Survivors Of Oct. 7 Music Rave Massacre Sue Israel For Negligence
Dozens of injured survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre at a music festival close to the Gaza Strip have filed a $56 million suit against the Israeli government, alleging various forms of negligence that resulted in unavoidable casualties.
Declaring that “the negligence and the gross oversight is beyond belief,” the 42 plaintiffs have targeted four government entities: the Israeli Defense Forces, the Shin Bet internal security service, the Defense Ministry, and Israel Police. According to the suit, 364 attendees were killed and 40 kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
#BREAKING Israel music festival-goers fled in hail of bullets
People tried to flee the site, running across the sand and getting into their cars to drive away. Partygoers said there were jeeps full of gunmen, shooting at the cars.
The IDF conducted two security assessments over the night leading into Oct. 7, sparked by unusual observations on the border with Gaza. However, no warnings were given to the organizers of the Supernova rave — despite the fact that Shin Bet had taken the threat seriously enough that it deployed to the area soldiers from its unit responsible for thwarting abductions. It’s also been reported that military units put on alert didn’t know the festival was going on.
“A single phone call by IDF officials to the commander responsible for the party to disperse it immediately in view of the expected danger would have saved lives and prevented the physical and mental injuries of hundreds of partygoers, including the plaintiffs,” they say in their filed complaint.
In a particularly grim twist of fate, the festival was originally slated to last only two days — Oct. 5 and 6. However, earlier in the week of the event, organizers requested and were granted permission to extend it to Oct. 7. The “Gaza Division’s operations officer, Lt. Col. Sahar Fogel, opposed the extension, arguing it was a needless security risk, but was told by his superiors to approve it,” writes Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp, citing Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
An expert cited by the plaintiffs said the IDF shouldn’t have approved the festival at all, given its location: “The event was held a small distance from the Strip’s border. The noise from the party was heard by Gazan residents and revelers were an easy target for the terror attack.”
The plaintiffs also fault the police for positioning only 27 officers to secure the festival, with the great majority armed only with pistols, in an alleged failure to comply with regulations requiring long arms when deployed so close to Gaza.
According to Haaretz, the permit signed by an IDF colonel said “the northern brigade is responsible for regional security during the event in the fence space across from the Gaza Strip.” However, attendees say no soldiers were positioned there. In the most damning fact of the day, the festival came under attack at around 6:30am and the IDF didn’t arrive until 3pm.
Some hospitals in Southern California are struggling with an influx of illegal immigrants amid the border crisis, while American patients are enduring longer wait times for doctor appointments due to a nursing shortage in the state, according to two health care professionals.
A health care worker at a hospital in Southern California, who asked not to be named for fear of losing her job, told The Epoch Times that “the entire health care system is just being bombarded” by a steady stream of illegal migrants in recent years.
Some migrants get hurt crossing the desert or injured climbing the border wall, while others are injured in accidents, especially when too many occupants are packed into one vehicle, said the health care worker.
Severely injured illegal migrants are often rescued by helicopter and flown to trauma centers in Southern California, she said.
“They’re falling off the wall,” she said. “They’re always flown. They’re never put in the back of an ambulance.”
With a typical helicopter rescue costing around $30,000, without factoring in the costs of medication and medical staff at the hospitals, “who pays for that?” she asked.
“Our health care system is so overwhelmed, and then add on top of that tuberculosis, COVID-19, and other diseases from all over the world,” she said.
Total U.S. apprehensions of illegal and inadmissible aliens in fiscal year 2023—from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2023—were 3.2 million. In fiscal year 2022, it was more than 2.7 million. Counting “known gotaways”—those who Border Patrol agents record but don’t catch—more than 8 million illegal immigrants have entered the country in less than three years under the Biden administration.
Illegal migrant patients are usually accompanied by their sponsors who advocate for them, but language barriers still pose a problem for doctors and other hospital staff, said the health care worker.
“Not everybody can speak the languages of these patients,” she said. “That’s another burden.”
Hospitals need to hire either translators or staff that can speak all the languages of the patients crossing the border from dozens of different countries, she said.
“Of course, there’s nothing wrong with learning another language or having people that can accommodate their health care,” she said. “Nobody wants to see somebody in pain or hurting in need of medicine. But, at the same time, it’s at the expense of others.”
The “others,” she said, are American patients, as well as taxpayers who are ultimately footing the bill.
Patients often have their doctor’s appointments “pushed back,” to accommodate the medical needs of illegal migrants, the health care worker said.
“They get in a lot quicker than our Veterans Affairs [VA] and retired military patients. They get in a lot faster, and they get the best care—probably better care than the VA patients do,” she said.
Typically, VA patients usually wait months to be seen by a specialist while illegal migrants who just crossed the border are seen the same week, she said.
“I’ve seen that firsthand,” she said. “We hear it from VA patients all day, every day.”
When Border Patrol agents bring patients to the hospitals, there is an “air of secrecy” that follows them.
“No one is allowed to talk to the media or public about why they are there or how they got there,” she said. “We keep them in this bubble of protection, which is the wrong approach. We should let the public know.”
The government is using “patient privacy” as a shield to hide what they’re doing.
“Patient privacy is a priority in the health care field, but when it comes to illegals, it’s branching off into elitism or a protected class,” she said.
An experienced doctor in Southern California, who spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the influx of illegal migrants to San Diego and Imperial counties is “just outrageous” and the burden of care on hospitals is “overwhelming.”
He also said he is concerned about the secrecy surrounding non-government organizations, or NGOs, that are being paid to provide services to illegal migrants.
“Where’s the transparency?” he asked. “There’s been no transparency.”
The doctor said in 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, he was involved in a planned government contract for COVID testing, but it was canceled at the last minute.
“We started testing and treating patients and then … they kicked us out,”he said. “They said your contract has been terminated and replaced with some company that was from out of the area. So, they’re not even using local contractors … which takes away money, resources, and jobs from our community.”
Amid a statewide shortage of primary care doctors and nurses, the doctor said three nurse practitioners he trained at his practice were recruited with better pay and benefits to work at the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) detention center in El Centro, Calif.
“It’s a huge place, and so there are lots of resources being used at that facility. A lot of nurse practitioners are being pulled from us,” he said. “It’s really hard to get doctors out in our area, so we have a lot of nurse-practitioners that help physicians in the community because they can see patients and prescribe medications.”
Increasingly, more patients are going to urgent care clinics because they can’t get in to see their primary care doctors, he said.
“There is a huge shortage of primary care in Imperial County,” he said. “Appointment times are weeks to months out.”
“Border cities are having to deal with the influx without having the resources. When you take from the resources that are currently available, you’re depriving the community of those resources,” the doctor said. “The unintended result is it backs up the system.”
Tuberculosis (TB) patients, for example, can tie up hospital beds for month depending on the severity of infection, the doctor said.
“You can’t let them out, because it’s a public health issue, so they’re staying in the hospital. We had a patient stay for six months for full treatment, and the government is paying for all of it,” he said. “TB in the United States is pretty much gone except for in isolated border towns, but the rates in Imperial County are higher than I’ve ever seen anywhere, because of the influx from illegal migration.”
According to the Harvard Medical School’s Center for Global Health delivery, California’s Imperial County has reported an incidence of 38 TB cases per 100,000 people, nearly 10 times higher than the national average in the U.S., while Mexicali, Mexico—just across the border—has an incidence of 100 cases per 100,000, one of the highest rates in North America.
The center also indicates the number of TB cases are probably underreported, stating that “with more robust detection efforts, it’s likely that these rates would be much higher.”
Aside from TB and measles, sexually transmitted diseases such as, gonorrhea, syphilis, measles, and AIDS are on the rise, said the doctor.
“Very rarely do you see syphilis anymore, but cases have gone up,” he said.
Illegal migrants also need treatment for injuries from lacerations from razor wire,” the doctor said.
“They cut their hands and legs when they’re jumping the fence. They usually put a jacket or something over the razor wire, but sometimes it comes through,” he said.
Because so many medical professionals and resources have been tapped to treat illegal migrants, American patients, including military veterans have been neglected, the doctor confirmed.
“It takes forever for these VA patients to get seen at the clinic. It’s months to get appointment. There is very limited care for the veterans out here,” he said. “The VA program has been neglected as a result of having to put more money into funding for the ICE detention centers.”
The doctor, who also treats Border Patrol agents, said their job-related injuries “have gone through the roof.” He’s also noticed an increase in the number agents with mental health problems related to stress and anxiety.
Many agents say they’ve been taken out of the field to act as immigration processing clerks rather than doing what they were trained to do: patrol the border, he said.
“They’re really frustrated. They’re not being listened to. They’re not getting the resources they need. They feel like their hands are tied. And, they’re being silenced,” he said. “They’ve become processing agents, rather than really trying to catch the bad guys—the criminals and the drugs.”
The agents also witness the aftermath of heinous crimes, including the abuse and rape of women and girls at the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
“A lot of the girls coming across—there’s a good percentage of them that have been abused during the trek. We’ve seen a few of them. We’re talking young girls—12 years old, 13 years old—pregnant from the journey. It’s extremely sad,” he said. “And so that takes a toll … kids coming up by themselves, unaccompanied minors. You can see the human trafficking side of all of this as well. It does happen quite frequently.”
Suicides among agents have also increased. In 2022, 14 agents took their own lives, more than any other year since U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began tracking these deaths.
“Working long hours and responding to high-stress situations, our men and women in green and blue are being pushed to their breaking point every single day,” said U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez in a Dec. 15 press release.
Between 2007 and 2022, CBP lost 149 people to suicide, which is “among the highest rates compared to other law enforcement agencies.”
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a nonprofit organization that pushes for changes in immigration policy, the cost of health care for illegal immigrants in California through Medi-Cal was approximately $4.8 billion per year in 2022.
FAIR estimated the total federal medical costs for illegal immigration at more than $23.1 billion in 2022 and pegged the costs to cover unpaid hospital bills for uninsured illegal migrants at about $8.2 billion.
The total cost of illegal immigration in California was around $22.8 billion annually for education, health care, law enforcement, criminal justice system costs, welfare, and other expenditures. By comparison, the annual cost of illegal immigration in Texas in 2022 was $9.9 billion. In California, the taxpayer cost per immigrant in 2023 was $7,074 compared to Texas at $4,466.
The FAIR study estimates the gross cost of illegal immigration in the United States is $183 billion annually, up more than 35.7 percent since 2017. The cost incurred for each illegal migrant, including their U.S.-born children, has increased to $8,776 annually.
FAIR says its report covers “the full fiscal impact of illegal immigration,” and “includes the contributions of illegal aliens to the economy.”
“These include tax payments made directly to state and local jurisdictions, the federal government, as well as excise, property, and sales taxes. However, these receipts fall far short of covering the expenses incurred due to illegal immigration. Taxes paid by illegal immigrants only covered around 17.2 percent of the costs they created for American citizens,” the report states.
When the taxes paid by illegal aliens are factored in, the net cost of illegal immigration to U.S. taxpayers is $150.7 billion, according to FAIR.
As of June 2023, FAIR estimates about 16.8 million illegal migrants live in the U.S., an increase of 1.3 million since January 2022 and a 2.3 million increase since the end of 2020, indicating the illegal migrant population increased 16 percent nationwide in the first two-and-a-half years of the Biden administration.
“Illegal immigration’s annual net burden on the economy, now more than $150 billion, is greater than the annual GDP output of 15 U.S. states,” according to FAIR.
Ira Mehlman, a FAIR spokesman, told the Epoch Times that on top of the staggering costs of illegal immigration—with 12,600 illegal migrants crossing the border on Dec. 19 alone, the highest on record for a single day—the Biden administration is “playing Russian roulette with the safety and security of the American public.”
“They’re simply ignoring laws. The law explicitly says that if you were in the country illegally, you are subject to deportation, and Mayorkas has said no, just being in the country, in and of itself, is not sufficient to remove somebody,” he said. “We all expect that there will be some incompetence in government and maybe even neglect, but now what we’re seeing is overt sabotage of our immigration laws by people who were sworn to uphold those laws.”
At a press conference on Dec. 21, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre downplayed the border crisis, telling reporters the record number of illegal migrants at the southern border isn’t unusual.
“What we’re seeing here at the border, the migration flow, increased migration flows, certainly, it ebbs and flows,“ she said. “And we’re at a time of the year where we’re seeing more at the border, and it’s not unusual. This is an immigration system that has been broken for decades, and the president has taken this very seriously to try to do more.”
Robert Hammond, a cancer patient and former Marine in Santa Ana, Calif., who retired early from his job as a school teacher because of his health, told The Epoch Times he was exposed to toxic chemicals in the water when he was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
Mr. Hammond said he has seen doctor appointments for veterans, including his own, pushed back for months because of the border crisis.
He said he questions the Biden administration’s sense of priorities when it “coddles people who break our laws to come here, and gives them money, food, housing, clothing, [and] free medical,” but then “turns its back” on not only veterans but all American citizens.
“The people who are responsible for this are more interested in seeing us veterans die. That’s how I feel. They don’t want us because they know we won’t vote for them.” he said. “But, the people who are coming in illegally, well, there’s a good chance that they’ll vote for them. We are disposable.”
The money spent on illegal migrants should be used for better health care and cancer research to improve the quality of life of American citizens, he said.
Mr. Hammond said he’s also concerned about national security, considering the surge in suspected terrorists who have entered the country illegally during the border crisis.
NYC & SF Dominate The US Cities With The Heaviest CRE Office Debt-Loads
With a combination of high interest rates and a slow return to office towers, the commercial real estate sector faces further declines as the new year begins. One of the most significant challenges facing office tower owners will be either repaying the full value of the loan or finding an institution, such as a regional bank, willing to offer refinancing.
According to a new report by the Financial Times, which references data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, $117 billion in CRE office debt needs to be repaid or refinanced this year. Much of this debt is concentrated in major cities such as Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
“It’s going to be a very difficult environment to be getting loans from the institutions that typically give these loans. That’s the bottom line, “Andrew Metrick, the Janet L. Yellen Professor of Finance and Management and director of the Yale Program on Financial Stability, recently said at the Alumni Real Estate Association Conference.
The challenging environment can be attributed to several factors, including regional bank stress due to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic, and Signature Bank, among others, in the first half of 2023. The situation worsens for building owners because regional and community banks make up most of the CRE lending space. Additionally, the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive interest rate hiking cycle in decades has significantly increased the cost of borrowing.
Moody’s Analytics estimates about 605 office towers with mortgages will need financing this year. Of that, about 224 will have trouble refinancing – either because the property values have plunged and there is too much debt or perhaps a high vacancy rate.
Meanwhile, stress is emerging as new Trepp data shows delinquencies on office loans financed by commercial mortgaged-backed securities topped 6% at the end of November, up from 1.7% a year earlier.
Even with the low default rates, the potential losses on these loans are in the billions of dollars. A recent study by a group of US economists found that 40% of office loans on bank balance sheets were valued less than the loan amount, posing a risk for regional banks.
“People should realize that regional banks are still very much exposed to the troubles in commercial real estate,” said Leo Huang, head of commercial real estate at Ellington Management.
Over the next three to four years, about two-thirds of the CRE space will require refinancing. With property values plunging and significantly higher interest rates, default rates will likely continue surging, causing even more trouble for exposed regional banks.
The percentage of full-time U.S. journalists who identify as Republicans has dropped significantly over the last decade, while journalists who said they are Democrats and Independents have increased, a study finds.
According to a survey by Syracuse University titled “The American Journalist Under Attack,” only 3.4 percent of journalists in 2022 identified as Republicans, compared with 36.4 percent of Democrats and 51.7 percent of Independents in the profession.
At the time the survey was concluded in April last year, 28 percent of Americans considered themselves Republicans, 28 percent identified themselves as Democrats, and 42 percent viewed themselves as Independents, according to a Gallup poll.
The survey found that the percentage of Republicans in the journalism industry has declined substantially over the decades.
In its first survey in 1971, 25.7 percent of journalists said they were Republicans. In 1982, the number dropped to 18.8 percent and further declined to 16.4 percent in 1992. It showed a slight increase in 2002 with 18 percent but plummeted to 7.1 percent in 2013 and to 3.4 percent last year.
The trend for journalists identifying as Democrats has remained relatively steady at around 35 percent over the decades. Last year’s figure of 36.4 percent marked the third-highest percentage of journalists identifying as Democrat since 1971, the survey noted.
Notably, the survey showed that 60.1 percent of journalists said journalism in the United States was headed in the wrong direction. In comparison, only 22 percent said it was going in the right direction.
“When asked about the ’most important problem facing journalism today,’ the journalists mentioned these issues most often: Declining public trust in the news media (20.8 percent); shrinking local and community news coverage (12.8 percent); perceived bias and opinion journalism (12.7 percent); fake news (9.9 percent); disrupted business model (9.3 percent).”
The survey is conducted nearly every decade and covers many topics in the journalism industry, ranging from using social media in their daily work to job satisfaction, journalists’ age, women in the journalism workplace, comparative pay between genders, and educational levels, among others.
The study was based on an online survey of 1,600 U.S. journalists in various media organizations and conducted from January to April 2022.
Public Trust in Media Declines
According to an October Gallup poll, 39 percent of Americans did not trust the mass media, while 29 percent held very little trust. Only 32 percent reported having trust in the mass media.
The poll also found sharp partisan divisions in Americans’ views of the media. Only 11 percent of Republicans trusted the media, whereas 58 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of Independents expressed a fair amount of trust in the media.
Democrats have historically placed more trust in the media overall than Republicans, but the current gap of 47 points is the smallest since 2016. Since last year, Democrats’ confidence in the media has decreased significantly, from 70 percent in 2022 to 58 percent this year.
Another Gallup poll in July found that Americans were losing confidence in U.S. institutions. In the journalism business, only 18 percent of Americans trust newspapers, and just 14 percent trust television news—two of the five worst-rated institutions.
In last year’s poll on the honesty and ethical standards across various professions, 42 percent of Americans said journalists have “very low” or “low” ethical standards, while 35 percent rated them as average and 23 percent viewed them high.
A survey from Pew Research Center revealed that journalists and the general public differ markedly with regard to their views on “both-sides-ism,” which refers to whether journalists must always look to give equal coverage to all sides of an issue.
While 55 percent of journalists in the survey insisted that every side does not always deserve equal coverage in the news, 76 percent of Americans wanted the news to cover all sides equally.
Watch: Trash-Talking Female Boxing Champ Gets Knocked Out By Average Male Fighter
The root origin of the controversial inclusion of trans (male) athletes in women’s sports was the argument by third-wave feminists that women and men are similarly biologically capable. It is a trope that has infested every corner of entertainment media for years, so much so that many women have convinced themselves that it is true – Feminists really believe that males and females are physically equal.
A cursory study of professional athletic records from almost any sport imaginable would tell them different, but woke activists have insisted on pressing the issue to the point that, in the US at least, fully developed male athletes posing as women are now crushing women’s chances to excel in multiple arenas.
The consequences are very real, specifically in high schools and colleges where female athletes rely on athletic scholarships in order to further their education. Multiple women have now had their scholarship prospects diminished by males claiming to be trans. On top of this, multiple women’s sports records have also been broken by biological males because of trans inclusion.
In 2023 we have had a number of mixed-sex sporting environments to appease the woke mob and the message should be painfully obvious by now – Women are not on par with men.
Unfortunately, it seems a female boxing champ and notorious trash talker by the name of Claressa Shields didn’t get the memo.
Shields has an exemplary record in women’s boxing, but this does not translate to winning against even average fighters in the male arena.
After calling out top male boxers and challenging them publicly, a video from 2018 was leaked by a little-known Latvian boxer out of Florida named Arturs Ahmetovs who knocked the female champ out clean in a sparring match.
According to Ahmetovs’ trainer, Derik Santos, the fighter had intended to keep the footage private out of respect and boxing etiquette, but became frustrated with Claressa Shields’ incessant and delusional boasting. Santos described the situation as confusing, claiming that Shields trash talked throughout the sparring session even though she and her coach had asked the fighter to do them a favor by helping her train for a pro bout.
Ahmetov had allegedly been asked to go easy on Shields in previous rounds and avoid hurting her. But after her disrespectful display the fighter (with a minimal record) flattened her across the mat.
Shields has since accused Santos of “removing padding” from Ahmetovs’ gloves, though Santos vehemently denies this. He noted that it was “just a sparring session.” This kind of behavior has become a plague in women’s sports in the last few years (as we have seen in the WNBA and women’s soccer), and has only been tempered recently by the realization that transgender athletes are slowly but surely muscling out female competitors.
The idea that men and women are deeply and fundamentally different on a biological level has never in the history of humanity been a contentious issue, until now. In a move which seems like self destruction, third-wave feminists have set the stage for women to be put in harms way, in the field, on the court and in the ring all in the name of maintaining the lie of equality.
From Poimboeuf v. Merritt, decided today by the N.C. Court of Appeals (No. 23-229), in an opinion by Judge John Tyson, joined by Judges Zachary and Flood; some quick and likely not fully reliable Googling suggests that Poimboeuf wasn’t trained as a lawyer, though Riselvato had been a paralegal:
Kevin Poimboeuf’s … long-term girlfriend, Shelley Welch Riselvato …, owns Wildflower Preschool, a farm and nature preschool …. Wildflower Preschool bordered and shared an access easement with the adjacent Merritt’s Gravel Pit, Inc. …. Merritt’s Gravel Pit is owned and operated by Defendant Tony [Merritt]. Defendant Ilene [Merritt] is not an employee on the payroll of Merritt’s Gravel Pit, but she often helps with the business ….
Katelyn Merritt …, Tony’s and Ilene’s daughter, is the Vice President of Merritt’s Gravel Pit. TIK, LLC … owns the land from where Merritt’s Gravel Pit operates. Tony, Ilene, and Katelyn Merritt are each one-third member-owners of TIK.
Riselvato and the Merritts have endured a contentious relationship since Riselvato first visited the property adjacent to Merritt’s Gravel Pitt. Shortly after the property was listed for sale, Riselvato’s realtor instructed her to review the property. While there, Tony and Katelyn confronted Riselvato, accused her of trespassing, told her the property was not for sale, and reported her to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. Tony’s mother owned the property Riselvato eventually purchased, and selling the property was a source of contention amongst members of the Merritt family.
Once Riselvato and Poimboeuf began constructing Wildflower Preschool, Riselvato’s and Poimboeuf’s relationship with the Merritt family quickly deteriorated. Tony accused Poimboeuf of exposing his penis in the presence of children and reported Poimboeuf to law enforcement officers. Although the Merritts filed a complaint at the magistrate’s office to bring criminal charges against Poimboeuf, those charges were later dismissed.
The Merritts also accused Riselvato and Poimboeuf of cutting their telephone line, which ran along the easement between the two properties. Lastly, the Merritts accused Poimboeuf of burning down the barn, where Wildflower Preschool previously held classes, along with burning down a house in Charlotte.
This animosity led to two explosive interactions between the Merritts and Poimboeuf and Riselvato. In April 2020, Riselvato began constructing a wall on her property line to reduce the noise coming from Merritt’s Gravel Pit during school hours. Poimboeuf was helping Riselvato with the construction. Tony drove a blue tractor onto Riselvato’s side of the easement, and at some point both Ilene and Katelyn joined the confrontation. This encounter quickly became heated, and during the conversation Tony made sexual gestures towards his crotch when accusing Poimboeuf of exposing his penis. The Merritts’ “statements were loud, sustained, and contained offensive language.” Poimboeuf recorded the interaction.
On another occasion in May 2020, Tony used machinery to uproot a large pine tree separating Merritt’s Gravel Pit from Wildflower Preschool. Riselvato leaped in front of the excavator to prevent Tony from removing the remaining trees. Katelyn, Ilene, and Poimboeuf were also present. Tony and Ilene yelled at Riselvato and Poimboeuf for over two hours during this encounter, and, again, the “statements were loud, sustained, and contained offensive language.” Poimboeuf recorded this conversation, too.
During the two encounters, Tony made the following statements to Poimboeuf:
“F–ked with a tractor again, you egg-headed son-of-a-b–ch.”
“Hey, we found out about that house you burnt down in Charlotte, too, big boy. You a barn burning motherf–ker, ain’t ya?”
“You got a tractor down there you f–ked with. You got pictures where you took trespassing. You have placed yourself at the scene. You f–ked with my excavator.”
“Motherf–ker took his thumb and his forefinger and go owa, owa, owa. G–damn, the boys think that’s funny as hell, bro.”
Ilene directed the following statements to Poimboeuf:
“Kevin, why don’t you tell ’em that they dismissed the charges of you shaking your weenie at us. That is disgusting.”
“He got in trouble, but they dismissed it. Carrboro didn’t want y’all to be exposed that y’all do that stuff to children.”
“It’s pitiful what you do to children.”
“Don’t expose yourself like you did before.”
“What did they tell you they let you off for, huh? When you exposed yourself in front of the preschool? What did they say they dropped the charges for, do you know? Do you know why they dropped the charges? Yes[,] when you exposed yourself. You remember, don’t you[,] Kevin?”
Poimboeuf sued for defamation, representing himself; the jury ruled in his favor, and awarded a total of $10,000 in presumed damages against Tony and Ilene plus $70,000 in punitive damages against Tony, Ilene, and Merritt’s Gravel Pit. The appellate court affirmed, concluding, among other things:
The trial court heard all of the evidence, watched the videos, and concluded: “Taken in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff and considering the circumstances and the Defendants’ words, tones, and gestures, the Defendants imputed crimes of moral turpitude to the Plaintiff and made statements that were actionable per se.” The trial did not err as a matter of law when it submitted the evidence to the jury and let the jury’s verdict stand.
The trial court did not err by allowing the jury to determine whether Merritt’s Gravel Pit was liable for punitive damages [even in the absence of compensatory damages against it], because Tony [an officer of Merritt’s] “participated in or condoned the conduct.” Punitive damages may be awarded in the absence of nominal damages, as long as nominal damages could have been awarded….
When I write on Social Security, I regularly have readers write and tell me the “real” problem with Social Security is that Congress has looted the Social Security trust fund and spent the money on other programs. I have as little respect for Congress as anyone and they are profligate spendthrifts, but this narrative is false.
Every year, the trustees who govern Social Security’s operations issue a Trustees’ Report. Included in that report is a cash flow statement going back to the inception of the program in 1937. It details the taxes paid into the plan, adds interest earned from the excess funds held by the system, and then subtracts the administrative costs and benefits paid.
In 69 of the 86 years since Social Security was created, the system has enjoyed a positive cash flow. This has resulted in the system building up a cushion over the years, which currently totals to about $2.7 trillion. So, where is that money?
The answer is that it is invested in U.S. bonds. Those bonds earn interest which help defray the cost of the program and in the 17 years that it ran a negative cash flow, it cashed bonds to make up the difference.
Those bonds are part of the overall debt issued by the federal government to finance its operations, albeit a relatively small amount of the total federal debt (~7-8%). Those who promote the “Congress looted Social Security” narrative have misinterpreted the use of the reserves by the federal government as part of its overall financing structure as evidence that the reserves have been used for other purposes.
Some critics go so far as to suggest that the bonds that Social Security holds are worthless and will never be repaid. This is nonsense, which is most clearly demonstrated by the fact that Social Security has redeemed over $100 billion on bonds in the last two years and in 14 other years when its cash flow went negative.
Beyond that, the market for U.S. securities is the deepest and most liquid in the world. The federal government auctions billions in securities on a weekly basis, which are regularly oversubscribed. While many, including your correspondent, worry about the long-term fiscal trajectory of the federal government, the risk of it defaulting on bonds held by Social Security is nil.
However,some have raised a fair question as to whether investing all of Social Security’s reserves in U.S. bonds is the best investment strategy. The interest rate paid on the bonds is determined by a formula adopted by Congress in 1960. It uses a rolling average of the rate on all U.S. bonds with maturities longer than four years. My rough calculation indicates this has resulted in about a 5.2% average yield since 1960. Currently, the rate is much lower because interest rates have been so low for the last decade, notwithstanding the increase in rates over the last year. According to Social Security Administration data, the average return for 2022 was 2.35%.
In contrast, the S&P 500 index has returned 10.15% since 1960. If the reserves had been invested in the S&P 500 during that time, the reserve balance today would be something around $30 trillion and we would not be facing any shortfall for decades. Of course, investing the reserve funds in stocks or other alternative investments would be hugely controversial and involve significant risks to the fund. Nonetheless, it would appear that a more diversified investment strategy would relieve some of the pressure on the system. (This is not a novel concept. George W. Bush proposed it in 2005 – and it was hardly a new idea then. The politics, though, are tougher than just crunching the numbers.)
But the real problem with the promotion of narratives like “Congress looted Social Security” is that they divert attention away from the real demographic problem that will continue to plague the system in the coming decades. How society will provide for its older citizens, and probably even what it means to be “retired,” is going to require a complete reset from our current notions. The sooner we accept the math of that new reality and begin to change our system and expectations, the less painful the transition will be.
DHS Joins With Woke Universities To Label “Manosphere” A Terror Threat
Since at least the year 2020 the Department of Homeland Security has been funding a series of woke university programs across the country. They have spent millions of dollars (that we know of) to incentivize academic groups, not with the goal of countering foreign terror elements or even to investigate US preppers and patriots, but to develop tools for disrupting what some call the “Manosphere” movement (previously known as the Red Pill movement) – A movement focused on countering feminism and feminist propaganda.
Is arguing logically against feminism really such a threat to the nation? No, but it is a threat to the woke movement, which has been on the decline in recent years as more and more information about their ideology is scrutinized by the public.
Woke activism, which includes third-wave feminism, is transparently astroturf. It relies on billions of dollars in funding supplied by elitist institutions such as the Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. The oppressive authoritarian nature of the woke apparatus has given rise to a large individualist counter-culture that is truly grassroots and this includes various men’s rights groups, political commentators and YouTubers (collectively known as the Manosphere).
The division has created what many refer to as the “culture war.” And, if it wasn’t clear by now, evidence shows that government agencies have chosen a side…
In a more recent exposure, documents have surfaced from a DHS funded program linked to the University of Arizona, home of the McCain Institute. Included in the network are a number of NGOs and Big Tech conglomerates as well as the SPLC and ADL. The project rhetoric ties the Manosphere to extremism, racism and even terrorism.
The thrust of the effort appears to be propaganda based, with a tandem scheme to “redirect” social media and web traffic away from Manosphere related commentators. ASU referred to the program as “hate speech surveillance.”
The “Redirect Method” was mentioned as a useful mechanism by the Rand Corporation in 2018. We saw this strategy play out to some extent during covid, when every major social media platform attempted to redirect traffic away from alternative media sources and into the arms of corporate news platforms.
Such grants are offered under the TVPT (Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention) program. In 2023 the DHS announced the award of 34 of these grants to the tune of $20 million. That’s millions of dollars of your tax money going into the pockets of woke academics so that they can fabricate new ways to undermine western values.
As part of TVTP, in 2022 the DHS gave $659,327 to fund Diverting Hate, a group of students and at ASU who were studying “incels,” or “involuntary celibates”—a term used to describe young men who can’t attract romantic partners. The incel moniker is a purely feminist concept originally used as a way to ridicule young men who speak out against woke beliefs (the insinuation being that if they don’t embrace feminism no woman will want to associate with them). They then expanded on the label to suggest that these men will inevitably turn to lone wolf terrorism out of frustration.
Keep in mind, many of these DHS projects were launched in the midst of the covid pandemic hype and the mass censorship that came with it. The establishment may have felt that it was the perfect time to go-for-broke and construct censorship protocols for any and every group rebelling against the prevailing narrative. It hasn’t been very long since that period of leftist insanity, but even now the pendulum is swinging back against them.
The only reason to associate counter-feminism with terrorism is to make authoritarian measures against the Manosphere more “palatable” for the public. To connect philosophical opponents to treason or terrorism is a political attack that government bodies and power hungry zealots have used for all of recorded history, but in this case it feels like the desperate behavior of a cult that is on the verge of fading into obscurity.
The idea that men and masculinity are a threat to society is the root argument of third-wave feminism. It’s no longer about equal rights, which they already have; now it’s about removing masculine (and traditional) influences from culture altogether. The current government seems to be fully in support of this cleansing and, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense – It’s a lot easier for authoritarians to control a society if the men in that society have been psychologically neutered and are incapable of fighting back.
The Delaware computer repairman who disclosed the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 said on Dec. 30 that his home was subjected to a “swatting” incident on Friday night.
John Paul Mac Isaac, who owned a computer store in Delaware at which the son of President Joe Biden was said to have dropped off his laptop years ago, said he was not present during the swatting incident.
“My home was swatted tonight, I was not home but the outstanding men and women of the Wilmington PD responded quickly and professionally,” Mr. Mac Isaac said on X.
“All that was achieved was the wasted time of the Wilmington PD. NOTHING, let me repeat that, NOTHING will take me out of this fight! Cheers!” he added.
It remains unclear whether the swatting is connected to his defamation lawsuit against Mr. Biden. The Wilmington Police Department has not disclosed any details regarding the incident.
The Lawsuits
Mr. Mac Isaac in October 2022 sued Mr. Biden for defamation. He closed his business in 2020 after receiving death threats. Mr. Biden has countersued Mr. Mac Isaac for allegedly invading his privacy.
Mr. Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, reportedly deposed Mr. Mac Isaac in June 2023, a session that lasted about seven hours, according to the New York Post.
The countersuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, asks for a jury trial.
“No matter how they came into his initial possession, Mac Isaac improperly accessed files that he admits were ‘none of [his] business’ even though he was never given permission by Mr. Biden to access or review any data of Mr. Biden’s,” it says.
He later made copies of the data and distributed the copies to others, including former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
“Mac Isaac’s knowing and intentional distribution of Mr. Biden’s personal and sensitive data was not carried out for any reasonable or legitimate purposes, but rather to try and expose Mr. Biden’s data to those that he knew or should have known would intend to create embarrassment and harm for Mr. Biden,” the countersuit says.
“In addition, Mac Isaac decided to use the data in his possession for commercial purposes and to make money, which he has done by including portions of the data in his book and making reference to and/or making some or all of the data available at appearances he has made.”
According to a document Mr. Mac Isaac has filed in court, on April 12, 2019, Mr. Biden asked for a quote for data recovery from three MacBook computers. Mr. Mac Isaac recovered the data and notified Mr. Biden of the development. He also sent an invoice, but Mr. Biden “never returned” to the shop to retrieve the data nor did he pay the invoice, according to the suit.
Mr. Biden’s attorneys confirmed that Mr. Mac Isaac had come into possession of materials from Mr. Biden.
Baptism By Fryer: North Carolina Pastor Arrested For Allegedly Assaulting McDonald’s Cook Who ‘Disrespected’ Wife
A North Carolina pastor was arrested for assault and battery after allegedly walking into a McDonald’s and assaulting a cook who ‘disrespected’ his wife, according to a police report of the incident.
The man, 57-year-old Dwayne Waden, allegedly placed his hands around the cook’s neck, thenpushed the cook toward the deep fryer and punched him in the face on December 28.
The victim “suffered a large contusion to the forehead and right eye, along with scratches on his neck, CBS News reports.
Officers were able to see footage from a surveillance video of the altercation. Waden, whose Facebook profile identifies him as pastor of Elevated Life International Ministries and a semitruck driver, was arrested on a charge of assault, according to a police report, and released on a $1,000 bond.
According to the local McDonald’s franchise, Waden’s wife is no longer with the organization, and said “the safety and security of our employees and customers is our top priority.”
Waden was transported to police headquarters, where he posted bond in the amount of $1,000. He’s due in court on Jan. 22 to face charges.
