by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
A strange thing happened to me here in 2020. I went to bed one night in my home country, the United States of America, known for its Constitution and protection of individual liberties, and the next day I woke up in a place I no longer recognized, for it had become a totalitarian communist regime.
Two days ago, I decided to stop in a Walmart for a brief minute to pick up something I was not able to order online quick enough. I had checked to see if this Walmart near me had it in stock. I seldom shop at Walmart, so this was a rare visit to the mega-chain franchise, and I was planning on just getting what I needed and head on my way.
An older woman wearing a mask was at the entrance, and mumbled something about wearing a mask as I walked in, but I was in a hurry and so I just ignored her.
I found someone stocking a shelf and asked him where the item was that I wanted to purchase. He said he would take me there, and proceeded to show me the way to the aisle where it was located. As we were walking to the aisle, he looked back at me and asked: “You’re not wearing a mask?” (I obviously was not.)
“No, ” I said, “I don’t wear them for medical reasons.”
He showed me the aisle then left. Before I could even read the box and labels on the item I wanted to purchase, a husky young woman wearing a kind of security uniform with a two-way radio came up to me and said in a very loud and serious tone: “Sir, if you’re not going to wear a mask, you need to leave the store NOW!”
I was somewhat taken aback by this confrontation, as I had never wore a mask during the entire COVID Plandemic, and nobody had ever bothered me about it previously, at least not in any stores where I was shopping (only an outdoor Farmer’s Market gave me problems one time).
So I decided to call her bluff, and told her I had medical reasons for not wearing a mask, and that I was just purchasing one item and then I would be leaving.
She got on her radio and stated: “He’s refusing to leave. I need back up.”
Now my blood pressure kicked up a notch, as I was clearly being seen as a criminal, and a threat.
In less than a minute, a tall man named “Allen” with a badge that said “Assistant Manager” came into the aisle and told me I had to leave immediately. I pulled out my phone and began recording everything, and was told I was “not allowed” to record in the store. I kept recording anyway because I was being threatened and wanted a record of what actually was transpiring.
I tried reasoning with him and telling him I was doing nothing illegal, and that he had no legal authority to prevent me from shopping there. He would have none of that and said:
“You should have seen the sign when you came in that face masks are required to shop here. We are under orders to prevent anyone not wearing a face mask from entering our store, so you need to leave immediately.”
“Who’s orders?” I asked.
He replied “The County.”
“The county has no authority to make laws,” I replied. “And even if they did,” I continued, “there are always exceptions, especially for medical reasons.”
He claimed that he was not given any exceptions, and that he was just following orders.
By now I was getting agitated a bit, as I always do when someone uses the excuse “I am just following orders,” and I used a pejorative term, not at him or the security lady, but in referencing the fact that this was the same excuse used by the *!#%$ Nazis in Germany during WWII.
The security lady got on her radio again and said, “He’s cursing now. We need back up.”
The Assistant Manager then scolded me and said: “You need to leave immediately. You are being very disrespectful towards me, and you need to go.”
“I’m being disrespectful to YOU?” I asked incredulously. “You’re being disrespectful to ME,” I replied, “because you are trying to force me to do something medically inappropriate as a condition to shop here.”
“Sir,” he replied, “you are disturbing the other customers by using profanity. And so for that reason you have to leave.”
The aisle we had been in when that word slipped from my tongue had no other shoppers in that aisle at the time.
I asked him, “So can you please show me your store policy, or maybe provide a link online, where it states customers who swear in your store have to leave immediately?”
“You are being disrespectful to a team member of Walmart,” he said, changing the reason yet again, “and therefore store policy allows me to ask you to leave immediately.”
By now I was already walking towards the door seeing that this was way more of a big deal to them than was worth my time in dealing with. Honestly, if I had had a face mask on me, I would have just put it on to avoid the trouble. But I don’t carry one around with me as I never wear them, and they did not offer me one.
By now two other very husky men had shown up that looked like undercover bouncers who work at a nightclub or bar, and stood nearby staring at me with piercing eyes.
I again reminded the store manager that he was breaking several laws by asking me to leave because I chose not to participate in a forced medical procedure that could damage my health, and that he himself had no legal basis for discriminating against me and preventing me from shopping there.
His reply was that the County was threatening them with fines if they did not comply with the mask order. I told him that Walmart should then sue the county if they did fine them, because such fines are illegal.
Before I walked out of the store I said to him:
“Just remember this day Allen. The day that you asked a law abiding citizen with no past criminal record to leave your store due to an illegal decree. What if they decree something else, like refusing to allow a person of color, like a black person, from shopping at your store? Would you obey that decree too? Is your job worth violating the civil rights of others?”
The young woman security guard made a kind of disgusting noise behind her mask as she shook her head in disgust at me, and I honestly thought she was going to attack me with the two thugs behind her ready to back her up.
I guess she was too young to understand the history of the REAL Civil Rights movement in this country, and that for many years that is EXACTLY what happened in this country, that people were prevented from shopping in places simply because of the color of their skin.
I told the manager to have a good day, and walked out of the store – forever. I will never buy another thing from Walmart, as long as I live. The cost of liberty is too precious to me. Somehow all those Chinese products sitting on the shelves of Walmart have apparently also imported China-style totalitarianism and communist tactics to make people comply to their orders.
When I got back to my car I was actually shaking. I had never before in my life been treated like a criminal in public, and it was a very degrading and humiliating experience.
I am writing this on July 4th, 2020. I don’t know about you, but this is worst July 4th in my lifetime, with Americans losing their liberties very quickly in what is obviously becoming a well orchestrated attack on our country from coast to coast.
As I write this today, Americans in New York are being subpoenaed and threatened with a $2000.00 a day fine if they fail to report to the authorities for contact tracing, simply because they attended an “unapproved party.” (Source.)
In California, Governor Newsom has mandated that everyone must wear face masks in public, he has closed down many businesses again, he closed the beaches again for the July 4th weekend, and he told churches they can no longer sing during their services.
All of these measures are happening right in the middle of summer when children and families should be outdoors and enjoying the summer. Deaths attributed to COVID are way down, but because they keep using these faulty tests to test more people than ever, the excuse now is that the virus is “spreading” just simply based on more positive test results.
So obviously, something else is going on here, and we better wake up and start preparing for even worse times ahead.
An article I received in my newsfeed this week made some rather startling accusations against Governor Newsom and California, and so I am going to concentrate the rest of this article on California, and their governor.
But trust me, what is happening in California affects the entire nation right now.
Who is Governor Gavin Newsom?
While researching how California Governor Gavin Newsom became the Governor of the most populous state in the U.S., it is obvious that he was not “elected” based on merit, but apparently due to his powerful connections.
Gavin Newsom: His Education – Trying to Overcome Dyslexia and Low IQ
According to The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity:
Gavin Newsom was diagnosed with dyslexia at age five, but his mother didn’t tell him, for fear he would use his disability as a crutch. So while he labored to read, spell, and work with numbers, his little sister sailed through school effortlessly. “As an older brother,” he says, “that was more difficult than you can imagine. I was always wondering why she would get done with her homework quickly and I was still struggling to work through it, and why my parents were so demanding with me and so easy on her as it related to academics.”
When Newsom was in fifth grade, he discovered in his mother’s office a stash of papers reporting on his dismal academic performance and describing something called dyslexia. “That really hit home, and it explained why everyone else was running into their parents’ arms after school and I was stuck in that shack behind the school every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with four or five other students.”
Of all the learning difficulties he endured, Newsom says that reading aloud was “the most humiliating.” He can still recall his fifth-grade classroom and the row he sat in, “with my heart just sinking and pounding, hoping that that period would end and we’d get the hell out of there, and then getting up and starting to read and having everybody in the class laugh. That’s when I basically gave up on any reading. I did book reports by literally reading the back of the book and just copying the text, thinking the teacher would never find out.”
High school was even worse. “The grades were bad, my self-esteem started to collapse, and I remember faking being sick all the time to avoid math class, which I just couldn’t handle.” But because he was expected to attend college, Newsom began to take summer classes to catch up, knowing that he would never get into “a serious university. I took the SAT and it was a complete disaster, and they didn’t even argue for me to take it again, because it was just beyond stressful. And I’ll be honest: had it not been for my mother and some remedial training, I never would have gotten into college.” Thanks to those and his outstanding abilities in baseball, Newsom began to receive scholarship offers from a number of colleges and attended Santa Clara University in California on a partial baseball scholarship.
Newsom was trained in the “tradition of the Jesuits” while at Santa Clara, and spent one semester in Rome. From an interview with The Santa Clara:
This is Santa Clara. It taught me how to learn. And you’re talking to a guy with massive dyslexia, that only got into Santa Clara because of baseball, that got student loans and that was given a waiver to graduate because I couldn’t pass a class — three times — that I took at College of Marin…
Santa Clara stands out, providing more of a Socratic method, so to speak, of education. And that’s the Jesuit tradition, of course.
I think that the greatest memories I had — and it’s rather perverse — were my semester abroad in Rome. I can’t impress upon people more the extraordinary opportunity of doing a semester abroad. I cannot underscore how great that was. It’s going to be a requirement when I have kids. They have to do a semester abroad. (Source.)
Gavin Newsom’s Wine Business – Powerful Friends
Despite his apparent lack of academic excellence, after Newsom graduated from college, his family friends, billionaire Gordon Getty and Democratic leader John Burton, helped fund a new wine business, PlumpJack.
From This millionaire might be California’s next governor. How Gavin Newsom got connected, by Christopher Cadelago of the Sacramento Bee on July 31, 2018:
Up a narrow staircase above his wine shop, Gavin Newsom glides across the cramped office before making his way to its showpiece.
Off to the side sits a mop sink that city inspectors made him install even though he argued the floors were carpeted.
“I fought this, and lost,” said Newsom, the state lieutenant governor and frontrunner to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown next year. The 49-year-old Democrat raises one arm and grins, defiantly. “When you fight bureaucracy, make sure you have money and patience – and I didn’t have either.”
What Newsom lacked in poise and prosperity at the time he made up for in hustle and capitalizing on connections.
Newsom opened the wine shop in 1992 with the financial backing of family friend and oil fortune heir Gordon Getty. Newsom’s father, a classmate and close adviser of Getty, urged another prominent friend, John Burton, to recommend then-Mayor Willie Brown to appoint him to a vacant seat on the Board of Supervisors.
A fourth-generation San Franciscan who grew up around politics, Newsom said he still envisioned the life of an entrepreneur. But at just 29, the allure of citywide issues slowly began to win out.
As mayor, Newsom became nationally recognized for ordering the distribution of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. And the shop with the mop sink upstairs, PlumpJack Wines, grew into a line of successful restaurants, hotels and wineries managed by Newsom’s sister, Hilary.
Yet the early hand he received in politics and business continues to form the basis of criticism against him. Newsom’s opponents in the mayor’s race painted him as privileged and out of touch. In the gubernatorial contest, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Treasurer John Chiang, both Democrats, are beginning to do the same.
Villaraigosa dismisses Newsom as a “Davos Democrat,” after the town in the Swiss Alps that hosts a grand summit of world politicians, business leaders and celebrities and other elites. Chiang took a backhanded swipe by noting that he wasn’t born into a family with “wealth or big connections …”
In the interview above the wine shop, Newsom conceded he wouldn’t be in politics without Burton and Brown. (Source.)
Last week, when Newsom announced the re-closing of some businesses in certain counties due to a “spike” in COVID cases, it included several of his competitor wineries, while his was excluded, and he even tweeted about how his winery would be open during July 4th.
The criticism that followed prompted PlumpJack Winery to change their plans and close as well.
One has to also wonder if Governor Newsom’s relationship to the powerful Getty family who made their fortune in oil has affected his policies towards the oil industry in California, which is more similar to a Capitalist Republican than it is to a Progressive Democrat that Newsom claims to be.
From an article by Steve Horn on June 19, 2020 at Global Research titled California Governor Hands Out Fracking Permits on Behalf of Big Oil:
While California was convulsed by COVID-19 and George Floyd’s death, the governor gave Big Oil a big gift:
On June 1, in the midst of the turmoil created by the coronavirus pandemic and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration quietly issued 12 fracking permits to Aera Energy, a joint venture owned by ExxonMobil and Shell.
Oil drilling in California has faced criticism for its disproportionately negative health impacts on Latino communities and other people of color. The 12 new permits will be for fracking in the Lost Hills Oil Field. The Kern County town of Lost Hills is more than 97 percent Latino, according to 2010 U.S. Census data.
The fracking permits are the latest example of California’s oil industry benefiting from regulatory or deregulatory action during the COVID-19 pandemic and came just months after the Newsom administration said it supported taking actions to “manage the decline of oil production and consumption in the state.” Aera, which also received 24 permits from the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) on April 3 during the early days of COVID-19, has well-connected lobbyists in its corner who work for the firm Axiom Advisors.
One of them, Jason Kinney, headed up Newsom’s 2018 transition team and formerly served as a senior advisor to Newsom while he was lieutenant governor. He is also a senior advisor to California’s Senate Democrats. The other, Kevin Schmidt, previously served as policy director for Newsom when the latter was lieutenant governor. Aera paid Axiom $110,000 for its lobbying work in 2019 and, so far in 2020, has paid $30,000, lobbying reports reveal. (Full Article.)
And is Gavin Newsom related to Nancy Pelosi and former California Governor Jerry Brown?
From 4 Corrupt Families Of California – Newsom, Brown, Pelosi and Feinstein at Aircrap.org:
The connections date back at least 80 years, to when Jerry Brown’s father, Pat Brown, ran for San Francisco district attorney, losing in 1939 but winning in 1943, with the help of his close friend and Gavin Newsom’s grandfather, businessman William Newsom.
As mayor, Newsom became nationally recognized for ordering the distribution of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. And the shop with the mop sink upstairs, PlumpJack Wines, grew into a line of successful restaurants, hotels, and wineries managed by Newsom’s sister, Hilary.
A Times review of campaign finance records identified eight of San Francisco’s best-known families as being among Newsom’s most loyal and long-term contributors. Among those patrons are the Gettys, the Pritzkers and the Fishers, whose families made their respective fortunes in oil, hotels and fashion. They first backed him when he was a restaurateur and winery owner running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1998, and have continued their support through the governor’s race.
They are not Newsom’s largest donors: The families in total have given about $2 million of the $61 million that donors have contributed to his campaigns and independent committees backing those bids. But they gave while he was a relative unknown, providing crucial support to a political newcomer in the years before his campaign accounts piled high with cash from labor unions, Hollywood honchos, tech billionaires and donors up and down the state.
Gavin Newsom is succeeding someone who could be considered his quasi-uncle, since his inauguration continues the decades-long saga of four San Francisco families intertwined by blood, by marriage, by money, by culture and, of course, by politics – the Browns, the Newsoms, the Pelosi’s and the Gettys. (Full article.)
Gavin Newsom the Womanizer: His Affairs while in Office and Yet Never Prosecuted
From Newsom’s latest affair of the heart could turn into political heartburn by Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross of SFGate published in 2006:
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is certainly feeling his oats these days — although, truth be told, his latest jaunt with “CSI: Miami” star Sofia Milos is giving some of his advisers a case of political heartburn.
As reported by The Chronicle’s Leah Garchik, Milos was introduced to the yet-to-be-officially-single mayor by former Supervisor Angela Alioto a couple of weekends ago at the wedding of Alioto’s son, Police Commissioner Joe Veronese.
Things must have clicked, because this past weekend Newsom — who is in the midst of a divorce with his TV-commentating wife Kimberly Guilfoyle — jetted off to spend a couple of days in La-La Land with Milos.
The mayor checked into the Chateau Marmont, the show-biz hotel just north of the Sunset Strip that is perhaps best known as the spot where comedian John Belushi overdosed on cocaine and heroin.
On Newsom’s agenda: a little visit with his new actress friend, then off with her to the Beverly Hilton to attend the annual dinner of the Citizens Commission for Human Rights. (Source.)
The image used in that story, posted above, not only shows him with Sophia Milos, but also with Ruby Rippey-Tourk, one of his aides who worked out of his office as Mayor of San Francisco, with whom he was also having an affair, and who was also the wife of his Campaign Manager, Alex Tourk.
But the photographer would not have known that yet, as it was revealed later.
From the San Diego Union-Tribune in an article published in 2018 titled: Former aide to Gavin Newsom speaks out about their affair while he was San Francisco mayor:
The woman gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom had an affair with when he was mayor of San Francisco spoke out about their relationship on Wednesday after questions about the liaison emerged in the governor’s race.
Ruby Rippey Gibney said that although their relationship destroyed her home life, it probably shouldn’t be part of the discussion about sexual misconduct surrounding the #MeToo movement.
“I fully support the #metoo movement. In this particular instance, however, I am doubtful that it applies,” Rippey Gibney wrote on her Facebook page. “Yes, I was a subordinate, but I was also a free-thinking, 33-yr old adult married woman & mother. (I also happened to have an unfortunate inclination towards drinking-to-excess & self-destruction.)”
Newsom and Rippey Gibney had an affair when she worked as the then-mayor’s appointments secretary. At the time, she was married to the Democrat’s campaign manager and friend, Alex Tourk.
The affair came to light in 2007. The controversy rocked San Francisco politics, but has largely gone unmentioned in the 2018 governor’s race.
As a side note, these two particular affairs were going on while he was still married to his first wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is now allegedly the girlfriend living with Donald Trump, Jr.
Maybe this is one reason why Governor Newsom and President Trump get along so well, even though they are supposedly on the opposite ends of the political spectrum?
Newsom’s use of women is not the main concern here, however, but the allegation that he used his position of power and influential connections to stop legal efforts to investigate the appropriateness of a powerful San Francisco Mayor to use his position to take advantage of women.
In 2012 Larry Bush, writing for CitiReport highlighted how Newsom was able to accomplish this. From his article, Mythologizing Gavin Newsom:
It is, we are told, spelled out in the City Charter. “Official misconduct means…conduct that falls below the standard of decency, good faith and right action impliedly required of all public officers…”
What that means – and doesn’t mean – comes through in sharp relief if you substitute the name Gavin Newsom for Ross Mirkarimi. Because Gavin Newsom would have been charged with Official Misconduct in 2007 after notoriously scandalous behavior that begged issues of unlawful behavior. In Newsom’s case, he was the anointed front man for a city establishment from the day he was appointed to a city commission, then to the Board, and then backed with the most expensive campaign in city history to be elected mayor.
Not only was nothing going to drive him from office, but every asset from Dianne Feinstein to the Chronicle to the Ethics Commission’s Executive Director to the head of the Commission on the Status of Women did everything in their power to make the issue go away.
The contrast with Mirkarimi, a political outsider who began as a member of the Green Party and who challenged longstanding city practices ranging from the reluctance to implement community policing to directing city funds to programs serving vulnerable people. In an instant, rumor morphed into a drumbeat, then an echo chamber, that was so overwhelming that a jury expert determined that it would be impossible for him to get a fair trial in the city where he had just won city-wide office.
The facts are not in dispute — although few ever saw them put together into a narrative that told the story. How the city establishment responded to those facts is the story.
If any city official ever collided right into the abyss described in this language it would be Gavin Newsom, who catapulted San Francisco into national disgrace after being forced to admit that he had a sexual affair with a subordinate.
Within hours, BeyondChron editor Randy Shaw had posted his prediction: “That’s what will likely lead City Attorney Dennis Herrera to file charges against Newsom by the end of the week.”
In the following days, questions emerged over just how many laws had been broken. The City Attorney was investigating whether Newsom’s scheme to pay Alex Tourk, the cuckolded husband and erstwhile deputy chief of staff, out of Newsom’s campaign funds. A second investigation was underway on whether Ruby Rippey-Tourk was given favorable treatment under the city’s catastrophic leave program that awarded her over $10,000 for her absences, why she was allowed the payment after she resigned, or whether she was entitled to sign her own time cards so she would be paid.
Looming over it all was the question of whether a mayor, or any city supervisor, would be violating ethics laws and public trust by having an illicit affair with a subordinate – that would most likely result in a private sector boss or even a CEO being canned.
More details revealed that Newsom’s office was dysfunctional, at times resulting in significant mismanagement affecting the city. He failed to establish an attendance policy for his office’s senior political appointees, and did not establish rules on approving leave.
Commission appointments, the duty of Ruby Rippey-Tourk, Newsom’s lover, were ignored even after months of pleading for action. One result: a complete melt-down of the city’s Taxi Commission with its executive director fired at 2 a.m. after an all-night commission meeting. The record showed that Rippey-Tourk had already been on unpaid leave for five weeks at the time.
Newsom Held The Aces
But Newsom held the aces that would trump any effort to legally hold him accountable.
He could count on the city’s powerful elites, from Senator Dianne Feinstein to the San Francisco Chronicle to even the city’s hobbled Ethics Commission, to immunize him from any legal consequences.
Indeed, the city charter language on Official Misconduct applies to all city officials – except the mayor. The only way to hold Newsom accountable would be if the City Attorney or District Attorney brought charges based on violations of the law, not violations of the charter.
By the morning after Newsom’s February 1 late afternoon press revelation, the Myth Machine was in full working order.
First, the Chronicle ran a February 2 story explaining that Newsom had not violated any city policies.
“Mayor Gavin Newsom’s affair with his former aide Ruby Rippey-Tourk apparently violated none of the city’s ethics codes, which do not cover general moral transgressions or errors in judgment,” reported the Chronicle.
Despite the scant few hours since Newsom admitted to his affair, Ethics Commission Executive Director John St. Croix was ready to shoot down any notion that the city’s ethics laws were broken.
“The ethics code could deal with situations where a supervisor gives something like a gift to a subordinate with the understanding that they will get something in return, (but) it doesn’t really cover sexual relationships,” said John St. Croix, executive director of the city’s Ethics Commission, in the same story.
Next the Commission on the Status of Women packed away any notion that a supervisor having sexual relations with a subordinate was a matter of concern.
“The San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women, a seven-member board appointed by the mayor that, among other things, monitors complaints of unlawful treatment of women in city government, was keeping its distance,” reported the Chronicle in its February 2 story.
Emily Murase, director of the mayor-appointed commission, declined to comment about the affair. “We’re treating it as a personal issue,” Murase said.
That same day-after series of stories started a new narrative, this time from top political reporter Carla Marinucci, who just hours after Newsom’s announcement was redefining the issue as a “violation of the man code” for having sexual relations with his friend’s wife.
Senator Dianne Feinstein was ready, in 24 hours, to blame the pressures of being mayor as contributing to Newsom’s misbehavior, but voiced her belief that “I think he’ll go on from there.” She noted, “This is a young mayor. I know the pressures of being mayor, and I know how hard it can be.”
In a matter of days, the Chronicle was ready to offer its conclusions, including its view on whether the mayor should resign.
“Newsom made it clear that he has no intention of resigning, leaving his fate where it belongs — with the voters. San Franciscans neither want nor need a mayor with an image that is too good to be true,” it editorialized on February 7.
Newsom Escapes His Past
A significant part of the Newsom Myth Making was the claim that Newsom handled the revelation in a textbook perfect example of crisis management. He announced it, took responsibility, and apologized.
But Gavin Newsom was no Betty Ford, stepping up to take responsibility for anything other than sleeping with his friend’s wife who was his subordinate.
It took several more days for Newsom to admit he had a drinking problem, and then he veered back and forth on whether he did have a drinking problem. Weeks later he was still saying he didn’t know if he had a drinking problem.
Newsom wasn’t just in denial. He had been using his office to make certain that he would not be confronted with questions about his excessive drinking even in public. At one point a month earlier, Newsom directed his police bodyguard to block a reporter trying to ask about Newsom’s drinking and its impact on his job as mayor.
After the story broke, Newsom refused to answer questions about his use of city funds to ease Ruby Rippey-Tourk’s transition or his effort to use his campaign funds to pay Alex Tourk despite the apparent violation of campaign laws.
Newsom’s refusal to respond to questions ultimately resulted in a four-minute video that stitched together footage of Newsom repeatedly refusing to deal with reporters.
“The Walkaway Mayor” was posted on youtube by a group calling itself GavinWatch
At its core, Newsom’s problem appears to be less drinking than an immaturity that positions himself at the center of his world, petulantly acting out when others raise uncomfortable questions about his behavior. What the video documents most of all are a man given to tantrums, rudeness and insults when others stand in the way of how he views himself and wants others to view him.
For more than a year, Newsom benefitted from a City Hall press corps that was not aggressive in investigating accounts that Newsom was having an affair with a staffer or was drinking heavily.
Matier and Ross, the “Insiders,” told readers only after the news broke what City Hall had known all along.
“For more than a year, the affair between San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and the wife of his good friend and campaign manager, Alex Tourk, was a bomb that those around the mayor knew would one day go off,” they wrote on February 2.
“Rumors started making the rounds of City Hall in late 2005, soon after Newsom and Rippey-Tourk were reportedly spotted together in the mayoral town car at a wedding in Napa.
The cavorting with a 19-year-old model and nighttime public sightings in which the mayor appeared to have been drinking have damaged what was once Newsom’s strongest political asset — a squeaky-clean image.,” the duo wrote.
When he did decide to get counseling, he went to Mimi Silbert, a longtime friend and ally, but still refused to publicly discuss his drinking problem or to encourage others to take similar steps to get help with alcoholism. Newsom never discussed it.
With Newsom establishing a wall of silence, reporters option was to haunt the City Attorney to learn whether any action might come from that quarter.
KGO-‘s Dan Noyes of the stations’ I-Team went on the air on February 6 with one angle.
“But there are new, serious questions whether Newsom is breaking campaign finance law. His close friend and campaign manager, Alex Tourk, resigned last week, after Newsom admitted having an affair with Tourk’s wife, Ruby. She was the mayor’s appointments secretary.
As part of a deal worked out with lawyers, Alex Tourk will continue to be paid his $15,000 dollar a month salary until he finds a new job.
The I-Team has confirmed the city attorney’s office is researching whether that’s against the law,” said Noyes.
The story died right there because the City Attorney doesn’t comment on investigations and doesn’t comment on advice it provides to office holders.
This past week, CitiReport asked the City Attorney’s office for the outcome of the reported investigation aired by Noyes.
“Did Mr. Herrera either state, officially or informally, that Mayor Newsom could not use campaign funds to pay Alex Tourk after he resigned?” was the question CitiReport asked.
The answer: “Without indicating an answer either way, I was able to identify a record that while potentially responsive to this request is covered by the attorney-client privilege (Bus. & Prof. Code Sec. 6068(e)(1)). As such, disclosure by the City Attorney’s Office is prohibited under the Public Records Act (Cal. Gov. Code Sec. 6254(k)) and S.F. Sunshine Ordinance.”
Newsom, for his part, backed out of using campaign funds and said he made the payments from his own accounts.
The City Attorney Finds No Wrongdoing
The question of payments to Rippey-Tourk was reviewed in a 31-page analysis by the City Attorney released on April 11, 2007. It was a comprehensive analysis of each of the major questions – the use of catastrophic leave, the payments made after leaving office, the issue of attendance and time sheets – and each time the City Attorney’s conclusions skated by questions of wrongdoing and tossed the issues to other city departments, the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor himself.
After noting that both Rippey-Tourk and Alex Tourk declined to be interviewed, the City Attorney’s analysis relied on interviews with others and available documents. The Mayor does not show up as being interviewed.
On the eligibility of Rippey-Tourk for catastrophic leave intended for those facing end-of-life illness such as HIV or Cancer, but extended to Rippey-Tourk reportedly to enable her to attend a substance abuse program:
“We did not find any case in which DPH certified eligibility for the CIP based solely on substance abuse…We did find a few denials by DPH of applications where the catastrophic illness was substance abuse, but apparently unaccompanied by any life-threatening physical condition or behavior. We did not discover any DPH approval of a CIP application based solely on alcohol or substance abuse, including attending a treatment program.”
“Whether there should be amendments to the Ordinance to set forth additional direction or criteria for making this determination is a policy matter for the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor.”
On approval for Rippey-Tourk to receive payment after resigning and before starting a new job:
“But we could find no other instance where, as here, an employee received approval by the Controller for payment under the CIP after she indicated her intent to resign from City employment and received the payment just as she was starting a new job.”
“Again, if as a policy matter the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor would prefer a rule prohibiting payments to employees who are separating from City employment, including circumstances where they have accepted a new job, they could amend the CIP ordinance to incorporate such a limitation.”
On the question of confirming attendance at the office:
“During the time she served in the Mayor’s Office, there was no written City-wide or Mayor’s Office policy regarding the submission or approval of time sheets. Our review indicates that during the majority of time that Ms. Rippey-Tourk was employed by the Mayor’s Office, senior staff members were not required by any policy or practice of the City or the Mayor’s Office to have a supervisor approve their time sheets.”
On the question of nepotism of Tourk signing time sheets in some cases for his wife:
“Even though Mayor’s Office approval of senior staff time sheets was merely an internal departmental control and was not legally required for salary payments by the Controller, authorization of a spouse’s times sheets is not appropriate in light of this public trust. But the City’s anti-nepotism law prohibiting participation by an employee in employment actions involving that employee’s relatives does not appear to extend to this situation; it covers only hiring, promotion and discipline.”
“Because Mr. Tourk approved his wife’s time sheets, this practice was inappropriate and at least created the appearance of impropriety though it does not appear to have violated City laws.”
“It is a policy matter for the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor whether to amend the City’s anti-nepotism law to cover this type of situation going forward, and a policy matter for the Board of Supervisors, the Mayor, the Controller, the Department of Human Resources and the Ethics Commission whether to institute a formal City policy requiring approval of employee time sheets in a particular manner, or not at all.”
On the question of Rippey-Tourk signing her own time sheets:
“Similarly, the fact that Ms. Rippey-Tourk occasionally signed as her own “authorized signature” during this period was not legally improper, as no such signature was required.”
Today, almost on the exact fifth anniversary of his report, City Attorney Dennis Herrera will go before the city’s Ethics Commission to argue that the charter provisions on Official Misconduct involving “conduct that falls below the standard of decency, good faith and right action impliedly required of all public officers…” should serve as the grounds to remove Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office.
Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom’s failure to uphold a standard of decency, good faith and right action is seen as one of his finest hours.
Governor Newsom is an Alcoholic
This was mentioned above in Larry Bush’s article. Here is an account of Newsom getting treatment, although he did not “step aside” during this alleged treatment from his duties as Mayor of San Francisco, according to the SFGate’s article, Newsom seeks treatment for alcohol abuse:
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said today that he will seek treatment for alcohol abuse.
“Upon reflection with friends and family this weekend, I have come to the conclusion that I will be a better person without alcohol in my life,” Newsom said in a written statement. “I take full responsibility for my personal mistakes and my problems with alcohol are not an excuse for my personal lapses in judgment.”
Newsom told department heads at a meeting this afternoon that the help he is seeking would not require him to step aside even temporarily, as it might if he entered a residential rehabilitation program, sources familiar with the meeting told The Chronicle.
The move follows the revelation last week that Newsom had a sexual affair with an employee of his office, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, who also is the wife of one of his former top political aides, Alex Tourk. Tourk, the mayor’s former deputy chief of staff, resigned as Newsom’s re-election campaign manager after confronting Newsom about the affair.
The mayor admitted the affair Thursday after it was reported by The Chronicle and apologized to Tourk, his friends and family and the residents of San Francisco. He has since declined to say anything about the scandal and has stated repeatedly that he wants to get back to work.
Newsom’s alcohol use became an embarrassment for the mayor after witnesses reported he appeared to have been drinking late Dec. 22 before arriving at San Francisco General Hospital, where a police officer had been taken after being mortally wounded.
The mayor also faced scrutiny late last year for bringing a then 20-year-old woman out on dates, where she was reportedly seen drinking what appeared to be alcohol. (Full Article.)
Governor Newsom’s Connections to China?
This article has become longer than my normal articles, and I do apologize for that. But I have saved the best part for last.
It was important to give as much background information about Gavin Newsom from documented sources first, before speculating about what Newsom is up to today and in the future.
First, Newsom has used his position as Governor of California to strike a $1 BILLION deal with China for N95 respirator masks. This is reported in the corporate media, so this is not speculative.
C. Douglas Golden, in an April 22, 2020 article in The Western Journal, writes:
Consider the fact that conservative Newsmax and the liberal Los Angeles Times both hit him (Newsom) for what he did.
According to the Times, the problem wasn’t the cost of the masks — or where the money was going to, although that was equally problematic — but the lack of any details regarding the deal.
“The governor’s advisors have so far declined requests for information about the agreement with BYD, the Chinese electric car manufacturer hired to produce the masks, though the state has already wired the company the first installment of $495 million,” the Times reported.
“Newsom, who has been praised for his efforts to slow the spread of the disease, bristled on Saturday at suggestions that his administration has been too slow to explain a deal that will cost California taxpayers 30% more than his January budget would spend on infectious disease prevention for an entire fiscal year.”
Furthermore, he hasn’t bothered to brief the California Legislature on what, exactly, he agreed to.
“I must emphasize, that’s a big deal,” GOP state Sen. Jim Nielsen said during a legislative oversight hearing Tuesday. “And what is in the contract that ensures the deliverability — timely — is going to be really, really important. At the least, we cannot be just throwing out a false hope to people.”
The details sound impressive. Newsom’s office says it can buy 200 million N95 masks at an impressive price from BYD, heretofore known for its electric vehicles, using its state buying power. This may, in fact, be an accurate appraisal of how the deal would work — assuming, that is, BYD can convert its plants into N95-producing powerhouses.
“Exactly how BYD has converted some of its manufacturing efforts in China to begin producing protective masks is unclear,” the Times reported.
“On March 13, it touted the creation of ‘the world’s largest mass-produced face masks plant’ in a news release posted on the company’s website. The company announced that it would make 5 million masks a day — far surpassing the 100 million masks a month promised by 3M, the company best known for producing N95 masks, used to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
“A spokesman for BYD referred all questions about negotiations over the purchase of masks to Newsom’s office.”
Given that Newsom’s office appears entirely unwilling to share these details with legislators, you may perhaps begin to see the problem here. (Full article.)
A few weeks ago (June 9, 2020), the San Francisco Chronicle reported an update on this deal:
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s medical mask deal with a Chinese manufacturer will proceed after the company succeeded in obtaining federal safety certification, following two missed deadlines.
Newsom said Monday that supplier BYD had secured safety certification for its N95 particulate-filtering respirators, clearing the way for California to receive 150 million masks. A spokeswoman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health confirmed that the certification was granted Sunday.
“This new supply of N95 masks, as well as the surgical masks this contract has already provided, are game-changing and play a crucial role in our state’s public safety and reopening strategy,” Newsom said in a statement.
Newsom’s office said the N95 masks, part of a $990 million deal, will be distributed to medical workers and others on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. (Full article.)
Do you think this deal would have anything to do with why Newsom and California (and other states for that matter) want to all of a sudden mandate wearing masks, when formerly when COVID was much worse they were not mandated?
Could this be one reason to fabricate the news that we are now seeing a “resurge” and “hot spots,” when in fact we are only seeing increased testing and more positive test results from tests that are not even accurate?
Earlier this week Mike Adams published an investigative report related to this that included some intel he had received.
Mike and I don’t always agree on things, even though we are both in the alternative media, but when he states he has received intel on anything related to China, I pay attention. This is because like me, he has lived in Southeast Asia for part of his life, in Taiwan, and has seen and learned things that are not widely known in the U.S.
Likewise I lived in the Philippines for several years in Southeast Asia, and have seen first hand how the Chinese control commerce and most aspects of life in the region, and beyond.
Mike still has connections in the area, as have I, although I have not had the opportunity to investigate and corroborate what Mike is reporting, yet.
According to Adams, Newsom is part of a money laundering scheme with China that is having funds coming back into the U.S. to fund groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa in an effort to destabilize the U.S. and lead us to a civil war that will cripple us, and give China an opportunity to attack the U.S.
From Adams’ article at Natural News:
We begin with the recent news that China was caught attempting to smuggle “10,800 assault weapons parts” into Louisville, Kentucky. This news was announced by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on June 26, 2020:
At the Express Consignment Operations hubs in Louisville U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers seized a shipment from China that contained over 10,000 Assault Weapons parts being smuggled into the country.
The shipment was seized on May 22. Officers inspected the item, which was arriving from Shenzhen, China, destined for a residence in Melbourne, Florida. The parcel was manifested as containing 100 Steel Pin Samples. This is a common practice of smugglers manifesting the contraband as a harmless or a legitimate commodity in hopes of eluding further examination.
The official CBP announcement did not offer any specifics on what exactly the “assault weapons parts” were, but we have since learned from another source that the parts were drop-in full-auto mods for AR-15 rifles.
Full auto drop-in parts are very simple but highly illegal parts which turn a semi-auto AR-15 into a full-auto AR-15, which is illegal for civilians to own. Such parts replace a small number of existing parts in the AR-15 trigger mechanism and safety selector. Because the parts are very small, a high number of them — such as 10,800 — can be hidden in shipments that claim to be other things such as machinery parts or samples.
This means China was sending 10,800 full-auto rifle mods to Melbourne, Florida, which no doubt serves as a distribution hub for moving those pieces nationwide.
You might reasonably wonder, then, why China would be sending full-auto rifle mods to the USA. The answer is that China supports the civil war attempt by Black Lives Matter, and China is coordinating with BLM terrorists to arm up their militant troops across the country, upgrading their legally-acquired AR-15 weapons to “full auto” status, which makes them far more formidable in a kinetic assault.
Melbourne, Florida, is known as a human trafficking, drug trafficking and weapons trafficking mecca, with smuggling routes that are well established across both land and water. With easy access to both Orlando and Miami airports, contraband that comes into Melbourne is easy to distribute across the USA within days. The human trafficking is so bad in Melbourne that every law enforcement officer working the area has had contact with human trafficking operations there.
We now believe that some of these full-auto weapons mods end up under the control of Democrat governors like Newsom, the California Governor who actively seeks to see America destroyed.
Weapons, ammo and gold storage: East End Complex – Block 174 – Capitol building, Sacramento, California
Several weeks ago, we learned from a source in California that the East End Complex – Block 174 – of the Capitol building in Sacramento, California, has a vast underground storage complex that consists of multiple floors, much like a giant underground parking garage. The construction alone cost a quarter of a billion dollars:
From JohnsonFain.com, the firm that designed the facility:
…this project is an ambitious multi-block mixed-use development to consolidate the headquarters operations of three major departments of California State government. 6,400 employees of the Departments of Health Services, Education and General Services are housed in the five-building, 1.5 million square foot development, along with 1,500 parking spaces…
The Department of Health Services and General Services are housed in the second portion of the Capitol Area East End Complex, known as Blocks 171-174. This design-build team is made up of Clark Construction and Gruen Architects who completed this $225.6 million complex.
Here’s a link to the official web page for this building.
And here’s a satellite map of its location:
Our source, who served as an employee inside the building complex for several years, tells us that the underground storage facility in this building houses “vehicles, firearms, ammunition and gold bullion.”
Governor Newsom sent half a billion dollars to China for completely fabricated “covid-19 mask” deal
Governor Newsom is fully aware of this operation and has been bought off by China, which is covertly providing loans to Newsom to keep him in power and prevent California from defaulting in an epic financial collapse. As Paul Preston reported on Agenda21Radio.news:
(Washington DC)-Sources in Washington DC speaking under condition of anonymity have revealed to AENN that California Governor Gavin Newsom has entered into discussions with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) to loan the state of California $1 trillion dollars by way of a collateralized loan.
Newsom is making “payments” on the loans from China by funneling money to China through other corrupt means, such as this recent bombshell that finds Newsom helping communist China receive $1 billion in coronavirus aid.
[T]his isn’t a billion dollars for “masks.” It’s part of a massive money laundering operation to funnel money to China, so that China can funnel money and weapons back to Newsom in preparation for the civil war that they’re launching. Nobody believes Gov. Newsom is spending a billion dollars on N95 masks… it’s absurd. Just a cover story.
Gov. Newsom is stockpiling weapons, ammunition and gold at the Capitol building in Sacramento
Back to the Easy End Complex in Sacramento, our source says they personally witnessed “insane amounts” of ammunition — pallets at a time — being delivered and stored there, harkening back to the DOJ purchases of 2 billion rounds of ammunition under President Barack Obama, who also said that he wanted to build a civilian army that was just as powerful as the U.S. military, by the way. Obama called this his, “Civilian National Security Force,” as AmericanThinker.com explains, Barack Obama said:
We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set… We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.
One pallet of 5.56 ammo is well over 50,000 rounds, by the way. So the ammo stockpiling by Gov. Newsom is off the charts, and it appears he got ammo from the DOJ under Obama as well as new ammo funded by communist China. Essentially, Gov. Newsom has been stockpiling weapons and ammo in preparation for a civil war that he’s been helping to make reality.
Back to Obama, how do you create a civilian military force? You stockpile weapons in Democrat-controlled cities like Sacramento. You work with communist China to import full-auto weapon mod parts to upgrade your civilian forces to military-grade automatic weapons. And you put more weapons into the hands of your loyalists through legalized gun-running operations like Operation Fast and Furious.
What might happen next, is of course speculative at this point, but given how rapidly events have been unfolding right before our very eyes, it would be foolish at this point to exclude anything as a “conspiracy theory” as we now know that there is a plan, no longer a “theory”, in place to usher in a New World Order.
So this is what Adams and another independent journalist named Dave Hodges believe may be happening in the future:
The multi-faceted attack that’s about to hit the United States while 99% of Americans are totally oblivious to reality
Dave Hodges at TheCommonsenseShow.com has extensively documented the interactions between Mexican drug cartels and Chinese military troops. See some of his analysis in stories like, “Mexican Oil Official Says UN-Mexican Cartels and Chinese Are Provoking a Border War” or, “Leaked Document Shows Chinese Intent to Commit Mass American Genocide Followed the Occupation of America.”
In effect, America is about to be hit with a multi-faceted attack that has been largely funded by communist China, consisting of:
- A domestic civil war uprising of Black Lives Matter militants who have been heavily armed with automatic weapons and are intent on killing Whites, Christians, conservatives and Trump supporters. In addition, Black Lives Matter is already receiving enormous funding through U.S. corporations such as McDonald’s, Netflix, Google and others who have pledged almost half a billion dollars so far.
- A border invasion consisting of armed Mexican narcos who have been trained by Chinese military instructions and given heavy weapons paid for by China.
- The release of financial weapons against America, including China selling off U.S. Treasury debt and announcing its own gold-backed currency.
- The unleashing of emotionally charged, drooling left-wing “zombies” who have been whipped up into a frenzy by the treasonous left-wing media pushing deliberately fake news such as claiming that America is a “racist” nation or that Trump himself is racist.
- The continued chemical warfare against America via fentanyl, heroin and other drugs that are devastating America’s young males who might otherwise be capable of serving in a military draft, if not for the fact that they are now trembling drug addicts.
- The likely deployment of EMP weapons against America, using stolen technology, unleashing a “Pearl Harbor” attack that could kill 90% of the American population. This was the subject of a recent bombshell authored by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry and filed under the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security. You can read my coverage of this at this link on NationalSecurity.news. See the official website of this task force at https://emptaskforce.us – from that article:
The EMP weapons that China is perfecting would destroy the power grid, collapsing the United States of America into mass starvation, chaos and economic collapse. Although this seems to be exactly what Democrats want for America, it’s obviously a very dangerous scenario. This achieves China’s goal of eliminating the American people without destroying the natural resources and farmland through the use of nuclear weapons, which contaminate soils for three centuries with radioisotopes.
As Pry explains in the report, “a highly computerized open society like the United States is extremely vulnerable to electronic attacks from all sides. This is because the U.S. economy, from banks to telephone systems and from power plants to iron and steel works, relies entirely on computer network.”
Once the American people begin to die off in large numbers, China will stage a military invasion to occupy America and kill any remaining resistance. At that point, China will claim America for itself and begin a mass migration effort to colonize America with communist Chinese.
All this has been meticulously documented by people like J.R. Nyquist (JYquist.blog) and Dave Hodges (TheCommonsenseShow.com), both of whom I have interviewed about these critical issues.
Read the full article at NaturalNews.com.
Nobody knows for sure at this point that events could unfold as Mike Adams is predicting, and being a “prepper,” he has exaggerated projected future events in the past that did not (at least fully) come true.
But what I am attempting to do in this article is NOT promote fear that will paralyze you, but to wake people up to the real dangers that are before us, and unfolding before our very eyes right now.
And I would rather error on the side of caution and publish something that, God willing, will never happen, rather than fail to warn you of the possible dangers before us and have them catch you unaware.
Our country is radically changing before our very eyes, and if people do not wake up and start resisting these government edicts that are not even legal, soon we will have no liberties left to defend.
Take Action to Recall Governor Newsom!
One of the things that people can do right now, especially if you live in California, is share this article and expose who Governor Newsom really is, and join the effort to recall him.
Here is the official Recall Gavin Newsom website.
In the meantime, resist efforts by governors, mayors, and city and county boards, particularly health boards composed of non-elected officials, to control every aspect of our lives over a fake COVID pandemic!
I know it is hard to endure ridicule for going against the crowd, but things are only going to get worse. Masks are the one thing almost everyone is fighting against right now, but efforts are in place to get everyone tested for COVID and put in place a global tracking system as well.
Then COVID vaccines are right around the corner.
So this is no time to shrink back and take the easy route, and to not “rock the boat.”
Those days are over. If getting kicked out of a store for not wearing a mask bothers you, trust me. You haven’t seen anything yet….
Comment on this article at HealthImpactNews.com.
Copyright 2020 Health Impact News. Free to republish using Creative Common standards with correct author attribution and links back to this original article.
See Also:
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Exposing the Christian Zionism Cult
Jesus Would be Labeled as “Antisemitic” Today Because He Attacked the Jews and Warned His Followers About Their Evil Ways
Insider Exposes Freemasonry as the World’s Oldest Secret Religion and the Luciferian Plans for The New World Order
Identifying the Luciferian Globalists Implementing the New World Order – Who are the “Jews”?
The Brain Myth: Your Intellect and Thoughts Originate in Your Heart, Not Your Brain
Fact Check: “Christianity” and the Christian Religion is NOT Found in the Bible – The Person Jesus Christ Is
Was the U.S. Constitution Written to Protect “We the People” or “We the Globalists”? Were the Founding Fathers Godly Men or Servants of Satan?
The Seal and Mark of God is Far More Important than the “Mark of the Beast” – Are You Prepared for What’s Coming?
The Satanic Roots to Modern Medicine – The Mark of the Beast?
Medicine: Idolatry in the Twenty First Century – 8-Year-Old Article More Relevant Today than the Day it was Written
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