Homeless man faces seven years in prison for a 43-cent “theft” in Pennsylvania
A homeless Pennsylvania man faces up to seven years in prison after being arrested last month for underpaying on a 20-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew.
Joseph Sobolewski stopped at a gas station convenience store outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where he saw a sign advertising two 20-ounce Mountain Dew bottles for $3.
Sobolewski picked up a bottle, laid $2 on the counter and walked out. What he did not know is that the store charged $2.29 for a single bottle, and with tax he had shorted the store 43 cents total.
The clerk called the police, who arrested Sobolewski, who is now being held in jail on a $50,000 cash bond and faces three to seven years in prison.
Magisterial District Judge Jacqueline Leister told PennLive she could not remember specifically why she set Sobolewski’s bond at the exorbitant $50,000, claiming that she handles too many cases. However, she did tell PennLive it was most likely because of repeated offenses and an outstanding warrant.
Court records show that Sobolewski was arrested more than 10 years ago, when he drove off without paying after filling his gas tank. In 2011 he was arrested for stealing a pair of shoes that cost less than $40.
Sobolewski also owes $1,500 in child support and was arrested a few months ago, but has yet to go to trial, for stealing craft supplies from a hobby store.
Under Pennsylvania’s three-strikes law, no matter how small the third theft is, the charge is an automatic felony and carries a 3- to 7-year sentence.
Sobolewski remains in jail as he awaits trial, since he cannot afford to pay the cash bond.
Thousands of people have posted comments on social media expressing their outrage at his treatment, the draconian US criminal justice system, and the mistreatment of homeless:
“Incredibly dumb. That’s all the U.S. does is jail people for ludicrous small-time crimes. Send them to prison for being a drug addict, send them to prison for petty thefts, because incarceration always works…dumb”
“This is plain stupid. And if prosecutors take him to court, they are rotten, as would be any judge or jury that would convict him.”
“Where is Charles Dickens’ common decency when you need it? Does the store have a penny collector tray? Does the clerk hold a grudge? Are the police there that obtuse? Is a Judge going to say it’s frivolous, here’s 43 cents? Shame! He’s already homeless, why not lend a hand?”
“It's seriously time to defund whatever police department that was if they have so much resources and spare time that they follow up on calls like this and track people down and arrest them over an honest mistake that didn’t harm anyone at all in any way. You’re arresting ppl over 40 cents? You are a giant waste of public funds.”
In 2019, the prison and jail population in Pennsylvania averaged over 82,000. Nearly another 300,000 people are on probation or parole. Pennsylvania ranks 25th in the nation in the percentage of its population in jail.
Throughout the country, 2,850,000 people are incarcerated and more than another 4.5 million people are on probation or parole. This figure is higher, in number and percentage-wise, than any other country in the world.
The United States is also the only country which jails people for life without the possibility of parole for crimes committed as a juvenile. Known as Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP), there are over 2,600 throughout the country, and 414 listed in Pennsylvania prisons.
While poor laws have been ruled unconstitutional, on any given day one-quarter of those in jail are there because they cannot pay bail or have outstanding jail fees.
Typically, within 48 hours after arrest, a defendant sees a judge, who can release the person, keep them in prison, or most often set bail. If the person can pay the bail, they are released until trial, getting the bail money back if they appear for trial, convicted or not.
However, most defendants cannot pay bail, which places them at the mercy of the for-profit bail bonds industry. A bail bond company will charge an upfront fee and post the bond. The typical bond fee is 10 percent but often can be higher.
In Sobolewski’s case that would be $5,000. The company does not return the fee when the defendant shows for trial, and bondsmen are granted great powers to go after defendants who do not show, including the employment of bounty hunters.
The arrest of Sobolewski also underscores the depth of the social crisis in general and the lack of social services for the homeless in particular.
More than one-quarter of the population of Harrisburg lives below the poverty line, and the median household income is less than two-thirds the state average.
While trillions have been funneled to the banks, financial houses and the wealthy since the 2008 financial crash and during the pandemic, social programs for the poor and homeless have been slashed.
Using the cover of the pandemic, they unabashedly, and in many cases unconstitutionally, altered the election laws in swing states to accommodate massive voter fraud and buried any negative stories about Joe Biden and his family while censoring the alternative media. Thus, unleashing their delusional madness for all the world to see.
“The Democrats had abandoned their working-class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”. DANIEL GREENFIELD
The United States and the West are in the Grip of Delusional Madness
The politically motivated and unprecedented overreaction to a virus with a 99.5% survival rate was launched in March of 2020, thus unleashing what can best be described as a once-in-a-century fiasco. Nineteen months later it is impossible to look at the United States and the world and not conclude that this country and much of the West is in the grip, not of a virus, but of delusional madness and malevolence.
The governing elites have been so successful in propagandizing and fear-mongering the populace in many western nations, including the United States, that the virus has made far too many people blind to the madness as they wallow in anxiety, depression, and hopelessness -- deliberately and with forethought brought about by these malevolent cabals.
The noted British historian Kenneth Clark in his book and television series Civilisation said that empires fall not just to barbarians and other external enemies, but more so on account of exhaustion and loss of confidence within. He warned of the evolutionary process of destruction of self-confidence leading to exhaustion and culminating in the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity. As any civilized nation, in order to survive, requires confidence in the society in which one lives as well as belief in its philosophy and in its laws and confidence in one’s own mental powers.
In the United States, the left-wing dominated ruling class, determined to transform the nation into a one-party oligarchy, has long focused on demoralizing and fomenting hopelessness among the American people so they would be amenable to this transformation. In a society already beset with self-doubt and disquiet about the future, they gaslighted the populace through the gross and near-criminal exaggeration of the threat of Covid-19, combined with manipulated data, unprecedented societal and economic lockdowns, social distancing, mandatory masking and now de facto vaccination passports. Thus, exacerbating the feeling of hopelessness among the citizenry.
At the height of the pandemic hysteria in the fall of 2020, 36% of Americans reported symptoms of anxiety disorder (in 2019, 6.5% of Americans reported anxiety disorder). In this same period, 42% of Americans reported anxiety or depressive disorder (in 2019, 10.8% of Americans reported these disorders). The age group 18-39 (30% of the overall U.S. population) had the highest reported levels of anxiety or depressive disorder-- 52%.
The manipulation of the public by the ruling class and its media arm has succeeded as nearly half of the overall American population and a majority of the Millennials (America’s most populous generation) are suffering from anxiety or depressive disorders, which inevitably leads to hopelessness.
Having wildly succeeded in fomenting despair, the ruling establishment cannot stop or curtail their tactics as they cannot risk the American people awakening from or becoming aware of their malevolence and delusional madness. Thus, the never-ending Covid-19 falsehoods and fearmongering in order to maintain and exacerbate anxiety and depression.
Having demoralized and created hopelessness among the bulk of the population, the next step for the ruling elites was to remove Donald Trump, install their hand-picked puppet and control Congress. Using the cover of the pandemic, they unabashedly, and in many cases unconstitutionally, altered the election laws in swing states to accommodate massive voter fraud and buried any negative stories about Joe Biden and his family while censoring the alternative media. Thus, unleashing their delusional madness for all the world to see.
The United States is the latest country in a long history dating back to 330 B.C. to leave bloody footprints on the way out of Afghanistan. The incomprehensible tactics in this exit, as executed by Biden and the ruling establishment, has destabilized the world and made it significantly more dangerous than before. Their imbecility in believing the Taliban will be responsible stewards of Afghanistan will precipitate another horror show playing out not only in Afghanistan but throughout the West and in the United States.
BLOG EDITOR: AMERICANS ELECT TO BE 'JOBLESS' SIMPLY BECAUSE JOBS GO FIRST TO 'CHEAP' LABOR ILLEGALS AND AMERICANS (LEGALS) REFUSE TO BE PART OF THE CORPORATE SLAVE CLASS CREATED BY THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY'S OPEN BORDERS AGENDA
The fatuous and Marxist-inspired ruling class believes that unlimited spending on social programs and unbridled money creation will sustain and expand an economy. Consequently, millions of able-bodied Americans are choosing to remain unemployed thanks to ever more generous welfare and unemployment, thus, permanently shuttering businesses throughout the country and severely undermining the economy. As an inevitable byproduct, inflation is also running rampant. Yet, these myopic loons are determined to spend $5 Trillion in new welfare and “Green New Deal” programs. Monies the nation does not have, and which will accelerate yet more inflation and ultimate stagflation leading to a potential global recession/depression.
On the now non-existent southern border, having created one humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, their madcap policies have deliberately created another and quite different humanitarian disaster, one made of unchecked illegal immigration. Allowing terrorist, murderers and sex-traffickers unfettered passage into the country and millions access to welfare, education, health care and low-income jobs. Thus, displacing Americans, further exacerbating economic decline, creating potential health crises and accelerating societal upheaval.
The ruling elites, in their irrationality, have decreed eight-year-olds can choose their gender, take on a new name and use which ever toilets they want -- and mom and dad don’t get to hear a word about it. Nor do mom and dad have a say in whether their children must wear potentially harmful masks or be vaccinated with an experimental vaccine or be taught in school that those with white skin are genetically predestined to be oppressors and those with dark skin are hopelessly doomed to be oppressed, or that the planet will self-immolate within 10 years because of the lifestyles of their moms and dads.
The madness is in other countries in the West. In the Australian state of Victoria, they are firing rubber bullets into crowds of protestors as well as physically attacking and jailing them without trial. Australia and New Zealand have almost totally shuttered their countries and in at least one place built a “quarantine camps.” Many nations have initiated vaccine passport schemes to keep the unvaccinated -- the unclean -- out of the mainstream of society, precipitating the closure of vital medical facilities and security services due to lack of staffing.
It is not the Chinese Coronavirus that will be the undoing of this or any western country. They (we) will be undone -- and are being undone now -- by the madness and malevolence of their ruling classes.
Many Americans and citizens in other Western nations know what is happening is wrong and will lead to chaos and a dark place. Yet far too many are fearful of being shouted down, ostracized and censored for saying so. But that cannot be an excuse to remain quiet -- on the contrary, that must be the inspiration to speak out in every forum available from one’s family, to one’s neighborhood, to one’s town, to one’s state.
This can be fixed, and a nation restored, if enough join together stand up and emulate Howard Beale in the classic movie Network and shout from the rooftops: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”
Graphic credit: Jeff Creation Pixabay license
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“The Democrats had abandoned their working-class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”. DANIEL GREENFIELD
Study: Biden’s Legislative Agenda to Kill 5.3 Million Jobs, Generates $4.5 Trillion Debt
President Biden’s big government legislative agenda will kill 5.3 million jobs and generate $4.5 trillion in debt, according to a Monday study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
The study also suggests the United States’ gross domestic product (GDP) will be reduced by $3.7 trillion, nearly the cost of the massive $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.
Biden’s legislative agenda will additionally cost American families a combined $1.2 trillion in reduced income via tax increases to pay for the costly package, the study reveals.
The study also broke down the costs of Biden’s social welfare spending by state, analyzing Texas, Arizona, and West Virginia.
Arizona, where Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) resides and who is opposed to much of Biden’s massive tax and spending, will absorb $97 billion of the cost and the destruction of 115,000 jobs.
West Virginia will absorb $24 billion of the cost and the destruction of 29,000 jobs. Those costs are set to effect the state of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has also suggested he is opposed to the expense and a few radical left provisions of the reconciliation package.
Texas will absorb for more than both states combined. The lone star state will be saddled with $394 billion in cost and 467,000 jobs lost.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s study summarizes the following impacts of the tax and spend agenda:
- Top marginal income tax rates with federal, state, and local taxes are over 65%.
- Corporate tax rate up by a quarter to 26.5% for third highest combined rate of 30.9% in OECD.
- Marginal tax rate increase of 13 percentage points on some households.
- Capital gains tax rate up by 25%.
- Marginal income tax rate on some small businesses raised by 24%.
- Multiple severe marriage penalties are imposed.
- Effective tax rate on large estates before state and local taxes is 61.1%.
- Taxes raised on tobacco and vapor products, primarily used by those earning less than $400,000.
- International taxes on businesses raised by over 20%.
- $6.89 tax raised per barrel on imported petroleum and increase tax with inflation.
- Capital gains tax rate increased, unrealized gains taxed at death, death tax increased, and step-up basis eliminated.
- Cap on SALT deduction removed.
- Redistributing $6.2 trillion in government spending slows growth.
The following is the impact from the legislation on families, according to the study:
- National Debt increase is an extra $35,439 in debt on each American household.
- Jeopardizes family farms and businesses when original owner dies.
- Marriage penalty on small business owners as high as $130,200 annually.
- Median family’s income drops by $12,000.
- Removing cap on SALT deduction: Middle class family receives just $15 while wealthy Democrat donors in blue states receive $150,000.
The impact on business is as follows, the study details:
- Lost investment of $663 billion.
- Taxing unrealized capital gains yields 43.4% less revenue than expected.
- Corporate tax rate hikes reduce wage growth by 23.1% for employees.
- International tax rate hikes reduce full-time employment by 12,000 jobs.
- U.S. tax competitiveness would fall from 21st to 30th.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø
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