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New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to be caught up in controversy over his failed leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, and now, left-wing media publications are finally starting to take notice.

What are the details?

The New York Times, though usually congratulatory toward Cuomo, published a blistering report Monday suggesting the governor had “all but declared war” on public health experts in his state, leading nine of them to quit their posts since the start of the pandemic.

According to the Times, the “drumbeat of high-level departures” — which includes the deputy commissioner for public health at the New York State Health Department, the director of its bureau of communicable disease control, the medical director for epidemiology, and the state epidemiologist — has caused morale in the state’s health department to plunge and came as a result of experts being “sidelined and treated disrespectfully.”

“Their concern had an almost singular focus: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo,” the Times noted, based on the testimony of five anonymous sources inside the department.

The tipping point for many experts appears to have been the governor’s autocratic takeover of the vaccine rollout, though it’s hard to imagine that his obfuscating over a deadly nursing home policy that sowed public distrust in the health department hasn’t also played a part. The report goes as follows:

Even as the pandemic continues to rage and New York struggles to vaccinate a large and anxious population, Mr. Cuomo has all but declared war on his own public health bureaucracy. The departures have underscored the extent to which pandemic policy has been set by the governor, who with his aides crafted a vaccination program beset by early delays.

The troubled rollout came after Mr. Cuomo declined to use the longstanding vaccination plans that the State Department of Health had developed in recent years in coordination with local health departments. Mr. Cuomo instead adopted an approach that relied on large hospital systems to coordinate vaccinations not only of their own staffs, but also of much of the population.

In recent weeks, the governor has repeatedly made it clear that he believed he had no choice but to seize more control over pandemic policy from state and local public health officials, who he said had no understanding of how to conduct a real-world, large-scale operation like vaccinations. After early problems, in which relatively few doses were being administered, the pace of vaccinations has picked up and New York is now roughly 20th in the nation in percentage of residents who have received at least one vaccine dose.

“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference on Friday, referring to scientific expertise at all levels of government during the pandemic. “Because I don’t. Because I don’t.”

Making matters worse, the governor may have opted to designate major roles for the vaccine rollout to organizations that contributed to his causes in the past, rather than relying on distribution plans painstakingly crafted by state health officials.

The report found that in his planning, Cuomo often held closed-door meetings with hospital executives and lobbyists before scrapping health department distribution plans in favor of his own, which relied on large hospital systems as distribution “hubs.”

Then, in December, Cuomo sidestepped the city’s 6,000-person health department, instead selecting as a regional hub the Greater New York Hospital Association, “a trade group with a multimillion-dollar lobbying arm that had been a major donor to the governor’s causes.”

What else?

The Times report comes on the heels of another scathing report from a left-leaning publication that raised alarms over Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic.

Last week, CNN editor-at-large Chris Cillizza admitted that the governor’s leadership “may have been less stellar than it seemed” after learning from a report released by New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James that the Cuomo administration had undercounted COVID-19 nursing home deaths by 50%.

It must be said that these critical reports are far too late in coming, though. For months, liberal media outlets fawned over the governor’s “New York Tough” public persona and celebrated as he sent in tapes of his daily briefings to be recognized by the Emmys. All the while, thousands were dying in nursing homes due to Cuomo’s deadly policy, and businesses were closing en masse due to his lockdown orders, many never to reopen.

That said, the reports, however late, may still be useful and could well lead to a reckoning for the governor and perhaps for many government leaders who abused their authority during the once-in-a-lifetime COVID-19 pandemic.

IN OTHER WORDS, THEY WILL BE ‘PRIMARIED’ OUT. PERIOD!

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A president takes office amidst charges of family corruption and shady business dealings with a country connected to interfering in the very election that put him in the White House. Sound familiar?

The false narrative that Democrats concocted to hobble the Trump administration four years ago is now the real deal with joe biden and his family. And unlike President Trump, who faced unprecedented institutional resistance and Deep State resistance, President biden can likely count on the Justice Department and the media to allow him to escape meaningful scrutiny.

Judicial Watch recently started a petition at Change.org asking the Department of Justice immediately to appoint a special counsel to investigate biden family dealings in china, Ukraine and other countries. There is substantial evidence, from documents and witness statements, that the biden family, including President joe biden, may have been involved in criminal activity with foreign entities tied to Ukraine and china. In just a few days the petition has garnered nearly 200,000 signatures.  

Judicial Watch uncovered documents that show even as far back as the Obama administration Russia-linked media in Ukraine were “trolling” joe biden over “his son’s business.” biden’s son hunter has acknowledged that he is the target of an FBI criminal investigation. Any investigation should involve alleged money laundering, influence peddling and tax violations among other shady activities.

A special counsel is required because the Justice Department and its FBI are conflicted in investigating any matters that could implicate the president and/or his immediate family in criminal activity. As Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said recently, “if there were ever circumstances that create a conflict of interest and call for a special counsel, that’s here.” Justice Department regulations that were abused to appoint a special counsel to harass then-President Trump actually do fairly apply to the biden situation. A special counsel is required by Justice regulations when:

(a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances; and

(b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.

The matter is urgent. Americans just learned that communist china was actively involved in the 2020 presidential election. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, in a letter transmitted to Congress, concluded that “based on all available sources of intelligence, with definitions consistently applied, and reached independent of political considerations or undue pressure — that the people’s republic of china sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections.”

chinese efforts to interfere in the 2020 election might have been better known before election days but for Deep State resistance. Intelligence Community Ombudsman Barry Zulauf found that CIA analysts were reluctant to reveal china’s malign actions because they were opposed to the Trump administration, and were “saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.” In fact, “strong efforts” were made last summer to suppress analysts who wanted to expose the full range of chinese efforts to swing the election to biden.

We are already seeing china indirectly benefitting from biden policies. Cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline will divert Canadian oil west to the petroleum-hungry People’s Republic. Re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement gives political cover to china’s excessively polluting dirty coal industry, in which hunter biden is heavily invested. biden’s State Department on Day One removed a page on its web site that contained a comprehensive assessment of the threats china poses to the U.S. and its allies, and an emboldened Beijing slapped outrageous sanctions on outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and 27 other former Trump officials. Does china have corrupt leverage over biden?

Given the years of investigations costing millions of dollars to delve into fake Russia collusion accusations against Trump world, the American people deserve to know what china was up to with joe biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous hunter biden laptop? The conflicted biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel NOW!

Billionaire George Soros’s radical leftism is spreading through America’s most populous county. Days after a Soros-backed prosecutor who vows to lock up fewer criminals became Los Angeles District Attorney, the city’s mayor is forcing all employees to undergo “implicit bias” training to be conducted by a group that receives funding from Soros and his Open Society Foundations (OSF). That makes L.A. County and its biggest city, the nation’s second-most populous, a stronghold of the powerful Soros machine that aims to promote the left’s agenda.

It started with Soros’s financial support for a controversial Black Lives Matter-endorsed District Attorney candidate, George Gascon, who has alienated career prosecutors throughout California with his renegade criminal justice reform initiatives. A former San Francisco District Attorney, Gascon announced upon being sworn in as L.A. County’s top prosecutor that his office will no longer pursue the death penalty, try juveniles as adults, add gangs and other enhancements to criminal complaints or seek cash bail for non-violent felonies or misdemeanors. It is worth noting that the L.A. County D.A. is the largest local prosecutorial office in the United States. The District Attorney in Sacramento recently blasted Gascon in a letter published by various media outlets in the state. “Your Special Directives are not just extreme but will undoubtedly wreak havoc on crime victims and their Constitutional rights,” the letter states. “Your lack of concern for their rights and safety concerns me greatly. Additionally, because crime has no boundaries, these Special Directives will have far greater impact than on Los Angeles County alone. Rather, victims across California will be negatively impacted and the safety of all Californians will be jeopardized.”

Now all the city’s 50,000 employees must participate in racial bias training conducted by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University (OSU). Judicial Watch dug up information on the group and uncovered deep ties to Soros and other notorious leftists. The center is named after a former OSU president appointed by California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi to a prestigious Department of Education post. In addition to its “implicit bias” trainings, the institute’s research areas include racial wealth inequality, opportunity mapping, and health equity and disparities. As you would expect, its agenda is radically progressive. Policy proposals from Kirwan Institute products include, “significantly raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy,” a Congressional committee on reparations, guaranteed employment, and “Medicare for All.”

Until this month, the institute’s executive director was Darrick Hamilton, who left to head the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification and Political Economy at the New School in New York. He is best known for being one of the developers of the “baby bonds” proposal in which the government provides a trust fund for every newborn based on parents’ wealth. Hamilton was an advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign and a member of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force. OSU paid him $259,334.40 annually to run the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Other individuals associated with the institute include Kyle Strickland, who serves as senior legal analyst and Hasan Jeffries, an OSU professor who achieved notoriety for posting on social media that the Fraternal Order of Police has killed more black people than the white supremacist hate group Ku Klux Klan. Strickland is a Black Lives Matter supporter who is also deputy director of race and democracy at the Roosevelt Institute, which received more than $1 million from OSF in 2019 and lists Jonathan Soros as a senior fellow.

The Kirwan Institute has received an undisclosed amount of funding from OSF and the Soros conglomerate is listed as a financial supporter in its 2015-2016 Biennial Report. OSF is not specifically mentioned in the 2020 annual report however, it notes that the institute partners with Demos, the Roosevelt Institute, the Center for Community Change, and the Economic Security Project, all of which receive extensive funding from OSF. One of the institute’s partners, PolicyLink, is a liberal research and advocacy nonprofit in Oakland that received $500,000 from OSF in 2019.

The mayor of L.A., Eric Garcetti, claims the goal of enlisting this group is to “advance racial equity across city government.” Garcetti recently issued a directive that creates a racial equity task force and appoints racial equity officers throughout city government. “Our city is in pain, and we are hungry for change,” the mayor writes in the order “The demonstrations for racial justice in recent weeks have not exposed something new — they’ve laid bare the urgent and overdue demand to end structural racism. America’s tragic history of violent and persistent discrimination casts a long shadow over the challenges Blacks and other people of color confront today in housing, employment, and the criminal justice system.” The social, economic, and political inequities have created a “shamefully disparate and stratified society,” Garcetti asserts.

‘I’m terribly concerned that the biden administration … is going to use the leverage of power, as the obama administration did, to target the political opposition,’ Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch said on Friday.

America has a new administration, and Judicial Watch is working hard to defend the Left’s ongoing attacks on election integrity, the Constitution, and our nation’s laws. Whether it’s undermining your constitutional rights, promoting unrestricted illegal immigration, or silencing concerns about corruption, the biden presidency is likely to be worse than the obama Administration, Fitton explained. “You’re a terrorist if you object.…that’s their thinking.” Fitton remarked that Biden’s inauguration speech was “a dogwhistle to the Left and to Big Tech … keep on taking steps to effectively outlaw dissent here in the United States.” 

Fitton believes that the Left’s rushed impeachment proceedings in Congress are an assault on the First Amendment. In his latest Weekly Update, Fitton argued that “If they found him [Trump] guilty, that would be devastating to the First Amendment because it would be a green light to attack and remove others that engage in core political speech that all of a sudden would be criminalized if the Left doesn’t like it.” The impeachment vote rolled over the civil rights of the president. “They wouldn’t let him make a presentation, or call witnesses, there were no hearings, no defense… And so are they going to do that with the trial?” he continued.

As with President Trump, Fitton is also regularly the target of Big Tech censorship. Having been “locked out” of Twitter, Fitton reminded viewers this week, “we’ve got to be prepared to push back, and we do it through the law.” 

From a policy standpoint, the biden administration is introducing equally alarming precedents, Fitton argued.

The administration “issued a notice through his acting secretary that effectively will shut down all immigration enforcement in the United States.”

Remarking on the absurdity of these policy changes, Fitton reminded viewers that “We’ve got a number of Freedom of Information Act requests about these policies … we have dozens of lawsuits against the biden administration.” 

Judicial Watch is also still investigating allegations of corruption in the Biden family, specifically as it relates to then-Vice President biden’s connections to China, and his son Hunter’s dealings with Burisma. “We’re still going to be pushing for justice. Someone’s got to do it.”

As Fitton concluded, “we’re ready to go to court to hold them accountable.… It’s going to be a busy year for us, and don’t despair because you have wonderful tools under law.” If you’re concerned about corruption in the biden administration sign their petition, and support Judicial Watch.

Schools now subjected to “diversity audits” that are nothing more than fascist “woke policing”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/matt-schlapp-wife-and-two-young-daughters-were-accosted-by-angry-neighbor_3679383.html?utm_source=morningbriefnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-02-01

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/eus-behavior-on-vaccinations-has-vindicated-brexit?utm_source=WEX_News%20Brief%20-%20YouTube%20_02/01/2021&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEX_News%20Brief&rid=24856244

https://justthenews.com/nation/technology/amazon-still-plans-host-twitters-timelines-even-violent-content-allowed-remain?utm_source=daily-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/01/militarized-capitol-police-use-fences-and-razor-wire-to-keep-preschoolers-from-sledding/

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/01/are-zoom-rooms-the-future-of-the-courtroom-lets-hope-not/

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/01/sephora-sacks-and-smears-beauty-youtuber-for-being-a-conservative-christian-trump-supporter/

biden talks about his team as if he asked to see headshots over resumes. Ultimately, that’s a surefire way to upset just about everyone.

joe biden is incredibly proud of his staff’s sexual and racial diversity. You don’t even have to ask. He’ll tell you that his choices were tailor-made to “look like the country,” meeting he demands of his party’s identity-focused base. Yet, as we’ve seen time and time again, staffing based on immutable characteristics instead of earned qualifications can only end poorly.

Party activists oftentimes stubbornly adhere to a radical worldview, a position much easier to hold when not implementing plans. They expect whomever they support to be just as rigid.

But when any appointee takes on a job for an administration, he or she meets the undeniable reality that ideological obedience isn’t always practical. That’s especially true when trying to please more than just the party base ahead of a crucial midterm election. Equally true? Many mainstream politicians aren’t nearly as woke as their virtue-signaling buzzwords suggest.

The moment a bureaucrat veers away from the positions he or she is “supposed” to hold, activists quickly forget the excitement of a diversity hire. In all their rage at administration officials not pursuing exactly what they demand, activists seldom realize that maybe they shouldn’t have judged the book by its cover.

You needn’t look outside of Seattle to see the chaos and disappointment that comes from blindly embracing tribalism. Activists once celebrated many Seattle “firsts” as they earned leadership posts. Years later, the same activists ran those “firsts” out of town for not being leftist enough. Indeed, if there’s a lesson here, it’s that Seattle’s trouble could soon become biden’s.

Today’s Leftists Always Want More

Seattle’s first black, female police chief Carmen Best somehow shocked the activist community for being too supportive of law enforcement. Mitzi Johanknecht, King County’s first lesbian sheriff, wouldn’t blindly back radical police reforms. Activists weren’t pleased.

Seattle’s first lesbian and American Indian school Superintendent Denise Juneau didn’t super-serve non-white people the way activists demanded. And it wasn’t enough that Seattle’s first lesbian Mayor Jenny Durkan gave radicals space for an illegal (and ultimately deadly) occupation. When she didn’t give in to every whim of the increasingly radical black lives matter and antifa movements, she became their enemy.

It’s not so much that these leaders were bad at their jobs; that’s obviously subjective. It’s that they didn’t meet the expectations of a leftist movement that assumed these leaders could effectively hold positions based exclusively on their identities. They all mostly delivered what they said they would, or at least tried. But when all you see is identity, you pay little attention to anything else.

Identity politics is an innately pernicious concept promoted by America’s leftists. Meant to eradicate perceived institutional or systemic bias, it does the opposite, creating a system where one gains an unearned advantage due to membership in a marginalized community. It’s institutionalized tokenism.

The concept has evolved into the practice of electing, appointing, or hiring a variety of people that “look like the country.” In other words, whether it’s biden’s cabinet, the local police force, or the boards of corporations, it must represent a menagerie of different demographics.

It’s no longer about one’s qualifications based on skills or ideas; instead, you’re the right choice merely because of the group you belong to. It renders us into marks on a checklist meant to satisfy the demands of groups promoting the most superficial aspects of diversity.

This is in no way, shape, or form a good way to pick leaders. Indeed, the events in Seattle over the last several months show you the limitations of this condescending ideological view.

The Demands of Radicals

As a black woman, Best was supposed to understand the strained relationships between black Americans and law enforcement. No doubt, she did. Johanknecht, as a lesbian in a field dominated by straight men, is supposed to fight for marginalized communities. She fights for everyone.

Both fell short of expectations because neither reformed their agencies to meet the demands of radicals. The anti-police movement claimed to Best that they had the right to “peacefully protest” by throwing rocks, bottles, and explosives at police officers. Johanknecht was supposed to usher in a new era of police reforms, handing overly broad investigative powers to an oversight committee that views police as the enemy.

After dealing with a recalcitrant mob enabled by a vindictive Seattle City Council, Best retired. The radical defund movement was too much for any reasonable person to handle. She told the city, “I’m done.”

The defund movement also claimed Johanknecht, albeit in a different way. The majority-Democrat King County Council quickly pushed through charter amendments that Seattle voters overwhelmingly supported last November. It took away the entire county’s ability to vote for sheriff, transferring the power to an appointment. Soon, she will be out of a job.

The same scripts played out with Durkan and Juneau. Durkan bent over backward to satisfy the ravenous demands of an increasingly out-of-control activist community, even giving them an autonomous zone known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Still, it wasn’t enough.

The pride of electing its first lesbian mayor wore off when she wouldn’t defund the police by 50 percent. After facing a recall election (tossed by the court before signature gathering), Durkan saw the writing on the wall. Facing a tough road to re-election, she announced she would not seek a second term.

The city’s latest victim has been Juneau. Facing scorn from area activists for not doing enough to help black students succeed and a school board sending overt messages they wouldn’t extend her contract, the city’s “historic” school leader announced she’s out at the end of her contract.

When these women came to power, Seattleites lauded their identities. They tweeted their delight in electing a lesbian mayor and posted Facebook updates to declare Seattle a progressive city with an American Indian superintendent — along with an acknowledgment that we live on stolen Duwamish land, of course.

Regression in the Name of Tolerance

Too often, leftists view all minorities monolithically. As they think all of one identity group necessarily hold the same values, ideas, experiences, and lack of privilege, so they think all such people categorized by race and sexuality will naturally pursue policies and programs that satisfy leftist ideologues. How utterly demeaning.

Activists sprinted further away from what was supposed to be a societal ideal: judging people on their character and skills, not on their race, sex, or sexuality. We’ve regressed in the name of tolerance.

Press most Seattleites on why they celebrated any of the women at the time, and they won’t tell you much about policy positions or specific values those leaders held. You’d get a lot of assumptions based on expectations and a lot of people let down. When you focus on the least interesting part about someone (his identity), at the expense of the most interesting (his beliefs and actions), you set yourself up for disappointment.

biden promised us “the most diverse Cabinet representative of all … Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ, across the board.” Most of us would have been happy with forward-thinking, unifying thinkers, with an assumption that it would generate a diverse staff on its own. But biden talks about his team as if he asked to see headshots over resumes. Ultimately, that’s a surefire way to upset just about everyone.