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How Cuomo Investigation, Possible Impeachment Could Play Out

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
AP

(AP) — Gov. Andrew Cuomo has urged New Yorkers to “wait for the facts.”

Patience, though, has grown thin. The state’s two U.S. senators, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and most of the 27 other members of New York’s congressional delegation have called for his resignation. In the state legislature, more than 120 lawmakers have called on the Democrat to quit.

Leaders in the state Assembly on Thursday announced an impeachment investigation, a first step toward potentially removing Cuomo from office.

Cuomo has rebuffed calls to resign and staked his political future on the outcome of an independent investigation by Attorney General Letitia James, who is examining allegations that the governor sexually harassed or inappropriately touched several female aides.

Here’s a look at the next steps on a possible road to impeachment:

ATTORNEY GENERAL’S INVESTIGATION

James, an independently elected Democrat, hired former Acting U.S Attorney Joon Kim and employment discrimination attorney Anne Clark to lead her inquiry into the governor’s workplace conduct.

The investigative team will have the power to subpoena documents and interview witnesses. Its findings will go in a public report.

Cuomo has since said that he will “fully cooperate.”

James lacks power to unilaterally remove Cuomo from office, but any findings corroborating the allegations could sway potential impeachment proceedings — or add pressure for Cuomo to leave voluntarily.

Kim and Clark may choose to limit their scope to allegations that are already public, or broaden it to look for other women who might have complaints about Cuomo’s behavior.

James’ office sent a letter last week instructing the governor’s office to preserve all evidence related to the harassment allegations. That could include documents and emails to and from Cuomo’s staff, calendar entries and communications involving the transfer of one of his accusers to another office.

There is no deadline for completing the investigation and James hasn’t said how long she expects it to take. A 2010 investigation that Cuomo oversaw as attorney general into his predecessor, Gov. David Paterson, lasted about five months.

Andrew G. Celli Jr., who was chief of the civil rights bureau in the office of attorney general from 1999 to 2003, said that while James is a Democrat, her independence would allow her to to “do what she thinks is in the best interest of all the people, even if that means an adverse finding to the governor.”

THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

The Assembly’s Judiciary Committee will also have power to subpoena documents and witness testimony. It could rely on work done by the attorney general’s team of investigators, or gather its own evidence.

The scope of its inquiry might go beyond Cuomo’s conduct with women. The governor is also under fire for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis in the state’s nursing homes.

 

Many lawmakers have been outraged that the Cuomo administration declined, for months, to release the full number of nursing home patients killed by the virus.

The governor’s office said some of the data, related to deaths of nursing home patients who had been transferred to hospitals, was unreliable. But in a recorded conference call with lawmakers, Cuomo’s top aide said the administration withheld the data in late summer because it was afraid the fatality numbers could be “used against us.”

Federal investigators are scrutinizing how the Cuomo administration handled data about nursing home deaths.

The committee’s work could result in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Cuomo, though that outcome is far from certain.

One of the women who has reportedly accused Cuomo of groping her has not spoken publicly about what happened and it is unclear whether she would be willing to offer public testimony in an impeachment trial.

THE IMPEACHMENT PROCESS

New York’s process for impeaching and removing a governor from office has some parallels — and some important differences — to the process the U.S. Congress uses for impeaching presidents.

Like at the federal level, New York impeachments starts in lower house of the legislature — in this case, the Assembly. If a majority of members vote to impeach Cuomo, a trial on his removal from office would be held in what’s known as the Impeachment Court.

 

The court consists not only of members of the state Senate, but also judges of the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, who would also cast votes. There are seven appeals court judges and 63 senators, though not all would serve on the impeachment court.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul (HOH-kull) and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins are also members, but they are excluded when a governor is on trial. At least two-thirds of the jurors must vote to convict in order to remove Cuomo.

Democrats control both chambers of the Legislature. Many have joined Republicans in calling for Cuomo’s resignation or impeachment in recent days. Cuomo has appointed all seven members of the Court of Appeals.

New York has only impeached a governor once, in 1913, when Gov. William Sulzer was bounced after 289 days in office in what he claimed was retribution for turning his back on the powerful Tammany Hall Democratic machine.

Sulzer, accused of failing to report thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and commingling campaign funds with personal funds, blasted the court’s secret deliberations, complaining: “A horse thief in frontier days would have received a squarer deal.”

SIDELINING CUOMO

If Cuomo were impeached by the Assembly, state law might force him to step aside immediately — a dramatic difference from what happens when the U.S. president is impeached.

A section of the state’s judicial code regarding impeachment states: “No officer shall exercise his office, after articles of impeachment against him shall have been delivered to the senate, until he is acquitted.”

 

According to the state constitution, the lieutenant governor would then take over.

“In case the governor is impeached, is absent from the state or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office of governor, the lieutenant-governor shall act as governor until the inability shall cease or until the term of the governor shall expire,” the constitution states.

When Sulzer was impeached, Lt. Gov. Martin Glynn was appointed acting governor.

If Cuomo were to be acquitted in an impeachment court, he would return to office. If the Impeachment Court were to remove him from office, Hochul would serve out the remainder of Cuomo’s term — through the end of 2022. The court could also opt to disqualify him from holding office in the future, on top of removing him.

IRS Says New Round Of Covid Relief Payments On The Way

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
AP

(AP) — Along with daylight saving time, this weekend could bring some Americans fatter bank balances.

Officials at the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service said Friday that processing of the new round of stimulus payments has already begun, with the aim of having the first payments start showing up in bank accounts this weekend.

President Joe Biden signed the new $1.9 trillion rescue package on Thursday, the day after it won final passage in the House. The measure provides for payments to qualifying individuals of up to $1,400, with payments to a qualifying family of four of $5,600.

“The payments will be delivered automatically to taxpayers even as the IRS continues delivering regular tax refunds,” IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in a statement.

It is estimated that 85% of Americans will be eligible for the payments and the goal is to have millions of the payments disbursed in the next few weeks.

The relief measure, which passed on party-line votes in both the House and Senate, contains the third round of economic-impact payments. The first round passed last spring provided up to $1,200 per individual, and a second round of payments in December provided up to $600 per individual.

The latest package passed with no votes from Republicans, who objected to the size of the measure and argued it was not necessary given signs that the economy is beginning to recover.

Then-President Donald Trump called the payments in the $900 billion relief bill passed in December too small and Biden agreed, pushing the total for an individual up to $1,400 in the new package.

The latest round of relief payments will provide households with $1,400 for each adult, child and adult dependent, such as college students or elderly relatives. Adult dependents were not eligible to receive payments in the previous two rounds of payments.

 

The payments start declining for an individual once adjusted gross income exceeds $75,000 and go to zero once income hits $80,000. The payment starts declining for married couples when income exceeds $150,000 and goes to zero at $160,000.

Officials said that beginning on Monday, people can check the “Get My Payment” tool on the IRS.gov website to track their own payments.

Taxpayers who have provided bank information with the IRS will receive the direct-deposit payments, while others will get paper checks or debit cards mailed to them.

Officials said in the interest of speeding up the relief payments, the IRS will use the latest tax return available, either the 2019 return filed last year or the 2020 return that is due by April 15.

If a person’s job situation changed last year because of the pandemic, which led to millions of people losing jobs or being forced to work reduced hours, officials said that the IRS will adjust the size of the new impact payments after the 2020 return has been filed and provide a supplemental payment if that is called for. Officials said those adjustments will be made automatically by the IRS for people who have already filed their 2020 returns.

Officials said they wanted to handle the payments this way rather than waiting for the 2020 tax return to be filed in the interest of speeding payments to taxpayers.

Iran accuses Israel of attack on cargo vessel in Mediterranean

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
An Israeli soldier fires on board the Israeli Navy Ship Lahav. (illustrative) (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

By World Israel News Staff and AP

An Iranian cargo vessel was targeted this week in a “terrorist attack” in the Mediterranean Sea, the country’s state TV reported on Friday. There were no casualties in the explosion, the report said.

The report quoted Ali Ghiasian, spokesman for Iran’s state shipping line, as saying that Wednesday’s attack damaged Shahr-e Kord, a commercial vessel traveling to Europe. Ghiasian said an “explosives device” damaged the hull of the ship and set off a small fire that was quickly extinguished.

Ghiasian said such acts of terrorism and instances of piracy are contrary to international regulations. He said “legal prosecution of the perpetrators of this terrorist action will be pursued through competent international organizations.”

The report said the ship would continue on its path following a damage assessment, without providing more details.

On Saturday, Reuters reported that local media were quoting an Iranian investigator who blamed Israel as the most likely suspect behind the strike.

 

An unnamed individual told the semi-official Nournews “considering the geographical location and the way the ship was targeted, one of the strong possibilities is that this terrorist operation was carried out by the Zionist regime.”

Earlier this week, Israel accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guard of attaching an explosive device to the Israeli-owned cargo vessel Helios Ray in international waters near the Gulf of Oman in February. The vessel was en route from Saudi Arabia to Singapore. Israel said the explosion caused “severe damage, forcing the ship to return to the port of Dubai to ensure the safety of the crew.”

Iran, which does not recognize Israel and supports anti-Israeli terror groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas, rejected the claim as an unfounded allegation.

Also Friday, Iranian Gen. Esmail Ghaani, chief of the Quds Force, thye foreign wing of the Revolutionary Guard, warned that Tehran “will destroy the wall,” referring to Israel’s separation barrier protecting civilians from Palestinian terror attacks.

Iranian officials are known for calling for the destruction of Israel, which has produced evidence that Tehran has tried to develop nuclear weapons.

Earlier this week, Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz told Fox News that his country is upgrading contingency plans to strike Iranian targets if Tehran shows signs of a nuclear escalation.

Iran denies it is pursuing nuclear weapons, and says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Unlike Iran, Israel’s atomic program, which is widely believed to include an undeclared nuclear bomb program, is not monitored by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Aztec worship chants now proposed for California public schools

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0

By Monica Showalter(American Thinker)

Leftists in education are always cooking up bad ideas of what’s to be taught in schools, but here’s one that arguably takes the cake.

According to the Fox News, via the New York Post:

The California Department of Education has proposed an ethnic studies “model curriculum” that includes, among other things, chanting the names of Aztec gods in an attempt to build unity among schoolchildren.
Included in the draft curriculum is a list of “lesson resources” with a chant based on “In Lak Ech,” which it describes as “love, unity, mutual respect,” and “Panche Be,” which it describes as “seeking the roots of truth.”
The chant starts with a declaration that “you are my other me” and “if I do harm to you, I do harm to myself.” Before chanting the name of the Aztec god Tezkatlipoka, the text reads: “Seeking the roots of the truth, seeking the truth of the roots, elders and us youth, (youth), critical thinking through.”
It adds: “Tezkatlipoka, Tezkatlipoka, x2 smoking mirror, self-reflection Tezkatlipoka.”

So much for separation of church and state.  That’s a religious chant to someone else’s religion.  Their plan is to literally foist that “faith,” if you can call it that, onto California’s schoolchildren, many of whom already have religions of their own from their families.

So much for the usual claptrap out of this bunch about all cultures being alike.  This one is being favored and taught as theological indoctrination.

Worse still, it’s as repellent and abhorrent a religion as such things come.

The Aztecs, as these clowns choose to ignore, had a religion commanding human sacrifice, cannibalism, and conquest.  Like pretty much every ancient culture, the ancient Aztecs had examples of civilizational greatness, but religion was not one of them.

The phony god these California wokesters are planning to force children to worship was the very one who commanded the abhorrent practice of human sacrifice, often of captives.  According to Fox:

Tezkatlipoka is the name of an Aztec god that was honored with human sacrifice. According to the World History Encyclopedia, an impersonator of Tezkatlipoka would be sacrificed with his heart removed to honor the deity.

The Fox report even has a video of the students doing the worshipful chanting.

What’s doing in Mexico City, home of the Aztecs, where no one would dream of doing such disgusting chants?  Well, a couple months ago, someone discovered some authentic Aztec history in a dig — a stacked mountain of the just beheaded skulls of captives on the edge of city walls.  (It’s like what ISIS in Syria, as my combat vet nephew told me, also liked to do.)  The Aztecs were the ISIS of their age in terms of cruelty and the quest for power.

And not just ripping hearts out and stacking human skulls.  They also did a lot of cannibalism.

At one extreme, anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins.  According to Harris, the Aztec economy would not support feeding slaves (the captured in war), and the columns of prisoners were “marching meat.”

Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano has proposed that Aztec cannibalism coincided with times of harvest and should be thought of as more of a Thanksgiving.  Montellano rejects the theories of Harner and Harris, saying that with evidence of so many tributes and intensive chinampa agriculture, the Aztecs did not need any other food sources.

Some of the ancient Anasazi Indians of the U.S. Southwest, descended by some accounts from Aztecs, also were practicing cannibals in the same Aztec tradition.  The Navajo say that Anasazi in their language means “ancient enemy,” so obviously there were problems.

And the Navajo were hardly the only Indians who were victimized by marauders who practiced such North American cannibalism.  Mexico’s other Indian nations, such as the Tarascan of Michoacán, couldn’t stand the Aztecs.

Here’s Wikipedia:

The Tarascan state was contemporary with and an enemy of the Aztec Empire, against which it fought many wars. The Tarascan empire blocked Aztec expansion to the northwest, and the Tarascans fortified and patrolled their frontiers with the Aztecs, possibly developing the first truly territorial state of Mesoamerica.
Due to its relative isolation within Mesoamerica, the Tarascan state had many cultural traits completely distinct from those of the Mesoamerican cultural group. It is particularly noteworthy for being among the few Mesoamerican civilizations to use metal for tools and ornamentation, and even weapons.

Nobody likes cannibalism — nobody.  It’s fundamentally against human nature.  That might explain why such cultures that embrace that practice are always easily toppled, and the Aztecs were no exception.  The Native Americans of these parts readily embraced Christianity, which is why the arrival of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1512 was so powerful.  The Indians at the time all knew what the alternative was, and nobody ever went back, not any more than the ancient Europeans who sure as heck aren’t going to return to embracing the religion of Loki and Thor.

But wokester leftists are a different breed and have begun to pick up the torch.

Part of this worship of Aztecs and their religion is ignorance at who the Aztecs were and why their religion was so repellent.

Another part of it is secretly liking it and hoping to advance the Aztec terror-is-power narrative, which obviously benefited a tiny elite there, as a model for themselves.

But another part still is a view that it’s a pander to Latinos.

Latino students are now 55% of the state’s public school student population.  What better, in the minds of these people, than to indoctrinate whites to claim that Aztec culture is better?

Instead of teach students the culturally uniting principles of the American founding and lives of its founding fathers, they reject all of that and are looking for a new religion.  They found one, in about the most vicious of all Indian tribes (except maybe the much feared Iroquois), that fit the wokester narrative.  They reject American values and embrace foreign ones, ones they can pin on Latinos, despite the fact that Mexico’s other Indians, who now form the public school population majority, hated the Aztecs as much as anyone.

Bottom line is, they’ve chased God and the founding fathers from our public schools, but now they need to replace it.  They chose their religion, imposed it on others, and violated the separation of church and state.  Their idea is an atrocious one, and they now need to be held accountable.

 

Netanyahu: ‘There will be no lockdown during Passover’

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Flash90/Miriam Alster)

(I24) Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Saturday “there will be no lockdown during Passover,” speaking to broadcaster Channel 13 less than two weeks ahead of the general vote on March 23.

The Jewish holiday of Passover begins on March 27.

“Unless a new [vaccine resistant] variant arrives within a few days, we will not impose a lockdown and when the children ask the question that is in the Haggadah, ‘how is this night different from the others?’ you can answer them: ‘we are vaccinated’,” the Israeli premier jested, referring to a famous proverb traditionally read during the Passover meal.

Netanyahu’s remarks come in the wake of coronavirus cases plummeting in the country, and despite some concerns voiced by Health Ministry officials who urged caution.

As the government eased lockdown restrictions, the mass vaccination campaign has enabled the country to reopen its economy in most sectors. Last week, bars, restaurants, sports halls, colleges, cultural venues and hotels resumed their activity.

The government is due to meet this week to discuss easing additional measures regarding the number of people allowed to meet in closed spaces and the opening of amusement parks.

The question of mandatory mask wearing in open spaces was also raised by health experts over the week but it remains unclear whether that would be deliberated by the cabinet.

39-Year-Old Mother Dies After 2nd Dose of Moderna Vaccine: Family

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0

BY SAMUEL ALLEGRI(EPOCH TIMES) 

A 39-year-old healthy single mother from Utah died four days after taking a second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on Feb. 1.

According to local news channel KUTV, her family said that Kassidi Kurill, who was a surgical technician for plastic surgeons, “had more energy” than most people around her and was a happy person with no known health problems.

“I didn’t really cry when my dad died. I cry a lot for her,” her father, Alfred Hawley, a former fighter pilot in the Air Force, told the outlet. “She was the one who promised to take care of me.”

“She was seemingly healthy as a horse,” Hawley told Fox News. “She had no known underlying conditions.”

Hawley said that Kurill started to have symptoms after receiving the shot, experiencing soreness at the shot location, then beginning to feel ill and complaining that she couldn’t urinate despite drinking plenty of fluids. She improved slightly the next day, but then her condition worsened; she said she had headaches, felt nauseated, and still couldn’t urinate.

On the morning of Feb. 4, Hawley woke up to his daughter’s plea for help.

“[She] said her heart was racing and she felt like she needed to get to the emergency room,” he told KUTV.

He took her to the emergency room, where she got blood tests. Hawley said she became less coherent and began to throw up.

In the evening, they transported her to a trauma center.

“They did a blood test and immediately came back and said she was very, very sick, and her liver wasn’t functioning,” Hawley said.

The doctors attempted to stabilize her for a transplant, but her condition worsened to the point where she could no longer talk by the morning of the next day.

“They were trying to get her to a point where she was stable enough for a liver transplant. And they just could not get her stable,” he said. “She got worse and worse throughout the day. And at nine o’clock, she passed.”

Kurill’s family is still waiting for an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

They set up a GoFundMe page titled “Kassidi Kurill and Emilia Memorial Fund,” in her and her 9-year-old daughter’s honor.

KUTV led an investigation into COVID-19 vaccine side effects and found four deaths were reported by families and caregivers.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told The Epoch Times in an email that as of March 8, more than 92 million doses of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 had been administered, with 1,637 deaths occurring following the injections.

The CDC states on its website, “To date, VAERS has not detected patterns in cause of death that would indicate a safety problem with COVID-19 vaccines.”

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) was put in place in 1990 to capture unforeseen reactions from vaccines.

Moderna didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Celia Farber contributed to this report.

Weakened Iranian regime tests Biden administration’s resolve by demanding concessions

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0

BY ARIEL BEN SOLOMON

Iran has suffered from an economic crisis and domestic instability for years due to harsh U.S. sanctions and, within the past 12 months, ramifications associated with the global coronavirus pandemic. Now, it is seeking a way out by trying to manipulate the Biden administration into making concessions as a prerequisite to talks about its nuclear program.

U.S. President Joe Biden and his foreign-policy team are working on how to renew nuclear talks with Tehran—first, by urging the Islamic Republic to return to strict compliance within the parameters of the original 2015 deal made under the Obama administration. Yet Iran’s leaders are demanding preconditions on removing sanctions that the Trump administration imposed after it withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018.

So far, the Biden administration has rejected such insistence.

Professor Ronen Cohen, an Iran expert and the head of the Middle East & Central Asia Research Center at Ariel University, tells JNS, “Both the U.S. and Iran know they will have to negotiate an agreement and that it would be preferable to do it around the table than to leave matters to the battlefield.”

From Iran’s perspective, says Cohen, the regime is not interested in a major confrontation with the United States, instead preferring to “squeeze and pressure” the Americans and Europeans so that if and when it winds up at the negotiating table, it might gain the upper hand.

Cohen does not, however, think that the Iranians are underestimating the Biden administration or that it will be as kind as the Obama administration was in previous negotiations.

Biden’s early use of military force against Iranian-backed militia groups in Syria last month signaled that the president is not afraid of using hard power. Yet Iran realizes that the United States would prefer a negotiated solution than an escalation and is using this factor to its advantage.

On the Israeli front, Iran is not seeking military confrontation at this point, according to Cohen.

Still, leader Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, an Iran proxy, could take aggressive action at any time. That could trigger not just a harsh response from Jerusalem but foment a larger conflict that would pull in America as well.

‘Widening divide between technocratic and ideological factions’

Ramin Parham, an exiled writer from Iran and author of the new book, New Constitutionalism (in Persian and published in London), tells JNS that Tehran is engaged in brinkmanship with the United States, where its position is influenced primarily by domestic existential threats.

Parham describes a battered regime as “exhausted economically and severely shaken politically after three major waves of nationwide protests over the past 10 years or so.”

“The regime’s situation is not dissimilar to that of the former Soviet Union before its collapse,” says Parham. “The key question is whether the inevitable collapse will be controlled or chaotic.”

He adds that “the widening internal divide between the technocratic and ideological factions are likely to become conflictual.”

The technocratic elite seeks normalization with the West, similar to the masses’ aspirations, while the ideological block is continuously struggling for its survival and safeguarding its sectarian interests.

Parham sees the Islamic Republic as historically miscalculating its strategic positions, whether in the Iran-Iraq war or the development of its nuclear program—a pattern of strategic miscalculations that have led to sanctions, isolation and economic devastation.

“The regime is weaker than ever before and its base of supporters has shrunk,” assesses Parham, adding that its leaders are likely to make another miscalculation over its domestic grassroots opposition, which is based more on Iranianism and that could overcome Islamism.

Parham views the upcoming June presidential elections as a possible tipping point in the fight over the succession of the aging leader Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Still, demonstrations against the regime over the years have not led to its fall. Parham attributes this to “the lack of a realistic political discourse and a resolute patriotic opposition in an otherwise unorganized opposition.”

He charges that “nothing is more important in the months ahead than a policy of maximum political pressure on the regime.”

He also sees no choice but to go through a transition period that would require a kind of “patriotic and enlightened authoritarianism.”

Parham envisions a transition period led by a military-technocratic coalition determined to reboot the economy, normalize relations with the United States, lift sanctions and allow for the growth of civil society—pre-conditions for an Iranian brand of a future democracy.

Of course, there have been numerous predictions of the regime’s downfall in recent years, and yet it still remains able to threaten Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Europe with its saber-rattling.

According to a report in The New York Times, informal talks between America and Iran over a return to the nuclear deal could begin in weeks with Tehran likely to get at least some injunctions removed in return for holding talks. The report added that when dialogue does begin, it’s expected that both sides will take simultaneous steps towards coming back into compliance.

Since 2018, Iran has moved away from the deal’s limits on its stockpile of uranium and begun enriching to 20 percent, not to mention its illicit oil exports and mayhem in the Persian Gulf.

“The struggle against Iran is an exhausting conflict, yet Tehran’s leadership has a huge amount of patience,” affirms Cohen, who measures the conflict in terms of centuries; that said, its leaders have eyed the long game, rebuffing the need to win in the short term

Portland Police Surround 100 Protesters After Violence Breaks Out

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0

By Sandy Fitzgerald

Approximately 100 protesters were detained Friday night in Portland, Oregon, after demonstrations focused largely on the presence of Department of Homeland Security officers at the downtown federal courthouse grew violent.

According to a report posted by the Portland Police Department on Saturday, protesters started marching at about 9 p.m. Some started smashing windows after about 15 minutes.

The police formed a perimeter around the group, which was advised they were not free to leave and should comply with orders, but legal observers, members of the press, or anyone medically fragile was invited to leave if they wished, the report said.

The detainment was an example of kettling, a tactic used by police to surround a crowd and contain people inside a perimeter, reports The Oregonian.

“Those that were being detained were identified and photographed, as part of a criminal investigation, before being released,” the police department’s report said. “Some refused to comply and locked arms together in an effort to interfere with the investigation. Officers escorted them away and they were arrested. A suspect in the earlier window vandalism was arrested and charged.”

Thirteen of those detained were charged with criminal offenses, the police report said, including two who were carrying firearms while wearing body armor and helmets.

Live-streamers and independent journalists said that before police released them, they were made to give their name and birthdate, which was written on a piece of duct tape and given to them to place on their chests. They were then photographed before leaving, requiring them to remove their face masks, reports The Oregonian.

Meanwhile, officers found several items that were left behind inside the perimeter, “Including a crowbar, hammers, bear spray, slugging weapon with rocks, high impact slingshots, and knives,” the report said.

Violent protests have eased since last summer’s marches sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said this week he will ask city council for a one-time fund of $2 million for police patrols to allow for more proactive patrols in the city’s streets in hopes of stemming growing gun violence, also reports The Oregonian.

He made his announcement along with religious and community leaders in hopes of further action being taken to prevent people from dying in shootings, especially young Black and brown people.

The group called for bringing back a dedicated uniformed police patrol team and to add more detectives to investigate gun violence and more money for the new six-officer on-call team that was recently formed to respond to shootings around the clock in the city. It also wants a new independent community committee that would gather information on officers’ stops and arrests.

Wheeler said the new police approach would differ from the former police Gun Violence Reduction Team that was disbanded in June amid $15 million in budget cuts. He also said he plans to bring the proposal before City Council members within a few weeks and that the money would come from a city reserve contingency account created last fall that now has a $6.3 million balance.

Newsmax

Andrew Cuomo’s Staffers Have Stopped Coming to Work as Scandals Grow

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
The odds are slim for Gov. Cuomo being impeached (AP)

Democrat New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s staffers are not showing up to work out of protest as sexual harassment claims against him increase.

“I hear that most people aren’t even coming into work, and the offices at the Capitol are empty,” one well-placed Albany insider who knew some staffers told the New York Post.

His staff began to rebel after Cuomo refused a second time to resign on Friday, blaming the outrage against him on “cancel culture.”

One former aide said many staffers are choosing to work remotely instead of coming into the executive offices, adding that they fear their jobs are at risk just as they were beginning to see some hope after toiling for hours for months during the coronavirus pandemic.

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi claimed Saturday that talk of a staff exodus was “greatly exaggerated.”

“There’s a budget to be done in two weeks, the largest vaccination effort is state history to stand up and the continued efforts to successfully fight this once in a century pandemic,” he stated, continuing, “and that’s what the hard-working members of this administration and the state workforce are focused on — period.”

Even though Cuomo has refused to resign despite his mounting scandals, several prominent Democrats have called on him to throw in the towel.

U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) have called on Cuomo to resign, as well as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and 11 House Democrats from New York, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

Despite calls for Cuomo’s resignation, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have not said a word about the Cuomo scandals.

Racist Plants? London’s Kew Gardens Uses Plants To Highlight UK’s ‘Imperial Legacy’

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
kew.org

Kew Gardens in London is to change labels on its plants and flowers in order to inform visitors on how racist they are, Daily Mail reported. 

The popular attraction, which welcomes over 2 million visitors a year from all over the world, is set to “change display boards for plants such as sugar cane – previously harvested by slaves – to highlight their ‘imperial legacy’”, reports the Daily Mail.

Tory MP Sir John Hayes responded to the announcement by saying he would look into public funding of Kew Gardens.

“This is preposterous posturing by people who are so out of touch with the sentiment of patriotic Britain,” said Hayes.

“This is typically bourgeois liberal arrogance which is ill-fitting of people that get public funding,” he added.

While it is true that Britain was heavily involved with the slave trade, they were also among the first major nations to abolish slavery.

In general, it’s bizarre to come to a garden to learn about plants and end-up being lectured about slavery.

The British initially became involved in the slave trade during the 16th century. By 1783, the triangular route that took British-made goods to Africa to buy slaves, transported the enslaved to the West Indies, and then brought slave-grown products such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton to Britain represented about 80 percent of Great Britain’s foreign income. British ships dominated the slave trade, supplying French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and British colonies, and in peak, years carried forty thousand enslaved men, women, and children across the Atlantic in the horrific conditions of the middle passage, as per historian Wilber Hague’s book William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner.

Historical figure William Wilberforce is largely credited with the movent to abolish slavery in the British Empire which began in the late 1700s and ended with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire. Wilberforce died just three days after hearing that the passage of the Act through Parliament was assured.

 

 

 

 

20M child sexual abuse images on Facebook in 2020, Watchdog Group Report Says

By
Sholom Schreirber
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(AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

Facebook had more than 20 million child sexual abuse images on its platform in 2020, according to a report by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

“We are talking about crime scene photos,” said NCMEC’s Lauren Coffren. “We’re taking about the sexual abuse of the child that unfortunately has been memorialized.”

Coffren believes the numbers could be even higher than reported.

“The real story behind it is that some companies are making an awful lot of reports and some companies are not making a lot of reports,” said Coffren speaking to KOMO News.

KOMO News reported:

Facebook released a statement after doing their own analysis, sharing findings that “90% of this content was the same as or visually similar to previously reported content.” PornHub, which had over 13,000 incidents, said that the number includes several thousand duplicates. Coffren says the same images may be shared repeatedly, creating multiple reports and re-victimizing children.

“We have victims who are 20 years pass the actual hands-on or contact of use, and they are still suffering as a victim because the imagery is still being distributed,” said Coffren. “It’s the crime that never ends.”

 

Number 7: Former NY Journalist Accuses Andrew Cuomo of Sexual Harassment

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
, @jessicabakeman / Twitter

JOSHUA CAPLAN

Jessica Bakeman, a journalist formerly stationed at the New York State Capitol, has come forward as the seventh woman to level allegations of sexual harassment against embattled New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).

Bakeman broke her silence about Cuomo in an essay published in The New Yorker on Friday, alleging that the governor placed his arm around her shoulders during a party at the Executive Mansion in 2012.

“He left it there, and kept me pinned next to him, for several minutes as he finished telling his story,” Bakeman, now an education reporter for Miami’s WLRN, recalled. “I stood there, my cheeks hot, giggling nervously as my male colleagues did the same. We all knew it was wrong, but we did nothing.”

In another instance, Bakeman alleges that the governor held her body tightly while she said goodnight at a holiday party in 2014.

“He took my hand, as if to shake it, then refused to let go,” she recalled. “He put his other arm around my back, his hand on my waist, and held me firmly in place while indicating to a photographer he wanted us to pose for a picture.”

According to Bakeman, Cuomo’s behavior toward her was not about sex but rather exerting “power.”

“He wanted me to know that he could take my dignity away at any moment with an inappropriate comment or a hand on my waist,” she wrote.

“The way he bullies and demeans women is different,” she added.  “He uses touching and sexual innuendo to stoke fear in us. That is the textbook definition of sexual harassment.”

Shortly before Bakeman’s allegations went public, a slew of New York congressional Democrats, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called on Cuomo to resign immediately.

“The repeated accusations against the governor, and the manner in which he has responded to them, have made it impossible for him to continue to govern at this point,” Nadler said in a statement.

However, Cuomo defied New York Congressional Democrats’ call for him to step down, instead declaring himself a victim of “cancel culture.”

“There are facts and then there are opinions. And I’ve always separated the two,” a defiant Cuomo told reporters. “Politicians who don’t know a single fact, but yet form a conclusion and an opinion, are in my opinion reckless and dangerous.”

The people of New York should not have confidence in a politician who takes a position without knowing any facts or substance. That, my friends, is politics at its worst,” the governor added. “People know the difference between playing politics, bowing to cancel culture, and the truth.”

On Thursday, New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie authorized the Assembly Judiciary Committee to launch an impeachment investigation into Cuomo over the governor’s alleged cover-up of nursing home deaths and sexual harassment allegations.

“The reports of accusations concerning the governor are serious. The committee will have the authority to interview witnesses, subpoena documents and evaluate evidence, as is allowed by the New York State Constitution,” said Heastie. “I have the utmost faith that Assemblymember Lavine and the members of the committee will conduct an expeditious, full and thorough investigation.”

Heastie noted the review will not interfere with New York Attorney General Letitia James’ (D) independent investigation of the allegations against the governor.

Breitbart

Restriction-Heavy New York Reports More Cases of Coronavirus in Last 7 Days Than Florida

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
(COVID-19) vaccine, revealed a 94% efficacy in preventing symptomatic disease. Photo by Eitan Elhadez-Barak/TPS on 1 February, 2021

HANNAH BLEAU

New York State, which has embraced some of the most stringent coronavirus restrictions in the country over the past year, has reported more cases both per capita and in overall number than Florida, which has faced backlash from establishment media outlets and pro-lockdown politicians for its coronavirus policies, allowing businesses to operate and abstaining from a statewide mask mandate.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) March 11 data, Florida reported 152.8 new cases of the virus per 100,000 in the last seven days alone, or 32,823 cases total. The CDC excludes New York City from New York State’s data. Even so, the state, excluding New York City, has reported 208.6 cases per 100,000 in the last seven days, or 23,056 total. Separately, New York City has reported 314.5 new cases per 100,000 in the last seven days, or 26,410 cases total. Combined, New York State has reported over 16,600 more cases than Florida in the last seven days alone, despite maintaining a statewide mask mandate and other restrictions.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), meanwhile, came under fire last year after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate and announcing the reopening of his state in September, pushing it into the third phase of the reopening process.

“We’re also saying everybody has an opportunity and a right to work. Every business has the right to operate. Some of the locals may be able to — they can do reasonable regulations, but they can’t just say no. You can’t say no after six months and just have people twisting in the wind,” DeSantis said at the time.

At the time, DeSantis also suspended outstanding mask-related fines and penalties.

On Wednesday, the governor signed an executive order canceling local coronavirus fines imposed between March 1, 2020, and March 10, 2021, citing the “unprecedented local government restrictions imposed on individuals and businesses over the course of the last year.”

New York continues to operate under various coronavirus restrictions. On Thursday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), who faces dueling scandals rocking his administration, announced domestic travelers will no longer have to quarantine after arriving in the state, effective April 1.

Florida, meanwhile, has continued to serve as a model to other states in their reopening process — something DeSantis noted during this month’s State of the State address.

“There are not a whole lot of Floridians who are itching to move from Florida to lockdown states, but there are thousands and thousands of people who are seeking to leave the lockdowns behind for the greener pastures in Florida,” DeSantis said.

“We have long been known as the Sunshine State — but, given the unprecedented lockdowns we have witnessed in other states, I think the Florida sun now serves as a beacon of light to those who yearn for freedom,” the Republican governor added.

Breitbart

White-Collar Visa Workers Take 2/3 of New Tech Jobs Each Year

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
AP

NEIL MUNRO

Two-thirds of entry-level tech jobs go to compliant foreign guest-workers, not to the young American professionals who may create a new wave of establishment-shaking companies, according to a report from Bloomberg.

In 2018, “the U.S. had between 96,000 and 143,000 openings in IT occupa­tions that typically went to candidates with a bachelor’s degree or higher in computer science or engineering,” said the March 10 report, headlined “STEM Graduates Deserve a Better Path to Good Jobs.”

But the government each year provides “Occupational Practical Training” (OPT) work permits to hundreds of thousands of foreigners who have paid tuition to American universities. It also invites roughly 85,000 foreign graduates on H-1B work visas, the report says.

“So, OPT participants accounted for anywhere from one-third to one-half of new hires. If you add H-1B candidates, up to two-thirds of openings went to guest workers,” said the report, which relies heavily on Hal Salzman, an expert on high-tech employment at Rutgers University.

Few of the OPT workers are high-skilled, Bloomberg acknowledged: “More than 70% of nonresident computer science master’s degrees awarded in 2018 came from unranked programs, or those ranked 50 and lower by U.S. News and World Report. Just 17% came from schools ranked in the top 25. [universities]”

Breitbart News has extensively reported on the fraud-ridden OPT program — and its sister program, the Curricular Practical Training program — which provides Fortune 500 companies with roughly 400,000 cheap foreign workers each year.

The OPTs — and the many similar H-1B, L-12, J-1, and TN visa workers — fill many starter-jobs and mid-career white-collar jobs in a wide variety of industry sectors, including tech, healthcare, academia, accounting, and design.

Few of the OPT workers complain about their lower-wage jobs because their CEOs can fire them at will.

More importantly, the foreign OPT workers accept the low wages and long hours in exchange for the promise of green cards. This means that employers can pay foreign graduates with government-supplied free green cards — in contrast them paying American graduates with dollars subtracted from company profits, stock values, and executive bonuses.

Nationwide, at least 1 million foreigners are working in lower-wage, white-collar jobs in the hope of getting green cards. This huge “Green Card Workforce” helps lower many Americans’ salaries, diminish the importance of professional advice in business, and smother the future creation of innovative companies by experience and outspoken American graduates.

Jay Palmer closely monitors this layered hiring system in his role as a human rights advocate for migrants, visa workers, and trafficked workers.

U.S. college graduates owe so much in student loans that they have to work for at least $45,000 or $50,000, but the OPT worker “will come out and work for $30,000 because of the poverty levels back in their home country,” he told Breitbart News, adding:

They’ll work for 30 percent to 40 percent less than Americans can work and drive American salaries down and drive the [U.S.] college students out of work.
The [OPTs] will live very cheaply, sometimes five and seven and eight to a house. They will send their money back to their country, for example, India, Slovenia, Croatia, or China or Vietnam, Venezuela, or other countries. So it is not helping the economy because they’re not spending money here .. tax receipts decline, municipalities lose out.
And the [employers] are paying them on 1099s. The majority of them on 1099s never file their taxes. This is a huge scheme that I know that the State Department and Department of Labor is looking at. The Fortune 500 companies have their master services agreements with third-party contractors and are saying that they’re not liable for this.
If a company hires an American college graduate, the company has to pay employment tax, unemployment tax, Social Security taxes, pay their health care, all of the normal benefits. But if they hire an OPT worker, they’re hiring them through a third-party contractor, paying them on 1099s, without benefits or taxes. So their rate of return [per employee] is about 80 percent higher. They save up to 28 percent just by not paying benefits.
And the [subcontractor hourly] rates are lower. If the rate [paid by the Fortune 500 company to the subcontractor] is $50 an hour [per graduate], the workers probably end up maybe getting $20 an hour, and the subcontractors pocket the difference. That scheme is known as the layer system.

Palmer works with the Weiser Law Firm in Pennsylvania.

Over time, the mass of foreign tech workers are getting a greater share of careers — and wealth — from CEOs in the prestigious tech firms, as many American graduates into lesser jobs.

graph 1

graph 1

Media interviews spotlight the foreign graduates’ sense of entitlement to Americans’ jobs. CNBC reported February 19:

Shantanu, 33, received his Ph.D. in structural biology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in December. His OPT application arrived on Nov. 17 and he didn’t receive a filing receipt until Feb. 11. He’s still waiting for work authorization and is unable to start his postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
“We invest a lot of time coming to the U.S., working in the U.S. and contributing to the U.S.,” said Shantanu, who asked to be identified only by his first name. “And after a while, when we are treated like this, it makes us wonder why we chose the U.S. in the first place.”

The Bloomberg article includes a few proposed reforms to the OPT program, but those reforms would not significantly reduce the number of American graduates who get sidelined by CEOs who prefer to pay compliant foreign workers with government-supplied green cards.

Bloomberg writes:

Shifting oversight from DHS to the Labor Department should be an obvious baseline, according to Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute and Ronil Hira of Howard University …  Costa and [Ronil] Hira have sensibly proposed that foreign students should be “paid according to U.S. wage standards.”
Eliminating the payroll tax advantage would also help ensure that merit rather than pay drives hiring … A carrot-and-stick approach, for example, could exempt employers from such taxes for two years when they hire new U.S. STEM graduates, and charge a 10% penalty for displacement when an OPT student is hired.
Finally, the U.S. should focus on attracting talent for jobs where a shortage truly exists. This involves ensuring visa holders have a legitimate job offer with a wage at or above specified levels, making a concerted effort to recruit U.S. workers and targeting the truly “best and brightest.”

President Donald Trump missed the opportunity to make himself a champion for white-collar workers in the 2020 election, largely because a few of his top aides simply favored the major donors and the Fortune 500 companies.

But according to Bloomberg, Biden may grab the political prize by forcing pro-employee changes to the visa-worker programs:

This is where Biden has an opening. Many American workers who voted for Trump were lifelong Democrats. They bought into his agenda only because it seemed like someone was finally hearing them. Biden, the ultimate empath, has built a political brand on listening.

“His personal grief has become a synecdoche for a nation of suffering, be it Covid-related loss or diminishing job opportunities or opioid addiction,” the article concluded.

Breitbart

Biden Expected to Nominate Big Tech Critic to Federal Trade Commission

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0

By Hadassa Kalatizadeh

President Joe Biden is expected to nominate Lina Khan for a seat on the Federal Trade Commission.  On Tuesday, the NY Times reported, based on information from a source, that Biden would appoint Ms. Khan, a law professor and primary critic for the tech industry’s power.  In 2016, Khan had penned an article in the Yale Law Journal accusing online Retail giant, Amazon, of abusing monopoly power.  The pending nomination suggests that President Biden seems to be inclined towards forceful action against tech titans including Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. The appointment will require senate confirmation.

Last week, the Biden administration had similarly announced that Tim Wu, another top tech critic, would join the National Economic Council as a special assistant for the president for technology and competition policy.

As per the Times, Ms. Khan, an associate professor at Columbia Law School, would become one of the three Democratic members on F.T.C., which has a total of five seats.  Khan, who received her J.D. from Yale Law School, recently worked as legal counsel for the House Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee and helped with an investigation into the tech giants’ monopoly power. The resulting report advocated aggressive changes to antitrust laws. Previously, Khan had worked as an aide to Rohit Chopra, a member of the Federal Trade Commission who also supports her antitrust policy.  The FTC is already suing Facebook for alleged antitrust violations, and it has also begun an investigation against Amazon.

The appointment was lauded by several left-leaning activist groups, who have said the commission has been slack in allowing tech giants to expand.  “The F.T.C. has failed to take on corporate abuses of power including rampant antitrust violations, privacy intrusions, data security breaches and mergers, and Khan’s appointment as a commissioner at the agency hopefully will herald a new day,” Public Citizen said in an earlier statement, when the appointment was being rumored.

Conservative voices also emerged, contending the expected nomination.  “Her views on antitrust enforcement are also wildly out of step with a prudent approach to the law,” said Senator Mike Lee from Utah, a leading Republican on the Senate antitrust subcommittee. “Nominating Ms. Khan would signal that President Biden intends to put ideology and politics ahead of competent antitrust enforcement, which would be gravely disappointing at a time when it is absolutely critical that we have strong and effective leadership at the enforcement agencies.”

Amazon Now Bans Books That Treat Gender Dysphoria as Mental Illness

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0

(Free Beacon)

Amazon informed senators on Thursday that it instituted a new policy banning books that treat gender dysphoria as a mental illness from its platform.

The e-commerce giant explained its policy, which had previously not been public, in response to a request for clarification from senators concerned about the banning of When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment by Ryan T. Anderson. Amazon pulled the book from its shelves on February 21.

“We have chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness,” said Amazon. Author Ryan T. Anderson pushed back on Twitter, saying the ban is based on misinterpretations of his book.

First reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday, the news comes as further confirmation of the ideological guidelines Amazon uses to determine which books it will allow. Amazon is the largest bookseller in the country, with over half of all book sales coming from the platform.

Republican senators Marco Rubio (Fla.), Mike Lee (Utah), Mike Braun (Ind.), and Josh Hawley (Mo.) asked Amazon to clarify why the book had been removed from the platform and whether the ban marked the beginning of a new approach from the tech giant.

In its response, Amazon seemed to confirm that only the distributer had been informed of the ban, not the publisher or author: “Amazon notified the distributor via email of the removal of the book for violating our content guidelines on the day the book was removed from sale.” Anderson and his publisher Encounter Books both said they found out about the ban when they were contacted by prospective buyers who could not find the book on the platform.

Amazon avoided responding to requests from the senators for documentation of the change in policy and whether publishers and sellers were notified of the change.

Amazon’s refusal to answer certain questions may cause further political trouble for the company. In an op-ed Friday, Rubio announced his support for striking Amazon workers in Alabama, citing Amazon’s new books policy. In February, Lee stated his willingness to work with Democratic senators to rein in big tech companies that are creating “a corporatist nightmare of censorship and hypocrisy.”

The American Psychiatric Association referred to gender dysphoria as a disorder in its influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 2012, when it changed its description to “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender.” Gender dysphoria is still considered a disorder in cases in which the individual experiences “significant distress or impairment in major areas of life.”

“Everyone agrees that gender dysphoria is a serious condition that causes great suffering,” said Anderson and Encounter Books on Thursday. “There is a debate, however, which Amazon is seeking to shut down, about how best to treat patients who experience gender dysphoria.”

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