, properties confiscated and religious ceremonies harassed by Albanian police. Now it appears that Albania wants to continue weakening the Greek identity in the region by collaborating with Turkey to relocate refugees and illegal immigrants, changing the demographics of the area from being majority Greek.
One of the main Greek towns in Northern Epirus, Himara, is also the namesake of the main Greek news portal about the region, and its editor Thodoris Goumas spoke with Protothema. The editor of Himara.gr said:
“The Albanian prime minister’s actions can only be described as suspicious. Without any transparency or public statement, we learn from leaks that there is an agreement with Turkey to host 30,000 migrants. It is known that Albania not only does not have hosting infrastructure, but after the earthquake that hit the country, it is also facing an economic problem.”…
There is little doubt that Albania and Turkey are collaborating to not only change the demographics of the Greek-majority region, but to also open another front for illegal immigrants to enter the European Union (Greece) illegally….
In writing for SLPress, Lieutenant Colonel of the Greek military, Christos Pougialis said “Officially, of course, the 30,000 will be immigrants and refugees, some of whom will have their families with them. But beyond that, Turkey is sure to send its own agents among them to guide and control the situation. Turkey will send some ‘retired’ jihadists from those fighting alongside them in Syria, who will be with weapons.”
Just as Turkish intelligence agents played a key role in inciting violence on the Greek-Turkey border, they will now be able to create tensions on the Greek-Albanian border.
The Lieutenant Colonel in his article on SLPRESS also said that the refugees and jihadists “will be used by Rama for demographic alteration of the Greek population of the region […] as has happened historically, it is very likely that gangs will be organized independently or led by agents who will ravage Greek homes and villages. In this way, they will force the Greek population to leave so that they can permanently change the demographic composition in Northern Epirus.”

Robert Spencer

Source: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/04/albania-signs-deal-with-turkey-to-bring-30000-muslim-migrants-to-area-where-120000-greeks-live

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Judicial Watch Sues to Force Pennsylvania to Clean Its Voter Rolls, Alleges Pennsylvania Has over 800,000 Inactive Voters on Rolls - Judicial Watch

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by Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch is the national leader in enforcing the NVRA.

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania and three of its counties for failing to make reasonable efforts to remove ineligible voters from their rolls as required by the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). According to Judicial Watch’s analysis of voter registration data, these counties removed almost no names under NVRA procedures for identifying and updating the registrations of those who have moved (Judicial Watch v. Pennsylvania, et al (No. 1:02-at-06000)). The lawsuit also points out that the Commonwealth has over 800,000 “inactive” registrations on its voter rolls. One Pennsylvania county almost immediately removed 69,000 inactive names earlier this year in response to a Judicial Watch letter.

In its complaint, Judicial Watch points out that the State’s abnormally low number of removals under NVRA procedures designed to identify voters who have changed residence indicates that it is not removing inactive registrations as the law requires. According to data the State certified to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), in the most recent two-year reporting period:

• Bucks County, with about 457,000 registrations, removed a total of eight names under the relevant NVRA procedures;
• Chester County, with about 357,000 registrations, removed five names under those procedures; and
• Delaware County, with about 403,000 registrations, removed four names under those procedures.

Judicial Watch also argues that an abnormally high percentage of registrations compared to the population over 18 years of age is an indicator “that the jurisdiction is not taking steps required by law to cancel the registrations of ineligible registrants.” It alleges that “[t]he registration rates for Bucks, Chester, and Delaware Counties are high in comparison to other counties in Pennsylvania, and high in comparison to other counties throughout the U.S.”  As of April 2020, Pennsylvania’s own data shows it has over 800,000 inactive registrations.

Other Pennsylvania counties have acted to avoid being sued by Judicial Watch. On January 14, 2020, CBS Pittsburgh reported that because of the threat of a lawsuit from Judicial Watch, Allegheny County removed 69,000 inactive voters. David Voye, Elections Manager for the county told CBS, “I would concede that we are behind on culling our rolls,” and that this had “been put on the backburner.”  

“Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections – that’s one reason why we’re going to court to force Pennsylvania to follow federal law to clean up its voting rolls,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Pennsylvania has to take the simple steps necessary to clean from its rolls the names of voters, which number over 800,000, who probably have moved away or died.”

Judicial Watch is the national leader in enforcing the NVRA.

Recently, a federal court ordered the State of Maryland to produce complete voter registration records for Montgomery County that include the registered voters’ dates of birth. The judge found that Judicial Watch made “reasonable justifications for requiring birth date information, including using birth dates to find duplicate registrations and searching for voters who remain on the rolls despite ‘improbable’ age.”

Judicial Watch recently filed a lawsuit against North Carolina to force the state to clean its voter rolls that included over one million inactive voters. In December 2019, Judicial Watch provided notice to 19 large counties in five states that it intended to sue unless they took steps to comply with the NVRA by removing ineligible registrations from their rolls. In addition to North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Judicial Watch sent letters to counties inCalifornia, Virginia, and Colorado.

In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld a voter-roll cleanup program that resulted from a Judicial Watch settlement of a federal lawsuit with Ohio. California settled an NVRA lawsuit with Judicial Watch and last year began the process of removing up to 1.6 million inactive names from Los Angeles County’s voter rolls. Kentucky also began a cleanup of hundreds of thousands of old registrations last year after it entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.

Despite successful litigation by Judicial Watch to bring counties and states into compliance with the NVRA, voter registration lists across the country remain significantly out of date. Judicial Watch’s 2019 study found 378 counties nationwide that had more voter registrations than citizens old enough to vote, i.e., counties where registration rates exceed 100%. These 378 counties combined had about 2.5 million registrations over the 100%-registered mark. This is a drop of about one million from Judicial Watch’s previous analysis of voter registration data in 2017.

Judicial Watch Attorney Robert Popper is the director of Judicial Watch’s Election Integrity initiative. Judicial Watch is being assisted by H. Christopher Coates of the Law Office of H. Christopher Coates, and by Jonathan S. Goldstein of Goldstein Law Partners, LLC in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.

Judicial Watch

Source: https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/jw-sues-pa-voting/

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The Origin of the Coronavirus: From Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory to Plausible - Larry Elder

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by Larry Elder

The virus-might-have-escaped theory suddenly became less crackpot when The Washington Post recently published an opinion piece called "State Department Cables Warned of Safety Issues at Wuhan Lab Studying Bat Coronaviruses."

In February the Daily Kos, an influential left-wing website, denounced "a whole parade of right-wing hand-waving that includes not just Republican Rep. Tom Cotton claiming that COVID-19 was cooked up in a Chinese bio lab." Likewise, The Guardian reported that Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance in the United States, an organization that researches emerging diseases, said: "Conspiracy theories circulating on social media claim the coronavirus was artificially manufactured in a lab conducting bioweapons research. They are 'crackpot theories that need to be addressed, but in the age of social media it is just impossible.'"

The Chinese government claimed that the COVID-19 originated at a Wuhan food marketplace where live animals are sold. But Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., thought otherwise. Cotton said: "We don't know where it originated, but we do know that we have to get to the bottom of that. We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China's only biosafety level-four superlaboratory that researches human infectious diseases. Now, we don't have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China's duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says."

Rutgers University chemical biology professor Richard Ebright dismisses the idea that the virus was a product of a laboratory. Ebright said, "There's absolutely nothing in the genome sequence of this virus that indicates the virus was engineered." But Ebright, according to the Asia Times, also said he "could not rule out the possibility that the unfolding pandemic could be the result of a 'lab incident.'" Bear in mind, Cotton did not claim the virus was manufactured in a Wuhan lab, let alone that the virus is a product of biological warfare. He speculated that the virus might have accidentally escaped from the lab.

The virus-might-have-escaped theory suddenly became less crackpot when The Washington Post recently published an opinion piece called "State Department Cables Warned of Safety Issues at Wuhan Lab Studying Bat Coronaviruses." American experts who visited two virology labs in Wuhan in 2018 were shocked at the lack of security and appropriate protocols to prevent a virus from escaping. The piece said: "What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV (Wuhan Institute of Virology) lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable ... also warns that the lab's work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic."

As to China's official story that the virus started at a so-called wet market that sold bats, The Washington Post wrote: "As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn't come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley. ...

"The Chinese government's original story — that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan — is shaky. Research by Chinese experts published in the (British medical journal) Lancet in January showed the first known patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn't sell bats."

It is maddening that there is so much about this virus that we do not know. We are uncertain of its origin. We are uncertain about its lethality. We don't know whether one develops an immunity after infection and survival. We don't know how many have or have had the virus and have recovered. We don't know how many have the virus and are asymptomatic. There are still questions about whether after one can get the virus, survive and get it again.

We do know that the disease does not discriminate against Republicans or Democrats. Nor does the disease care whether theories about its origin came from the right-wing "crackpots" or left-wing Trump haters. This is a political year. And President Donald Trump and his supporters are so despised by Democrats and their media enablers that many reflexively wrote off conservative skepticism about the official Chinese government story on the origin of the coronavirus. But suddenly, the skepticism is no longer "crackpot."
 


Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host.


Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/origin-coronavirus-right-wing-conspiracy-theory-larry-elder/

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Shocker: FBI Lied, Hid Evidence, Covered Up State of Disorder - Judicial Watch

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by Judicial Watch

[A] bipartisan group of U.S. Senators -- want the beleaguered law enforcement agency investigated for “major abnormalities” involving evidence in a terrorism case. 

Notorious for failing in its duty to thwart terrorist attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is under fire again, this time from a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators who want the beleaguered law enforcement agency investigated for “major abnormalities” involving evidence in a terrorism case. Known for its corrupt method of operating, the FBI appears to be hiding evidence critical to a pending Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) lawsuit brought by family members of 9/11 victims. Two years ago, the FBI received a civil subpoena in the case and the lawmakers believe the agency has committed numerous violations and may be trying to conceal that its “investigative files are in a state of disorder.”

In a letter to the FBI watchdog, the Department of Justice Inspector General (DOJ IG), the senators write about “troubling reports concerning the FBI’s irregular treatment of a civil subpoena issued by the September 11 families.” The lawmakers, New York Democrat Charles Schumer, Iowa Republican Charles Grassley and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal mention half a dozen concerns that merit a probe by the IG, including the FBI’s refusal to conduct methodological searches of its electronic databases, “instead empowering FBI officials with inherent conflicts of interest to hand-select the materials to be considered for possible production, and to control the information that is produced.” Judicial Watch has regularly encountered similar obstacles over the years in efforts to obtain public records from the FBI, most recently involving the shady anti-Trump “dossier” masterminded by corrupt FBI officials plotting against the president. Last month the FBI used coronavirus as an excuse to shut down its electronic public records operations.

In the 9/11 lawsuit families are seeking information about the FBI’s investigation of two Saudi Arabian government employees—Omar al Bayoumi and Fahad al Thumairy—who provided 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al Hazmiand and Khalid al Mihdhar and their accomplices “substantial assistance.” Thumairy was a Saudi consular official in Los Angeles and his ties to the hijackers are detailed in a once-classified portion of the 9/11 Commission Report that was declassified in 2016. In the spring of 2018 attorneys representing the 9/11 families served a civil subpoena on the FBI for the information critical to their case, but there may have been major abnormalities in the FBI’s handling of that subpoena that deserve the inspector general’s attention, the lawmakers write.

Here is what the veteran legislators allege that merits a probe; departures from established processes for responding to civil discovery demands, which would violate the FBI’s legal obligation and are designed to guard against conflicts of interest within the agency; misstatements to the federal court presiding over the litigation about the actual status of investigations; misstatements to the federal court regarding the sensitivity of the evidence being sought, including efforts to conceal original classification designations; efforts to conceal that the FBI’s investigative files are in a state of disorder; efforts to conceal the fact that key investigative materials collected after the attacks were never properly analyzed; refusal to conduct methodological searches of FBI’s electronic databases, instead empowering FBI officials with inherent conflicts of interest to hand-select the materials to be considered for possible production and to control the information that is produced.

“These allegations by the families raise questions as to whether FBI personnel may be acting in improper ways to withhold evidence the 9/11 families are entitled to receive, and that this obstruction may be driven by an effort to shield the Bureau and individual FBI officials from embarrassment,” the senators write. “Obviously, any irregularities, abuse, fraud, or improprieties in the handling of the 9/11 families’ subpoena for evidence are entirely unacceptable.” The lashing continues: “The September 11 attacks represent a singular and defining tragedy in the history of our Nation. Nearly twenty years later, the 9/11 families and American public still have not received the full and transparent accounting of the potential sources of support for those attacks to which they are entitled. Circumstances that leave the impression that our government is hiding facts about 9/11 from the families and public tear at the very fabric of our democracy and erode trust in our government.”


Judicial Watch

Source: https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/shocker-fbi-lied-hid-evidence-covered-up-state-of-disorder/

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Coronavirus ushers in a subterranean dystopia - Carol Brown

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by Carol Brown

The subway has become a filthy, deadly homeless shelter on rails, according to disgusted transit workers who have taken to recording and photographing the horrid conditions.

Leave it to New York City to have coronavirus fallout like no other.

Not only does the state have the highest infection and mortality rate, thanks to Cuomo's and de Blasio's lousy "leadership," but the New York City subways have become a place where the homeless, down and out, drugged out, passed out, and released-early-from-jail can collapse among garbage, human waste, and unbearable stench.

Transit authority workers are filming these dystopian scenes of subways eerily moving through the underground network of tracks carrying a new group of passengers who occupy otherwise near empty cars. Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) workers suspect that many are sick with coronavirus. The New York Post reports:

The subway has become a filthy, deadly homeless shelter on rails, according to disgusted transit workers who have taken to recording and photographing the horrid conditions.

YouTube screen grabs.

Videos and photographs show people in various stages of consciousness, some relieving bodily functions, some dragging garbage cans full of decaying food from the subway platform onto the train, with all posing a serious health risk to MTA employees and the small percentage of riders who must take the subway to get to work.

One train operator expressed frustration that the trains are being used to house infected homeless people so the city doesn't have to deal with the problem. A conductor said, "the MTA is basically a mobile hotel for homeless people right now."

Everyone seems to agree that Mayor de Blasio is out of touch and doesn't care. Requests to Governor Cuomo to shut down the subway system during the pandemic have gone unheeded.

Welcome to our brave new world.

Carol Brown

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/coronavirus_ushers_in_a_subterranean_dystopia.html

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IRGC Aerospace Force Commander General Amir Ali Hajizadeh: 'We are a superpower now' - Mordechai Sones

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by Mordechai Sones

General Hajizadeh: Iran had plan to strike 400 targets in event US retaliated immediately after Ayn Al-Asad attack.

IRGC Aerospace Force Commander General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said in a Channel 2 (Iran) 
interview that he would like to thank the start-up companies, the universities, and the people from Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Aerospace Industries Organization for their help in the construction of the first-stage engine of the missile that launched the Noor satellite into orbit on April 22, 2020, reports the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Saying that Iran is now a superpower, he said that the Noor satellite’s orbit passes over the U.S. and other countries that Iran can’t fly planes over, and he went on to explain that the first-stage engine used liquid fuel that is also used in surface-to-surface missiles because it was a cheaper option.

He elaborated that the first-stage engine had belonged to an old missile that had been in storage, and that in the future, Iran will develop a solid-fuel first-stage engine. Furthermore, he said that since Iran used a portable launch pad, it has no need for a stationary command center.

Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the aerospace division of the Revolutionary Guards         Reuters

He also promised to advance Iran’s space technologies, to strengthen Iran every day, and to secure Iran such that nobody would dare threaten it.

Later in the interview, General Hajizadeh said that the Americans have a false sense of security, that they only threatened to attack Iran and its cultural sites after hearing the Iranian people’s chants of revenge following the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, and that Iran had a plan to strike 400 targets in the event that the U.S. retaliated immediately after the Ayn Al-Asad attack.


Mordechai Sones

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/279447

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