Bailing Out on Cities

Here is your ticket out:

"Flush with donations, Massachusetts Bail Fund pays to free defendants across the state — many facing serious charges; Fund wants to "free them all," but law enforcement officials fear for public safety" by Andrea Estes Globe Staff, July 19, 2020

WEST BOYLSTON — If only he’d had $1,100, Joel Rodriguez could have been a free man. Instead, the 31-year-old sat in the Worcester County House of Correction awaiting trial on assault and harassment charges — working out, reading the Bible, trying to tame the rage that got him locked up in the first place.

So when the man from the Massachusetts Bail Fund showed up at the jail on the evening of July 6 to post bail for Rodriguez and four other prisoners, it felt like divine intervention.

“Hallelujah!” he shouted before he fished his belongings from the plastic storage container where jailers had kept them. “They saved my life, basically.”

Scenes like that are playing out across the country as private charities including the Bail Fund ride a tidal wave of donations since the killing of George Floyd set off massive demonstrations against racial injustice in law enforcement. Within two weeks of Floyd’s death as a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck, Minnesota’s largest bail fund had received more than $31 million in donations so that protesters who were arrested could be bailed out, according to news reports.

Where is that money coming from?

The Massachusetts Bail Fund has not released its fund-raising totals, but leaders of the charity say on their website that the “incredible generosity” of donors has allowed them to increase the amount of bail they can pay. As recently as January, the group, which has just one paid employee, paid no more than $500, but last week it posted $85,000 bail to free a single prisoner.

The Massachusetts Bail Fund opposes cash bail on principle, arguing that it discriminates against the poor by keeping them locked up until their day in court and interfering with their ability to work or prepare for that trial. The only purpose of bail, they point out, should be to make sure defendants show up for trial — and the people they bail out overwhelmingly do, but its sudden prosperity has led the Bail Fund into controversial territory as many of the prisoners they have bailed out face increasingly serious, often violent, charges, and some have long criminal records.

Well, if you want to sow chaos on city streets, that's the way to do it.

Donors who rushed to support bail funds after the Floyd death likely thought they were helping to bail out jailed protesters, who typically face bail of up to a few hundred dollars. The fund bailed out scores of protesters arrested during the Boston demonstrations, but it has set free many facing more serious charges as well. Rodriguez, for example, had been in jail for nine months before his release, serving time for assaulting and harassing several victims, according to court records. Now he’s out on bail for additional domestic violence charges, which he described to the Globe as “problems of love.”

That is something batterer would say, and the Globe is taking his side!

The day after the fund bailed out Rodriguez, it put up $85,000 to free Karmau Cotton-Landers, 25, who is accused of shooting someone in the daytime on Boston Common in early April. When he was arrested, officers found a loaded firearm and ammunition in his Puma camouflage backpack, Boston police said.

On the day after Cotton-Landers was freed, the fund bailed out someone who had been arrested on looting charges hours after the May 31 demonstration in Boston. Darren McFadden also has an extensive criminal history including 60 cases in Suffolk County and a three-year prison sentence for robbing someone at knifepoint. The Bail Fund paid McFadden’s $2,500 bail on larceny and breaking and entering charges.

This is not about altrui$m and righting wrongs, this is to $erve the very agenda I mentioned above. It's about creating the conditions of chaos that will allow a further lockdown of the population as we morph into a military-style police state based on medical fascism.

That all happened in three days. Other defendants recently freed by the Bail Fund include Walker Browning, accused of robbing five women, two at knifepoint; David Privette, facing charges of holding up a gas station at gunpoint; and Otis Walker, who had been held since late 2018 on three counts of child rape. These three were being held on bails ranging from $5,000 to $50,000.

OOOOOOH!

Atara Rich-Shea, the fund’s unpaid executive director, declined to comment on the group’s increasing activities, saying she objected to the Globe’s attempt to interview people the fund had bailed. The Globe visited the Worcester jail after learning the Bail Fund would be freeing five prisoners that afternoon and asked to speak to the men as they left. Rich-Shea said the arrangement “ambushed the people whose bail we were posting,” although Rodriguez was enthusiastic about talking to a reporter.

It's not always that way:

"A day after two teenagers were shot and killed inside a Wildwood Street apartment, a group of people gathered by the front stoop Monday, listening to music on the residential street near the border of Dorchester and Mattapan. They politely declined to speak with a reporter. As of Monday evening, police had not made any arrests in the deaths of the teenagers, ages 16 and 17. They had not disclosed their names or the circumstances of the shootings, except that officers found them injured but alive Sunday afternoon. They were taken to local hospitals with gunshot wounds and later died, police said. Their deaths were part of a violent weekend in Boston.  “Sunday was a violent day in Boston,” Boston Police Superintendent-in-Chief Gregory Long said at a news conference Monday.  Police have not made any arrests in two stabbings on Saturday that left three people injured, one person near Egleston Square and two others in East Boston....."

This is as Trump threatens to send US forces to more cities and as Mayor Walsh rips the Trump administration for sending federal agents to respond to protests in Portland. 

The Globe wants to call the county sheriff and says that hope is a powerful weapon against the violence that plagues their communities. All it will take is a triumph of the will.

It's a tale of two cities, one racist, another striving to change and increase affordable housing (never mind the stink next door) with a convenience store right down the streets. Just be careful when you go out, at least in Lowell.

Also see:

ACLU accuses Boston police of violating rights with ‘Operation Clean Sweep’ arrests

How do you know the ACLU is a worthless agitator?

We have the loss of freedom and liberty all around us with onerous and increasing tyranny, and they are silent.

Have they filed any court cases on behalf of churches?

At least you don't have to pay to make bail.

The Bail Fund’s website makes it clear it will help any defendant post bail, no matter the severity of the charges or their criminal record:

“THE MASSACHUSETTS BAIL FUND IS A CHARGE NEUTRAL BAIL FUND; WE POST BAIL REGARDLESS OF COURT HISTORY, CHARGE, OR CIRCUMSTANCES. Our only limitation is access to funds and staffing.”

For the fund and its supporters, a principle is at stake. If a prosecutor believes a defendant is too dangerous to release, they argue, the prosecutor should ask a judge to declare him or her dangerous and held indefinitely. Setting a high bail, they argue, is both unfair to the poor and ineffective at preventing crime.

I'm NOT FOR THAT as we ENCROACH upon the former East German-Soviet realm!

“Why would paying a certain amount of bail make them any less dangerous?” asked David Rangaviz, a lawyer for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, an organization that represents poor defendants, but victims rights advocates and some in law enforcement say the fund is enabling the release of potentially dangerous people with few or no court-ordered conditions to protect the public.

“It is a total injustice,” said Boston Police Commissioner William Gross, referring to the release of defendants charged with crimes of violence. “I’ll get criticized, but not by the folks in the neighborhoods. They are the victims of crime and they feel left out.”

Freeing them, he said, sends the message to those inclined to commit crimes that there are no consequences.

That's the one the bankers got.

“We have seen an uptick in violence,” Gross said. “I have no doubt that some of the violence is attributable to” people out on bail.

“I would never deny anyone the opportunity to be bailed, but ... what about the victims? We keep forgetting about the victims. They have constitutional rights too — to walk down the street, to be secure in their homes.”

The Globe usually does.

* * *

Every defendant is innocent until proven guilty. It’s a cornerstone of the American justice system. So bail, which defendants pay in exchange for freedom while awaiting trial, is not supposed to be punishment. It’s meant as a deposit to ensure that the defendant will return for trial instead of fleeing. If they show up, they get their money back.

It's been warped from rehabilitation to punishment as the society has become more sadistic, and I think everyone knows it's a two-tiered ju$tu$ $y$tem now.

In reality, cash bail — an amount that a defendant can pay to leave jail while awaiting trial — is weighted heavily against people who are least able to pay, sometimes forcing them to remain behind bars for weeks or even months before trial, and people who remain in jail while awaiting trial are more likely to be convicted than if they’d been free, according to a 2018 study in American Economic Review. That’s a big part of the reason that states including California and New Jersey have sharply reduced the use of cash bail.

Even some prosecutors agree that the bail system is unfair, especially the deliberate use of high bail to keep defendants behind bars. If prosecutors believe someone is too dangerous to be released, they can ask the judge to hold him or her indefinitely without bail, something Bristol District Attorney Tom Quinn said he routinely does. At a dangerousness hearing, the prosecutor must convince the judge that the defendant poses too great a risk to be released.

“The cash bail system is an arbitrary approach that negatively impacts the poor and disadvantaged,” he said. “The fairer approach is to hold someone without bail, if appropriate, or release them on conditions.”

I'm glad I don't live in his county!

However, current law makes some prosecutors reluctant to ask for a dangerousness hearing since it imposes a strict timetable for a speedy trial that can be difficult to meet. Quinn has been lobbying to change the law so that jails can hold prisoners for up to one year of pretrial detention, but, for now, it’s much easier for district attorneys to seek high bail on people they consider high risk and avoid the timetable.

Justice delayed truly is justice denied.

Groups such as the Massachusetts Bail Fund, with its “Free Them All” slogan, have waged a low-key battle against the bail system for years, freeing jailed defendants in counties across the state. Rich-Shea told the state Senate last year that the fund has posted about $1 million in bail for more than 4,000 people since 2013. Most were held on low bail.

The death of Floyd on May 25 suddenly linked bail funds to one of the largest protest movements in modern US history. On social media, the Massachusetts Bail Fund encouraged potential donors to think of their group as a way to fight racism in law enforcement.

“Anytime we post a bail, protest or otherwise, we are pushing back against a system of racialized social control and violence,” tweeted the Massachusetts Bail Fund on June 8. “The $$ we & the bailfundnetwork community has received these past three weeks shows how many of you support this pushback.”

What do you think we have going on now with COVID, no matter what your skin?

The fund has bailed many people arrested during protests, including most, if not all, of the 53 arrested in the unrest after the May 31 demonstration in Boston.

The fund paid the $5,000 bail for Chana Harris, 35, who was arrested hours after the protest for being in a car from which 10 shots were allegedly fired at Boston officers. A gun was found at her feet and she was charged with carrying a firearm without a license.

The Bail Fund also freed many people jailed for reasons that had nothing to do with the demonstrations.

Rodriguez had nine pending criminal cases out of East Brookfield District Court when he was locked up in November. All involved domestic abuse, and multiple accusers, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in May and was sentenced to nine months. With good behavior, he was eligible for release on July 4; however, he had two other outstanding cases, out of Worcester District Court, involving similar charges. Bail on those cases was $1,100.

Those women must be pissing their pants right now. 

He's out!

Had the Bail Fund not covered the $1,100 bail on July 6, he would likely have remained in jail until the cases went to trial — scheduled for September.

Rangaviz, the lawyer for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, said incarceration is generally not helpful to anyone — often costing them their jobs and disrupting relationships.

“It actually increases the likelihood that the detained person will commit a crime in the future,” he said, but Colby Bruno, senior legal counsel for the Victim Rights Law Center, believes dangerous criminals should be held as long as possible.

That's the kind of logic you get from these people who are pushing agendas and are unaffected by their own actions.

Wait until they start filling up the jails, schools, and malls, with half the country who will COVID dissenters when it comes to the masks, distancing, and shots.

That is what this all about, and releasing criminals to create chaos is a further avenue to a much harder martial law.

“It’s entirely different to bail someone involved in protests versus someone who lost their rights because they are being charged with really serious crimes,” she said. ”These are not good citizens and this is a get-out-of-jail-free card that does not factor in the safety of the victims.” but there’s at least one recently freed prisoner who said he plans to make the most of the second chance the Bail Fund gave him.

“I’m not doing anything illegal,” said Rodriguez as he left the Worcester County House of Correction. “This is hell, or purgatory ... I made good use of my time and I’m pretty sure I’m not coming back.”

In his mind, assaulting and harassing women is not illegal! 

Poor fella was in hell, Jerry!

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The Founding Fathers would be lost in today's America:

"Founding Fathers increasingly viewed through modern lens in time of racial reckoning" by Brian MacQuarrie Globe Staff, July 15, 2020

Toppling statues of Confederate generals and leaders — century-old symbols of brutal white dominance — feels long overdue for many Americans. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis plunged the country into civil war to maintain the institution of slavery, but statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have been toppled in Oregon. A bust of Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general who crushed the Confederacy, came down in San Francisco, and a statue of Abraham Lincoln standing over a newly freed slave will be removed from Park Square in Boston.

We know what they are doing. It's an attempt to erase historical and cultural memory and values so that new ones can be freshly installed going forward. It's a big leap that is called a Cultural Revolution. They did this kind of thing in China back in the 1960s, and it didn't work out too good.

Targeting Confederate symbols is one step, but a national groundswell for racial justice also has brought renewed scrutiny to Founding Fathers such as Jefferson and Washington, American icons who created a government of soaring democratic ideals but denied those rights to the Black people they and others held in bondage.

“The Revolution had very little regard for the lives of Africans and Native Americans,” said Miranda ADEkoje, a Roxbury woman who is completing a play on Crispus Attucks, a Black and Native American man who was killed by British troops at the Boston Massacre in 1770. “White supremacy is just weaved into the fabric of this country. Not recognizing the humanity of everyone, especially those whose skins were not white, is so ingrained,” she said.

It was, not so much now. Cites are -- or were -- more cosmopolitan than ever, their have been set sides and aid programs to close gaps. We are not perfect in any way, but we are past what they call white supremacy and now liver under the $upremacy joo can not name.

The debate about the contradictions between the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s legacy of discrimination is not new. The Founders’ links to slavery have been acknowledged in many US classrooms for decades, if not deeply explored, and Jefferson’s radical words that “all men are created equal” have long carried an asterisk.

It’s a complicated question of historical legacy, and a painful one for Black people and others who have been marginalized in the national dialogue. Should the Founders be judged by their contemporaries or by current standards? Why were the statues of them erected, and what do they mean? Is it better to learn from the past instead of erasing it?

Should you be cutting them down while asking those questions they made possible for you to ask?

As for the past, you learn from it, you don't "unlearn" it. Unlearning something is a polite term for brainwashing. 

Besides, why do the Blacks (although most protesters are white) want to tear down the symbols that emphasize their complaint and cause? 

It's the same with the Red$kins thing. The removal of the name and logo diminish the attention on the cause.

“I think people confuse the past with history. The past is over and done with. History is about truth, or trying to find the truth,” said Catherine Allgor, president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, founded in 1791. “The questions change all the time, which is why people write history over and over again.”

Some history is not allowed to be rewritten.

Ancient Greeks and Romans often pulled down statues as a form of protest, she said, and during the American Revolution, statues of King George III were toppled from their pedestals. “Maybe the answer is we don’t put up statues to people,” Allgor said.

Robert Allison, a Suffolk University professor of American history, said any judgment on the Founders needs to consider the broad picture and the daring, aspirational nature of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, milestones in human history.

“The Founders are always fair game for reassessment — it’s what historians do,” Allison said, “but that is not what is happening now. We are watching a concerted effort to remove history, not to reinterpret it.”

Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration, was “a flawed human being,” Allison said, “but we also know he said these things, and it forces us to try to believe them.”

Who isn't flawed?

The words of Martin Luther King Jr. are instructive, Allison said. The great civil rights leader described the Declaration as “a promissory note” for the rights of all Americans, although King added that the country had defaulted on that note for citizens of color.

“You can’t really understand how far you have come, or where you are going, unless you understand where you have been,” Allison said.

They always leave out King's antiwar criticism of the government and the massive doses of violence it uses to solve its problems.

Understanding, if not reconciling, the flaws and contradictions of the Founders has always been challenging. Instead of tearing down statues, Allison proposed erecting new ones.

“Where are the statues of Lewis Hayden, Harriet Hayden, and Prince Hall?” he asked, referring to Black abolitionists who lived in Boston. ”Why haven’t we put up more monuments to those who have stood up? That’s been the missing step. It’s a lot easier to take something down than to put something up.”

Cruise missiles have been launched. 

Whoooooooooosh!

Otherwise, he mused, “the only statue we’re going to be left with is the giant pear in Everett Square” in Dorchester.

“It does seem we have reached a moment where we want to remove historical figures because they do not live up to our high standards,” Allison said. “The Founders understood their own failings.”

The more time that goes by, the more I realize how tremendous they were.

Comparing virtues and vices from different eras also is difficult, perhaps more so when academic interest in American history is declining. Fewer college students are interested in the subject, looking instead toward majors with better job prospects, Allison said, and in public schools, instruction in American history has dwindled.

If you don't know where you came from, you don't know who you are or where you are going.

What they did teach us was distortion anyway. I never saw the name Rothschild in them once.

Even the term Founding Fathers is being reassessed.

Nathaniel Sheidley, president of the organization that oversees the Old State House and Old South Meeting House, said that the term, long confined to the small group of white, propertied statesmen who created the United States, needs to be expanded.

“There were plenty of people who felt themselves on the outside looking in,” said Sheidley, whose organization, Revolutionary Spaces, commissioned ADEkoje’s play on Attucks. In their sweat and struggle, they were founders, too, he said.

“We should scrutinize those held up as the great shapers of our story and judge them as they were, but the most helpful thing is to add more voices,” Sheidley said.

Revolutionary Spaces had expected to amplify those voices this year — the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre — but then COVID-19 intervened.

Awwwww.

“We intended to build our programming around the Massacre, and to use the Massacre as an invitation to reflect on the intersection of race, citizenship, and memory,” Sheidley said.

“We planned to use the figure of Crispus Attucks as a lens, a figure that is spot-on with the questions we’re grappling with today,” he added. “What was he fighting for when he was standing on King Street that night, and how does he speak to us today?”

See jwho is controlling the narrative of our history?

The May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police brought new, searing relevance to ADEkoje’s play about Attucks, a two-person piece titled “I Am This Place.”

It was also used as a cover trigger for the wider agenda when the same thing was continuously happening in the country and not much was said -- nor is there any protest regarding the black-on-black murder.

“Suddenly, the first figure to fall in the Boston Massacre was trending on Twitter,” ADEkoje said of the references to Attucks following Floyd’s death. “The play is almost painfully significant, this idea of protest and the militarization of police.”

The play will be presented at the Old South Meeting House at a date to be determined by safety and other logistics. In the interim, questions about monuments, statues, and the realities of America’s past will continue.

For ADEkoje, that means putting the Revolutionary leaders in frank context rather than trying to erase them, and judging the bad with the good.

“Put these figures in a Museum of Painful History,” ADEkoje said. “What will we put back in place of these statues? Fill that space with a balm of equity and empowerment.”

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Let's all hope we have a history to argue about after COVID.

Here is the book on Trump:

"The book manuscript being drafted by President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen alleges that Trump has made racist comments about his predecessor Barack Obama and the late South African leader Nelson Mandela, according to court filings made public Monday night that contend Cohen was sent back to prison this month as retaliation for seeking to publish his memoir before November’s election. The lawsuit seeks Cohen’s immediate release from federal custody. He was rearrested July 9, less than two months after he was approved to serve the remainder of his sentence on home confinement because of the coronavirus pandemic. His attorneys allege that Cohen’s First Amendment rights were violated when he was detained at the federal courthouse in Manhattan during a meeting with probation officers, who had asked him to sign a gag order prohibiting him from speaking to the media or publishing a book while serving the rest of his sentence. Cohen’s suit names Attorney General William Barr and Federal Bureau of Prisons officials, in their official capacities. On Tuesday, the case was assigned to a US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York, but an initial hearing may take place....."

Hellerstein is strategically situated to squash 9/11 Truth, Epstein, and any other uncomfortable cases that come before him.

Related:

"Federal officers’ actions at protests in Oregon’s largest city, hailed by President Donald Trump but done without local consent, are raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis — one that could escalate as weeks of demonstrations find renewed focus in clashes with camouflaged, unidentified agents outside Portland’s U.S. courthouse. Demonstrators crowded in front of the U.S. federal courthouse and the city’s Justice Center late Monday night, before authorities cleared them out as the loud sound and light of flash bang grenades filled the sky. State and local authorities, who didn’t ask for federal help, are awaiting a ruling in a lawsuit filed late last week. State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in court papers that masked federal officers have arrested people on the street, far from the courthouse, with no probable cause and whisked them away in unmarked cars. Constitutional law experts said federal officers’ actions in the progressive city are a “red flag” in what could become a test case of states’ rights as the Trump administration expands federal policing. “The idea that there’s a threat to a federal courthouse and the federal authorities are going to swoop in and do whatever they want to do without any cooperation and coordination with state and local authorities is extraordinary outside the context of a civil war,” said Michael Dorf, a professor of constitutional law at Cornell University. “It is a standard move of authoritarians to use the pretext of quelling violence to bring in force, thereby prompting a violent response and then bootstrapping the initial use of force in the first place,” Dorf said....."

Although I oppose the Marxist anarchists who will be bailed out, I agree there. The tactics will eventually be used against all. When they came for the $ociali$ts, etc, and the events are being orchestrated for that very reason. The racial protesters are pawns if not worse.

"St. Louis’ top prosecutor on Monday charged a husband and wife with felony unlawful use of a weapon for displaying guns during a racial injustice protest outside their mansion. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who are white, are both personal injury attorneys in their 60s. Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner told The Associated Press that their actions risked creating a violent situation during an otherwise nonviolent protest last month. “It is illegal to wave weapons in a threatening manner — that is unlawful in the city of St. Louis,” Gardner said. An attorney for the couple, Joel Schwartz, in a statement called the decision to charge “disheartening as I unequivocally believe no crime was committed.” Gardner is recommending a diversion program such as community service rather than jail time if the McCloskeys are convicted....."

Whole world is upside down, proving we are living in Satanic times.

It's illegal to defend yourself from the lawless mob now, and yet the media whines:

"A police corporal accused of shooting three photojournalists with rubber pellets while they covered protests in Detroit against police brutality was charged with felony assault, prosecutors said Monday. Detroit Police Corporal Daniel Debono, 32, faces multiple counts of felonious assault for allegedly firing rubber pellets at the three photojournalists during a May protest, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said. Shortly after midnight on May 31 in downtown Detroit, MLive.com photojournalist Nicole Hester, 30, and two independent photojournalists, Seth Herald, 28, and Matthew Hatcher, 29, encountered Debono and two other officers. Each of the photojournalists was wearing press credentials, identified themselves as news media and raised their hands as they asked to cross the street, Worthy said. Debono, dressed in riot gear, struck all three with rubber pellets that inflicted bruises and other injuries....."

Looking to get rid of the men (and women) in blue, too, so their thugs can roam the street and enforce mob rule.

Where it all began:

"As a large, peaceful protest against police brutality and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement marched through downtown Seattle on Sunday afternoon, police said a separate, bat-wielding group showed up and began vandalizing businesses and injuring officers with fireworks. At least a dozen Seattle police officers were hurt, with one requiring treatment at a hospital, while the violent group of demonstrators also caused “a significant amount of property damage to government buildings and private businesses,” the Seattle Police Department said in a news release. Two protesters were arrested. Tara Lee, a spokesperson for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), told The Washington Post that the governor’s office would be “monitoring” the events in Seattle....." 

King Inslee is finally “aware of the developments and actively monitoring the situation.”

That must make Seattle feel safer as Trump’s thin, orange line is sparking alarm in cities (as it should).

Then, when you turn on the TV:

"As Trump Pushes Into Portland, His Campaign Ads Turn Darker" by Maggie Haberman, Nick Corasaniti and Annie Karni, New York Times  |  July 21, 2020

Darker ads, NYT? 

What are you trying to imply?

As President Trump deploys federal agents to Portland, Ore., and threatens to dispatch more to other cities, his re-election campaign is spending millions of dollars on several ominous television ads that promote fear and dovetail with his political message of “law and order.”

The influx of agents in Portland has led to scenes of confrontations and chaos that Mr. Trump and his White House aides have pointed to as they try to burnish a false narrative about Democratic elected officials allowing dangerous protesters to create widespread bedlam.

Well, the New York Times should know all about false narratives after Mueller, Afghanistan, and now regarding the alleged vaccine theft by Russia and China -- though government officials did not say they had evidence that such manipulation had occurred, however (translation: the report is war-mongering crap).

The Trump campaign is driving home that message with a new ad that tries to tie its dark portrayal of Democratic-led cities to Mr. Trump’s main rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr. — with exaggerated images intended to persuade viewers that lawless anarchy would prevail if Mr. Biden won the presidency. The ad simulates a break-in at the home of an older woman and ends with her being attacked while she waits on hold for a 911 call, as shadowy, dark intruders flicker in the background.

So far, the campaign has spent almost $20 million over the last 20 days on that ad and two other similar ones, more than Mr. Biden has spent on his total television budget in the same time frame, and a relatively large sum for this stage of the race. Though the ads predate the federal actions in Portland, they convey a common theme of lawlessness under Democratic leadership.

If the shoe fits! 

I mean, they kneeled down and and tacitly approved of them!

The focus of the Trump administration in recent days has been on Portland, where there have been nightly protests for weeks denouncing systemic racism in policing. In the last few days, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals, traveling in unmarked cars, have swooped protesters off the street without explaining why, in some cases detaining them and in other cases letting them go because they were not actually suspects. The protests have increased in size since the arrival of federal officials.

We are not close to the Soviet Union now; we ARE the former SOVIET UNION NOW!

Mr. Trump’s deployment of federal law enforcement is highly unusual: He is acting in spite of local opposition — city leaders are not asking for help — and his actions go beyond emergency steps taken by some past American leaders like President George H.W. Bush, who sent troops to quell Los Angeles in 1992 at the request of California officials.

The president has said he might next deploy federal agents to Chicago, and has listed other cities where similar enforcement could take place, including New York but also Philadelphia and Detroit, urban centers in two battleground states. White House officials said the deployments had grown out of meetings among administration officials after protests in Washington, D.C., in late May and early June.

Hey, if Democrat public officials can lockdown red electoral states, then Trump is only fighting back.

The White House has defended the recent measures. The most recent ad from the Trump campaign, depicting the break-in at a woman’s home, has a singular goal: terrifying the viewer into believing that claim.

How dare he, COVID PRE$$!!!

The same pre$$ that sold non-existent WMD to you, remember!?

The spot hews to Mr. Trump’s long-held preference for messages that promote fear and division.

I'm SICK of the POT-HOLLERING KETTLE PRE$$ and their self-projections!

Protests around the country have been largely peaceful, with spikes of conflict usually arising in clashes with law enforcement. While polls show that a majority of voters support the Black Lives Matter movement, Mr. Trump and some of his advisers are counting on a backlash, so far nonexistent, with white voters in the fall that will boost the president’s numbers.

Look at them rewrite history!

Related:

"A majority of Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement and a record 69 percent say black people and other minorities are not treated as equal to white people in the criminal justice system, but the public generally opposes calls to shift some police funding to social services or remove statues of Confederate generals or presidents who enslaved people, a Washington Post-ABC News poll finds. These findings underscore the mixed fallout after the brutal killing of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police in May. There is increased public scrutiny of police treatment of black Americans, but less unity on broader questions about how to address the country’s treatment of black Americans since its founding. Stark divisions exist between different racial groups and among varied political identities, not surprisingly given the high profile that President Trump has taken in fanning opposition to Black Lives Matter protesters. The share of Americans saying that black people and other minorities do not receive equal treatment in the criminal justice system has risen by 15 percentage points from 2014 — and this year marks the first time a majority of whites has held this view....."

Oh, the American people are against a better path forward for America, according to the despicable scum and cretin John Kasich, who is comparing himself to John Lewis now.

“Clearly what they’re looking to do here is scare the living hell out of seniors,” said Pia Carusone, a Democratic ad maker, but, she said, the new Trump ad falls short in the realm of believability. “You’re making the assumption that the voter that you’re hoping to convince is going to relate and think that this could happen, and then you have to make the leap to blame Biden or the Democrats or whoever, and I think it fails that first test.”

What is not in the realm of believability is anything the New York Times reports, as they claim Trump has failed the leadership test.

Stuart Stevens, a Republican strategist who now works with the anti-Trump group known as the Lincoln Project, said Mr. Trump’s team was focusing on an issue that doesn’t rank at the top of voter concerns. “I’d bet a lot that the actress they hired for this is more worried about Covid-19 than a phony threat about cops,” Mr. Stevens said......

That's it, show's over, and he's wrong. The people care more about their own safety than some invisible enemy whose symptoms are mild if not nonexistent.

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Related:

Even in video games, politics and race divide

They are being infused with politically correct propaganda that doesn't allow them to breathe.

Never mind that he was intoxicated, and thankfully Trump doesn't drink.

"Antifeminist identified as suspect in killing of son of federal judge in N.J." by Nicole Hong and William K. Rashbaum New York Times, July 21, 2020

A lawyer who was a self-described antifeminist was identified by federal authorities as the gunman who shot into the New Jersey home of a federal judge, killing her son and wounding her husband.

New York State Police found the lawyer’s body in upstate New York, near the town of Liberty, on Monday morning, hours after the shooting late Sunday afternoon at the home of the judge, Esther Salas of US District Court in New Jersey. The authorities believe that the lawyer died from a self-inflected gunshot wound, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the matter.

Federal authorities said the lawyer was Roy Den Hollander, who in 2015 brought a lawsuit before Salas that challenged the male-only military draft.

This incident is already stinking.

The class action lawsuit accused the Selective Service System, the independent government agency that maintains a database of Americans eligible for a potential draft, of violating women’s equal protection rights by requiring only men to register with the service. Salas ruled that the lawsuit could proceed, and the case is ongoing.

Den Hollander had also sued nightclubs for offering ladies’ night discounts and Columbia University for offering courses on women’s studies.

As part of the investigation into the lawyer’s death, police found a package that was addressed to Salas, according to another law enforcement official briefed on the matter.

“There’s a pretty good level of confidence he’s the guy,” the official said.

Yeah, that solves this case!

Federal and local authorities had been carrying out an intense search Monday for the gunman, canvassing the neighborhood while looking for witnesses and surveillance video, according to law enforcement officials.

Authorities believe that somebody dressed in a FedEx uniform was in the neighborhood around the time of the shooting, but it could not be determined if that person was the gunman, one of the officials said.

Don't the trust the truck!

In an interview, Carlos Salas described an account of the shooting that he said was provided to him by federal authorities. Esther Salas presided over a wide range of cases. Last week, she was assigned to oversee a class-action lawsuit filed by a group of investors against Deutsche Bank, contending that the firm failed to flag questionable transactions that were made from the account of financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in August while in jail awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

I'm sorry, what was that?

She would have been looking into the money in the Epstein case, huh?

Hmmmm.

In 2014, she sentenced two married stars of the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” television show to prison time after the couple pleaded guilty to fraud charges. In 2016, she also sentenced a heroin supplier for the Grape Street Crips Gang to 15 years in prison. Salas, 51, is the first Hispanic woman to serve as a federal judge in New Jersey. President Barack Obama nominated her to the US District Court for New Jersey in 2010.....

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Related:

Alleged Salas Family Assailant Previously Worked for US/Israeli Intelligence-Linked Firm

No kidding?!

"Federal investigators are examining whether a suspect in the ambush shooting of US Judge Esther Salas’ family in New Jersey also killed a fellow men’s rights lawyer in California, a law enforcement official said. The federal agents are trying to determine whether Roy Den Hollander, who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound the day after an attack that killed the judge’s son and wounded her husband, had any role in the killing earlier this month of Marc Angelucci. Angelucci, like Den Hollander, was involved in lawsuits alleging gender discrimination against men. He was shot to death July 11 at his home in San Bernardino County. The official cautioned the investigation was in its early stages and federal officials were working with local homicide detectives. In both cases, the suspect appeared to pose as a delivery driver, the official said. Investigators are also examining Den Hollander’s financial and travel records, as well as misogynistic screeds he posted online, said the official, who could not discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Den Hollander, 72, described himself as an “anti-feminist” attorney."

That's the best they could come up with for a cover story, and talk about total obfuscation!

Looks like a HIT JOB to PROTECT certain information, and that is why we have a ZOG.

Also see:

Planned Parenthood in N.Y. Disavows Margaret Sanger Over Eugenics

Abortion IS racist!

"The Walt Disney Co. said in an internal memo Monday that it had cut ties with a top ABC News executive after an investigation backed complaints that she had made racist remarks in the workplace. The executive, Barbara Fedida, 52, had worked at ABC for most of her roughly two-decade career, save for a five-year stint as the head of talent development at CBS News from 2006 to 2011. As the senior vice president of talent relations and business affairs at ABC News, she had a hand in selecting on-air talent for programs like “Good Morning America,” “ABC World News Tonight With David Muir,” and “Nightline.” Last month HuffPost reported that Fedida had made insensitive statements, including racist comments, at work. During a salary negotiation with “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts, who is Black, Fedida said the company was not asking her to “pick cotton,” according to the article."

At least she didn't get physical:

"Jide Zeitlin, the chief executive of Tapestry and one of only four Black chief executives in the Fortune 500, resigned on Tuesday. The unexpected move came after the company’s board was made aware of a misconduct allegation involving Mr. Zeitlin and hired a law firm to investigate, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Though Tapestry, which owns Coach and Kate Spade, announced that Mr. Zeitlin was stepping down for “personal reasons,” he later acknowledged in a statement that the exit was related to a past relationship. “In the past month, a woman I photographed and had a relationship with more than 10 years ago reached out to various media organizations to express her concerns about what had occurred,” Mr. Zeitlin said in the statement. “I felt compelled to resign today because I do not want to create a distraction for Tapestry, a company I care deeply about.” The Wall Street Journal reported on the statement earlier Tuesday."

They are now going after Tucker and Hannity, to the point of encouraging violence.

UPDATES:

"A 23-year-old University of Connecticut student who is accused of killing two men and committing numerous other crimes while leading authorities on a six-day search, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to murder and other charges. Peter Manfredonia, who is being held in lieu of a $7 million bond, waived his right to a probable cause hearing on the murder charge during a hearing in Superior Court. He is due back before a judge on October 2. He elected to have a jury trial. Manfredonia also is charged with criminal attempt to commit murder, assault, home invasion, kidnapping with a firearm, robbery, larceny, stealing a firearm and assault on an elderly person. Additional charges are expected. The murder charge stems from the death of Ted DeMers, of Willington, who police said was killed with a Samauri sword outside his home on May 22. It’s not clear why Manfredonia was in DeMers’ neighborhood, but a female acquaintance of Manfredonia’s who lives near DeMers’ home told police she stopped seeing him after learning on March 18 that he had hacked into her social media accounts, police said. She had considered getting a restraining order against Manfredonia, police said. According to state police, the University of Connecticut senior then went to another man’s home, held him hostage for about 24 hours, stole his guns and truck and drove about 70 miles southwest to Derby. On May 24, police found Manfredonia’s high school friend, Nicholas Eisele, 23, shot to death in his Derby home. Authorities believe Manfredonia killed him and then forced Eisele’s girlfriend into her car and fled the state. Manfredonia was captured on May 27 in Maryland....."

"A 78-year-old man was allegedly drunk behind the wheel for the fifth time Saturday night in Quincy when he crashed his car into a 72-year-old man in a wheelchair, killing him, police said Monday. In a statement, Quincy police identified the suspect as David Bowering. His lawyer didn’t immediately return voice and e-mail messages seeking comment....."

He had a valid license.

Protecting Your Paycheck

You will never gue$$ who it is:

"Banks brace for millions of small-business loan requests as Trump coronavirus plan is put to test" by David J. Lynch Washington Post, April 1, 2020

Man, have they ever been all over my Globe today.

WASHINGTON — A crush of loan applications could swamp the Trump administration’s effort to speed money to cash-strapped small businesses, complicating hopes of keeping tens of millions of Americans employed during the coronavirus shutdown, according to lenders and analysts.

Americans should be used to crushed hopes by now, and it's the souls that are next.

The administration is racing to get new ‘‘paycheck protection’’ loans approved in time to head off fresh layoffs by Main Street businesses at a time of soaring unemployment. In a notable departure, the Small Business Administration will delegate to the nation’s banks — including some of the perceived villains of the last financial crisis — authority to make $349 billion in new loans.

Only perceived villains, not real ones. Forget the mismanagement and misbehavior that led to them playing both sides of the fence before parachuting out with profits and loot. Now they will be in charge of who gets $350 billion in loot.

The program, part of the $2 trillion financial rescue legislation that President Trump signed on Friday, offers small businesses 100 percent government-guaranteed loans, which will be forgiven if the company retains the workforce it had before the pandemic.

I was starting to have reservations before he signed that piece of legi$lootive extortion, and now I'm convinced it's a mon$tro$ity.


President Trump signed the $2 trillion stimulus bill into law. (Pool/Photographer: Pool/Getty Images)

Damn criminals, each and every one of them, and you gotta love the social distancing, no?

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has promised a ‘‘very, very easy’’ process with banks starting to make loans on Friday, the first day applications can be submitted, but for the rapid-fire effort to succeed, the government must distribute in a matter of weeks more than 15 times as much money as the SBA issued through its main loan program in all of last year. 

Loans to do what? Who will meet the criteria for it? What if it can't be paid back? 

How is more debt, more loans going to help any but those who caused the crisis, deflated the economy, and who now stand to profit tremendously?

‘‘I can’t imagine, given the size of the program, that banks are going to be able to get this out as quickly as Treasury wants, but it’s the best option they have,’’ said Brian Gardner, managing director at the investment banking firm Keefe Bruyette & Woods.

What is he saying, the banks will be sitting on the capital?

With large swaths of the economy essentially closed by government edict, countless small companies are growing desperate for funds, even as many bankers say they lack the detailed guidance needed to administer the loans. Some lenders that are new to working with the SBA could struggle with staffing and software problems once they are approved to join the program in early April.

That is, you know, the hallmark of a dictatorship. Edicts.

Paycheck protection is the cornerstone of the administration’s effort to avoid repeating the mistakes Washington made in responding to the 2008 financial crisis. Generous bank bailouts and only scattered aid for homeowners incited bipartisan populist anger for appearing to favor Wall Street over Main Street. This time, Trump officials want to make sure that the policy response is seen to benefit average Americans more than corporate elites — and that is focusing attention on the nation’s banks.

They want it to be $een that way, but it won't be seen that way. Not when you impoverish a country and destroy people's lives and dreams to enrich the same criminal cla$$ you did before. and it sadly will not likely matter.

‘‘It’s really up to the banks to step up and get that cash to Main Street,’’ said Tom Sullivan, vice president of small-business policy for the US Chamber of Commerce.

That's where the print copy ended, and by reaction in the margin was a big UH-OH!

Business owners across the country are besieging bankers for loan information. On Monday, the National Federation of Independent Business, an industry group, had 13,000 members join an online meeting about the program. If borrower demand exhausts the $349 billion, the administration will ask Congress for more, Mnuchin has said.

Those printing pre$$ motors are going to burn out at that rate.

‘‘We’re inundated with everything from hairdressers to hardware stores to multimillion-dollar businesses,’’ said Cynthia Blankenship, corporate president of Bank of the West. ‘‘We expect to be flooded with requests, and we’re seeing that already.’’

The Grapevine, Texas-based lender has fielded calls from about 50 of its small-business clients asking to delay loan payments during the shutdown.

‘‘There’s a real desire to get it done, but the problem is, it isn’t as easy as it looks,’’ Blankenship said of the paycheck program, adding that verifying even the stripped-down paperwork could take time. Some banks may be turned off by the 0.5 percent interest rate that the standardized loans will carry, she said.

I don't think Americans are going to be in the mood to hear that, sickness be damned! If you are going to take it all away, fuck it. I'm sure a few of you will be taken along with it. The ma$ters won't care. You serve them and are disposable.

To arrest the economy’s slide, the paycheck aid must move faster than typical government programs, officials said. One-quarter of the nation’s small businesses can survive just 13 days before exhausting their cash reserves, according to a 2016 JPMorgan Chase Institute study.

Then they are already dead.

‘‘These programs don’t do any good for Americans three or four months from now,’’ Mnuchin told Fox Business on Monday.

They won't do any good weeks from now, either!

See: The list of who won’t get a $1,200 stimulus check is growing

The Washington ComPost reports that "Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said direct deposits should begin by April 17, followed by checks in the mail, but millions of other Americans are realizing that they don’t qualify for a coronavirus relief check. Most high school seniors and college students won’t get any money. The bill gives nothing to families for their children older than 16, a shock to many households already reeling from canceled graduations, and college students readjusting to life at home with so many universities shut down. Many immigrant families are also learning that they are ineligible.

Related: Some in US may not get stimulus checks until August

That is an April Fool's Joke, right?

Administration officials said they had streamlined the loan application process by abandoning the SBA’s customary requirement for borrowers to post collateral or offer a personal guarantee. Companies with fewer than 500 workers are eligible to participate and can apply by completing a two-page form, which is available at sba.gov.

The banks will not be expected to assess a borrower’s ability to repay the loan, only to establish that the business was operational on Feb. 15, said the officials, who briefed reporters on the condition that they not be identified by name.

Oh, no. This is a recipe for further disaster, and are they going to come back and want the money back like they did after Superstorm Sandy?

The SBA’s only role will be to verify that the borrower has not already received a paycheck loan, leaving the approval, disbursement, and servicing of the transaction to the financial institutions.

One senior administration official said the banks are bracing for ‘‘millions of applications’’ on Friday. ‘‘It’s going to depend on the banks,’’ said a second official, who added that loans could be approved ‘‘almost in real time.’’

Where, where?

This is crazy, folks. 

We are in the HANDS of the BANKS!

The administration is trying to move quickly as parts of the economy crumble. On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs cut its forecast, saying the economy will shrink in the second quarter at an annualized 34 percent rate before rebounding. Unemployment will spike to 15 percent by midyear, the bank’s economists wrote in a client note, up from 3.5 percent in February. In comparison, the jobless rate reached 10 percent during the depths of the Great Recession in October 2009.

HOLY $HIT!

--more--"

Also see: Tho$e Needing Protection

They need it more than do you.

Related:

"US companies shed 27,000 jobs in March, according to a private survey, a figure that mostly reflected the economy as it stood before the full impact of the viral outbreak. Payroll processor ADP said small businesses took the biggest hit, losing 90,000 jobs, while medium-sized and large companies still added workers. Economists forecast that much larger job losses, probably in the millions, will be reported in the coming months. March’s figures are the first monthly job loss reported by ADP since Hurricanes Harvey and Irma slammed Texas and much of the southeast in September 2017. Just one month ago, ADP said that businesses gained a solid 179,000 jobs in February. On Friday, the government will issue its monthly jobs report, which is expected to show a loss of about 150,000 jobs, according to FactSet. That will snap a record-long streak of 113 straight months of hiring."

They are hiring at Amazon:

"Amazon’s hiring boom packed applicants into job fairs with no special precautions" by Spencer Soper and Matt Day Bloomberg News, April 1, 2020

On Mar. 18, a laid-off customer-service representative for one of the airline companies attended an Amazon.com Inc. employee orientation in Dallas. He found himself packed into a room with about 70 other applicants, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder to watch a PowerPoint presentation about what it’s like to work for the online retailer.

The man, who provided a smartphone photo to document his experience, said the event was exactly like one he attended last year for a seasonal holiday job with Amazon. In other words, there were no special precautions to keep attendees safe from the coronavirus. When the man raised concerns about the crowded conditions, he said an Amazon manager mocked him and a fellow recruit sneered.

“They made jokes and told me to leave if I was unhappy,” he said, adding that one manager said Amazon’s operations were exempt from the rules because the company is considered an essential service. “They didn’t care one tiny bit.” The former customer rep took the job but still worries about getting sick.

It's almost as if they know something you do not, and do employees know that Bezos sold $3.4 billion in stock just before Covid-19 collapse.

Amazon also ignored official social-distancing guidelines at mid-March events near Portland, Oregon, and in Kenosha, Wisc., according to two applicants. A fourth person who attended an Amazon job fair in West Jefferson, Ohio, said she was sent home and asked to return another day because the gathering was too crowded, suggesting precautionary measures are in place at least at some events or Amazon is changing its practices.

The absence of social distancing at Amazon hiring events recently made the rounds on social media. One user tweeted photos he said were taken at recent recruiting event in Los Angeles. Another complained on Twitter that the event she attended, where people were in close proximity on a line, wasn’t safe. She didn’t disclose the location. Bloomberg was unable to reach those people.

The location disclosure will one day be mandatory, and judging from the photo above, the guidelines have yet to reach the oval office.

In an e-mailed statement, Amazon said it has updated its recruiting practices to avoid large crowds and keep applicants safe, but it declined to say precisely when it made the change.

“These situations occurred two weeks ago and we’ve since moved all new hire events and orientations to virtual platforms,” Amazon spokeswoman Lindsay Campbell said. “Any situation in which teams don’t follow social distancing guidelines are immediately investigated.”

Amazon is widely seen as an indispensable service amid the pandemic, providing such essentials as food, cleaning supplies, and medicine. That hasn’t stopped critics from accusing the company of putting customers ahead of its warehouse workers. These employees aren’t simply handling essential goods but also processing returns and packing toys, clothes, and cosmetics. As more COVID-19 cases are confirmed among Amazon’s warehouse workforce, demonstrations and walkouts have erupted in the United States and Europe along with demands from lawmakers and regulators for the company to improve working conditions.

Most of us are non-essential, and could that recalcitrant workforce be an unforeseen con$equence?

On Monday, workers staged a walkout at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, where three more cases were reported Tuesday evening; they called for the facility to be shut down for cleaning. Hours later, workers at a Chicago depot picketed outside their facility, and in Romulus, outside Detroit, on Wednesday, a group of Amazon employees lined the sidewalk of their warehouse, complaining about a lack of transparency from management and beseeching chief executive Jeff Bezos to shut it down.

The machines can't come fast enough.

Amazon has lauded the bravery of its workers delivering essentials during the crisis and said it’s protecting them through social distancing requirements and stepped-up cleaning.

With the economy imploding, many Americans are willing to toil at an Amazon warehouse. Almost 4 in 10 would have difficulty covering a sudden $400 emergency expense, according to a survey on economic health released in May by the Federal Reserve, highlighting the precarious financial condition of many hourly workers living paycheck to paycheck. A record-breaking 3.3 million people filed jobless claims in the week ending March 21, and experts say unemployment could top 30 percent, five points higher than the Great Depression’s jobless peak.

Amazon’s March 16 announcement that it would be hiring and boosting pay represents a lifeline to thousands of people who have lost their livelihoods in the travel, leisure and hospitality industries. “There are very few jobs right now, and millions of people are going to want them,” said Fred Goff, who runs Jobcase, a job search and networking site for hourly workers. “Amazon was ahead of the curve with $15 an hour and announced temporary raises. They’re not going to have a problem hiring people.”

And what to do with the rest?

In its initial rush to hire 100,000 people to meet surging demand from customers fearful of visiting physical stores, Amazon dusted off its holiday season recruiting playbook: holding events with lines snaking through hallways and crowds packed into meeting rooms to watch videos, submit identification, and fill out paperwork. The practices violate official COVID-19 safety guidelines, which include avoiding large gatherings and maintaining at least six feet of distance from others.

Are they not even going to get fined?

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Breana Avelar (left), a processing assistant, and family members protested outside the Amazon DTW1 fulfillment center in Romulus, Mich., Wednesday. They say the company is failing to protect the health of its employees amid the COVID-19 outbreak. (Paul Sancya/Associated Press/Associated Press)

What will they do when the scab robots cross the "line?"

Maybe you get a job at NETA:

"Two employees of pot firm NETA test positive for coronavirus, making workers question protocol; State regulators say they’re looking into allegations" by Dan Adams Globe Staff, April 1, 2020

State marijuana regulators said Wednesday they are “looking into” allegations that one of the state’s biggest cannabis firms, New England Treatment Access, is failing to adequately protect its workers from the coronavirus, after employees at two of its facilities tested positive for COVID-19.

NETA, best known for its popular Brookline dispensary, confirmed that a worker at its large cultivation and processing center in Franklin and another at its Northampton dispensary were diagnosed this week with the deadly, fast-spreading disease. The Franklin facility, where the company grows various strains of cannabis and processes the plants into edibles and other products, employs more than 400 people.

The death rate is lower than seasonal flu, the authorities are presenting modeled simulation numbers as real, but the virus will be like a fungus on the cannabis business.

The sick Franklin employee, “whom we will continue to support in every way we can, practiced excellent public health and social responsibility by self-identifying symptoms, notifying their manager upon feeling ill, pursuing COVID-19 testing, taking appropriate hygienic precautions, and self-quarantining," a NETA spokesman said in a statement, adding that the Northampton worker had done the same.

While recreational marijuana sales have been shuttered by Governor Charlie Baker because of the coronavirus pandemic, medical marijuana operators such as NETA (which also serves the recreational market) have been allowed to continue to serve registered patients as an “essential” healthcare business.

Say goodbye to legal recreational, and now they know who you are!

NETA said that, per state protocols, local boards of health and the state Department of Public Health had been notified of the positive test, and insisted there was no chance the Franklin worker had contaminated products made by NETA.

The spokesman also said the company was protecting workers appropriately, including by hiring a contractor to “deep-clean” the Franklin building after learning of the sick employee, and that many employees had told management they agreed NETA’s efforts were sufficient.

However, a number of workers at the Franklin facility told the Globe that they are worried they could have been exposed to their ill coworker, including at a building-wide appreciation breakfast last week at which numerous employees were served French toast from a common table.

Workers also said the company’s social distancing guidelines are only sporadically enforced, or impractical. They described employees frequently working side-by-side and small locker rooms crowded with a dozen or more workers changing in and out of their uniforms.

The workers questioned the extent of the “deep-cleaning,” saying the facility was operated uninterrupted despite the worker’s diagnosis.

“We’ve been telling management for weeks that they have to do something about it,” said one cultivator at the Franklin building, who requested anonymity because he fears losing his job for speaking out. “We’re all piled on top of each other here. They’re more worried about money than the health of their employees and patients."

Make me wonder if he even exists at all. I put nothing past the Globe (he still writes for them).

“I don’t want to see people die because of the negligence of this company,” the cultivator added. “It’s really disheartening that I have to say that, but here I am.”

I guess he doesn't use the product, huh? Or is he just paranoid?

Asked whether managers had taken steps to identify workers who may have been in close contact with the sick Franklin employee, NETA initially said, “the local health department is the agency that identifies, with the [sick patient], any close contacts.” The company also reiterated that it has encouraged workers with symptoms to stay home (though COVID-19 patients may be simultaneously asymptomatic and contagious).

However, the company later said managers were “in touch with the employee’s co-workers who worked closely with the employee who tested positive, and they are being asked to self-quarantine.” Another group of workers that had “close contact” with the sick Northampton dispensary employee are also self-quarantining.

A spokeswoman for the Cannabis Control Commission, which regulates both medical and recreational marijuana operators, said it is "deeply concerned about COVID-19’s threats to patients, customers, employees, agency staff, and all residents of the Commonwealth. We are aware of the complaint and looking into it.”

The commission had urged marijuana companies to let sick employees stay home, step up sanitization efforts, switch to pre-orders only at their retail dispensaries, and strictly enforce distancing guidelines between and among employees and customers.

Barbara Carrapichano, a 30-year-old patient adviser at NETA’s Brookline dispensary, said the company has failed to provide masks or protective partitions to prevent transmission of COVID-19 between workers there and the medical marijuana patients they serve, some of whom have compromised immune systems.

Do you know how hard it is to get that stuff?

In addition to better protective gear, she and other workers who spoke with the Globe want NETA managers to communicate virus-related protocols better, check employees’ temperatures before they clock in, more thoroughly sanitize shared equipment such as computers, and keep workers apart, among other efforts.

“We see enough people that we could be a vector for this [virus] to spread exponentially,” Carrapichano said. “NETA has not set up an adequate response whatsoever. I have an auto-immune disorder myself and I’m putting myself at risk every time I walk through those doors. My biggest concern is the people — everyone involved."

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Related:

"Big Tobacco is one of the sectors that’s sticking to its forecasts as the coronavirus outbreak hardly dents cigarette demand — and may be leading to smokers lighting up on the job when they work at home. Imperial Tobacco, the maker of Kool cigarettes, said Tuesday the outbreak has had no material impact on its business and that current trading remains in line with expectations. British American Tobacco, whose brands include Lucky Strike and Kent, said something similar two weeks ago, when it reiterated its 2020 guidance. The resilience of an industry based on the addictiveness of nicotine contrasts with other sectors, such as alcoholic drinks and confectionery. Cigarette consumption levels are likely to remain robust as quarantined consumers may face boredom and forms of stress or anxiety, and as tobacconists stay open alongside essential shops like grocery stores and pharmacies in countries such as France."

Yeah, you can get booze and liquor but not pot.

(exhale)

"Of all the automakers that are recalling dangerous Takata air bag inflators, Mercedes is the laggard when it comes to getting repairs done. The German automaker ranks last of 16 companies tracked by the US government, finishing repairs in 40.1 percent of its recalled vehicles. All other companies are above 57 percent, with Honda leading at 88.8 percent, followed by Jaguar-Land Rover at 83.8 percent, according to an analysis of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data."

(Cough, cough, cough)

"Automakers reported a plunge in new-vehicle sales as fear of the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders kept consumers from dealerships, adding to the troubles of the country’s largest manufacturing sector. General Motors said sales fell 7 percent in the first quarter and Fiat Chrysler said first-quarter sales fell 10 percent. Both companies said a significant decline in March offset strong sales in January and February. In addition, Hyundai reported a 42 percent drop in US sales in March, and Mercedes-Benz had a 50 percent decline. Other automakers will report monthly and quarterly totals later on Wednesday. ALG, a company that tracks trends in auto sales, estimated that industrywide March sales fell 37 percent from a year ago."

They are making ventilators now anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5FPPoLqkCk

Finally, the family home now looming in his headlights:

"A measure to stop evictions starts moving on Beacon Hill, but both housing advocates and landlords say the legislation doesn’t go far enough" by Tim Logan Globe Staff, April 1, 2020

The state Senate is poised to vote soon on a bill that would stop many evictions in Massachusetts during the coronavirus crisis, but advocates for both tenants and landlords say the legislation doesn’t go far enough to deal with the challenges facing many renters.

A key Senate committee voted unanimously on Tuesday night to advance the bill, which would block many court-ordered evictions for 90 days and prevent landlords from charging late fees for missed rent payments tied to the COVID-19 crisis. It could go before the full Senate by next week, and, if approved, would then go to the House and — assuming passage in that chamber ― to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk.

How long will that take, and will you still have a home by then?

“We’re trying to keep people in their homes,” said Senator Brendan Crighton, who is leading the bill’s push in the Senate. “It’s a public health issue right now. We can’t be telling people, ‘Stay in your homes,' and on the other hand be pushing them out into the street.”

Well, we have been ordered into them.

The measure arrives as April rent checks are due for many tenants across the state, and amid growing cries for help from community groups and advocates who fear the coronavirus crisis and resulting widespread job loss could put thousands of families at risk of losing their homes. In that context, said Lisa Owens, executive director of the Boston-based tenant advocacy group City Life/Vida Urbana, the measure falls short.

Why can't they wait like the rest of us?

Practically speaking, most evictions are on hold. State housing courts are only hearing emergency cases until at least April 22. A more aggressive bill, filed last month in the House, would institute a full moratorium on evictions for as long as Massachusetts is under a state of emergency. It was referred on Monday to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Housing.

Oh, that can't last then.

Landlord groups have blasted that measure, which they say could create criminal penalties for landlords who initiate eviction proceedings. The Senate bill, one group said Wednesday, is more palatable, even if it fails to address the root of the region’s looming rental crisis: The fact that many people simply won’t be able to pay their rent until the economy recovers.

Maybe some $lumlords should be penalized.

“Long-term, we’re going to deal with the aftermath,” said Doug Quattrochi, executive director of MassLandlords. “Under this, when the state of emergency ends, you can start evicting people again. But I don’t think anyone expects the economy will just go back to the way it was before. It’ll take years for people to get back on their feet.”

One possible solution, Quattrochi said, could be state funding to cover unpaid rent. That would protect tenants from eviction while providing landlords with income. His group is trying to rally support for that idea on Beacon Hill, though no legislation has yet been filed. Other groups, including the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations — which represents nonprofit affordable housing developers — are calling for boosts to state rental assistance programs.

Then the millionaires better start paying up because the rest of us won't be able to fund it. We will be needing it.

“We also want to make sure that we don’t have a wave of evictions the moment the moratorium is lifted,” wrote Joe Kreisberg, president of MACDC, in an e-mail.

Crighton acknowledged that not everyone is satisfied with the Senate bill, but he said it’s an effort at consensus that can pass quickly, far faster than the typically years-long process involved in getting a law through on Beacon Hill.

Yeah, it's amazing how they can get things done when needed.

“We recognize the urgency of situation,” he said. “Not everyone is going to be 100 percent happy with this, but we need to keep people in their homes.”

That is their overriding concern, to keep you imprisoned in there.

--more--"


Renters' rights groups rallied outside the State House in January. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff/The Boston Globe)

It's also a coronavirus free-zone, isn't it?

"Loan applications to purchase homes declined for a third straight week to the lowest since November 2016 as coronavirus mitigation efforts stymied house hunting. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s purchase index dropped 10.8 percent in the period that ended March 27 after tumbling 14.6 percent — the worst two weeks since May 2010, data from the Washington-based group showed Wednesday."

The Globe says renters and homeowners need immediate protections, and look who rids to the re$cue:

"Bank of America said it has agreed to allow 50,000 mortgage customers to defer payments for three months because they’ve lost income as a result of the pandemic. The borrowers have all kinds of home loans, including some that are not federally backed, said Bill Halldin, a spokesman for Bank of America. To qualify for the government forbearance program, passed last week by Congress as part of the stimulus package, homeowners must contact their lenders and request help. It’s for people who have a hardship because of COVID-19, but it doesn’t require proof."

The most vulnerable amongst us:

"Anticipating surge, Boston area facilities moving residents and patients to set up coronavirus recovery centers; Spaulding, AdviniaCare join effort to relieve burden on hospitals" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff, April 1, 2020

As hospitals brace for a surge in coronavirus patients in the coming weeks, two Boston-area health care facilities are racing to repurpose their operations to admit recovering COVID-19 patients too sick to go home or return to senior care residences.

That's going to be the narrative, and thanks for the warning.

Spaulding Hospital in Cambridge and the AdviniaCare nursing home in Wilmington are moving more than 130 nursing home residents and rehab patients to other sites. The goal is to create dedicated space for COVID-19 patients who are discharged from Boston area hospitals, yet who may still be contagious and in need of oxygen, physical therapy, and other support, but the relocations are already prompting protests from advocates and the families of residents of these facilities, who say the plans may traumatize and endanger fragile seniors.

All part of the Trauma-based Mind Control Psychological Operation, and people are naturally fighting back.

Four groups that advocate for nursing home residents are calling for a halt to the transfers, which are among the first of an expected wave of such consolidations of patients and nursing home residents statewide. In a letter Tuesday night to Massachusetts Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders they objected to the plans and demanded a meeting with state officials.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Arlene Germain, policy director of the Massachusetts Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. “It’s like an eviction. I don’t see the need. There are so many options in Massachusetts with dormitories, athletic fields and empty nursing homes. It’s a recipe for disaster,” but nursing homes are under pressure to help hospitals and segregate healthy residents from recovering COVID-19 patients.

The evil state puppets and their ma$ters simply do not care!

AdviniaCare in Wilmington is the first nursing home in the Boston area to agree to become a recovery center and will begin moving its residents out of the 142-bed facility to other sites in the next few days. Chris Hannon, chief operating officer of the Wilmington nursing home’s parent company, Norwood-based Pointe Group Care, said the decision was not easy to make, but it seemed necessary.

“We understand the challenges it presents to residents and families," he said, "but we felt it was the best and only decision we could make given the insurmountable health crisis.”

It's insurmountable? 

Then LET'S ALL GO OUTSIDE and CONGREGATE!

AdviniaCare disclosed the move late Tuesday night, only hours after the operator of the state’s first planned recovery center, Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center in Worcester, acknowledged that a resident it was preparing to move had tested positive for the virus.

Plans to complete Beaumont’s relocation of 147 residents have been delayed as the patient remains isolated there while others on the same floor are tested for the novel coronavirus.....

--more--"


Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center began moving its residents this week so the facility could become a recovery center for COVID-19 cases, but stopped when a person tested positive for coronavirus. A second facility, AdviniaCare, announced late Tuesday it would begin moving its patients to make room for COVID-19 patients. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff).

Where are they taking them (ever see Soylent Green?), and believe it or not, this page A1 article says:

"Precisely how many outbreaks are underway at places that house the state’s most vulnerable residents — or where — is unknown, because the state so far has declined to release that information, leaving families and the public in the dark, even as the facilities block access to visitors. Asked about the lack of reporting, state officials said they are now working to make the information public....."

Another WTF moment!


A sign in an upper floor window at the Jack Satter House in Revere, where five residents have died in a coronavirus outbreak. The state says it is working to release information about COVID-19 cases at facilities that house and care for seniors. (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

Oh, now I'm convinced of the veracity of this cowflop as the doctors argue that in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, we must have those serious illness conversations:

"Braemoor Health Center is a modest nursing home in Brockton, licensed to care for 120 residents, but Larry Lipschutz, who owns the property, was able to wring $1.8 million in pay out of it last year, according to state records. His son, Avi “Zisha” Lipschutz, who holds the state license to run the nursing home, extracted nearly $900,000 from Braemoor as payments to a realty company and four management firms he owns. As the owners were taking hundreds of thousands of dollars out of Braemoor, the nursing home racked up three and a half times as many health and safety problems as the state average, federal documents show. Over the past year, a portrait has emerged of substandard care in many of the nursing homes run by Braemoor’s owner, Synergy Health Centers. Poor treatment of patients’ festering pressure sores. Medication errors. Inadequate staff training. Now, a Globe investigation shows that as father and son were paying themselves handsomely, Synergy apparently provided false information when applying for nursing home licenses. Synergy’s cofounders, through their public relations firm, declined to respond to a detailed list of questions about the company’s operations and owners. Requests for interviews made in person at the company’s New Jersey headquarters and with a company lawyer went unanswered. Three former Synergy employees describe Zisha Lipschutz as an ardent New England Patriots fan and high-energy boss. One former employee and one current worker said Lipschutz would rally his managers during meetings by quoting or showing scenes from “Mad Men,” a TV series about a 1960s-era Madison Avenue advertising firm. The former employees and the current employee declined to be identified because they still work in the nursing home industry and said they feared that being identified could affect their careers. The related management and realty companies associated with the nursing homes Zisha Lipschutz and Newmark co-own took in more than $7 million in 2014, according to a review of financial records Synergy filed with Massachusetts regulators. Both men received bachelor’s degrees in Talmudic law, according to resumes included in their state nursing home licensing application and verified by the Globe. Two other former staffers described coveted Patriots playoff tickets Synergy bought in January 2013 — one month after acquiring its first facility in Sunderland. The company spent roughly $25,000 on a suite at Gillette Stadium and invited local doctors and nurses to help woo more business for its new facility, the staffers said. “It really offended me because I had to do battle to get basic nursing supplies,” said one of the former staffers who still works in the industry and asked to remain anonymous. In the months following that playoff game, the company cut back on the quality of adult diapers and fresh fruit at its Sunderland facility, according to a former volunteer state ombudsman and government records, and was cited by state investigators for more than a dozen violations......"

That's who is running the nursing homes and taking care of your beloved old folks. 

Related:

VC firm Flagship Pioneering raises $1.1b for biotech startups, despite reeling economy

Wow! How many mortgages could they pay off with that?

"Flagship intends to use the $1.1 billion to create companies that reflect several priorities, including scientific discovery through artificial intelligence and the development of medicines to address health problems before they escalate. "The current COVID-19 crisis deeply underscores the essential need for a comprehensive health security initiative to complement our current health care system,” Afeyan said. The latest fund-raising haul comes after Flagship raised $1.08 billion last year and early this year. The firm plans to use that money for companies that Flagship has launched but that need more venture capital and private investments before they can sell stock in an initial public offering. Since its founding, Flagship has raised $4.4 billion, of which more than $1.9 billion has been deployed to start and grow companies. The fund-raising announcement was a glimmer of good news for an industry that has been buffeted by the epidemic. Many drug makers have postponed or canceled drug trials, in part because they didn’t want to expose patients to the new coronavirus....."


Noubar Afeyan of Flagship Ventures at Moderna Therapeutics in Cambridge. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff)

I gue$$ I would be $miling, too, as Eli Lilly and Co., of Indianapolis, Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and Moderna are al$o $et to benefit.

Time to start scolding people:


College age spring break students in Pompano Beach, Fla., in early March. (Julio Cortez/Associated Press)

"Go home!: My walks have become daily exercises in self-control, lest I throttle somebody" by Yvonne Abraham Globe Columnist, April 1, 2020

My walks have become daily exercises in self-control, lest I throttle somebody.

Strolling these days is like a cross between ballet and math. There are constant calculations as we do this slow dance around one another: Is there room on this sidewalk for both of us to keep a safe distance? How wide an arc shall I describe around that frenetic toddler? Shall I cross to the other side of the street to avoid this person, or will they? We both step off the curb, step back, chuckle, and go on our ways. We’re looking after each other, and ourselves. It’s nice.

I feel sorry for her.

Until they appear. The knuckleheads, galumphing all over our careful calibrations. I’d give them a good shake, if I were reckless enough to get near them.

Not anymore.

They are generally teens, traveling in packs of five or seven or more, slow-rolling on bikes or boards, hanging off each other. Or eight of them are standing together at the top of a trail in the woods, yukking it up as, shoulder to shoulder, they watch their drone fly overhead. Or they’re at the playground, bumping up against each other under a hoop, competing for a ball, slathered in sweat.

Save it for the elites, and they can't play hoop now.

Kids this age were supposed to be famous for living almost entirely online. Now they suddenly can’t resist being in each others’ actual presence?

She is like an old man yelling at kids because the ball went in his yard.

Like those empty-headed kids on spring break ― the ones who defied warnings, crammed together on Florida beaches, then carried the coronavirus back to their communities — they act as if they were invincible, and everybody in their lives was, too. Of course, it didn’t help that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others refused to take the threat seriously.

DeSantis has got his mind right thanks to Trump, and what proof does she have that those kids carried it back to their communities?

She, of course, has none. This is just a lecturing, moralizing screed from somebody who is on their high hor$e!

Being the deeply flawed mother of an almost-teen myself, I am generally loath to criticize other people’s parenting. There’s only so much you can control when your kid is big enough to run her own social life. You can’t watch them every second, and plenty of teenagers are heeding the increasingly urgent pleas to stay home or keep a safe distance, but now I’m 100 percent judging the rest of you. Keep your nondistancing kids inside, people!

Oh, she is a Jewi$h mother scolding us all. 

Pfft!

Every day, this catastrophe brings new horrors. Some of it is just short-sightedness, and not just among younger people, but some of it is something more sinister, and more lasting. We no longer live in the world of New York Senator Patrick Moynahan, who said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” For weeks, the president and his acolytes have conjured their own facts on this pandemic, and millions of their devotees have believed them. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, they played down the dangers of coronavirus, called warnings a hoax, repeatedly claimed it was under control.

Incredibly, this has dissolved into her waging a political cudgel. 

They turned social distancing into a political act, another front in the culture wars. A poll conducted in mid-March found that Republicans who had watched Fox News were less likely to practice distancing, but people are dying even in communities that hang on the president’s every word, and it’s going to get undeniably worse. It’s too late to avoid a catastrophe, but we may yet save lives: Do the dance, make the calculations, steer clear, and if you won’t do that, then for heaven’s sake — and everybody else’s — stay home.....

The Globe mu$t be jealou$ of Fox.

--more--"

She needn't worry; I will be giving her a wide, wide berth.


People all over the country are putting stuffed bears in their windows so kids can go out and look for them in a neighborhood scavenger hunt. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff)


Grace McGregor, her husband Mark, and her children Clara and Abram  (Lane Turner/Globe Staff)


Houses in Hyde Park held bears. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff)


Macklin and his mom wave to his friends as they drive by. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff)


One of Macklin Boyd's friends yells "happy birthday!" from a drive-by birthday parade. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff)

Okay, grab your pillow, it's time for bed.

Maybe they can track down those teen scofflaws, 'eh?


Governor Baker spoke at a briefing on the state's response to COVID-19 at the State House March 30. (Sam Doran/Pool)

"Governor Baker is launching a major effort to trace infected people’s contacts. Some say it might be too late" by Kay Lazar and Matt Rocheleau Globe Staff, April 1, 2020

The SOS sent out weeks ago by community leaders across Massachusetts was blunt: They couldn’t possibly track and trace everyone with COVID-19 in time to isolate the infected and stop the swift-moving virus. They just didn’t have enough staff or expertise, they told state health officials, and they sorely needed help.

Now, Governor Charlie Baker is poised to announce in coming days an initiative that would enlist more than 1,200 public health college students to answer that call. The AmeriCorps-style program was hatched by a coalition of public health groups and academic leaders working with the state, and they are pinning their hopes on students easing the burden on local health boards by collecting information from people potentially infected by each COVID-19 patient, but with hundreds of new COVID-19 cases reported each day in Massachusetts, the effort may be a bit late, say some public health specialists who are skeptical that ramped-up contact tracing will have much of an impact.

That looks like, smells like, and tastes like a DRAFT!

“Three weeks ago this would have been helpful,” said Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center.

“It’s so pervasive now, and if you have symptoms, you likely have it,” she said. “You have all these people at home, hopefully being told by their doctors or the CDC to stay home, so what is the point?”

To crash the economy and enact police state measures.

At least one large public health agency has thrown in the towel on tracing, saying it’s too late and too difficult to track individual cases. The health department in Orange County, Calif., announced March 20 that it was shifting away from “labor-intensive contact tracing" to a “more effective strategy” of trying to protect the region’s most vulnerable residents, elders and those with chronic health conditions, but leaders here say the practice may still be a catalyst in Massachusetts’ effort to curb coronavirus.

Sigh.

Nate Horwitz-Willis, who is helping to lead the charge, said reaching residents who are unaware they had close contact with an infected person might help convince them to take extra precautions, and maybe think twice about going out to get groceries and risk exposing others to infection.

“I will be damned if we throw in the towel," said Horwitz-Willis, an assistant professor of public health at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. “We just can’t do that.”

Health officials define close contact as being within six feet of an infected person for an extended period of time, generally 15 minutes or more, or being coughed or sneezed on by someone with COVID-19.

Contact tracing has been used globally to help contain outbreaks of other infectious diseases, including the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the increasingly common clusters of measles across the United States. In each instance, public health officials scramble to identify, isolate, and treat anyone who may have had close contact with an infected person.

You might want to keep your distance just in case.

In mid-March, a coalition of public health groups issued a pointed plea to the Baker administration. They noted: “Many local health officials on the front lines of this epidemic have experienced unclear and inconsistent guidance that undermines their ability to provide coherent, high quality public health information to community residents.”

They urged the administration to provide infectious disease specialists to help local health boards prioritize contact tracing, “determine who needs to be quarantined or isolated and for how long, and identify patterns of spread that can help slow the epidemic.”

Within two days, Horwitz-Willis said, state health officials were working closely with local health boards. The coalition sent out a survey, asking municipalities for details on what types of help they needed with contact tracing.

They also linked up with more than a half-dozen colleges, seeking volunteers among students in public health programs. Within 24 hours, more than 800 students had signed up, Horwitz-Willis said. That then ballooned to 1,200 who have agreed to staff phones and help track down potentially infected people by interviewing each person with a newly confirmed case of COVID-19.

Do you get a Scarlet Letter or Star of David with it?

Even before the pandemic, local health boards were ill-equipped for such a job. A report last summer by state and local public health experts painted a bleak picture, describing local boards as unprepared to handle medical disasters. Many scrape by with tiny budgets and staffs, and overall, Massachusetts’ local public health system, comprised of hundreds of independent municipal boards, is more fragmented than any other in the country and has failed to keep pace with national standards, the report said.

Yeah, that makes me want to run out to the doctor, and once again we see the flower of corruption in full bloom here in Ma$$achu$etts!

Ruth Mori, president of the Massachusetts Association of Public Health Nurses, said local health departments are working long hours, having to piece together confidential information about infected patients. These networks can stretch far and wide, well beyond each community’s borders, because a person’s contact circles often cross city and town lines. "Contact tracing in general with communicable disease is always important,” she said.

What are they doing with all that information, because the state isn't releasing any.

The situation with COVID-19 is so fluid that health specialists say there may not be a clear threshold for when local governments or states should graduate from trying to contain the disease with contact tracing to mitigating the severe impacts.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital, said tracing could be particularly helpful in communities or regions where the disease is still not yet widely detected.

“Doing this belt-and-suspenders approach now may also help have people prepared for when we go back to work,” Walensky said.

Barbara Ferrer, director of Los Angeles County’s health department, said she has 800 staffers hunting for the contacts of infected people, yet Ferrer, who previously led Boston’s Public Health Commission, said because of delays in testing results there and still-growing numbers of positive tests, they had to make some concessions last week. Now, her workers track down only contacts who are at the highest risk for serious illness, including the elderly and the homeless.

And Trump thought impeachment was a witch hunt!

“It’s a work in progress, at best,” Ferrer said. “If you look around the world, the countries who are doing better have never dropped their ability to identify contacts. We are going to try to do this to the best of our ability for as long as possible.”

Will they scream at you like a pod person?

--more--"

"In Boston, arrests continue to dip as pandemic rages on" by Danny McDonald Globe Staff, March 31, 2020

Amid the ongoing coronavirus menace, criminal arrests have continued to dip in Boston, with the number of people taken into custody recently by the city’s police department down by nearly 60 percent compared to last year.

Last week, between March 22 and 28, there 69 arrests by the department, according to Boston police Sergeant Detective John Boyle. Last year for those dates, Boston police arrested 167.

Earlier in the month, between March 11 and 18, Boston police made 123 arrests, versus 243 during the same period last year.

Domestic violence calls are up, but the Globe doesn't seem to care about that.

The recent numbers come during a time of significant restrictions to everyday life as government authorities look to slow the spread of COVID-19. On Tuesday, Governor Charlie Baker extended his order to close nonessential businesses and his stay-at-home advisory to May 4.

State Senator William Brownsberger, a Belmont Democrat whose district includes part of Boston, welcomed the news that arrests in the city are down. He said reducing populations in jails is imperative during the current pandemic.

“Jails are one of the hardest places in which to control infection because you have a lot of turnover in the population, a lot of people coming in and out and being confined,” he said.

Sort of like a revolving door.

Thomas Nolan, a retired Boston police officer who now teaches criminology and criminal justice at Emmanuel College, said he thinks the arrests trend in Boston would likely be found in cities across the United States in the time of COVID-19.

He said it might indicate that police recently are less inclined to engage with the public, which he said “was not necessarily a bad thing,” given the dangers of the pandemic. He also noted that “obviously there are far fewer people out in the street” because of the coronavirus.

You won't get shot.

Nolan said he was interested to know whether crime reported to police increased during periods where there were less arrests.

“If the answer to that is ‘no,’ then one could fairly question: Is this a bad thing?” he said.

He suggested that arresting fewer people may be a model authorities consider once this crisis is over.

“If we did it during the pandemic, if we were able to keep communities safe while arresting fewer people, maybe that’s a strategy we can adopt moving forward,” he said.

Once they get the tracking chip in you, yeah.

The pandemic has changed some law enforcement practices. The Middlesex district attorney’s office, which represents the state’s most populous county, has called for arrests to be made only when there is no other option, and the head of the State Police has directed troopers to increase reliance on court summonses and mailed citations for some offenses.

Don't run a red light if they let you out!

In Boston, meanwhile, police are holding roll calls outside when possible and telling officers to complete reports where they can maintain social distancing, among a host of other measures being implemented to prevent the spread of coronavirus within the ranks.

The department said Monday that 19 Boston police officers and three of its civilian employees have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

There is only one $egment of the population that is immune.

Also on Tuesday, the state’s highest court heard arguments on whether to release certain categories of inmates in Massachusetts in an effort to combat the spread of coronavirus in prisons and jails.

--more--"


Boston Police. (Aram Boghosian/For The Boston Globe/File)

Order in the Court:

"All state trials in Mass. postponed until at least May 4" by Matt Berg Globe Correspondent, April 1, 2020

Continuing efforts to protect the public from COVID-19, the Supreme Judicial Court issued an order Wednesday postponing all state trials to May 4, at the earliest.

The order came one day after Governor Charlie Baker extended his previous order that limited gatherings to 10 people or fewer, also lasting until May 4.

The high court’s order, which takes effect Monday, repeals and replaces two previous orders that restricted the number of people allowed in a courthouse, according to a statement from the SJC.

All civil and criminal trials which were scheduled to begin on or before May 1 will be delayed “unless the trial is a bench trial in a civil matter and may be conducted otherwise than in-person by agreement of the parties and of the court,” officials said.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Courthouses will remain closed to the public “except to conduct emergency hearings that cannot be resolved virtually," the statement said.

I wonder what would be those.

The offices of court clerks, registers, and recorders will continue to work, the statement said. These duties include scheduling and facilitating hearings, issuing orders, answering questions from legal professionals and the public, and performing other necessary tasks.

All business except the filing of pleadings and other documents will be done virtually.

Starting Thursday, a public help line will be available for non-emergency court matters, the statement said. People can get assistance with questions regarding their cases or navigating the court system.

UNREAL!

For emergency assistance, the public should call local clerks’ or registers’ offices, officials said. Phone numbers can be found on the state’s courthouse locator page.

“Emergency matters include: emergency protection and harassment prevention orders; arraignments of new arrests; bail reviews; dangerousness hearings; mental health commitment orders; care and protection orders; and other matters,” the statement said.

With courts closed, the help line “will also serve as a backup resource in the event a Clerk’s or Register’s office is closed or otherwise unable to assist in an emergency,” Trial Court Chief Justice Paula Carey said in the statement.

Representatives of District Court, Boston Municipal Court, Superior Court, Probate and Family Court, Juvenile Court, Housing Court, Land Court, and the Probation Service will be on the line to help callers.....

The right to petition means call your government? 

That means no more redress!

--more--"

Also see:

"For only the second time in its nearly 30 year history, Olin College of Engineering has a new president. Gilda Barabino, an administrator at City College in New York, will become Olin’s first woman and person of color, to lead the private engineering school, an Olin spokeswoman said. Barabino, who starts July 1, is a scholar well known for research into sickle cell disease, is currently the dean of The Grove School of Engineering and the Daniel and Frances Berg Professor at The City College of New York. Olin’s Board of Trustees unanimously chose Barabino because of her work at City College, where she is credited with doubling the student retention rate, developing several master’s degree programs and increasing diversity within the administration and faculty, according to the statement. Ken Stokes, chairman of Olin’s board of trustees, called Barabino “an extraordinary academic leader,” who will develop “ . . . new learning approaches and to inspire lasting change in the design and delivery of engineering education beyond our campus.” In the statement, Barabino said her connection to Olin was immediate.“ I am looking forward to working with this deeply collaborative community as Olin’s next president to help shape the future and the face of engineering education,” she said. "

That gets you into your ComfortZone so you can recover.