Category Archives: Votes voting

CA Prop 47 Made Theft out of Control

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Clean out your cars every night, watch shoplifters with calculators and stop UPS deliveries to your home.
Swell huh? Speaker Pelosi must be proud…same with Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Overview

Proposition 47 implemented three broad changes to felony sentencing laws. First, it reclassified certain theft and drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. Second, it authorizes defendants currently serving sentences for felony offenses that would have qualified as misdemeanors under the proposition to petition courts for resentencing under the new misdemeanor provisions. Third, it authorizes defendants who have completed their sentences for felony convictions that would have qualified as misdemeanors under the proposition to apply to reclassify those convictions to misdemeanors.

Felony convictions resentenced or reclassified as misdemeanors under the proposition are considered misdemeanors for all purposes, except that such relief does not permit the person to own, possess, or have in his or her custody or control any firearm.

Early Impacts of Proposition 47 on the CourtsPDF file type icon

California superior courts received more than 200,000 petitions for resentencing or applications for reclassification during the first 13 months after voters approved Proposition 47. A report prepared by Judicial Council staff, highlights the impacts of the ballot measure on the courts during the first year of implementation.

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Since the passage of the infamous Prop 47 five years ago, then marketed by California Democrats as the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” theft has increased across the state, as organized crime rings have transformed ordinary shoplifting into a lucrative and sophisticated operation. It’s likely no coincidence that San Francisco now has the highest rate of property crime of America’s twenty largest cities.

Passed in 2014, Prop 47 was allegedly designed to emphasize rehabilitation and keep non-violent offenders out of the state’s already packed prisons by reducing certain non-violent felonies to mere misdemeanors. For instance, a thief can now steal twice as much as he or she formerly could before facing a felony charge. But thieves and organized crime gangs capitalized on this loophole. In other words, Prop 47 is now a mechanism for gangs to immunize themselves from felony charges.  In cities like Vacaville, CA, just outside of the state’s capital, theft has more than doubled, and police believe Prop 47 is to blame.

According to the National Retail Federation’s 2018 survey on Organized Retail Crime (ORC), this jump is in petty theft as a result of relaxed laws is common (and given its ubiquity, should now be expected).

In states where the felony threshold has increased, over half report an increase in ORC case value. None reported a decrease. It appears that ORC criminals understand the new threshold and have increased their thefts to meet it.

Rachel Michelin, who currently serves as President of the California Retailers Association, explained to Fox News the crude savviness of the latest generation of shoplifters. “[Shoplifters] know what they’re doing. They will bring in calculators and get all the way up to the $950 limit.” She continued. “One person will go into a store, fill up their backpack, come out, dump it out and go right back in and do it all over again.”

The relaxation of penalties, combined with selective enforcement to focus on more “serious” crime, has seemingly been disastrous for the state’s larger cities. Although Prop 47 was championed by the state’s Democratic overlords, as well as by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), many attribute California’s growing property crime problem to lax initiatives like this one.

As Del Seymour of the non-profit Code Tenderloin emphasized to Fox News, the theft patterns in the city are a mix of international gangs, usually from Mexico or Guatemala, as well as homeless addicts looking to secure enough money to finance their next fix. The stealing and handoffs often take place in broad daylight and ironically, right in front of San Francisco City Hall. When I lived in San Francisco, City Hall was infamous for being a beehive of illicit activities and an area best avoided at all times of day.

Oddly enough, unrelated measures, like the additional charge for plastic bags, have made it more difficult for store owners to spot theft, given the frequency with which shoppers now simply throw items into their purses or backpacks after purchase. As Michelin noted, this type of behavior now allows shoplifters to “fit in” with the paying customers.  Michelin predicts that stores will increasingly turn to locking up their products for fear of theft.

The jump in retail theft is just one part of the picture when it comes to property theft in the state. According to the San Francisco Police Department, there is a car break-in every 22 minutes in the city, resulting in the formation of neighborhood “vigilantes” devoted to stopping break-ins. A 2018 study from the Public Policy Institute found evidence that Prop 47 was a contributing factor in the almost 20 percent-increase in car break-ins from 2014 to 2016.  It seems the rampant property crime in the city is creating a dystopian hellscape that the cops haven’t been awarded the authority to address.

CHAOS: California’s Prop 47 Gives ‘Green Light’ to ...

California voters may have had enough. In 2020, California residents will vote on whether to rollback the reforms implemented under Prop 47 in the hopes of reinstating the deterrents that fell by the wayside under the auspices of the state’s Democratic leadership.

When I lived in San Francisco’s fabled Bernal Heights, I was instructed to empty my car each night to discourage thieves from smashing my windows. There were some evenings I would forget after a long commute home, and I would hold my breath walking to my vehicle in the morning, always relieved to see that the windows were still intact (I detail my San Francisco trials here). If California voters are smart, perhaps San Francisco’s next generation of residents won’t have to feel terrorized by the constant barrage of petty crime. Hat Tip Federalist

Your Forced RSVP to the Cancel Party

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This list is hardly a complete list but it should stimulate some critical thought when it comes to Progessives attempting to run our lives and force law and policy upon us. The Progressives equal the Democrats, the Socialists, the Liberals. The notion of civil society is fading fast.

The Fight Doesn’t End With Kavanaugh | Earthjustice

Consider the following:

  1. The impeachment inquiry consuming Washington DC is effectively cancelling not only the vote for Trump to drain the swamp but to undo and redo past administration(s) actions.
  2. Cancelling history, changing the education syllabus on civics, monuments and principles.
  3. Cancelling the protections of the Bill of Rights, mostly all of them forcing government, state and federal to dispense their own versions of protections.
  4. Democrat organizations conspiring with media to cancel real news and facts with opinion.
  5. Cancelling and omitting law for protests, demonstrations, gang violence and shame.
  6. Cancelling new life for late term abortions while opposing the death penalty.
  7. Cancelling public safety and sovereignty by enabling homelessness, sanctuary cities, and legal challenges on immigration law.
  8. Cancelling self-governance for full reliance on government(s).
  9. Cancelling access to health treatment(s) and medicines with overwhelming costs, deductibles and policy restrictions.
  10. Cancelling any privacy protections when it comes to banking records, healthcare records, personal habits, buying trends, education, travel and homelife.
  11. Cancelling consequences for unlawful acts while selectively applying consequences for others, application of indictments and sentencing is subjective.
  12. Cancelling constituent access and legislative input.

Each of these items require the reader to apply real events to prove the points. Admitting the truths is the first step to seeking solutions, importance and call to actions by voters.

In this fractured and separated landscape, hate and apathy prevail such that any notion of recovery is fleeing. We have class warfare, fake news, deep fakes, shadow operations, new definitions and promoted manufactured dangers.

We have lost confidence in enforcing law, statesmenship, leadership, trust where it has been replaced by distrust, fear, self-censorship and isolation.

Pew Research this past June published a fascinating study.

Many Americans see declining levels of trust in the country, whether it is their confidence in the federal government and elected officials or their trust of each other, a new Pew Research Center report finds. And most believe that the interplay between the trust issues in the public and the interpersonal sphere has made it harder to solve some of the country’s problems. This research is part of the Center’s ongoing focus on issues tied to trust, facts and democracy.

The first item in the study:

Three-quarters of Americans say that their fellow citizens’ trust in the federal government has been shrinking, and 64% believe that about peoples’ trust in each other.

When asked a separate question about the reasons why trust has declined in the past 20 years, people offer a host of reasons in their written answers. Those who think there has been a decline of trust in the federal government over these two decades often see the problem tied to the government’s performance: 36% of those who see the decline cite this. Some worry the government is doing too much, others say too little, and others mention the government doing the wrong things or nothing at all. Respondents also cite concerns about how money has corrupted it and how corporations control the political process. President Donald Trump and his administration are mentioned in 14% of answers, and a smaller share lays the blame on Democrats. Additionally, 10% of those who see decline lay fault at the feet of the news media.

Those who think interpersonal trust has declined in the past generation offer a laundry list of societal and political problems, including a sense that Americans on the whole have become more lazy, greedy and dishonest. Some respondents make a connection between what they think is poor government performance – especially gridlock in Washington – and the toll it has taken on their fellow citizens’ hearts. Overall, 49% of adults think interpersonal trust has been tailing off because people are less reliable than they used to be.

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2 Nearly two-thirds (64%) say that low trust in the federal government makes it harder to solve many of the country’s problems. About four-in-ten (39%) who gave follow-up answers on why this was the case cite domestic concerns, topped by immigration and border issues, health care, racism and race-related issues, or guns and gun violence issues. Some also cite environmental issues, tax and budget matters, or political processes like voting rights and gerrymandering.

Another 70% of Americans believe that citizens’ low trust in each other makes it harder to solve problems. (They were not asked a follow-up question to explain their answer.)

3 Most think the decline in trust can be turned around. More than eight-in-ten Americans (84%) believe it is possible to improve the level of confidence people have in the government. Their written responses about how to make headway on trust problems urge a variety of political reforms, starting with more disclosure of what the government is doing, as well as term limits and restrictions on the role of money in politics. Some 15% of those who answered this question point to a need for better political leadership, including greater honesty and cooperation among those in the political class.

Read the full study here.

 

Apply More Shame to Facebook

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Okay, so without much media attention, YouTube was just fined $170 million for children’s privacy violations. Hello Google? WTH? This was a settlement by the way between Google and the Federal Trade Commission.

But what about Facebook and protecting our data? We have heard and read items about how casual Facebook is with out data. But hold on, there is more.

Primer: Cambridge Analytica was a cyber spy network with political operations and twisted tactics.

In part:

The company at the centre of the Facebook data breach boasted of using honey traps, fake news campaigns and operations with ex-spies to swing election campaigns around the world, a new investigation reveals.

Executives from Cambridge Analytica spoke to undercover reporters from Channel 4 News about the dark arts used by the company to help clients, which included entrapping rival candidates in fake bribery stings and hiring prostitutes to seduce them.

In one exchange, the company chief executive, Alexander Nix, is recorded telling reporters: “It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed.” More here.

Meanwhile:

Techcrunch: Hundreds of millions of phone numbers linked to Facebook accounts have been found online.

The exposed server contained more than 419 million records over several databases on users across geographies, including 133 million records on U.S.-based Facebook users, 18 million records of users in the U.K., and another with more than 50 million records on users in Vietnam.

But because the server wasn’t protected with a password, anyone could find and access the database.

Each record contained a user’s unique Facebook ID and the phone number listed on the account. A user’s Facebook ID is typically a long, unique and public number associated with their account, which can be easily used to discern an account’s username.

But phone numbers have not been public in more than a year since Facebook restricted access to users’ phone numbers.

TechCrunch verified a number of records in the database by matching a known Facebook user’s phone number against their listed Facebook ID. We also checked other records by matching phone numbers against Facebook’s own password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user’s phone number linked to their account.

Some of the records also had the user’s name, gender and location by country.

fb 3 2

This is the latest security lapse involving Facebook data after a string of incidents since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw more than 80 million profiles scraped to help identify swing voters in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Since then the company has seen several high-profile scraping incidents, including at Instagram, which recently admitted to having profile data scraped in bulk.

This latest incident exposed millions of users’ phone numbers just from their Facebook IDs, putting them at risk of spam calls and SIM-swapping attacks, which relies on tricking cell carriers into giving a person’s phone number to an attacker. With someone else’s phone number, an attacker can force-reset the password on any internet account associated with that number.

Sanyam Jain, a security researcher and member of the GDI Foundation, found the database and contacted TechCrunch after he was unable to find the owner. After a review of the data, neither could we. But after we contacted the web host, the database was pulled offline.

Jain said he found profiles with phone numbers associated with several celebrities.

Facebook spokesperson Jay Nancarrow said the data had been scraped before Facebook cut off access to user phone numbers.

“This data set is old and appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people’s ability to find others using their phone numbers,” the spokesperson said. “The data set has been taken down and we have seen no evidence that Facebook accounts were compromised.”

But questions remain as to exactly who scraped the data, when it was scraped from Facebook and why.

Facebook has long restricted developers‘ access to user phone numbers. The company also made it more difficult to search for friends’ phone numbers. But the data appeared to be loaded into the exposed database at the end of last month — though that doesn’t necessarily mean the data is new.

This latest data exposure is the most recent example of data stored online and publicly without a password. Although often tied to human error rather than a malicious breach, data exposures nevertheless represent an emerging security problem.

In recent months, financial giant First American left data exposed, as did MoviePass and the Senate Democrats.

Feds Prepare States for Foreign Voting Interference

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The Democrats have really lost their argument against voter ID if they are being fully candid about foreign interference. It is without question that several cities and states are victims of ransomware and Florida is especially concerned. Remember that a foreign actor, where clues point to Russia were able to gain access to voter registration databases and it stands to reason China will attempt the same.

Continually, the Democrats say that the Trump administration is virtually doing nothing to protect the election system. Read on as the Democrats know the mission and actions of the Cyber division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Image result for foreign hackers us voting systems photo
As Reuters reports:

The U.S. government plans to launch a program in roughly one month that narrowly focuses on protecting voter registration databases and systems ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

These systems, which are widely used to validate the eligibility of voters before they cast ballots, were compromised in 2016 by Russian hackers seeking to collect information. Intelligence officials are concerned that foreign hackers in 2020 not only will target the databases but attempt to manipulate, disrupt or destroy the data, according to current and former U.S. officials.

“We assess these systems as high risk,” said a senior U.S. official, because they are one of the few pieces of election technology regularly connected to the Internet.

The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, a division of the Homeland Security Department, fears the databases could be targeted by ransomware, a type of virus that has crippled city computer networks across the United States, including recently in Texas, Baltimore and Atlanta.

“Recent history has shown that state and county governments and those who support them are targets for ransomware attacks,” said Christopher Krebs, CISA’s director. “That is why we are working alongside election officials and their private sector partners to help protect their databases and respond to possible ransomware attacks.”

A ransomware attack typically locks an infected computer system until payment, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, is sent to the hacker.

The effort to counter ransomware-style cyberattacks aimed at the election runs parallel to a larger intelligence community directive to determine the most likely vectors of digital attack in the November 2020 election, according to current and former U.S. officials.

“It is imperative that states and municipalities limit the availability of information about electoral systems or administrative processes and secure their websites and databases that could be exploited,” the FBI said in a statement, supporting the Homeland Security initiative.

CISA’s program will reach out to state election officials to prepare for such a ransomware scenario. It will provide educational material, remote computer penetration testing, and vulnerability scans as well as a list of recommendations on how to prevent and recover from ransomware.

These guidelines, however, will not offer advice on whether a state should ultimately pay or refuse to pay ransom to a hacker if one of its systems is already infected.

“Our thought is we don’t want the states to have to be in that situation,” said a Homeland Security official. “We’re focused on preventing it from happening.”

Over the last two years, cyber criminals and nation state hacking groups have used ransomware to extort victims and create chaos. In one incident in 2017, which has since been attributed to Russian hackers, a ransomware virus was used to mask a data deletion technique, rendering victim computers totally unusable.

That attack, dubbed “NotPetya,” went on to damage global corporations, including FedEx and Maersk, which had offices in Ukraine where the malware first spread.

The threat is concerning because of its potential impact on voting results, experts say.

“A pre-election undetected attack could tamper with voter lists, creating huge confusion and delays, disenfranchisement, and at large enough scale could compromise the validity of the election,” said John Sebes, chief technology officer of the ESET Institute, an election technology policy think tank.

The databases are also “particularly susceptible to this kind of attack because local jurisdictions and states actively add, remove, and change the data year-round,” said Maurice Turner, a senior technologist with the Center for Democracy and Technology. “If the malicious actor doesn’t provide the key, the data is lost forever unless the victim has a recent backup.”

Nationwide, the local governments that store and update voter registration data are typically ill-equipped to defend themselves against elite hackers.

State election officials told Reuters they have improved their cyber defenses since 2016, including in some cases preparing backups for voter registration databases in case of an attack. But there is no common standard for how often local governments should create backups, said a senior Homeland Security official.

“We have to remember that this threat to our democracy will not go away, and concern about ransomware attacks on voter registration databases is one clear example,” said Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos. “We’re sure the threat is far from over.”

 

1st Amendment or Selective Enforcement, Kentucky and Texas

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So, just a few days ago, a disruptive crowd gathered in the street and front lawn of Senator Mitch McConnell’s home. This happened to nights in a row at his home and office. At his home they chanted in what was reported as a peaceful assembly and exercising free speech. This is all due to the recent mass shootings. Senator McConnell is recovering at home due to a major injury to his shoulder suffered as a result of a fall.

  Local police did not intervene stating that the assembly was within the law. But, hey that is hardly accurate. Let’s take a look at the law in Kentucky shall we?

Code Section Kentucky Revised Statute section 525.055: First-Degree Disorderly Conduct
What’s Prohibited? First-degree disorderly conduct is committed in Kentucky when the following four element are all present:

  1. Engaging in any of the following acts in a public place with the intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm:
  • Fighting, or acting in a violent, tumultuous, or threatening way
  • Making unreasonable noise

OR

Code Section Kentucky Revised Statute section 525.060: Second-Degree Disorderly Conduct
What’s Prohibited? Intentionally causing public inconvenience, annoyance, alarm, or wantonly creating a risk thereof in public while:

  • Engaging in fighting, or violent, tumultuous, or threatening behavior,
  • Making unreasonable noise

Misdemeanor Penalties in Kentucky

  • Class A misdemeanor: Punishable by imprisonment for up to 12 months and/or a fine of up to $500.
  • Class B misdemeanor: Punishable by imprisonment for up to 90 days and/or a fine of up to $250.

Okay, now we travel over to San Antonio….and Joaquin Castro, the twin brother of Congressman Julian Castro, currently a presidential candidate. By the way, Joaquin Castro is the campaign chair for his twin brother. We have a nasty doxxing operation that was launched at the hands of really both Castro twins.

The congressman claims he was targeting voters that are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as invaders. Meanwhile, Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan defends the Castros.

So, what are the details?

 

It is notable that Castro did not list ANY Latinos in his doxxing.

Image It does not seem to matter that campaign contributions are free speech and fully protected by the 1st Amendment. Will media even go there in reporting this? Nah. Will the House Ethics Committee get involved? Nah. The mayor? Law enforcement? Nah.

What if someone gets hurt? Who is responsible?

Congressman Steve Scalise knows this quite well.

 Steve Scalise
@SteveScalise
People should not be personally targeted for their political views. Period. This isn’t a game. It’s dangerous, and lives are at stake. I know this firsthand.
Would there be Democrat outrage if any republican or President Trump had done this? Of for sure and you can bet the SPLC or ACLU would already be filing law suits.
And the polarized divided media, political class and laws continue to swirl.