An Example of How Transgender Rights Affect Women’s Safety
In June, Instagram user “CubanaAngel” posted a video featuring a woman demanding of an employee at Wi Spa in Los Angeles why a man was being allowed in the women’s area.
“It’s OK for a man to go into the women’s section, show his penis around the other women, young little girls underage, your spa, Wi Spa, condones that, is that what you’re saying?”
The video went viral, and heated protests featuring people on both sides ensued. The Los Angeles Times reported that Wi Spa said “they are required to follow California law that prohibits businesses from discriminating against customers based on race, gender, sexual identity or expression.”
Meanwhile, some outlets questioned whether the incident had even occurred. The Washington Post reported, “It is unclear whether a transgender woman actually used the spa. The person has not been publicly identified.” Slate headlined an article, “Violence Over an Alleged Transphobic Hoax Shows the Danger of Underestimating Anti-Trans Hate.”
But now we’re learning the incident did happen—and a person who identifies as transgender has been charged.
“Charges of indecent exposure were discreetly filed against a serial sex offender for the Wi Spa incident, following an investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department,” reports Andy Ngo for the New York Post. “Sources with knowledge of the case but not authorized to speak publicly say four women and a minor girl came forward to allege that Darren Agee Merager was partially erect in the women’s section of Wi Spa.”
Merager, meanwhile, “denies ever being erect or around children at the spa. [Merager] says [Merager] is actually the victim of sexual harassment by transphobic women at the Wi Spa,” the Post reports.
But this is not the first brush with sexual harassment charges for the “legally female” Merager, per what Merager told the Post, which also reported, “Law-enforcement sources revealed that Merager is a tier-one registered sex offender with two prior convictions of indecent exposure stemming from incidents in 2002 and 2003 in California. … In 2008, [Merager] was convicted for failing to register as a sex offender.”
For years, conservatives have warned that these so-called anti-discrimination measures, which can lead to giving people access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and other private spaces on the basis of their gender identity, not biological sex, would allow sexual predators access to women’s spaces.
Across the country, women are being affected right now by transgender rights. Student female athletes are losing to biological males. Women in California prisons are facing the reality that biological men who now identify as women may be transferred to their single-sex units. High school girls are having to share locker rooms with biological males.
As a 15-year-old girl told The Daily Signal in 2015 when a biologically male student started using the girls locker room: “I don’t feel right changing in the same room as a transgender student. The locker room is already filled with so much judgment, and I barely feel OK changing in front of my naturally born girl peers.”
Solutions are out there that could accommodate both transgender people and keep women’s spaces safe, such as single-stall bathrooms that are gender-neutral. Yet unfortunately, instead of working on solutions like this, the default seems to be letting transgender rights trample women’s rights.
Let’s hope this incident in California isn’t a harbinger of a new normal.
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Left Doesn’t Just Want to Censor You on Social Media. It Also Wants to Close Your Bank Accounts
When White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that people who spread “misinformation” “shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others,” she revealed the left’s chilling plan for censoring content that goes against the left’s narrative.
It is becoming increasingly clear that political leaders on the left and Big Tech are joining arms to not just deplatform dissident voices from social media, but to bar them from the digital space entirely, including from having the ability to make and receive payments online.
In the latest example, Chase Bank reportedly planned to close the credit card account of former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Sept. 18, stating that “continuing the relationship creates possible reputational risk to our company.” While as of Aug. 31, a Chase spokesperson said that they had “made an error and apologized for any inconvenience caused,” the initial gesture can’t be ignored.
This comes just a couple months after Wells Fargo made the “business decision” to close 2020 Republican Delaware Senate candidate Lauren Witzke’s account. Two of the more prominent digital payment services, PayPal and Stripe, have also become active cancel culture participants.
PayPal has admitted to closing accounts flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2019, now, PayPal has announced a partnership with the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League to focus on “further uncovering and disrupting the financial pipelines that support extremist and hate movements.”
In their joint statement, neither PaylPal nor the Anti-Defamation League explicitly define what they mean by extremist and hate movements, but it would be naïve to think that mainstream conservatives will escape the crosshairs of this new partnership.
Following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Stripe stopped payment processing services for the Trump campaign’s website and online fundraising efforts, as well as for individuals who had been present at the protest-turned-riot.
Conservative organizations and individuals have been censored by these digital payment and financial service companies not because of what they say on these platforms, but because of who they are. These woke institutions are replacing financial credit with social credit.
In a tweet from July, author and business owner J.D. Vance states, “The next stage of deplatforming will be denying people access to the financial system. Second Amendment will mean little if Visa won’t let you buy ammunition.”
Vance is making an important point: If a person has the “wrong viewpoint,” the left will be coming for “your speech, your wallet, your ability to be a citizen in a digital environment.”
It hasn’t only been conservatives that have been censored, shadow banned, and suspended from online platforms. Certain content by any user that opposes or questions the left has been stifled, regardless of political or ideological view. Facebook and Twitter have especially taken part in this cancel culture behavior, most notably by kicking off former President Donald Trump.
The direction in which these tech companies are headed necessitates alternative digital payment services that will not deplatform users for their political views. Fortunately, conservative commentator Dan Bongino has stepped up to address this issue in the digital payment space.
Bongino recently announced the creation of AlignPay, a new platform that pledges to process the digital payments of organizations, regardless of their political beliefs. The launch of AlignPay highlights an important point: One of the most effective ways for conservatives to counter censorship is to develop, support, and promote alternative platforms, thereby providing users with greater choice.
Bongino openly admits that the creation of his newest anti-cancel culture payment process platform is in direct opposition to Stripe and PayPal after their cancelation of organizations and individuals. It is initiatives like Bongino’s that will address gaps in the technology marketplace for those who are not satisfied with their current options—choices that cancel users not only for what they say on the platform, but for what they say and believe off the platform.
AlignPay’s website states that the platform is “built for freedom,” and will be free from “cancel culture,” as it specializes in processing debit, credit, and other forms of mobile transactions. It also aims to provide its services at lower costs than competitors.
AlignPay also will prioritize user security and privacy by fully encrypting all transactions and not selling or monetizing users’ personal data. The platform’s services will be available to political campaigns, nonprofits, e-commerce sites, businesses, activist groups on both the left and right, and any organization, as long as they are not engaged in unlawful or criminal activity.
Other conservatives have also taken initiative to counter Big Tech censorship by developing alternative platforms. Locals was created by conservative commentator Dave Rubin to allow content creators to run their own subscription-based pages and communities.
RightForge was developed in part as a response to the deplatforming of Parler by Amazon Web Services, Apple, and Google to provide a range of IT services free from censorship and interference, including cloud and website hosting, website and application development, among others.
The digital platform GETTR is another recently created free speech alternative that was launched on Independence Day by former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller.
These are just a few examples of companies that have responded to tech censorship, which ultimately poses a threat to the health of our democracy. As the French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville once noted:
Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us.
To help restore balance between tech companies, their users, and the body politic, it is crucial that innovations and free market alternatives, such as Bongino’s AlignPay, are amplified and that innovations such as this continue to be created.
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Portugal reversed Europe's worst addiction crisis - it decriminalised drugs
Last month, in the wake of an Office For National Statistics report that revealed there were 4,561 drug fatalities in the UK last year — the highest total since records began in 1993 — an unlikely advocate of the Portuguese approach called for it to be adopted by the UK. Former leader of the Conservative Party, William Hague, wrote an article in The Times headlined 'Decriminalising drugs is the only way forward'.
'Many Tories are reluctant, as I was two decades ago, to abandon a 'tough' law-and-order approach,' said Mr Hague, pointing out that politicians are fearful of even raising the issue because it is such a political hot potato. 'Yet two truths about this issue seem clear. The first is that it has become a massive social problem. The annual deaths represent tens of thousands more people trapped in addiction and heading for the same fate. The victims match closely with child poverty and areas of deprivation.
'The second truth, awkward though it may be for those of us who always wanted to get tougher, is we will never suppress the supply of drugs while the demand goes on.'
A parliamentary report by Dame Carol Black last year found that the cost to society of illegal drugs was about £20billion a year in England and Wales but that we were spending only £600million on treatment and prevention.
Since 2012, deaths from heroin had doubled and those from cocaine increased five-fold — while 27,000 young people now identified as being gang members, many drawn into drug dealing and violence.
This was enough to persuade the Commons Health and Social Care Committee to recommend in 2019 'that the Government should consult on the decriminalisation of drug possession for personal use from a criminal offence to a civil matter'.
'After decriminalisation [in Portugal], all major indicators in a variety of studies improved,' Mr Hague said. 'Including an 18 per cent fall in the total costs to society. Might this not be worth a try?'
In a bid to establish exactly how successful Portugal's bold move has been, the Mail travelled to Lisbon. What I discovered will shock some readers and surprise others who — quite understandably — have an instinctive aversion to any weakening of laws banning the possession of the sort of drugs that wreck so many young lives.
First, though, it is important to explain what Portugal's approach is, how it came about — and to understand that decriminalisation is not the same as legalisation.
In the 1990s, the country found itself in the grip of a heroin epidemic. The roots of the problem lay in Portugal's opening up to the outside world after the Carnation Revolution of 1974 ended the longest dictatorship in Europe.
Portugal was suddenly exposed to new markets and influences and when, first marijuana then heroin, began flooding in, a country which the Swinging Sixties had passed by was utterly unprepared.
By the late 90s, one per cent of the population was hooked on heroin. Almost half were injecting and, with few opportunities for acquiring new needles on a regular basis, addicts shared them, resulting in an incredible 56 per cent becoming HIV-positive. By 2001, Portugal accounted for 50 per cent of new needle-related HIV cases in the EU, despite having just 2 per cent of its population.
'It was desperate,' says Hugo Faria from Ares do Pinhal, the organisation that runs the van from which Dulcineia has just received her methadone. We are in Casal Ventoso, a once rundown and dangerous gathering place for addicts. 'There were incredibly high levels of criminality, with addicts using heroin everywhere. People were dying in the streets,' recalls Hugo.
In the late 1990s, 70 per cent of all Portuguese crime was drug-related, with more than 40 per cent of the prison population in for offences related to drugs. 'Everyone, be it a family from a poorer district, or from the wealthiest areas — or even elected politicians — knew someone who had died from drug abuse or HIV,' says Dr Manuel Cardoso, Deputy General-Director of SICAD, Portugal's drug dependency agency. 'It was the number one concern at the time and we all knew something different had to be done.'
The then prime minster, António Guterres — now Secretary-General of the United Nations — put together a panel of experts who, in 1999, reported back with 'The National Strategy for the Fight Against Drugs'.
Introduced in 2001, it involved a combination of better treatment facilities, reducing harm (by, for example, providing clean needles), better education for the public and offering free and safer drug substitutes, such as methadone. The biggest change involved the decriminalisation of personal possession of small amounts of drugs, focusing instead on support to manage or get clear of drug use.
Possession was no longer a criminal offence but regarded as an administrative one — no more serious than a speeding fine. However, trafficking, dealing and possessing more than enough for one's own personal consumption for 10 days remain illegal and are punished firmly by the courts.
When a person is caught in possession of a small amount of a drug, their supply is confiscated and they are ordered to appear before district panels called Commissions for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction, comprising health, legal and social work professionals.
I went to see one in action near Praça de Espanha on the edge of central Lisbon. A nervous-looking 20-year-old man had been caught with 3.08 grams of hashish.
He was being interviewed by a social worker for an initial assessment. 'We are never judgmental and the atmosphere is relaxed,' says Nuno Capaz, vice-president of the Commission for Dissuasion of Drug Addiction, which administers the panels. 'We will usually explore why the person is using drugs, ask them whether they could use less, maybe try with none at all for a while, but we never tell them what to do. That would be counter-productive.
'If it's their first offence the case will be suspended and no more action taken — as it has been with this young man. However, for second and subsequent offences, they will be fined or asked to perform community service.'
Fines are usually in the region of 35 to 40 euros, but in very rare cases, can be as much as 665 euros. 'Where there are signs of addiction, we can offer people treatment, counselling and harm-reduction medicine such as methadone,' continues Capaz. 'But they are not forced to do this. That won't work. They have to want treatment for it to be effective.' When chef Tiago Filipe, 32, was caught with 7.45 grams of cannabis at the age of 19, he was told he faced jail — five grams is usually the limit allowed as 'personal' — but his case was suspended on condition he agreed to receive help from one of the commission's counsellors. Tiago is now head chef at Lisbon's Lince Brewery Kitchen and he credits the more relaxed approach to possession with saving his career.
It left him without a criminal record and enabled him to move on to senior positions in the UK — at The Savoy, Annabel's members' club and Hawksmoor steak restaurant.
'God knows what would have happened to me if I'd simply been thrown into prison,' he tells me. 'I didn't have a drug problem — I just smoked a bit of weed recreationally — but the counsellor made me ask myself why. It changed my behaviour and probably saved my career. It's a more humane system that tries to support people and help them change rather than simply punish them.'
But doesn't this mean that more people will take drugs? Surely if there's nothing to fear, then there's nothing to deter? 'That's what we were worried about at the beginning — it was seen as a gamble that could backfire,' says SICAD's Dr Cardoso. 'We had to be brave, and it paid off.' New cases of HIV — the problem that prompted reform — fell from 1,287 in 2001 to just 16 by 2019. In the same year, the number of drug deaths fell to just six per million — about 50 times lower than the current rate in Scotland, which is still rising. Levels of drug use fell, too. According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Portugal now has some of the lowest rates of drug use among 15 to 34-year-olds in the EU.
And, as a consequence of decriminalising small consumers of drugs, the profile of the prison population has changed dramatically. In 2001, more than 40 per cent of inmates were there for drug offences. That is now around 15 per cent.
Yet spending per head of population on prevention and treatment is less than in England and Wales — 65million euros (£55million) in Portugal for a population of 10 million, compared with £600million in England and Wales for a population pushing 60million.
The police, who were resistant to change at first, also came round when they began to see results.
Commissioner Rui Cruz of Lisbon's Criminal Investigation Department, says: 'Drug users were seen as criminals before the law changed. There were many impoverished neighbourhoods where lots of people consumed on the streets. We dealt with consuming as a crime — and that criminalised whole neighbourhoods.
'When the law changed, we were able to apply more resources to trafficking. When we reduce the supply, we reduce the demand.'
Some critics believe admissions to hospital for cannabis-related psychological problems in Portugal — a 29-fold increase from 20 to 588 between 2000 and 2015, according a group of Portuguese psychologists — could be related to relaxing attitudes to possession.
But this might well have been caused by its once-high numbers of heroin users moving to cannabis. And the strength of cannabis has increased considerably over the past 20 years. In England, numbers of cannabis-related hospitalisations have risen by 50 per cent to 31,130 since 2013.
Not everyone believes that a relaxation of drug laws is the answer. In a 2018 report on the legalisation of cannabis, the centre-right think tank, The Centre for Social Justice, predicted that removing legal constraints in the UK would result in a million more users and 100,000 new addicts. Andy Cook, its chief executive, said it would 'open the floodgates to hundreds of thousands of new users, many of whom will be young and vulnerable.'
In America, sales have boomed as laws have been relaxed. There, 48 of the 50 states allow the sale of medical marijuana and 16 states have legalised it recreationally, including New York and the entire West Coast. In December last year, the cannabis-focused Leafly reported that Americans had purchased $18.3billion in cannabis products, up 71 per cent on the previous year, based on marijuana state tax and revenue records.
It is figures such as these that give many British politicians pause. The last time Boris Johnson was asked about relaxing laws on drug use — when London Mayor Sadiq Khan suggested reviewing the legality of cannabis — his then spokesperson Allegra Stratton, said: 'The Prime Minister has spoken about this on many occasions — illicit drugs destroy lives and he has absolutely no intention of legalising cannabis, which is a harmful substance.'
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has also expressed opposition to decriminalisation. In an interview this year, he said: 'When I was Director of Public Prosecutions, I prosecuted many cases involving drugs and drug gangs and the criminality that sits behind, and it causes huge issues to vulnerable people across the country.'
Advocates of the Portuguese system say they are not arguing that simply decriminalising personal possession works — treatment, harm-reduction and re-integration policies must be in place, too. These have all been made possible in Portugal because of SICAD, which oversees dozens of charities, NGOs and associations that work on the ground to help addicts. Each is funded in full or part by the government.
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Corporate ‘Racial Justice’ Programs Don’t Work
According to a new report from The Washington Post, America’s corporations have committed at least $49.5 billion to the cause of “racial justice” since the George Floyd murder last year riveted our national attention on race.
This amounts to a little over $1,100 for every black man, woman, and child in America.
Or, from another perspective, about $16,500 for every black household earning $25,000 or less.
But we’re not talking about corporate America, despite its deep concern for racial justice, just simply giving black Americans cash. As much as corporate leaders undoubtedly care about these black citizens, they would never trust them to just take the money and spend it properly.
These corporate executives nationwide have concluded that they can justify taking a huge chunk of their shareholders’ funds—an amount equal to the entire economy of the state of Alaska—and spend it in a way that will produce more racial justice.
It is reasonable to ask why they believe they can achieve this.
It goes against all experience we have had with government.
The federal government has been spending trillions since the War on Poverty began in the 1960s—$20 trillion, by some estimates—and the incidence of poverty over these years has hardly budged.
Apparently, these corporate executives feel they have some insight that has eluded politicians all these years.
A large percentage of these funds is earmarked for loans and investments in housing and business loans.
According to the report, $28 billion flows from a pledge by JPMorgan Chase to move 40,000 families into home ownership over the next five years.
But, again, special loans and grants to encourage minority home ownership are nothing new.
Government has been doing this for years, causing more damage than good.
Most should recall that we had a major financial crisis in our country in which we saw a collapse in financial markets in 2008 that was the worst since the Great Depression.
According to research at the American Enterprise Institute, this collapse was driven by the bursting of a highly inflated bubble in housing prices, the result of widespread deterioration in lending standards driven by government affordable housing goals and mandates.
Black citizens, who these government programs were designed to help, were disproportionately hurt when housing prices collapsed as a result of the plethora of bad loans.
The great mystery is why the principles that made and make our country great are nowhere to be found in the various ideas and programs being promoted with this vast sum of funds.
Why have so many in corporate America signed off on left-wing dogma that American principles—principles of protection of life, of liberty, of property—are the problem rather than the solution?
A healthy portion of American blacks are doing very well because of these American principles.
Per the Census Bureau’s recent annual report—“Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019”—a larger percentage of black households, 29.4%, were earning $75,000 or more than the percentage earning $25,000 or less, 28.7%.
Those left behind need liberation from government control of their lives. Fewer government-created ghettos from federal housing programs, more freedom from failing government schools and from broken government entitlement programs such as Social Security.
I started promoting the idea 25 years ago of releasing low-income earners from the Social Security payroll tax and allowing them to invest those funds in a personal retirement account. Back then, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 10,000. Today, it stands at 35,000.
The very naysayers I heard back then are the ones bleating today about unfairness and the wealth gap.
Rather than betraying the tradition of free enterprise capitalism that built corporate America, U.S. corporations should be promoting these values. This is the path to more prosperity, more justice, for all Americans.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/09/01/corporate-racial-justice-programs-dont-work
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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