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Gym Fined Nearly $10K per Day for Defying COVID-19 Orders

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The owner of a gym in Graham, Washington, has vowed to remain open despite a series of hefty fines levied by the state for disobeying Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee’s restrictions intended to slow the spread of COVID-19.

According to the News Tribune, “Graham Fitness was hit with eight violations totaling $77,112 by the state Department of Labor & Industries on Friday for violating the Safe Start mandate to close up shop.” The outlet described the penalty as the state’s “largest pandemic fine to date,” noting that the total breaks down to $9,639 per day.

“They can fine me whatever they want,” owner Michael Knick told the News Tribune on Friday. “I don’t have it.” . . .

According to Knick, his gym has some coronavirus protocols in place, but does not require members to wear face coverings. Knick said he believes the state agency targeted his business because he has collaborated with the Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that has filed lawsuits in Washington and other states in response to overreaching coronavirus mitigation policies. (Read more from “Gym Fined Nearly $10K per Day for Defying COVID-19 Orders” HERE)

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This State Was One Vote Away From Releasing an Infamous Serial Killer Into the Public Over COVID-19 Concerns

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In 5-4 decision last Thursday, the Washington State Supreme Court narrowly denied a petition that would have released thousands of inmates from state prisons — including some who committed serious violent crimes such as assault, rape, and murder.

One of those inmates would have been infamous serial killer Gary Ridgeway, a stunning report by PJ Media noted.

Ridgeway, also known as “the Green River Killer,” was sentenced to 500 years in prison in 2003 after being convicted of murdering 49 women, many of whom were prostitutes, in the 1980s and 1990s. He later confessed to murdering upward of 80 women. . .

Columbia Legal Services filed the petition last month which sought the release of all state inmates over the age of 50, with early release dates, or with risk of serious harm or death from COVID-19 due to underlying medical conditions. Ridgeway is 71 years old.

Nick Straley, an attorney for the legal group, argued that thousands of inmates should be released in order to preserve their safety and to allow for social distancing within prison facilities. (Read more from “This State Was One Vote Away From Releasing an Infamous Serial Killer Into the Public Over COVID-19 Concerns” HERE)

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Washington Hospitals Are Facing a Space and Supply Scarcity in the Fight Against Coronavirus; Coronavirus Is Killing Italy’s Doctors. The U.S. Could Be Next.

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By Daily Caller. Washington State has been at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus since January. The first confirmed case of the coronavirus in the U.S. was in the state, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Jan. 20. As of Thursday, over 17,000 people have been tested in Washington, and 1,187 have tested positive, the Washington State Department of Health reports. The death toll was at 66 as of Thursday, the highest in the country.

Washington, and more specifically, Seattle, has emerged as America’s coronavirus laboratory, highlighting the challenges and deficits in resources the country is currently facing, as local, state, and federal governments have gone into overdrive to find solutions to the shortages of critical materials like face masks and testing.

President Donald Trump has even invoked a Korean War era law called the Defense Production Act to fill the gaps in medical supplies by harnessing by requiring corporations to accept and prioritize contracts for materials necessary to aid national defense, CNN reported. “I view it — in a sense as a wartime president,” Trump said Wednesday.

If this is war, Washington state’s doctors are on the frontline. The Navy has even sent its two hospital ships, which can be used to treat non-coronavirus patients, to allow Seattle-area hospitals to focus on the pandemic, Wired reported. King County, where Seattle is located, is creating field hospitals at multiple locations for additional isolation and quarantine sites, the Seattle Times reported. . .

But the biggest concern is still personal protective equipment for hospital staff, who have reported reusing face masks after spraying or wiping them down with sanitizer, supplies of which are dwindling in some hospitals, the New York Times reported. Typically, masks should be replaced after each use, but there aren’t enough in stock at many hospitals for doctors and nurses to be able to use more than one or two per day. (Read more from “Washington Hospitals Are Facing a Space and Supply Scarcity in the Fight Against Coronavirus” HERE)

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Coronavirus Is Killing Italy’s Doctors. The U.S. Could Be Next.

By The Daily Beast. Dr. Marcello Natali never left the front line in the northern Italian town of Codogno when the novel coronavirus outbreak exploded more than three weeks ago. And the front line is where the 57-year-old physician died this week from the disease he fought so hard. Natali, whose wife is also a health care worker, had no preexisting conditions, and was far younger than the median age of 80 of most of Italy’s nearly 3,000 COVID-19 dead. But he only agreed to get the intensive care he desperately needed last week after his symptoms overwhelmed him.

He didn’t go in sooner because he didn’t want to take an intensive care unit bed from anyone else. The crisis has put a severe strain on the entire health care system, with some of the best hospitals in Europe using corridors for ICU wards. Natali was taken by ambulance first to a larger facility in nearby Cremona and then to Milan, where he died alone in isolation. And since funerals are prohibited as part of the national lockdown, he will not even receive a hero’s burial. . .

Natali, who was the head of the region’s Federation of General Practitioners, is the fourth doctor to die in the original red zone, which has been under lockdown since Feb. 23. Just days before he went into intensive care, he gave a radio interview in which he complained that testing was taking too long and that there were many cases that family doctors were taking care of on a house call basis without full protection, exposing them to the virus. . .

As the virus spreads to the United States, health care workers there are watching Italy’s situation closely, and terrified doctors have sounded the alarm repeatedly. But the numbers do not augur well. Italy’s state run health care system is able to provide 3.2 beds per 1,000 people compared to 2.8 beds per 1,000 in the U.S, according to the OECD. On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department confirmed that Italy had sent 500,000 swabs to the U.S. to help complete test kits. The fact that the sick are now helping those perceived to be stronger should be worrying. . .

At least 2,629 health care workers—roughly 8.3 percent of all cases in Italy—have contracted COVID-19 from working with inadequate equipment or being exposed to asymptomatic carriers, according to the latest results from the Ministry of Health. (Read more from “Coronavirus Is Killing Italy’s Doctors. The U.S. Could Be Next.” HERE)

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Report: High School Teacher Arrested for Threatening to Shoot Students

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A high school geometry teacher in Washington state has been arrested and booked on several charges, after allegedly threatening to shoot students at Emerald Ridge High School in Puyallup. . .

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office said Julie Hillend-Jones, 58, was arrested at her home Wednesday morning, when law enforcement questioned her about alleged threats she made the night before while speaking to another adult.

PCSD Detective Ed Troyer told KING-TV that Hillend-Jones “didn’t back off” from the threats she made when investigators pressed her on the claims.

“Everybody knows you don’t talk about guns or make any threats in school,” Troyer said. “If the student does it, they’re going to jail. Now we have a teacher doing it. They’re also going to jail, so she’s been booked into the Pierce County Jail.”

Hillend-Jones was immediately placed on administrative leave Tuesday evening, after her alleged threats were reported to school officials. Now, she faces at least one felony charge of threatening to bomb or injure property. (Read more from “Report: High School Teacher Arrested for Threatening to Shoot Students” HERE)

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Washington Couple Sue Seattle for Releasing Violent Criminal Who Savagely Beat Them

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Who is standing for people like the Richardsons, a couple who were nearly beaten to death by someone let out by Seattle-area law enforcement despite a 25-year rap sheet of violence? The drug traffickers, career gun felons, and street thugs have the weight of the entire corporate, media, political, and entertainment industries plus Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and every phony “conservative” think tank – not to mention Soros and the Left – advocating on their behalf. How come nobody ever advocates policies on behalf of people like James and Melanie Richardson?

The Richardsons were walking around downtown Seattle on the fateful August 24 almost exactly three years ago, waiting for the start of a Seattle Mariners game. Suddenly, they were stalked by 25-year felon Nail Mulazim Muied, who was let out of prison just 24 hours earlier. According to KIRO7, Muied then beat both of them with a baseball bat, shattering James’ jaw and causing internal bleeding in Melanie.

Now they are suing Seattle and King County for not locking up this demon despite a 25-year rap sheet that included violent offenses. The local media report notes that the lawsuit seeks damages for surgeries and years of rehabilitation. KIRO7 also noted in the report that Muied is known as a mental health threat to local law enforcement, but the lawsuit alleges that this fact was ignored by authorities.

Evidently, Seattle is not just weak on criminal aliens but weak on all criminals, period. Which means it is tough on peaceful, law-abiding victims like the Richardsons. From a quick glance at Muied’s criminal record, I see 72 criminal charges stemming from arrests that occurred between July 1, 2000, and August 24, 2016. However, according to the KIRO7 news report, based on the documents, the criminal record goes back 25 years to when Muied, now 41 years old, was a minor.

According to court records, Muied was arrested just three months prior to this incident on May 18, 2016, on two counts of theft. He was charged again with assault on July 22, just one month before the incident. Throughout this time, he barely served any time behind bars. Going back further, he was charged with use of a deadly weapon on January 11 of that year. Theft, assault, criminal trespassing, and disorderly conduct were the hallmarks of his arrest and court records dating back to 2000. Amid the endless guilty verdicts, I can’t find a time when he was sentenced to more than one year of prison time.

One would think that after the Richardsons had to suffer this much at the hands of Muied and after he has shown an irredeemably violent proclivity along with mental illness, King County would finally take him off the streets. He was sentenced to eight years in April 2017, but thanks to the endless jailbreak programs, he will be out in a little more than two years from now. According to records obtained from the Washington Department of Corrections’ website, Muied was booked into the Washington State Penitentiary on April 25, 2017, and is scheduled for release on October 23, 2021. Just 4.5 years for nearly beating two people to death after a 25-year career of endless arrests for violent crimes harming other citizens!

This is the big lie nobody in the political class wants to admit. For every one person they can claim is over-sentenced, there are hundreds of people like this who are violent as can be, yet escape justice and are released to brutally victimize innocent people. In June, CR reported that King County released a man convicted of raping a disabled woman after he served just nine months in prison. The Mexican national, Francisco Carranza-Ramirez, allegedly went straight to the victim’s home and almost killed her.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, out of state prisoners released in 2016 after serving time for a violent offense, the average offender served less than three years. The report further found that “ninety-six percent of violent offenders released in 2016, including 70% of those sentenced for murder or non-negligent manslaughter, served less than 20 years before initial release from state prison” and “state prisoners serving time for property, drug, or public-order offenses served less than two years before initial release.”

Since 2016, the momentum for endless jailbreak and weak-on-crime initiatives has only accelerated rapidly.

Yet we never see politicians or Kim Kardashian giving a platform and legal aid to these victims, just like we never see them empathize with victims of illegal aliens, but only with the criminals. Instead, they claim that we lock too many people up for nothing, when in fact we barely lock up the most violent criminals. And those are the ones who have been in the system over the past decade or two. The ones going in now barely serve any time, because the momentum against incarceration among the political class has already swung all the way in the direction of the jailbreak movement, even though proponents are acting as if this is still the 1990s. They are maniacally pushing prison population reduction at all costs with no regard for public safety.

When was the last time you saw a single politician in either party stand for victims of crime? If this movement is really about rehabilitating “first-time, non-violent, low-level” offenders, then they should have no problem shaking hands with those of us who still care about public safety and working on legislation actually addressing the serious loopholes allowing repeat violent offenders to escape justice. (For more from the author of “Washington Couple Sue Seattle for Releasing Violent Criminal Who Savagely Beat Them” please click HERE)

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Young Man Severely Burned After Saving 8-Year-Old from House Fire

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A Washington man, who has been hospitalized with serious burns all over his body after he rushed into a burning home to save his 8-year-old niece, told reporters from his hospital bed that he would do it again.

Derrick Byrd, 20, of Aberdeen, which is about a two-hour drive from Seattle, told KOMO News, “I’d do it again, I really would.” . . .

Byrd said when the fire broke out he immediately tried to help his sister get her three young children out of the home through the second-floor window. . .

Byrd told the station he caught his 6-year-old nephew and his sister’s baby but her 8-year-old daughter, Mercedes, was too afraid to jump. . .

“She was screaming my name,” Byrd told the station. “So, I wasn’t just going to let her sit there. I wasn’t going to let my niece die.” (Read more from “Young Man Severely Burned After Saving 8-Year-Old from House Fire” HERE)

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Meet Washington’s Plastic Straw Cop

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With all the municipal governments banning the use of plastic straws, somebody has to be the guy that enforces it. In our nation’s capital, that man is Zach Rybarczyk, an inspector for the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment, who goes from restaurant to restaurant issuing notices to any violators, reports the Anchorage Daily News.

Rybarczyk described his recent patrol of D.C.’s Union Station food court, where one violator, the Chinese restaurant Lotus Express, was issued a warning: Should the restaurant fail to eliminate their stash of plastic straws, they would be fined up to $800.

“At Lotus Express, the inspector, one of three dispatched by the city to check cafeterias, bars and restaurants, scribbled the restaurant’s name on the paper sleeve of the plastic straw and tucked it into his back pocket, along with two others from scofflaw restaurants,” reports the Anchorage Daily News. “He planned to later check whether they floated in water, another telltale sign of prohibited plastic.”

Julie Lawson, director of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s Office of the Clean City, told the Anchorage Daily News that plastic straws will soon become as socially unacceptable as tobacco.

“It’s pretty absurd the amount of resources we put into creating plastic materials that we are using for five minutes to an hour, and then never again,” said Lawson. “Single-use plastics are taking the same cultural place as tobacco, where it’s socially unacceptable.” (Read more from “Meet Washington’s Plastic Straw Cop” HERE)

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Cougar Kills Biker in Rare Attack

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By The New York Times. Two friends riding their bikes in a mountainous, wooded area of Washington State on Saturday morning were attacked by a cougar, which killed one of them in the state’s first such fatality in more than 90 years, officials said.

The authorities said the two cyclists saw the cougar, a 100-pound male, in pursuit and one of them screamed. They stopped, got off their bikes and made noise to ward it off as people in such situations are advised to do, the authorities said. . .

But as they were about to pedal away, the cougar returned, Sgt. Ryan Abbott of the King County Sheriff’s Office said. It jumped on Isaac M. Sederbaum, putting its mouth around his head and shaking him. It released him and chased after the other cyclist, who had started to run. The authorities identified that cyclist as Sonja J. Brooks. (Read more from “Cougar Kills Biker in Rare Attack” HERE)

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State Orders Pathology Tests on Cougar That Attacked Bicyclists

By The Seattle Times. The state’s Department of Fish & Wildlife will have “an independent, third-party” forensic necropsy conducted on a cougar that attacked a pair of bicyclists near North Bend on Saturday, killing one person and mauling the other.

The independent review is a nod by the state to the politicized world of cougars, one of the state’s largest and most successful predators, despised by ranchers and defended by conservationists . . .

The 3-year-old cougar killed S.J. Brooks, 32, of Seattle, and injured friend Isaac Sederbaum, 31, also of Seattle, on a remote, dirt road northeast of Snoqualmie . . .

The dead cougar weighed 101 pounds. A cougar that age, considered “a sub-adult” – should weigh 130 to 140 pounds, said Beausoleil. (Read more from “State Orders Pathology Tests on Cougar That Attacked Bicyclists” HERE)

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Nurse Arrested for Infecting Patients with Hepatitis C

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. . .Cora Weberg, 31, could face second-degree assault charges as prosecutors claim she stole injectable drugs from Puyallup’s Good Samaritan Hospital, where she worked, and knowingly infected patients with hepatitis C, The News Tribune reported.

“Good Samaritan and local and state health department officials have conducted a thorough investigation and determined that one of our nurses was removing higher-than-normal amounts of narcotics from our dispensing system and admitted to diverting medications intended for patients,” the MultiCare Health System said in a safety alert last week.

The hospital system said it informed two patients treated in December 2017 by the nurse that they were infected with the disease while at the hospital. MultiCare Health System encouraged people who visited the emergency room between August 2017 and March 2018 to be tested.

Puyallup police said Weberg, who has hepatitis C, “intentionally contaminated medicine or another substance with her own blood.” However, Good Samaritan Hospital workers previously said Weberg was “surprised” to learn she had the virus after she took a test in March, according to The News Tribune . . .

The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department has established a link between the viruses both patients contracted while at the hospital, The News Tribune reported. However, health investigators were unable to conclusively find a genetic link between Weberg and the patients. (Read more from “Nurse Arrested for Infecting Patients with Hepatitis C” HERE)

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SAD: University No Longer Offering Class on ‘Weight-Based Oppression’

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By WND. Despite a major push to make “fat acceptance” the next frontier in social justice, Washington State University simply couldn’t attract students to a new course in “fat studies,” and has canceled the class.

Campus Reform first reported on the class earlier this year, after WSU announced that they would be creating specific curriculum to help students better understand “fat stigma, weight bias, and thin privilege,” as well as how many in our society are subjected to “weight-based oppression.”

At the time, WSU announced that the class would be part of the school’s gender studies department, and would even feature a segment on “fat fashion pedagogy” where students would design and manufacture their own line of plus-sized swimwear. (Read more from “SAD: University No Longer Offering Class on ‘Weight-Based Oppression'” HERE)

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Washington State Discontinues ‘Plus-Size Swimwear’ Course

By Campus Reform. . .The school’s “Fat Studies” class, taught by Debbie Christel, aimed to explore “weight based oppression as a social justice issue with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, and ability,” according to the course description.

Though the course was primarily offered through the Women’s Studies Department, it could also be taken for credit by students in the school’s Design and Textiles Program since a significant portion of the coursework was oriented around creating “plus-size swimsuits.”

Christel led the students in creating plus-size swimsuits as part of the “fat fashion pedagogy” that she was trying to pioneer, later publishing an article on her experiences with the class in the peer-reviewed academic journal Fat Studies.

Fat fashion pedagogy, Christel wrote, is a teaching method that uses “critical feminist and narrative pedagogies” to fight fat-stigma by “promoting activism to erode the thin-centric orientation” among her students. (Read more from “Washington State Discontinues ‘Plus-Size Swimwear’ Course” HERE)

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