What He's Not & What He Is

Stephen Carroll
School Resource Officer
Scranton PA

He's not an immigrant

He's not gay

He's not Muslim

He's not trans

He's not a drag queen

He's white

He's a cop

He's a rapist

He's a total fuckin' dirtbag

SCRANTON, Pa. — A former Scranton police officer faces child sex charges.

According to court documents, 49-year-old Stephen Carroll sexually assaulted multiple students while he was an officer with the Scranton Police Department assigned to West Scranton High School as the school resource officer.

Investigators say Carroll used social media to arrange sexual encounters and receive obscene and other sexual materials from students. Police say four of the students were underage at the time.

Carroll is also accused of drugging some of the victims before allegedly assaulting them.

He faces rape, aggravated indecent assault, and related charges in Lackawanna County.

The Shooter Speaks

Luigi Mangione's "manifesto".

“To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.” 

Mary Trump

More than 25 woman have braved the withering assault of Trump's media power to come forward and tell us what a fuckin' jerk he is.

25.

How many others are keeping their counsel because the risk is just too great?

Think about why upwards of 60% to 90% of Sexual Assault cases go unreported.

About That "Crime Crisis"

The crisis is in MAGA's WWE melodrama-addicted minds.

Crime continues to head downward, having reached pre-pandemic levels a while back.

And the numbers do include every city over a million, covering 94% of the US population.

So they're either ignorant or they're just lying about it.

Could be more projection, and what's really going on is that there's a crime crisis in red state rural areas, that they need us not to see, so they throw all this other bullshit up in the air to distract us, while they lay it on good and thick to get the rubes to blame everybody but the dog-ass Republican politicians in their own back yards.

It's a puzzlement.

Overheard

In the cities where

asshole Republican governors

shipped immigrants,

crime has continued to fall.

On Being Less Afraid

It's Crazy

Wanna know how fucked up the polling is? - and how it got fucked up?

Republicans.

Or more accurately, Republican fuckery, plus Press Poodles who refuse to do their fucking job.

What do we hear? "Crime is rampant!!!!"

Bullshit.

It's bullshit now, the same as it was bullshit back in 2017 when Trump did that god-awful American Carnage crap at his inauguration.

"Well now, that was some pretty weird shit." --George W Bush 

Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong.

Almost 80 percent of Americans, and 92 percent of Republicans, think crime has gone up. It actually fell in 2023. An expert blames a familiar culprit for the mistaken impression.

Crime in the United States has declined significantly over the last year, according to new FBI data that contradicts a widespread national perception that law-breaking and violence are on the rise.

A Gallup poll released this month found that 77% of Americans believe crime rates are worsening, but they are mistaken, the new FBI data and other statistics show.

The FBI data, which compares crime rates in the third quarter of 2023 to the same period last year, found that violent crime dropped 8%, while property crime fell 6.3% to what would be its lowest level since 1961, according to criminologist Jeff Asher, who analyzed the FBI numbers.

NINETEEN-SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO

Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023 at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded, Asher found, and every category of major crime except auto theft declined.

Yet 92% of Republicans, 78% of independents and 58% of Democrats believe crime is rising, the Gallup survey shows.

“I think we’ve been conditioned, and we have no way of countering the idea” that crime is rising,” Asher said. “It’s just an overwhelming number of news media stories and viral videos — I have to believe that social media is playing a role.”

The FBI’s quarterly numbers cover about 78% of the U.S. population and don’t give as full a picture as the more comprehensive annual report the FBI puts out once a year. But Asher said the quarterly reports in the past have hewed fairly close to the annual ones.

The most recent annual report, released in October, covered 94% of the country and found that violent crime in 2022 fell back to pre-pandemic levels, with murder dropping 6.1%.

Asher maintains a separate database of murder in big cities which found that murder is down 12.7 percent this year, after rising during the pandemic.

Detroit is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1966, Asher found, while Baltimore and St Louis are on track to post the fewest murders in each city in nearly a decade. A few cities, including Memphis and Washington DC, are still seeing increases in their murder rates, but they are outliers.

FBI data doesn’t have a separate category for retail theft. It falls under “larceny,” which declined overall last year, according to the latest numbers. Retail theft is widely believed to have skyrocketed in some cities, and the industry says it is at “unprecedented” levels. But the data doesn’t necessarily support that thesis.

FBI numbers are not the only measure of crime. The annual Justice Department survey of criminal victimization in 2022 found that a lot of crime goes unreported, and that more people reported being victims of violent crime in 2022 than in 2021. But Asher has documented questions about that survey’s methodology.

So why are Americans’ perceptions about crime so different from the apparent reality? Asher believes there is a measure of partisanship at work — Republicans are more ready to believe crime is increasing while Democrats hold the White House — but he largely chalks it up to media consumption.

“My neighbors never post on NextDoor how many thousands of packages they successfully receive,” he wrote recently. “Only video of the one that randomly got swiped.”

Asher and other analysts say the natural tendency of the news media to highlight disturbing crime stories — and the tendency of those stories to go viral on social media — presents a false but persuasive picture.

Videos of flash mobs on shop lifting sprees or carjackings in broad day light are more ubiquitous, even if those crimes are not.

“These outlier incidents become the glue people rely on when guesstimating whether crime is up or down,” he wrote.

Priorities

Make sure people are fighting about immigration and not about the guns.

It simply will not do to let "conservative" voters wonder why their favorite scapegoat (ie: an "illegal immigrant") was able to get a gun, totally eluding the keen-eyed law enforcers diligently on the lookout for aliens entering the country illegally to do their dastardly immigrant mischief.

It has to be obvious - these GOP assholes want us to concentrate on one thing in order to distract us from some other thing. And when two of their absolute favorite hobby horses converge to make a giant fucked up mess, they have to prioritize.

It looks for all the world that their priority is guns, which I think brings something into focus:

They don't really care all that much about immigration because the main point, actually, is their need to keep us angry and afraid and ready to kill each other. So they pimp the xenophobia to give us a way to rationalize the gun fetish they've cultivated in us, and our gun fetish is a means to an end - to keep us shooting each other instead of shooting cynically manipulative coin-operated politicians and their plutocrat paymasters.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Please understand that I'm not advocating shooting any coin-operated politicians and their plutocrat paymasters.

Maybe the hidden point of the exercise is to stir the shit in such a way as to provoke violent semi-organized revolt as pretext for an authoritarian clamp down. (Hey c'mon - it almost worked on Jan6, y'know)

What if a new Daddy State government that rode in on the backs of armed citizens decided suddenly that it was a bad idea to have armed citizens running around helter-skelter?

Don't think 'irony'

Don't think 'hypocrisy'

Think 'intent'

Think 'long game'

Greg Abbott Criticized for Response to Texas Shooting: 'A New Low'

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been criticized for his response to a mass shooting that left five people dead in his state.

Authorities appear no closer to catching the suspect, identified as Francisco Oropeza, after more than two days of searching.

Oropeza, 38, is considered armed and dangerous after fleeing the Cleveland, Texas, area on Friday night. Authorities say he entered his neighbors' home and fatally shot five people, including a 9-year-old boy after they had asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard at night because a baby was sleeping.

Abbott, a Republican, announced $50,000 in reward money for information on Sunday, noting in a press release and tweet that the victims were "illegal immigrants." The release also noted that Oropeza was in the country illegally.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat, blasted Abbott's statement, calling it "a new low" and accusing the governor of "continuing to do nothing" to keep Texas safe from gun violence.

Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, where a teenage gunman killed 19 students and two teachers last year, wrote on Twitter: "Greg, how was an undocumented person able to obtain an AR-15 in the first place? I'll tell you why. It's because you and other Republicans have made safe gun laws nonexistent. I challenge you to show some actual political courage and #DOSOMETHING."

Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar wrote: "They were part of a family, @GregAbbott_TX — and one of the victims was a child. What a disgusting lack of compassion and humanity."

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus also hit out at Abbott.

The caucus tweeted: "5 innocent lives lost to gun violence. TX @GovAbbott decides to dehumanize & delegitimize the lives of those killed in this horrific attack by calling them "illegal" immigrants. Just horrible. Thoughts are with the families and the survivors during this difficult time."

New York Rep. Ritchie Torres wrote that Abbott's "hatred for immigrants and love of AR-15s far outweigh his humanity."

Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, wrote that Abbott is a "racist xenophobe" who "can't bring himself to say a man with easy access to assault rifle [slaughtered] a family and child in his state."

Actor George Takei replied to Abbott's tweet: "This is despicable. I would have thought bringing up the immigration status of the innocent victims of this senseless violence would be beneath even you. But I was wrong."

Meanwhile, Carlos Eduardo Espina, an immigrant rights activist, tweeted a photo of an ID apparently belonging to one of the victims, confirming that she was a permanent resident of the U.S.

"But I guess to Greg Abbott, anyone who is from another country is an 'illegal immigrant.' Shameful," Espina wrote.

However, others praised Abbott. "Other politicians should be so forthright - call a spade a spade, and tenaciously pursue the suspect," one person tweeted, while others suggested closing the border.

Another person wrote: "Pretending nothing is happening at the border and focusing on choice of words is beyond dehumanizing. Thank you for putting up money and trying to find the killer. Your actions are stronger than words."

In a statement provided to Newsweek, Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said information provided by federal officials after the shooting had indicated that the suspect and victims were in the country illegally.

"We've since learned that at least one of the victims may have been in the United States legally," Eze said.

"We regret if the information was incorrect and detracted from the important goal of finding and arresting the criminal. The true focus remains on catching this heinous criminal who killed five innocent people and bringing the full weight of Texas law against him."

Her statement did not address why Abbott mentioned the victims' status in his statement.

The FBI in Houston has released more images of Oropeza on Twitter, and said it would be referring to the suspect as Oropesa, not Oropeza, going forward to "better reflect his identity in law enforcement systems."

According to The Associated Press, his family lists their name as Oropeza on a sign outside their yard, as well as in public records.

The San Jacinto County Sheriff's Office and the FBI have also chipped in reward money, together offering a total of $80,000 for any information about Oropeza's whereabouts.

More than 250 officers from multiple jurisdictions were searching for Oropeza by Sunday evening.

"FBI Houston and other local, state, & federal agencies will not stop assisting SJSO until he is captured and justice is brought on behalf of the 5 victims," the FBI in Houston posted on Twitter.

Crooks O' The Day

And now we'll hear more about the urgent need for the various levels of governments to harden our energy infrastructure.

Here's a thought: if we push for Distributed Generation - where each house, or each neighborhood, has its own power source - then some asshole can't take down 'the grid' because 'the grid' doesn't fucking exist.

But what's the bet that we'll feel compelled to spend ourselves into oblivion defending private corporations' commercial interests?

TACOMA, Wash. — Two Puyallup men have been charged in attacks at four Pierce County power substations that left thousands in the dark on Christmas.

Matthew Greenwood, 32, and Jeremy Crahan, 40, are charged with conspiracy to damage energy facilities and possession of an unregistered firearm, according to U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, Nick Brown.

The men were arrested on Saturday following an investigation by the FBI.

The four substations that were vandalized were the Graham and Elk Plain substations, operated by Tacoma Power, and the Kapowsin and Hemlock substations, operated by Puget Sound Energy.

Power was cut to more than 14,000 customers. All of the attacks happened in the middle of the night, according to Pierce County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Darren Moss, Jr.

“After watching this stuff happen in other jurisdictions, everybody might think Graham, Pierce County might be the last place something like this would happen, but it did,” said Sgt. Moss.

According to court documents, the attacks on the substations were attempts to cover up a burglary at a local business, where Crahan drilled out a lock, and Greenwood stole from a cash register.

“It’s kind of concerning that people would shut out the power to thousands just to rob a store,” said Sgt. Moss.

The damage to the Tacoma Power substations alone is estimated to be at least $3 million. Repairing a single damaged transformer could take up to 36 months.

“You can’t really put a dollar amount on some of the damage on the individuals who had their power go out,” said U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. “People were waking up to frozen houses and feeling cold and not having electricity and heat in their homes at that time is very serious.”

The men were identified as possible suspects through cellphone records and surveillance video.

At one substation, Tacoma Power recorded images of one man and a pickup truck that appeared to be connected to the attack. A similar truck was found to be connected to the suspects, according to the Justice Department.

In addition, distinctive clothing seen in the surveillance photos was found during a search of the men’s home.

Agents also seized two unregistered short-barreled guns. One of the weapons was equipped with a makeshift silencer.

Both men will appear in U.S. District Court in Tacoma on Tuesday, where prosecutors will ask that the suspects remain detained at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac pending future hearings.

Conspiracy to attack energy facilities is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Possession of an unregistered firearm is punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Today's Eternal Sadness

Mighty close to home.

About a mile-and-a-half from my house

(pay wall)

Three dead in shooting on U-Va. campus

Police were searching for Christopher Darnell Jones in connection with the incident that left two others injured

Three people were fatally shot and two others were injured on the campus of the University of Virginia late Sunday, U-Va. officials said, in an outburst of violence that set off an intense manhunt in and around Charlottesville for a suspect police described as armed and dangerous.

At 5:50 a.m. Monday, U-Va. police said agencies were conducting a “complete search on and around UVA grounds at this time. Expect increased law enforcement presence.”

The university identified a student, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., as the suspect. It did not immediately identify the victims.

“As of this writing, I am heartbroken to report that the shooting has resulted in three fatalities; two additional victims were injured and are receiving medical care,” U-Va. President James E. Ryan wrote in a message to the community at about 4 a.m. “We are working closely with the families of the victims, and we will share additional detail as soon as we are able.

“Our University Police Department has joined forces with other law enforcement agencies to apprehend the suspect, and we will keep our community apprised of developments as the situation evolves.”

Classes for Monday were canceled. Charlottesville City Schools and Albermarle County School District schools were closed.

At 6:09 a.m. Monday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) tweeted: “This morning, Suzanne and I are praying for the UVA community. Virginia State Police is fully coordinating with UVA police department and local authorities. Please shelter in place while the authorities work to locate the suspect.”

Gunfire was reported at the garage on Culbreth Road about 10:30 p.m., the University of Virginia Office of Emergency Management said.

University police said in a tweet that they were looking for Jones “regarding the shooting incident.” Jones is 22 and may be a former football player, according to a 2018 roster. Police later described Jones as a suspect in the shooting. There was a massive manhunt for Jones into the early morning hours, involving a state police helicopter and multiple law enforcement agencies.

Police said the suspect was wearing a burgundy jacket or hoodie, with blue jeans and red shoes. They said he may be driving a black SUV with Virginia plates.

The UVA Police Department is looking for Christopher Darnell Jones regarding the shooting incident that occurred on the grounds of the University of Virginia. Call 911 if seen, do not approach. pic.twitter.com/mKcxF6ksxw

— UVA Police Department (@UVAPolice) November 14, 2022

Jones, according to a U-Va. sports website, was a freshman on the football team in 2018 but did not appear in any games. He had previously played linebacker and running back at Petersburg High School in Virginia. Before that, he spent three years at Varina High School, where he was an accomplished player. It was not immediately known whether he is still a U-Va. student, but two students said he still is listed in the U-Va. directory.

Just before midnight, the emergency management office urged students to continue sheltering in place and to “reach out to friends & family and advise of your status.” The shelter in place order was still in effect at 4 a.m.

In a message that followed about 1:15 a.m., Vice President and Dean of Students Robyn S. Hadley exhorted the community: “Please, please take the shelter in place commands seriously as the situation remains active.” Later, the emergency management office said multiple police agencies were “actively searching for the suspect.”

The report of the shootings startled students and others on campus as the weekend was winding down.

“The second we all got that message that there was an active shooter, my phone flooded with messages,” said Eva Surovell, 21, of Alexandria, Va., who is editor in chief of the Cavalier Daily student newspaper. “People are genuinely scared.”

As of 2 a.m. Monday, Surovell said she was sheltering in her room on the university’s famed Lawn. She said she had been in touch with her mom and her sister at James Madison University to reassure them. “You just don’t really think something could happen like this to your community until it does.”

Danielle Werchowsky of Arlington, whose son is a student at U-Va., said: “UVA parents are glued to our social media right now. … Parents are all on edge.” She said she urged her son in a phone call to turn off the lights in his apartment and stay away from windows.

Culbreth Road and the garage, where shots were heard, are about half a mile north of the lawn and the Rotunda and near other campus buildings.

Family and friends with questions were urged to call

UVa Emergency Hotline at 877-685-4836.

This is not the first time this year that a shooting has rocked a college campus in Virginia. In February, two campus police officers at Bridgewater College were fatally shot after they were checking out a report of a “suspicious man” near a classroom building. The suspect linked to their deaths was a former student.

Also in February, a late-night shooting at a hookah lounge near the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg left one person dead and four injured, police said. In 2007, Virginia Tech experienced one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history when an undergraduate student killed 32 people, and himself, on April 16 of that year.

Humans Kinda Suck Sometimes

I realize 'Godfather II' and 'Casino' and 'Bugsy' aren't documentaries, but c'mon - do they think if the dirt in the desert managed to recede, they wouldn't find a whole big bunches of stiffs?

I guess I'm just wondering why it seems like these guys are surprised that dead bodies are being discovered in areas surrounding one of the biggest mobbed-up joints in this country.

Fox5 Las Vegas:

ABC13 Las Vegas:

And then, what do the politicos intend to do about things? They blab about making deals on impoundment and sharing - which is all about what can be done now - I get that - but they never once said anything about addressing the drivers of climate change that're causing of all this shit.

In the west, water is power. Watch this as it unfolds, cuz we're probably going to see this play out all over.

ABC13 Las Vegas:

Ukraine

Putin (and his enablers everywhere) have to be made to pay. I don't know how we go about it, but something has to be done to beat down this insane brutality, and to keep it from happening again.

WaPo: (updates on Ukraine are freebies for a while)

Zelensky to address U.N. Security Council; E.U. eyes ban on Russian coal

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to demand war-crime probes at a U.N. Security Council meeting Tuesday to hold Russian forces accountable after reports of corpses with their hands tied and civilian bodies lining the streets near Kyiv drew global outrage.

The European Union is set to propose a phaseout of Russian coal as part of new sanctions against Moscow in response to the mounting evidence of atrocities in Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital, according to an E.U. official and an E.U. diplomat. Gruesome images of devastation raised questions about where the European Union draws its red lines on Russian energy. The package would need to be approved by all 27 E.U. member states. Meanwhile, Washington has promised a war crimes investigation, while the Kremlin has dismissed the accusations as “staged provocations," eyeing the United Nations as a forum to blame Kyiv.

As Moscow appears to shift its military focus to the east and south, a Red Cross team was stopped while trying to evacuate people from the battered port of Mariupol and released overnight. Aid workers have been unable to reach trapped residents struggling to survive a brutal siege.

Here’s what to know

• In interviews with The Washington Post, residents near Kyiv and Mykolaiv recounted violence at the hands of Russian soldiers. Zelensky warned the death toll would rise as the withdrawal of Russian forces reveals the devastation left in their wake.
• A CNN television crew came under fire from Russian forces in southern Ukraine on Monday, surviving a close call that struck one of their cars. The crew was forced to cram into one vehicle to flee the area.
• The Post has lifted its paywall for readers in Russia and Ukraine. Telegram users can subscribe to our channel for updates.

It's A Federal Rap

In a system that can't operate unless people behave honorably, betrayal of the public trust has to be regarded as one of the worst things ever. It should be treated like any of the big felonies like murder or rape, and perpetrators - if proved guilty - should suffer some very severe consequences.

NY Daily News:

Long Island pediatric nurse charged in $900K fake vaccine card scheme, NYPD husband being investigated

A pediatric nurse practitioner has been arrested for selling phony COVID-19 vaccine cards on Long Island — and her NYPD officer husband faces a departmental probe over his possible involvement in the scam, prosecutors and sources said.

As part of the alleged scheme, Julie DeVuono, 49, is accused of using her Amityville, L.I. practice, Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare, to obtain blank vaccine cards from the state Department of Health, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office said.

She also obtained vaccine doses and syringes through the department, purportedly to administer to patients, prosecutors said.

Police seized $900,000 in cash from
Julie Duvuono's home in Amityville

DeVuono, along with Marissa Urraro, 44, a licensed practical nurse employed at the practice, allegedly charged adults $220 and children $85 for the cards and entered fabricated information into the New York State Immunization Information System, prosecutors said.

Undercover detectives told prosecutors they were given vaccine cards at the pediatric office “on one or more occasions,” but a vaccine was never administered.

DeVuono’s husband, NYPD officer Derin DeVuono, is being investigated by the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau for any involvement he might have had funneling business his wife’s way, sources said.

Derin DeVuono lost five vacation days in 2020 after he was accused of piloting a NYPD spy plane on a penis-shaped flight path in 2017 when he was a member of the department’s Aviation Unit.

DeVuono was assigned to Brooklyn’s 60th Precinct after he was accused of misusing the federally-funded $4 million Cessna plane, making improper entries in a flight log and not conducting flight surveys.

During a search of the DeVuonos’ Amityville home Thursday night, cops found $900,000 in cash and a ledger indicating the scheme has racked up over $1.5 million since November, prosecutors said.

Some of the cash was found in NYPD-issued helmet bags, sources said.

Julie DeVuono and Urrero were charged with forgery. DeVuono was also hit with a charge of offering a false instrument for filing.

Urrero is “a respected license practical nurse who has lead an exemplary career,” her lawyer, Michael Alber, told the Daily News. She pleaded not guilty at arraignment Friday in a Suffolk County court, Alber said.

“From our preliminary investigation, there are defects in the [prosecutors’] investigation and legal impediments to how the case came about.”

Both women were released without bail.

“As nurses, these two individuals should understand the importance of legitimate vaccination cards as we all work together to protect public health,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney K. Harrison said in a statement.

Last month, Gov. Hochul signed a bill criminalizing the production or use of fake vaccination cards.

Today's Dumbassery

It just doesn't make any sense to me that people would go so far out of their way to find shit that could easily bring them harm, and shame their families.

No mention in the Times of the penalties people can face for this kinda shit.

See The Conversation for more on that:

NYT: (pay wall)

Instagram User @AntiVaxMomma Charged With Selling Fake Vaccine Cards

The charges highlight how a black market for counterfeit Covid-19 vaccine cards has grown as the Delta variant fuels the latest wave of the coronavirus.

A New Jersey woman who used the Instagram handle @AntiVaxMomma was charged in a conspiracy to sell hundreds of fake coronavirus vaccination cards over the social media platform, Manhattan prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The allegations against the woman, Jasmine Clifford, 31, were unveiled in Manhattan criminal court. Prosecutors said that Ms. Clifford sold about 250 forged cards over Instagram.

She also worked with another woman, Nadayza Barkley, 27, who is employed at a medical clinic in Patchogue, N.Y., to fraudulently enter at least 10 people into New York’s immunization database, prosecutors said.

There was a warrant out for Ms. Clifford’s arrest, but she did not appear in the courtroom on Tuesday. She is expected to be charged with two felonies related to the scheme, in addition to the conspiracy charge, which is a misdemeanor.

Ms. Barkley, who did appear in court, was charged with a felony, as were 13 people who purchased the cards, some of whom worked in hospitals and nursing homes. A lawyer for Ms. Clifford could not immediately be reached for comment. Theodore Goldbergh, a lawyer who represented Ms. Barkley at the appearance, said that she had been released on her own recognizance but declined to comment further.

Beginning in May, prosecutors said, Ms. Clifford, who described herself online as an entrepreneur and the operator of multiple businesses, began advertising forged vaccination cards through her Instagram account.

She charged $200 for the falsified cards, prosecutors said. For $250 more, Ms. Barkley would enter a customer’s name into New York’s official immunization database, enabling him or her to obtain the state’s Excelsior Pass, a digital certificate of vaccination.

Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, released a statement that called on Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, to crack down on fraud.

“We will continue to safeguard public health in New York with proactive investigations like these, but the stakes are too high to tackle fake vaccination cards with whack-a-mole prosecutions,” Mr. Vance said. “Making, selling, and purchasing forged vaccination cards are serious crimes with serious public safety consequences.”

A spokesman for Facebook said the platform prohibited anyone from buying or selling vaccine cards, that it had removed Ms. Clifford’s account at the beginning of August, and that it would review any other accounts that might be doing the same thing, removing any it turned up.

A popular TikTok user, @Tizzyent, highlighted Ms. Clifford’s scheme in a viral video this month. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said that the video had not led to the charges against Ms. Clifford and the others, and court documents indicated that Ms. Clifford had been under investigation since June.

The charges against Ms. Clifford and her collaborators underscore a black-market industry for counterfeit vaccination cards that has come roaring into existence this year.

With only about 52 percent of the country fully vaccinated and a significant minority of Americans skeptical of the vaccines, forged cards are offered up on messaging services like Telegram and WhatsApp, as well as social media platforms like Instagram. Counterfeits have been spotted for sale on Amazon and Etsy.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said this month that its officers in Memphis had seized more than 3,000 forged cards in 2021 so far. Earlier this year, the National Association of Attorneys General sent a letter to the heads of Twitter, Shopify and eBay asking that they take immediate action to halt the sale of the fake cards on their websites.

Concerns about forged cards have risen as states, cities and corporations have shown more willingness to mandate vaccinations for certain activities and groups.

Earlier this month, New York City announced that it would begin to require that workers and customers at indoor restaurant dining rooms, gyms and performances have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine.

Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city’s more than 300,000 employees would have to get vaccinated or undergo weekly testing, prompting some pushback from unions, which are now in negotiations with the mayor’s office over the details of implementation.

Law enforcement officials have done what they can to crack down on fraud. Earlier this month, a Chicago-based pharmacist was arrested by federal agents and charged with the sale of 125 vaccination cards to 11 different buyers on eBay. The previous month, a naturopathic doctor in California was charged with a scheme to falsely record her customers as having received the Moderna vaccine.

New York’s Legislature recently passed a bill that would make it a state crime to falsify vaccination records. In an interview, State Senator Todd Kaminsky, one of the bill’s sponsors, said that counterfeit vaccine cards represented a growing threat.

“It was good foresight on our part to recognize that there were going to be those who would forge vaccine cards and create a public health danger,” he said.

@Tizzyent, the TikTok user who made a video about Ms. Clifford’s scheme this month, is an independent filmmaker in Florida who asked that he only be identified by his first name, Michael, because he had received threats for his videos in the past. He said in an interview that he had been fighting misinformation on social platforms for more than a year.

“It’s something that’s just a pet peeve,” he said.

He said that he had been alerted to a number of people selling counterfeit vaccine cards on social media, but that the @AntiVaxMomma scheme, for which she appeared to be recruiting collaborators when he stumbled upon one of her posts, seemed particularly advanced.

“A couple of days ago, a good friend of mine passed away from Covid,” he said. “When I see someone offering a workaround like this that’s putting everyone at risk, it’s horrifying to me.”

Oops

So we thought the main story would be the eventuality of a spike in Delta infections, and while that's still probably the case, here's a shitty little bonus for us.

KIRO Seattle:

Child sex-trafficking sting at 2021 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally nets 9 arrests

STURGIS, S.D. — A weeklong sex-trafficking sting executed at the 81st annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally netted nine arrests, each with some connection to children.

Eight of the nine men arrested, who range in age from 22 to 54, are South Dakota residents charged with attempted enticement of a minor using the internet, a charge which carries a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison upon conviction, the Argus Leader reported.

The ninth man, a New York resident, is charged with attempted commercial sex trafficking of a minor, which carries a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison upon conviction, the newspaper reported.

The South Dakota U.S. Attorney’s Office confirmed the arrests in a Tuesday news release.

According to the Rapid City Journal, the joint sex operation involved the South Dakota Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce, the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, Pennington County Sheriff’s Office and the Rapid City Police Department.

Specifically, law enforcement placed multiple advertisements on online websites and mobile applications to communicate with online predators. Skout, MeetMe and Whisper, as well as the website fetlife.com, were among the platforms targeted, the Journal reported.

The men arrested include:

• Alec Walker Daniel, 22, Rapid City, South Dakota: Attempted enticement of a minor using the internet.
• Alexander Wayne Basaldu, 35, Rapid City, South Dakota: Attempted enticement of a minor using the internet.
• Jesse James Young, 36, Rapid City, South Dakota: Attempted enticement of a minor using the internet.
• Joshua Robert Lehmann, 34, Rapid City, South Dakota: Attempted enticement of a minor using the internet.
• Christopher Thomas Dahl, 28, Wolcott, New York: Attempted commercial sex trafficking of a minor.
• Stephen Gregory Fontenot, 39, Black Hawk, South Dakota: Attempted enticement of a minor using the internet.
• Anthony James Kemp, 54, Spearfish, South Dakota: Attempted enticement of a minor using the internet.
• James Dean Hanapel, 20, Ellsworth AFB: Attempted enticement of a minor using the internet.
• Clayton John Paulson, 36, Spearfish, South Dakota: Attempted enticement of a minor using the internet.

The 2021 rally attracted more than 525,000 attendees, substantially fewer than the record-setting 2015 crowd of more than 747,000, but nearly 14% more than the roughly 462,000 who rode in for the 2020 event, KOTA-TV reported.

And the hardest part for me is resisting the urge to profile these fuckin' slugs as the usual "conservative" MAGA Incel suspects who talk shit while doing almost exactly what they accuse other people of doing.

A Very Fine Line

This is actually a really tough row to hoe.

I have no love or sympathy or any regard in any sense for Facebook, except that they should be more or less free to do their thing as long it doesn't directly harm anyone, or facilitate harm to anyone.

And that, I think, is at the heart of this:

KIRO-TV7 (Seattle)

Texas court: Facebook can be held liable for sex trafficking predators

The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that Facebook is not a “lawless no-man’s land” and can be held liable for the conduct of people who use the platform to recruit and prey on children.

The justices ruled that trafficking victims can move ahead with lawsuits because Facebook violated a provision of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which was passed in 2009, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The ruling stems from three civil actions from Houston involving teenage trafficking victims who met the predators through Facebook’s messaging functions, according to the Chronicle. The plaintiffs sued the California-based social media giant for negligence and product liability, arguing that Facebook failed to warn about or try to prevent sex trafficking from occurring on its platforms, the newspaper reported.

The lawsuits also alleged that Facebook benefited from the sexual exploitation of trafficking victims.

Facebook’s attorneys argued the company is shielded from liability under Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which states that what users say or write online is not the same as a publisher conveying the same message.

A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that the company is considering what steps to take next.

“Sex trafficking is abhorrent and not allowed on Facebook,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue our fight against the spread of this content and the predators who engage in it.”

The justices, in their majority opinion, wrote that “We do not understand Section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability on websites that knowingly or intentionally participate in the evil of online human trafficking.

“Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing, and the federal precedent uniformly dictates that Section 230 does not allow it,” the opinion said. “Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”

The lawsuits were brought by three Houston women who alleged they were recruited as teens via Facebook apps and were trafficked as a result of those connections, providing predators with “a point of first contact between sex traffickers and these children,” the Chronicle reported.

According to the Human Trafficking Institute, the majority of online recruitment in active sex trafficking cases in the U.S. in 2020 occurred on Facebook. The organization made the assertions in its 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report.

“The internet has become the dominant tool that traffickers use to recruit victims, and they often recruit them on a number of very common social networking websites,” Human Trafficking Institute CEO Victor Boutros told CBS News earlier this month. “Facebook overwhelmingly is used by traffickers to recruit victims in active sex trafficking cases.”

One plaintiff said she was 15 in 2012 when she communicated with the friend of a mutual friend on Facebook, the Chronicle reported. She alleged that after the man offered her a modeling job, he posted photos of her on Backpage, an online platform that was shut down in 2018 because it promoted human trafficking. The woman claimed she was “raped, beaten, and forced into further sex trafficking,” the newspaper reported.

The second plaintiff said she was 14 in 2017 when she was contacted on Instagram, another Facebook property. The woman alleged that the man lured her with “false promises of love and a better future,” and then used Instagram to advertise her as a prostitute and set up “dates,” according to the Chronicle. The woman claimed she was raped numerous times and alleged that when her mother reported what had happened to Facebook, the company “never responded.”

The third plaintiff said she was 14 in 2016 when a man she did not know sent her a friend request on Instagram, the Chronicle reported. They exchanged messages for two years, and in March 2018 the man allegedly asked her to leave home and meet her, the newspaper reported. The man allegedly photographed the teen in a motel room and posted the images on Backpage, according to court records.

Facebook’s attorneys argued that Congress used “very broad terms” to preserve free speech, guard against censorship via threat of litigation and avoid inconsistent liability standards.

“When Congress decided to amend Section 230 to combat the scourge of online sex trafficking, it did so with a scalpel, not a hammer -- carefully enumerating precisely the types of claims that would be exempt from Section 230,” Facebook’s attorneys argued in a September 2020 brief to the court. “The balance Congress struck is embodied in the language it used. Congress is free to alter that balance by amending that language. But this Court doesn’t sit as a super legislature to rewrite the statute under the guise of divining legislative ‘purpose.’

“But regardless of what plaintiffs contend Facebook should have done about that third-party content -- prevent it, block it, remove it, edit it, flag it, or warn about it -- the purported duty to take action that undergirds plaintiffs’ claims derives from (Facebook’s) role as a publisher, which is why these claims are prohibited by Section 230.”

My hang up is that I want Facebook kicked in the nuts really really really hard, but I don't want the Q-birds to take this as any kind of vindication that their stoopid fantasies have some tiny scintilla of rational justification.

Can't wait to hear more on that shit.

Today's Dumb

Dumb like a mud fence. Stay for the ending.

The Tightening

New York, and now Georgia have enlisted the aid of prosecutors who specialize in gang-busting as they ramp up their investigations of Donald (The Daft & Malignant) Trump.

So Trump's lawyers will be very busy trying to defend him, while Trump will be very busy raising money and figuring out ways not to pay them.

Reuters:

The district attorney investigating whether former U.S. President Donald Trump illegally interfered with Georgia’s 2020 election has hired an outside lawyer who is a national authority on racketeering, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has enlisted the help of Atlanta lawyer John Floyd, who wrote a national guide on prosecuting state racketeering cases. Floyd was hired recently to “provide help as needed” on matters involving racketeering, including the Trump investigation and other cases, said the source, who has direct knowledge of the situation.

The move bolsters the team investigating Trump as Willis prepares to issue subpoenas for evidence on whether the former president and his allies broke the law in their campaign to pressure state officials to reverse his Georgia election loss. Willis has said that her office would examine potential charges including “solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering” among other possible violations.

A representative for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

Floyd’s appointment signals that racketeering could feature prominently in the investigation. It’s an area of law where Willis has extensive experience - including a high-profile Atlanta case where she won racketeering convictions of 11 public educators for a scheme to cheat on standardized tests.

The investigation of Trump focuses in part on his phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, asking the secretary to “find” the votes needed to overturn Trump’s election loss, based on false voter-fraud claims.

Willis - a Democrat who in January became the county’s first Black woman district attorney - will have to navigate a fraught political landscape. She faces pressure from Democrats in Atlanta and nationally to pursue an aggressive prosecution, along with scrutiny from Republicans in a state historically dominated by that party.

Rule 1

Daddy State Awareness, rule 1

Every accusation is a confession.

The Trump Crime Family spends inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to smear everybody else as dopes and criminals - while being deeply involved in dopily criminal behavior themselves.

That's why they've been working to hard to get Ukraine (eg) to phony up some shit on Hunter Biden - which efforts have so far gotten President Stoopid impeached, and which, if Republicans had half the integrity of Snidely Whiplash, would have resulted in the removal from office of the sorriest excuse for a chief magistrate ever.

WaPo:

NEW YORK — A state judge on Wednesday ordered Eric Trump to be deposed no later than Oct. 7 in the New York attorney general's examination of the Trump Organization's financial practices, rejecting a protest by President Trump's son, who has said he is too busy to meet with investigators until after November's election.

The ruling was handed down by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron after nearly two hours of arguments in a lawsuit brought by state investigators conducting the civil investigation.

The president’s company is managed now by his two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., both of whom have taken active roles in their father’s reelection efforts. An attorney for Eric Trump said during Wednesday’s hearing that the president’s son travels nearly seven days a week to make campaign-related appearances.

Gotta love it when these privileged assholes argue they can't bother with obeying the law cuz they're just so darned busy all the time.

“This court finds that application unpersuasive,” Engoron said, referring to Eric Trump’s stated need to put off an interview until mid-November. He added that he felt Eric Trump’s attorney had cited no legal authority to support a bid to delay the deposition.

“Neither petitioner nor this court is bound by timeliness of the national election,” the judge said.

The judge also ordered that the Trump Organization and related business entities that were withholding documents and claiming attorney-client privilege proceed with producing records to the attorney general.

The lawsuit was filed in August by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), after lawyers in her office said they had hit a roadblock with attorneys for the Trump Organization and other potential witnesses in their pursuit of testimony and documents.

Today's Drip

As in drip drip drip. 

But yeah, that other kinda drip too. As in "What a fuckin' drip that guy is."

The problem of course, is that the flow of bullshit Cult45 uses to cover their crimes is exponentially greater than the revelations of those crimes.

Because it takes time to look into it, and then decide if there's really been a crime, because we have this "process" thing.

So the process gets manipulated and subvered by the bad guys, who (surprise surprise) are the same guys who bitch about the process all the fucking time.

Either they bitch about how the process is being manipulated and subverted by "those people" (Daddy State Awareness rule 1: every accusation is a confession), or they bitch about how unfair the process is because (eg) the bad ol' Democrats are trying to hold someone accountable (usually a criminally douche-bag-y Republican).

David Fahrenthold, WaPo:

President Trump has paid $2 million in court-ordered damages for misusing funds in a tax-exempt charity he controlled, the New York attorney general said Tuesday.

The payment was ordered last month by a New York state judge in an extraordinary rebuke to a sitting president. Trump had been sued in 2018 by the New York attorney general, who alleged the president had illegally used funds from the Donald J. Trump Foundation to buy portraits of himself, pay off his businesses’ legal obligations and help his 2016 campaign.

The money was split among eight charities, according to a statement from New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). The charities were the Army Emergency Relief, the Children’s Aid Society, Citymeals-on-Wheels, Give an Hour, Martha’s Table, the United Negro College Fund, the United Way of National Capital Area, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, according to the statement.