They’ll do whatever they want! – Mary Faith Casey
Whatever They Need To Say (#648)
Gentrification is one of the most common motivations for persecution of all kinds of sex workers:
Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has declared a gentrification war on South LA’s Figueroa Corridor under the guise of ending sex trafficking…she has weaponized an archaic law, The Red Light Abatement Act, to shut down immigrant-owned motels…in preparation for pre-Olympic gentrification…subject[ing] an already over-policed neighborhood to further hypersurveillance and…raids…The Act makes the property owner responsible for vice crimes committed on their property…Essentially, businesses can be forced to shut down based on a [mere evidence-free accusation] that sex work is happening on their property, whether or not they knew of the activity. As a result, property owners discriminate against sex workers…
The Last Shall Be First (#1147)
Puritanism is throttling the entire world:
Hungary’s parliament [has] passed an amendment to [its 14-year-old] constitution that allows the government to ban [LGBT] public events...another [increase in] authoritarianism…by the ruling Fidesz-KDNP coalition led by populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán…The amendment codifies a law fast-tracked through parliament in March that bans [such] events…including the popular Pride event in Budapest that draws thousands annually…That law also allows [pigs] to use facial recognition tools to [harass] people who attend prohibited events...with fines of up to 200,000 Hungarian forints ($546)…The new amendment also states that the constitution recognizes two sexes, male and female…denying the gender identities of transgender people, as well as ignoring the existence of intersex individuals…
The Last Shall Be First (#1342) 
Florida knows it will lose any challenge to this law:
A transgender woman was arrested last month for refusing to leave the women’s restroom at the Florida State Capitol. Marcy Rheintgen, a 20-year-old college student…acted intentionally to challenge Florida’s antitrans bathroom law…sending 160 letters to state representatives, the attorney general, and…Ron DeSantis [announcing the planned date and time of her visit and] asking that she not be arrested for using the…women’s restroom…[creepy pigs] followed her inside and warned her that if she did not leave…she would be arrested…but…opted to arrest her [for “]trespass on property after warning[” so she]…won’t be able to challenge the [bathroom] law…in court…
This one directly describes very typical cop behavior as “uncharacteristic”:
A…[New York cop named]…Aaron M. Alshaman…[was rewarded with a paid vacation for attempting to burn his girlfriend’s house down at 4:30 AM while wearing his magical clown costume]…The two-family, two-story house is still intact and livable but it is damaged…the fire was [quickly] deemed to be arson and…strong…evidence [points to]…Alshaman…
A society can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners:
For decades, America relied heavily on psychiatric asylums to treat—or, in many cases, to warehouse and neglect—people with serious mental-health conditions. Then the grand project of “deinstitutionalization” began…[start]ing [in] 1963…the funding for that vision never materialized. Instead, new policies criminalizing poverty and addiction swept up people in severe psychiatric distress, who often ended up in county jail—where…they might languish for months or even years…The number of people jailed pretrial has nearly quadrupled since the nineteen-eighties; people with mental-health issues tend to be detained significantly longer than the rest of the population. Today, the nation’s three largest mental-health providers are New York’s Rikers Island, L.A. County’s Twin Towers Jail, and Chicago’s Cook County Jail…private companies…[are] contract[ed]…to provide medical and mental-health care at a capped cost; any additional money expended…comes out of the corporation’s earnings…[so, predictably,] jails that provide…health care through the top five companies in that market…[have] death rates…eighteen to fifty-eight per cent higher than those of jails whose medical services were publicly managed. Of the five…NaphCare had the highest death rate…
The Puritan Recrudescence (#1517)
Missouri…Attorney General Andrew Bailey [is] push[ing] regulations to [censor the internet without bothering to go through the legislature]. Under a new [proclamation by a politician without lawmaking power], commercial porn sites are required to [violate the privacy of] users…at both the website and device level. [How Bailey imagines he has the power to do this, or how his magical proclamation demanding device filters will stand when others have been struck down, all while somehow magically]…upholding the privacy rights of legal-age users, [is unclear, as is how he imagines he has the power to determine how]…search engine[s work]…
It’s bad enough when human reporters parrot politicians’ bloviation, but it’s intolerable when a website uses a computer program to do it (while insulting readers’ intelligence by sticking a fake byline on it).
A few sane judges are the only thing protecting US libraries from morally-defective control freaks:
A lawsuit filed against Rockford [Michigan] Public Schools [seeking to ban] over 14 library books [absurdly labeled] “sexually explicit” has been dismissed by the Court of Appeals…The lawsuit was filed by [outside agitators who hid their identities to dodge public ridicule]…and…the court…said…they had no legal right to sue because criminal claims require a prosecutor’s approval…[and] the books were not illegal…
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