Discussion:
Trump Looks Like A Typical Right Wing Horses Ass
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tig
2020-05-12 02:39:05 UTC
Permalink
Very happy to see him fail after his immature ignorant behavior on a world
stage. Now he wants to ban bump stocks because he doesn't think his
followers can handle them.

Anyone who supports him is either a spree shooter or mentally unbalanced neo-
nazi who should kill themselves for supporting a rapist lunatic who lost
touch with reality 40 years-ago.
Going Woke? Dump That State!
2023-09-05 23:16:38 UTC
Permalink
Very happy to see Swallwell fail after his immature ignorant behavior with a Chink whore spy.
Monkey Pox, right on time to give Democrats an excuse to cheat in the next election.
After living in the Bay Area for nearly seven years, Hari
Raghavan and his wife decided to leave for the East Coast late
last year.

They were both working remotely and wanted to leave California
because of the high cost of living and urban crime. So they made
a list of potential relocation cities before choosing Miami for
its sunny weather and what they perceived was a better sense of
safety.

Raghavan said that their Oakland house had been broken into four
times and that prior to the pandemic, his wife called him every
day during her seven-minute walk home from the BART station
because she felt safer with someone on the phone. After moving
to Miami, Raghavan said they accidentally left their garage door
open one day and were floored when they returned home and found
nothing had been stolen.

“We moved to the Bay Area because we had to be there if you want
to work in tech and start-ups, and now that that’s no longer a
tether, we took a long hard look and said, ‘Wait, why are we
here again?’ ” Raghavan said.

He said there wasn't much draw in California's quality of life,
local or social policies, or cost of living. "That forced us to
question where we actually wanted to live," he said.

An acceleration of people leaving coastal California began
during the first year of the pandemic. But new data show it
continued even after lockdowns and other COVID restrictions
eased.

California ranks second in the country for outbound moves — a
phenomenon that has snowballed during the pandemic, according to
a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which tracked
data from moving company United Van Lines. Between 2018 and
2019, California had an outbound move rate of 56%. That rate
rose to nearly 60% in 2020-21.

Citing changes in work-life balance, opportunities for remote
work and more people deciding to quit their jobs, the report
found that droves of Californians are leaving for states like
Texas, Virginia, Washington and Florida. California lost more
than 352,000 residents between April 2020 and January 2022,
according to California Department of Finance statistics.

San Francisco and Los Angeles rank first and second in the
country, respectively, for outbound moves as the cost of living
and housing prices continue to balloon and homeowners flee to
less expensive cities, according to a report from Redfin
released this month.

Angelenos, in particular, are flocking to places like Phoenix,
Las Vegas, San Diego, San Antonio and Dallas. The number of Los
Angeles residents leaving the city jumped from around 33,000 in
the second quarter of 2021 to nearly 41,000 in the same span of
2022, according to the report.

California has grappled with extremely high housing prices
compared with other states, according to USC economics professor
Matthew Kahn. Combined with the pandemic and the rise in remote
work, privileged households relocated when they had the
opportunity.

"People want to live here, but an unintended consequence of the
state’s environmentalism is we’re not building enough housing in
desirable downtown areas," Kahn said. "That prices out middle-
class people to the suburbs [and creates] long commutes. We
don’t have road pricing to help the traffic congestion, and
these headaches add up. So when you create the possibility of
work from home, many of these people ... they say 'enough' and
they move to a cheaper metropolitan area.”

Kahn also pointed out that urban crime, a growing unhoused
population, public school quality and overall quality of life
are driving out residents.

“In New York City, but also in San Francisco, there are all
these fights about which kids get into which elite public
schools," he said. "The rich are always able to hide in their
bubble, but if the middle class looks at this quality of life
declining, that’s a push factor to leave."

Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather cited a June report
that tracked the change in spending power of a homebuyer on a
$2,500 monthly budget. While 11.2% of homes in Los Angeles were
affordable on that budget, using a 3% interest rate, that amount
swelled to about 72% in Houston and about 50% in Phoenix.

“It’s really an affordability problem,” Fairweather said.
“California for the longest time has prioritized single-family
zoning, which makes it so people stay in their homes longer
because their property taxes don’t reflect the true value.
California is the epicenter of where the housing shortage is so
people have no choice but to move elsewhere.”

While California experienced a major population boom in the late
20th century — reaching 37 million people by 2000 — it's been
losing residents since, with new growth lagging behind the rest
of the country, according to the Public Policy Institute of
California. The state's population increased by 5.8% from 2010
to 2020, below the national growth rate of 6.8%, and resulting
in the loss of a congressional seat in 2021 for the first time
in the state's history.

Although California has relied on immigration to offset its
population decline for the past two decades, that flow has also
shrunk, according to UCLA economics professor Lee Ohanian.

Delays in processing migration requests to the U.S. were
compounded during the pandemic, resulting in the lowest levels
of immigration in decades, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Estimates showed a net increase of 244,000 new immigrants
between 2020 and 2021 — roughly half the 477,000 new immigrant
residents recorded between 2019 and 2020 and a drastic reduction
from more than 1 million reported from 2015 to 2016.

The state is also seeing a dwindling middle class, said Ohanian,
who cited a report from the National Assn. of Realtors,
outlining that the national median home sales price has reached
$416,000, a record high. Meanwhile, California’s median home
price has topped $800,000.

“[California is] at a risk for becoming a state for very, very
wealthy people and very, very low earners who receive state and
local and federal aid that allows them to be able to live here,”
Ohanian said. “We should worry about those in the middle who are
earning that $78,000 household median income and is, at the end
of the day, really struggling, especially if they have interest
in buying a home.”

Los Angeles County, in particular, has suffered from slowed
population growth, as have rural parts of the state, while
Orange County, Sacramento and some parts of the Bay Area have
managed to see some gains, the Public Policy Institute of
California found.

Fairweather said that since she last lived in Los Angeles in
2016, she's noticed fewer affordable places to rent.

“It used to be that Santa Monica and Beverly Hills were
expensive, but you could find affordable housing on the
Eastside,” she said. “But that got expensive and you had to find
housing near South Central. Now, there’s nowhere within a two-
hour commute of downtown Los Angeles that’s still affordable.”

Bay Area native Kenny Phung, who made the exodus from California
last fall when his partner got into nursing school in Portland,
Ore., said high rent prices helped cement the decision to move
out of state. Phung was living with three roommates in Los
Angeles for $3,600 total per month but found a two-bedroom
apartment for less than half that price in Portland. He's
currently working as a project manager at a San Jose-based
company that allows him to work remotely.

“It just didn’t make sense,” Phung said. “Why would I want to
live in California when I’m working from home and paying
something outrageous for such a small space when I can try
things out and be able to save money on rent?”

Housing was also a major factor in Raghavan's decision to leave
the Golden State, he said, adding that downtown Miami has
multiple skyscrapers, more affordable housing, well-paved roads
and better infrastructure and services.

“The Bay Area has become a land of minor inconveniences, and
some are not-so-minor anymore," he said. "Housing and real
estate have ripples across everything. It makes rent more
expensive for restaurants, which raises food prices, and it
causes people to commute over longer distances. Everything
becomes a burden.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

https://news.yahoo.com/california-exodus-continues-l-san-
130027864.html
Why Waste Money On Queers?
2023-09-05 23:41:45 UTC
Permalink
Very happy to see Swallwell fail after his immature ignorant behavior with a Chink whore spy.
Monkey Pox, right on time to give Democrats an excuse to cheat in the next election.
In a setback for Visa in a case alleging the payment processor
is liable for the distribution of child pornography on Pornhub
and other sites operated by parent company MindGeek, a federal
judge ruled that it was reasonable to conclude that Visa
knowingly facilitated the criminal activity.

On Friday, July 29, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the
U.S. District Court of the Central District of California issued
a decision in the Fleites v. MindGeek case, denying Visa’s
motion to dismiss the claim it violated California’s Unfair
Competition Law — which prohibits unlawful, unfair or fraudulent
business acts and practices — by processing payments for child
porn. (A copy of the decision is available at this link.)

In the ruling, Carney held that the plaintiff “adequately
alleged” that Visa engaged in a criminal conspiracy with
MindGeek to monetize child pornography. Specifically, he wrote,
“Visa knew that MindGeek’s websites were teeming with monetized
child porn”; that there was a “criminal agreement to financially
benefit from child porn that can be inferred from [Visa’s]
decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant despite
allegedly knowing that MindGeek monetized a substantial amount
of child porn”; and that “the court can comfortably infer that
Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn” by
“knowingly provid[ing] the tool used to complete the crime.”

“When MindGeek decides to monetize child porn, and Visa decides
to continue to allow its payment network to be used for that
goal despite knowledge of MindGeek’s monetization of child porn,
it is entirely foreseeable that victims of child porn like
plaintiff will suffer the harms that plaintiff alleges,” Carney
wrote.

In a statement, a Visa spokesperson said: “Visa condemns sex
trafficking, sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse
materials as repugnant to our values and purpose as a company.
This pre-trial ruling is disappointing and mischaracterizes
Visa’s role and its policies and practices. Visa will not
tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity. We
continue to believe that Visa is an improper defendant in this
case.”

A rep for MindGeek provided this statement: “At this point in
the case, the court has not yet ruled on the veracity of the
allegations, and is required to assume all of the plaintiff’s
allegations are true and accurate. When the court can actually
consider the facts, we are confident the plaintiff’s claims will
be dismissed for lack of merit. MindGeek has zero tolerance for
the posting of illegal content on its platforms, and has
instituted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated
platform history.”

The company’s statement continued, “We have banned uploads from
anyone who has not submitted government-issued ID that passes
third-party verification, eliminated the ability to download
free content, integrated several leading technological platform
and content moderation tools, instituted digital fingerprinting
of all videos found to be in violation of our Non-Consensual
Content and CSAM [child sexual abuse material] Policies to help
protect against removed videos being reposted, expanded our
moderation workforce and processes, and partnered with dozens of
non-profit organizations around the world. Any insinuation that
MindGeek does not take the elimination of illegal material
seriously is categorically false.”

In June, MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo
resigned. The Montreal, Quebec-based company also laid off an
unknown number of employees. That came in the wake of a June 20
New Yorker exposé that found Pornhub hosted sexually explicit
nonconsensual videos including those with children.

The plaintiff in the case against MindGeek and Visa is Serena
Fleites, who, when she was 13, was pressured by her then-
boyfriend into making a sexually explicit video — which he
allegedly uploaded to Pornhub (with the title “13-Year Old
Brunette Shows Off For the Camera”) without her knowledge or
consent. Fleites’ attorneys say the video, which was alleged to
have been viewed millions of times on MindGeek sites, destroyed
her life: “While MindGeek profited from the child porn featuring
plaintiff, plaintiff was intermittently homeless or living in
her car, addicted to heroin, depressed and suicidal, and without
the support of her family,” her lawsuit, filed in June 2021,
states. Fleites’ story was featured by New York Times columnist
Nicholas Kristof in December 2020, who detailed how MindGeek
“monetizes child rapes.”

In his July 29 decision, Carney ruled partly in Visa’s favor. He
wrote in the opinion that Fleites “simply has no basis for
claiming Visa directly participated in the sex trafficking
ventures that harmed her.” In addition, he ordered Fleites to
provide “a more definite statement with respect to her common
law civil conspiracy cause of action against Visa.”

In a second ruling (available at this link), Carney compelled
MindGeek to undergo jurisdictional discovery, which attorneys
for Fleites said will reveal MindGeek’s “shadowy operations and
those controlling it” by exposing the defendant’s financial
relationships. “Where the money flows in the MindGeek web, which
may relate to ownership of the porn sites that generate revenue,
matters to the court’s jurisdictional analysis,” the judge said
in the opinion. “As the court sees it, financially benefitting
from the sexual exploitation of minors is the core of this case.”

On Saturday, activist investor Bill Ackman of Pershing Square
Holdings, who has previously called out the role of Visa and
Mastercard in enabling MindGeek’s ability to make money from
child pornography, posted a thread on Twitter about the ruling
in the case.

“Visa’s conduct here is inexcusable, likely to cause the company
incalculable financial and reputational damage” as well as
“create serious… personal liability and potential criminal
liability for the board,” Ackman wrote in part. According to
Ackman, neither he nor Pershing Square have any economic
interest, long or short, in Visa, Mastercard or any other
payments company, bank or financial institution.

According to Ackman, after he read the Times’ story about
Fleites and Pornub, he reached out to the CEOs of Visa and
Mastercard to express concerns about their part in enabling
MindGeek’s business. Shortly afterward, both companies cut off
consumer payment processing to MindGeek’s sites; within “a day
or so, MindGeek removed >10m illegal videos, 80% of its
content,” the hedge fund manager said. However, they both soon
reactivated business-to-business payments for the purchase of
ads on MindGeek sites and for subscriptions to “premium”
content, representing about 90% of the company’s revenue, per
Ackman.

Ackman wrote that Visa CEO Alfred Kelly “should know that the
majority of child trafficking victims are from lower-income
families including Black and Brown families. I would recommend
that Visa’s board, and separately Mr. Kelly, should hire
independent white collar and criminal counsel.” He concluded the
thread with, “Et tu, @Mastercard?”

Michael Bowe, partner at Brown Rudnick and lead attorney
representing Fleites in the lawsuit, said in a statement, “The
court’s holding that our detailed complaint adequately pleads
Visa was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to monetize child porn
means Visa and other credit card companies are finally going to
face the civil and perhaps criminal consequences of this
unconscionable and illegal activity.”

The case, Serena Fleites v. MindGeek S.A.R.L. et al., is Docket
No. 2:21-cv-04920-CJC-ADS in the U.S. District Court for the
Central District of California.

Fleites is one of 34 individual plaintiffs who last year sued
Pornhub and MindGeek, alleging exploitation and monetization of
child pornography, rape videos, trafficked content, stolen
content and other nonconsensual content. The litigation is the
first application to date of Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations (RICO), child pornography and trafficking laws
seeking to hold financial institutions accountable for illegal
conduct monetized by and through the systems of companies whose
payments they process.

VISA should be put out of business as a lesson.

https://news.yahoo.com/visa-intended-help-pornhub-parent-
125556303.html

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