Without weighing in on the legality of the sign, WOW… San Franciscan authorities moved fast to remove it. They let crooks run wild and drug-addled vagrants threaten residents and tourists, but the city authorities are mega vigilant about sign code enforcement.
San Francisco authorities have removed Elon Musk’s huge new, brightly-lit ‘X’ sign because it violated permit orders.
The social-media giant, formally known as Twitter, was under investigation after Musk had the blinding sign that aggravated neighbors installed without first obtaining permits from the San Francisco Department of Buildings.
Today, workers dismantled the large X logo on the roof of the headquarters in San Francisco, California – just over 48 hours after it was installed.
Earlier today, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith filed a brief to Judge Noreika, suggesting that she toss Hunter’s ‘sweetheart’ plea deal with Delaware prosecutors due to claims they gave the President’s son preferential treatment.
It is claimed that someone from Hunter’s attorney Chris Clark’s former law firm later called the Delaware clerk – pretending to be from the office of Smith’s attorney, Theodore Kittila – asking them to remove the original filing and, with it, 448 pages of Congressional testimony from the two IRS investigators who worked on the case.
[…]
‘It appears that the caller misrepresented her identity and who she worked for in an attempt to improperly convince the clerk’s office to remove the amicus materials from the docket,’ the order said.
‘Therefore, it is hereby ordered that, on or before 9pm today on July 25, 2023, counsel for defendant shall show cause as to why sanctions should not be considered for misrepresentations to the court.’
In 2021, when a New York art gallery debuted Hunter Biden’s paintings with asking prices as high as $500,000, the White House said that Hunter Biden’s team had a process for carefully vetting buyers, and that their identities were known only to the gallery, and not to Hunter Biden himself. The messaging seemed to suggest that Hunter Biden’s art patrons came from a rarified universe of collectors who had nothing to do with the hurly burly of politics.
Neither of those things has turned out to be the case. Hunter Biden did in fact learn the identity of two buyers, according to three people directly familiar with Hunter Biden’s own account of his art career. And one of those buyers is indeed someone who got a favor from the Biden White House. The timing of their purchase, however, is unknown.
That buyer, Insider can reveal, is Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a Los Angeles real estate investor and philanthropist. Hirsh Naftali is influential in California Democratic circles and is a significant Democratic donor who has given $13,414 to the Biden campaign and $29,700 to the Democratic National Campaign Committee this year. In 2022, she hosted a fundraiser headlined by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Insider also obtained internal documents from Hunter Biden’s gallery showing that a single buyer purchased $875,000 of his art. The documents do not indicate the buyer’s identity, which is also unknown to Insider at this time.
In July 2022, eight months after Hunter Biden’s first art opening, Joe Biden announced Hirsh Naftali’s appointment to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. It is unclear whether Hirsh’s purchase of Hunter Biden’s artwork occurred before or after that appointment. Membership on the commission is an unpaid position that is often filled by campaign donors, family members, and political allies — the same crowd that often winds up with US ambassadorial appointments. Hirsh Naftali’s fundraising activities mark her as the kind of well-connected donor who often wins such appointments, regardless of any relationship they might have with the president’s family. But they do not address the possibility that Hunter Biden might have voiced his support for her appointment.
While the story blames the pandemic, we know it is much more than that when it comes to cities like San Francisco. Permissive vagrant and drug policies, lack of police enforcement, prioritizing the homeless over the people who pay taxes, the list goes on.
Data bears out that San Francisco’s downtown is having a harder time than most. A study of 63 North American downtowns by the University of Toronto ranked the city dead last in a return to pre-pandemic activity, garnering only 32% of its 2019 traffic.
Hotel revenues are stuck at 73% of pre-pandemic levels, weekly office attendance remains below 50% and commuter rail travel to downtown is at 33%, according to a recent economic report by the city.
Office vacancy rates in San Francisco were 24.8% in the first quarter, more than five times higher than pre-pandemic levels and well above the average rate of 18.5% for the nation’s top 10 cities, according to CBRE, a commercial real estate services company.
Why? San Francisco relied heavily on international tourism and its tech workforce, both of which disappeared during the pandemic.
But other major cities including Portland and Seattle, which also rely on tech workers, are struggling with similar declines, according to the downtown recovery study, which used anonymized mobile phone data to analyze downtown activity patterns from before the pandemic and between March and May of this year.
I’ve gone to San Francisco two to six times a year for the past decade or so. In fact, I was in San Francisco and went to a basketball game right as the pandemic began. It was my last business trip for a while. While the city had its bums and nasty areas, it was a vibrant, fun city. It was also relatively safe – as far as cities go. I once took a run from Fisherman’s Wharf, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and back through the city. I never felt any less safe than any other large city. I usually stayed in the financial district or by the wharf because I liked the restaurants.
I was in San Fran again a few weeks ago. I stayed two nights in Fisherman’s Wharf. The place was a ghost town and one of my colleagues had his luggage stolen from his rental car in a smash-and-grab. When he returned the car, they said that they have difficulty maintaining inventory because the cars come back with smashed windows so often. I went for a short walk and had to avoid bums and feces. It was gross and while I wasn’t threatened, the glares made me lament that I wasn’t carrying a weapon. I cut my walk short.
It’s a shame, but the city isn’t dying. It’s being killed.
The suspect in the 1982 Tylenol poisonings that killed seven people in the Chicago area, triggered a nationwide panic, and led to an overhaul in the safety of over-the-counter medication packaging, has died, police said on Monday.
Officers, firefighters and EMTs responding to a report of an unresponsive person at about 4 p.m. Sunday found James W. Lewis dead in his Cambridge, Massachusetts, home, Cambridge Police Superintendent Frederick Cabral said in a statement. He was 76, police said.
“Following an investigation, Lewis’ death was determined to be not suspicious,” the statement says.
No one was ever charged in the deaths of seven people who took the over-the-counter painkillers laced with cyanide. Lewis served more than 12 years in prison for sending an extortion note to manufacturer Johnson & Johnson, demanding $1 million to “stop the killing.” He and his wife moved to Massachusetts in 1995 following his release. Listed numbers for his wife were not in service.
When Lewis was arrested in New York City in 1982 after a nationwide manhunt, he gave investigators a detailed account of how the killer might have operated. Lewis later admitted sending the letter and demanding the money, but he said he never intended to collect it. He said he wanted to embarrass his wife’s former employer by having the money sent to the employer’s bank account.
Lewis, who had a history of trouble with the law, always denied any role in the Tylenol deaths, but remained a suspect and in 2010 gave DNA samples to the FBI. He even created a website in which he said he was framed. Although the couple lived briefly in Chicago in the early 1980s, Lewis said they were in New York City at the time of the poisonings.
The FBI first learned of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, full of incriminating data, in October 2019, an IRS memo shows.
The memo, written by senior IRS Criminal Investigation official Gary Shapley in 2020, reveals how senior law enforcement officials sat on the treasure trove of evidence from the First Son’s computer and waited months before handing over mere excerpts to investigators working the case.
It also directly contradicts an open letter from 51 top former intelligence officials published weeks ahead of the 2020 presidential election which dismissed the laptop as having ‘all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation’.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Retiree Pamela Haile has paid property taxes, insurance and other bills on a house she lets out in Oakland, but for more than three years her tenants have paid no rent thanks to one of the longest-lasting eviction bans in the country.
The eviction moratorium in the San Francisco Bay Area city expires next month and Haile can’t wait. The 69-year-old estimates she is owed more than $60,000 in back rent, money she doubts she will ever see. Moreover, the tenants have trashed her house and it will cost tens of thousands of dollars to make it habitable, she says.
“It’s unbelievable and it’s like, how can they have the nerve to just let something like this happen? If this happened to them, how would they feel?” Haile said of her tenants. “Dealing with this whole thing gets me so upset.”
Eviction moratoriums were put in place across the U.S. at the start of the pandemic in 2020 to prevent displacement and curb the spread of the coronavirus. Most expired long ago, but not in Oakland or neighboring San Francisco and Berkeley, all places where rents and rates of homelessness are high.
I’m not sure why it’s relevant that he’s a CCW holder. This happened in his home. Still, it’s a good outcome.
A Wisconsin concealed carry holder found a man suspected of a local crime spree in his attic and held him at gunpoint until police arrived, authorities said.
A Cudahy, Wisconsin, homeowner only identified by local media as “John J.” said he returned to his home last Monday morning after work and made a disturbing discovery that an intruder was in his home. Cudahy is located in Milwaukee County.
“I opened my back door, and I saw a bunch of insulation from my roof, from my attic, on my kitchen floor. We thought an animal was upstairs,” John told WISN 12. “We thought an animal was upstairs. And it turned out to be an armed felon with a pistol.”
[…]
Turner was on parole for a hit-and-run at the time of his arrest on June 19, WISN reported.
A Virginia man has been arrested for the murder of New Jersey councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, who was gunned down outside her home in February.
[…]
Officials did not discuss a possible motive and did not take questions from reporters.
Ciccone called it a “complex, extensive case.”
[…]
Dwumfour, a business analyst and a part-time emergency medical technician, was elected as a Republican to the Sayreville Borough Council in 2021, defeating an incumbent Democrat.
Other notable declines occurred in major metros like Austin, Boise, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Los Angeles – all of which saw their median home price shed at least $60,000 since April of last year.
San Francisco and Oakland both saw price drops into six figures with the median value decreasing by $220,000 and $174,000 respectively.
I was speaking to a friend who lives in the Minneapolis area. She commented on how home prices in her town were still high with limited supply, but she knew of people moving out of Minneapolis proper who were losing their shorts on their homes. People are sick of the crime and are fleeing. Unfortunately, like what happened in Chicago, there are fewer and fewer people who care about crime living in these cities. What’s left are people who will continue to vote for Marxists who will continue to encourage the carnage with pro-criminal policies. The cities are in a death spiral.
The trap that we must avoid is to bail these cities out. They have made a choice. They should deal with the consequences. There is no rational reason for people who made better choices in other communities to send their hard-earned money to be flushed down the crime sewer.
Agents from the Ajo Border Patrol Station were involved in the shooting while assisting the Tohono O’odham Nation Police Department, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The FBI and the Tohono O’odham Nation Police Department are investigating the shooting, according to Customs and Border Protection. Tribal chairperson Ned Norris Jr. identified the dead man as Raymond Mattia.
“Our hearts go out to his family and all those impacted during this difficult time,” Norris Jr. said Saturday in a written statement. “As the investigation proceeds, the Nation expects full consideration of all related facts of the incident and an appropriate and expeditious response from relevant public safety agencies.”
Mattia was 2 feet from his front door when he was shot approximately 38 times, according to Tucson TV station KVOA. Mattia had called the Border Patrol because he had multiple migrants trespassing in his yard and he wanted help getting them off his property, KVOA reported.
The shooting happened in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which has the highest number of use-of-force incidents across the agency, with 158 incidents reported so far in fiscal year 2023, according to CBP data.
In March, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a U.S. citizen near Sasabe after a vehicle chase. The shooting was ruled a homicide by the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week. Sorry about the lack of posting this week. It’s been a busy time.
Eight minutes into a routine traffic stop for a suspected drunk driver, the suspect pulled out a gun and killed St. Croix County Sheriff’s Deputy Katie Leising. The 29-year-old new mother was the fourth officer murdered while on duty this year. At only five months into the year, it is already the deadliest year for police officers in 25 years.
The circumstances of Deputy Leising’s murder were eerily similar to the other three officers who were murdered this year. The suspect she was investigating was a multiple felon. Convicted for kidnapping and criminal sexual misconduct in 2015 in Minnesota, and with a long criminal record, he served just four years in prison before being released. With a history of violence and perhaps fearing another arrest, the suspect murdered Deputy Leising.
In April, Officers Emily Breidenbach and Hunter Scheel of the Chetek and Cameron Police Departments, respectively, confronted a suspect with an open warrant in a traffic stop. The suspect had a history of domestic violence and opened fire on the officers. Both of the officers were killed.
In February, Milwaukee Police Officer Peter Jerving was working with other officers to apprehend a robbery suspect. When they caught up to the suspect after a chase on foot, the suspect opened fire and killed officer Jerving. The suspect had a history of criminal behavior. In fact, the very week he killed officer Jerving, he had been sentenced for two counts of hit-and-run. He was sentenced to a scant four months, but the sentence was suspended meaning that he did not have to serve any time unless he violated his probation.
What’s going on? The increasing violence against law enforcement officers is a symptom of two sickening societal trends being driven by the political left.
The first trend is the intentional softening of our criminal justice system. With callous disregard for the victims of crime, the left has made a concerted effort in recent years to drive soft-on-crime policies while putting in place prosecutors, judges, and police leadership who use their positions to coddle criminals at every opportunity.
The left is so proud of their pro-crime positions that they are not shy about telling people. Gov. Tony Evers has a stated policy goal of halving the state’s prison population. The only way to do that is to let some criminals out early while preventing more from going in. Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm has a long history of advocating for criminal justice reform, the euphemism liberals use for soft-on-criminal policies. Chisholm’s “bail reform” initiative, which allows violent offenders to bail out of jail for little or no money, has led to criminals committing more crimes when they should have reasonably been in jail.
In each of the three incidents that led to the deaths of four officers this year, the murderers should have been in jail. We used to know that locking up violent criminals was the surest path to reducing crime. The left wants us to forget that fact, but the evidence is clear.
The second trend is the cultural contempt for police that the left is advocating. Every time there is a police-involved shooting, leftist politicians activists leap to blame the police and attack them with accusations of racism or misconduct before the guns have even cooled.
The left pushed the defund-the-police movement using rhetoric that the police were so fundamentally corrupt that they could not be reformed. They must be defunded and disbanded instead.
When leftist rioters burn down our cities, attack people, and occupy neighborhoods, leftist politicians and activists side with the rioters and prevent the police from keeping order.
Even with our children, the left teaches that police are inherently bad and corrupt. In the wake of the BLM movement, the Milwaukee Public Schools ejected all Milwaukee police officers from their schools and are boisterously rejecting Republican calls to let them return. How are Milwaukee’s public school kids supposed to respect police officers when they are being taught that the police are violent bigots?
The overall increase in crime driven by leftist policies, prosecutors and judges coupled with the leftist anti-police rhetoric is having the intended effect. More police officers are being murdered by violent criminals who no longer respect the police and should have been in jail anyway. The story of leftist rule is being written in blue and red.
The first trend is the intentional softening of our criminal justice system. With callous disregard for the victims of crime, the left has made a concerted effort in recent years to drive soft-on-crime policies while putting in place prosecutors, judges, and police leadership who use their positions to coddle criminals at every opportunity.
The left is so proud of their pro-crime positions that they are not shy about telling people. Gov. Tony Evers has a stated policy goal of halving the state’s prison population. The only way to do that is to let some criminals out early while preventing more from going in. Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm has a long history of advocating for criminal justice reform, the euphemism liberals use for soft-on-criminal policies. Chisholm’s “bail reform” initiative, which allows violent offenders to bail out of jail for little or no money, has led to criminals committing more crimes when they should have reasonably been in jail.
In each of the three incidents that led to the deaths of four officers this year, the murderers should have been in jail. We used to know that locking up violent criminals was the surest path to reducing crime. The left wants us to forget that fact, but the evidence is clear.
The second trend is the cultural contempt for police that the left is advocating. Every time there is a policeinvolved shooting, leftist politicians activists leap to blame the police and attack them with accusations of racism or misconduct before the guns have even cooled.
The left pushed the defund-the-police movement using rhetoric that the police were so fundamentally corrupt that they could not be reformed. They must be defunded and disbanded instead.
When leftist rioters burn down our cities, attack people, and occupy neighborhoods, leftist politicians and activists side with the rioters and prevent the police from keeping order.
Even with our children, the left teaches that police are inherently bad and corrupt. In the wake of the BLM movement, the Milwaukee Public Schools ejected all Milwaukee police officers from their schools and are boisterously rejecting Republican calls to let them return. How are Milwaukee’s public school kids supposed to respect police officers when they are being taught that the police are violent bigots?
The overall increase in crime driven by leftist policies, prosecutors and judges coupled with the leftist anti-police rhetoric is having the intended effect. More police officers are being murdered by violent criminals who no longer respect the police and should have been in jail anyway. The story of leftist rule is being written in blue and red.
In a 306-page report, special counsel John Durham said the agency’s inquiry had lacked “analytical rigor”.
He concluded the FBI had not possessed “actual evidence” of collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia before launching an inquiry.
The FBI said it had addressed the issues highlighted in the report.
[…]
The report noted significant differences in the way the FBI had handled the Trump investigation when compared with other potentially sensitive inquiries, such as those involving his 2016 electoral rival Hillary Clinton.
Mr Durham noted that Mrs Clinton and others had received “defensive briefings” from the FBI aimed at “those who may be the targets of nefarious activities by foreign powers”. Mr Trump had not.
“The Department [of Justice] and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law,” the report concluded.
I admit. I was skeptical, but Wow. Always follow the money. This is specific, damning evidence that the Biden family has been engaged in a long-term extortion scheme to sell policy to foreign interests – including some of our most ardent foes. This is treasonous. I don’t use that word lightly. This is not about a policy dispute. This is old-fashioned corruption of selling public policy to foreign interests for personal enrichment.
Republicans are digging in on over $10 million received by Biden family members from foreign actors, including previously undisclosed $1 million in Romanian-linked payments, and a ‘web’ of 20 companies created while President Joe Biden was vice president and pushing anti-corruption efforts abroad.
On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Republicans led by Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., released a ‘Second Records Memorandum’ that expands on information it received from subpoena returns as the committee continues its investigation into the Biden family’s business practices.
The memo specifically outlines the Biden family’s ties to Romanian ‘influence peddling’ and a web of LLCs created while Biden was vice president. It also accuses President Biden for a ‘lack of transparency’ regarding his family’s receipt of funds from China, which he has said are ‘not true.’
[…]
The Romanian transactions outlined in the bank records released by the committee were from Cypriot – a company controlled by Gabriel Popoviciu, who was at the time under investigation for criminal corruption in Romania and later convicted for bribery-related offenses.
Between 2015 and 2017, Robinson Walker, LLC received $3 million from Bladon Enterprises Limited – Popoviciu’s Cypriot company – which was then paid out to Biden family members in a total sum of over $1 million.
The first payments were received by the LLC just weeks after then-Vice President Biden hosted Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House and they discussed anti-corruption policies.
Biden family accounts gained $1.038 million from Robinson Walker, LLC in a series of 17 deposits, 16 of which were made while Biden was still in the White House. The payments went to associate James Gilliar, Hunter Biden, Hallie Biden, Owasco LLC and an ‘unknown Biden bank account.’
‘It appears from bank records the Bidens were using Robinson Walker, LLC to conceal that the source of these payments was Popovici,’ the memo says.
According to emails from Hunter’s laptop obtained by DailyMail.com, Popoviciu hired the president’s son in 2016 as part of an influence campaign to persuade anti-corruption prosecutors to cut a deal or drop the case – all while his father was sitting vice president.
While I expect these options to be popular with some, I doubt it will stem the exodus. I don’t think most are leaving (or not joining) because of the way shifts are structured.
The flexible schedule comes amid a mass exodus of veteran officers retiring or taking jobs at other departments for better pay and benefits. The department is experiencing high overtime costs as the rest of the force picks up the slack with extra hours.
[…]
Under the 12-hour shift option, officers work three days on and three days off within the NYPD’s scheduling framework.
In the 10-hour option, officers would work 10-hour shifts for four days, followed by two days off.
Officers based in the Bronx — in the 45th and 47th precincts and in Transit District 11 and Public Service Area 8, which serves city housing projects in the 43rd, 45th and 47th precincts — are participating in the pilot program. If the program works, the city hopes to expand it.
Democrats in the Oregon House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would decriminalize homeless encampments in public places and allow homeless people to sue for $1,000 if harassed or told to leave.
The bill, HB 3501, would allow unhoused people to use public spaces “without discrimination and time limitations” regarding their housing status, the text reads.
“Many persons in Oregon have experienced homelessness as a result of economic hardship, a shortage of safe and affordable housing, the inability to obtain gainful employment and a disintegrating social safety net system,” says the bill, sponsored by Rep. Farrah Chaichi, a Democrat whose district includes Beaverton, and Rep. Khanh Pham, from southeast Portland. “Decriminalization of rest allows local governments to redirect resources from local law enforcement activities to activities that address the root causes of homelessness and poverty.”
A retired CIA leader coordinated a letter from former intelligence chiefs claiming that Hunter Biden‘s laptop was Russian disinformation because he wanted to help Joe Biden‘s presidential campaign.
Morell was a former acting CIA director, serving for two months in 2011 and four months from 2012 to 2013. He retired from the CIA in September 2013.
[…]
Joe Biden used the letter during the October 22 debate against Donald Trump, saying he thought the reporting around his son’s abandoned computer was the work of Russia.
Morell was thanked for his work in coordinating the letter, with Steve Ricchetti, chairman of the Biden campaign, telephoning him after the debate to say thank you.
He was then said to be in consideration for the role of CIA director – a job that ultimately went to William Burns.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is the ‘senior’ unnamed Biden administration official in the center of a new bombshell IRS whistleblower claim, a source familiar tells DailMail.com.
According to a letter Wednesday from attorney Mark Lytle, a man serving as a supervising agent on a ‘high-profile’ criminal tax probe has come forward seeking whistleblower protections while claiming politics are ‘improperly infecting decisions’ in an investigation.
The investigation referred to is reportedly examining matters related to President Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
The protected disclosures by the IRS whistleblower ‘contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee,’ the letter stated.
DailyMail.com has confirmed that the ‘senior political appointee’ is Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Racine Alderman John Tate II, who was forced last year to resign as Governor Evers’ Parole Commission director, has been charged with a felony for allegedly using his position to approve a new $100,000-per-year job that he himself then took. The Racine County District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday filed a charge of Private interest in a Public Contract While Working in a Public Capacity, a Class I felony punishable by a maximum sentence of more than three years in prison.
According to a criminal complaint obtained exclusively by “The Dan O’Donnell Show,” Tate used his position as Racine’s Common Council President and member of the Finance and Personnel Committee to approve a grant creating a new city position of Violence Interruption Coordinator. The position, which was described as helping “to facilitate the process of creating a Racine version of a ‘Blueprint for Peace'” and would pay between $78,520.00 and $101,004.80 annually. There were 20 applicants for the position, which was advertised only from September 8-22, and Tate was one of only three to interview for the position.
On October 11, Tate accepted a positiion as the City of Madison’s Independent Police Monitor, but two days later the City of Racine offered him the position of Violence Interruption Coordinator. Tate used his new position in Madison as leverage with Racine and negotiated an annual salary of $101,698.05 (more than the advertised salary range for the position), four weeks of paid vacation, and offered an opportunity to take advantage of a $10,000 forgivable home loan program for City of Racine employees.
