Culture

Felicity Huffman was sentenced to 14 days in prison, unlike Tayna McDowell, who was sentenced to 5 years in prison for enrolling her son in a school district using a fraudulent address. So the meme goes. A bit of digging ads some context.

Tanya McDowell arrested in Bridgeport on drug charges

The 33-year-old woman, who is facing larceny charges for enrolling her son in Norwalk public schools while living in Bridgeport, was alone as she stood handcuffed before Judge Howard Owens to face multiple drug charges. Her entourage and her lawyer, who escorted her to court in Norwalk and Stamford, were absent.

Police said McDowell sold crack cocaine and marijuana to an undercover police officer on two occasions outside her Dover Street home. They said she even interrupted her 6-year-old son’s birthday to sell the drugs. She was arrested in court Monday morning.

That McDowell was selling drugs outside of a school is relevant, but of course outrage has no time for context.

Yes, Twitter’s hero had drugs outside of a school:

Several weeks later, she was arrested for selling drugs to Norwalk undercover officers on five occasions in Norwalk and Bridgeport.

When she was picked up on the drug charges, police found her in front of Brookside Elementary School holding 30 small bags of marijuana and 23 small bags of crack cocaine, prosecutor Tiffany Lockshier said during her sentencing hearing.

At the sentencing hearing, here is what the judge said:

[Judge] Iannotti retorted Tuesday that the Norwalk case had nothing to do with why McDowell was before him.

“This case is about the convictions for the sale of narcotics to an undercover police officer,” the judge said. “I think you understand that because that is really the essence of what has gotten you into the predicament you find yourself today.”

On the two counts of sale of narcotics, the judge then sentenced her to 12 years, suspended after she serves five years and followed by five years probation.

The sentence is to run concurrently with a five-year sentence she received in the Norwalk case.

McDowell pled guilty to the larceny charges involving lying about her address as part of package deal with prosecutors.

There were three cases pending against McDowell:

• S20N-CR11-0128870-S (larceny)
• F02B-CR11-0258104-S (sale of illegal drugs)
• F02B-CR11-0258105-S (sale of illegal drugs)

McDowell pled guilty to all three cases, and received the following:

• Sentenced: 12 Years Jail, Execution Suspended After 5 Years, Probation 5 Years

While the Twitter outrage mob can be forgiven for not bothering to do any research, you’d expect better of Snopes.

Snopes rates as true this claim, “Was a Woman Sentenced to Five Years for Sending Her Son to a Better School?”

Snopes used to be an official fact-checking partner of Facebook’s. Under this program, a Facebook page could be suspended if Snopes concluded that the page had posted fake news.

Snopes leaves out this relevant context of the prison sentence:

The Bridgeport mother charged with illegally enrolling her son in a Norwalk school has agreed to a plea deal. Tanya McDowell was arrested last year on larceny charges for using a false address to send her son to Brookside Elementary.

She was later arrested on drug charges in Bridgeport and Norwalk.

Her lawyer tells News 12 Connecticut that McDowell, who was facing 40 years, agreed to a plea deal and will spend five years in prison to cover all the charges.

Read that last paragraph again, “Her lawyer tells News 12 Connecticut that McDowell, who was facing 40 years, agreed to a plea deal and will spend five years in prison to cover all the charges.”

During the sentencing hearing, the judge said:

“This case is about the convictions for the sale of narcotics to an undercover police officer,” the judge said. “I think you understand that because that is really the essence of what has gotten you into the predicament you find yourself today.” On the two counts of sale of narcotics, the judge then sentenced her to 12 years, suspended after she serves five years and followed by five years probation.

Tanya McDowell was not sentenced to prison for 5 years for lying about her address. She was sentenced to five years in prison as part of a package deal involving her lying about living in a school district and also being a drug dealer.

Non-lawyers can be forgiven for not knowing that the drug charges greatly raised any potential sentence in the larceny case. Snopes should have some lawyers fact-check their articles for them, at least when the legal system is involved.

P.S. In a case actually similar to Felicity Huffman’s, the woman was sentenced to 10 days in county jail.

Ohio Mom Kelley Williams-Bolar Jailed for Sending Kids to Better School District

She was sentenced last week to 10 days in county jail and put on three years of probation. She will also be required to perform community service, the Beacon Journal reported.

UPDATE: In response to my reporting, Snopes has issued this following update:

[UPDATE 09/19/19]: This story has been updated and returned to a “mixture” rating to better reflect the claim that McDowell was sentenced to 5 years in the school larceny case, but that the sentence included drug and prostitution charges, as well.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to watch Hoaxed Movie, an expose into fake news.

Six mothers and one father were arrested yesterday morning while protesting a vote approving amendments to SB276, a controversial vaccination-related bill. Under the new law, school children who had received medical exemptions from vaccinations would be barred from attending public/private school.

SB276 was seen as a major attack on medical freedom as a 2015 California law, SB277, already eliminated personal and religious exemptions to vaccines.

Under SB276, people like Senator Richard Pan, who is funded by Big Pharma, and Sen. Ben Hueso (convicted for a DUI that could have got a child murdered) are allowed to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship.

I spent the day with the group of people, mostly women and all mothers, who are called “anti-vaxx.”

Here’s what I learned at a protest requiring children to take vaccines over their doctors’ objections:

The moms are not “anti-vaxx.”

The media narrative is that a bunch of crazy moms decided to stop vaccinating randomly. This is a lie.

Nearly every other mother I spoke to (and I spoke to at least 100) had vaccinated one of their children. Their child had an adverse reaction, and they obtained an exemption for that child. Many stopped vaccinating their other children.

One mother described the experience of protesting at the Capitol as degrading. “If we were men, they’d take us more seriously,” she told me on the flight back.

Everyone on Twitter – even single people who couldn’t name two brands of formula – has a strongly held opinion on vaccines.

I don’t know all that much about vaccinations, which is why I attended the event in California. Why not learn? When I was single, I sure wouldn’t have had any opinion at all.

When people start freaking out about vaccines, I ask them to name some brands of childrens’ toys. The fact is that most have no idea what’s in vaccines. They don’t even know who makes something as safe and widespread as baby formula.

Most people with strongly held opinions on vaccines couldn’t tell you how many shots a child is given before he or she turns 5 years old.

People who throw around the “anti-vaxx” slur also couldn’t tell you how the United States vaccine schedule has changed. Nor could they tell you what the vaccination schedule is in Japan.

I find it hilarious that my mostly pro-Trump readers SCREAM about “anti-vaxxers” when those MAGA types have received nearly all of their “knowledge” about vaccines from the “fake news media.”

• “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the ‘wet streets cause rain’ stories. Paper’s full of them.”  Michael Crichton.

Vaccine manufactures cannot be sued.

What? Yes, fact-check that one. The The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act

• Provides that no vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death: (1) resulting from unavoidable side effects; or (2) solely due to the manufacturer’s failure to provide direct warnings. Provides that a manufacturer may be held liable where: (1) such manufacturer engaged in the fraudulent or intentional withholding of information; or (2) such manufacturer failed to exercise due care. Permits punitive damages in such civil actions under certain circumstances.

There is big money in vaccinations.

If you think BigPharma is doing you any favors, think again:

• The global vaccine market is expected to reach total revenues of 59.2 billion USD by 2020. This is nearly double the size of the market in 2014 ($32.2 billion), according to a survey from Zion Market Research. By 2020, the total market size for vaccines in the United States will generate $18 billion.

Read, Global Vaccine Market Revenue to Reach $59.2 Billion by 2020.

Even talking about vaccines get you labelled anti-vaxx.

By writing this article, I’ll become a target. People will call me anti-vaxx.

You’re not allowed to even ask questions like:

• If vaccine manufacturers can’t be held liable for their products, what incentives do they have? Vaccines are a highly profitable industry. Are we supposed to trust the same industry that gave us Vioxx and opioids with our children’s safety? If so, why? Explain your answer.
• Why does the CDC own patents for vaccines?
• Why aren’t vaccines sold as a non-profit product? If your answer is, “Because then there wouldn’t be any incentive for BigPharma to make new vaccines,” then doesn’t your claim that drug companies just really really really care about children fall apart?
• How can you be pro-choice and support women’s rights while calling mothers of sick children “crazy”?

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Mike Cernovich is the producer of Hoaxed Movie, which you can watch here.

In October I’ll be attending two events – one in Vegas and one in Miami.

The Miami event is ostensibly political, so if you’re into that, there are a lot of high profile speakers attending and it’ll be huge. It’s sort of the event to be at for 2019. Even if you’re not into politics, I’ll be around to have coffee, chat…. It’s the social aspects of those events that get you the most value. Tickets to Miami are here.

We’ll also be hosting a cigar night in Las Vegas. That will be “my” event, unlike the Miami one, so I’ll be speaking. Maybe we’ll do a live podcast. Certainly we’ll be enjoying cigars. Tickets to Vegas are here.

See you soon!

Spend an evening in an ultra luxury roof top penthouse mingling with Mike Cernovich and his podcast co-host Mike Bolen.

October 3rd, 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Get tickets here.

Jeffrey Epstein had a butler named Alfredo Rodríguez. Without Googling, Can you guess what happened to Alfredo Rodríguez?

Epstein’s butler was indicted for felony charges, while Epstein was never federally prosecuted.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Read the Alfredo Rodríguez documents here:

• FBI file of Alfredo Rodríguez,
• Criminal complaint against Alfredo Rodríguez