Monday, December 30, 2019

HOUSE OF PERVS - BISHOP MICHAEL J BRANSFIELD SPENT $4.6 MILLION RENOVATING HIS PERV PAD

West Virginia Catholic bishop spent $4.6M renovating mansion where he 'inappropriately touched young priests' - fitting it with a sunken bar, a wine cellar and a $20K dining table - before church quietly sold it for only $1.2M after he was fired

  • Bishop Michael J Bransfield resigned as head of the Catholic Church in West Virginia last year amid allegations of sexual and financial misconduct
  • He was barred from public ministry by Pope Francis earlier this year
  • A secret report later revealed how Bransfield spent more than $2.4million in church funds on personal travel, luxury items, liquor and prescription drugs
  • He also spent $4.6million on renovations his diocese-owned home in Wheeling
  • The renovations included adding a climate-controlled cellar, heated floors in the bathrooms, five bay windows and refurbished fixtures
  • He also added a bar space in the basement, where he allegedly groomed and inappropriately touched young seminarians
  • After the allegations against Bransfield were made public over the summer, the diocese sold the Wheeling residence for $1.2million in August  
Former Bishop Michael J Bransfield spent $4.6million renovating the church-owned mansion in West Virginia where he is accused of making unwanted advances on young priests. After Bransfield's resignation in September 2018, the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston sold the home for just $1.2million
Former Bishop Michael J Bransfield spent $4.6million renovating the church-owned mansion in West Virginia where he is accused of making unwanted advances on young priests. After Bransfield's resignation in September 2018, the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston sold the home for just $1.2million
A disgraced bishop spent $4.6million renovating the mansion where he allegedly made advances at young priests before the church quietly sold the property for just $1.2million. 
Bishop Michael J Bransfield resigned as head of the Catholic Church in West Virginia in September 2018 amid allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. He was barred from public ministry by Pope Francis earlier this year.  
A secret report later revealed how Bransfield spent more than $2.4million in church funds on personal travel, luxury items, liquor and prescription drugs - along with $4.6million on renovations to his diocese-owned home in Wheeling, where he allegedly groomed and inappropriately touched young men during his 13-year tenure as Wheeling-Charleston Diocese bishop.    
After the allegations against Bransfield were made public over the summer, the diocese sold the Wheeling residence it had provided for him to David H and Meredith McKinley for $1.2million in August, according to Ohio County real estate records. David is the son of Congressman David B McKinley. 
Church officials said they conducted the sale privately - without a real estate agent or online advertising - to avoid paying commission. The officials emphasized that the proceeds from the sale would go toward supporting programs for survivors of sexual abuse.
The private sale also had another effect: It kept the public from seeing just how extravagant Bransfield's mansion was. 
Washington Post article published Sunday offers an inside look at the 9,200-square-foot Colonial Revival-style home - once known as Elmcrest - that Bransfield spent millions of dollars retrofitting with lavish amenities including a sunken basement bar, temperature controlled wine cellar and $20,000 dining room table.    
Pictured is the 9,200-square-foot Colonial Revival-style home in Wheeling that Bransfield spent millions of dollars retrofitting with lavish amenities including a sunken basement bar, temperature controlled wine cellar and $20,000 dining room table
Pictured is the 9,200-square-foot Colonial Revival-style home in Wheeling that Bransfield spent millions of dollars retrofitting with lavish amenities including a sunken basement bar, temperature controlled wine cellar and $20,000 dining room table
The diocese offered the mansion at 52 Elmwood Place to Bransfield when he was installed as bishop in 2005. Just before he moved in, a plumber accidentally started a fire which caused $700,000 in damage.  
Six people who worked on the home described to the Post how what was intended to be a modest renovation to repair the damage ballooned into an extensive, costly undertaking at Bransfield's insistence. 
'It was always, "this" or "that" is what the bishop wants,' said Jim Baller, the construction manager during most of the renovation.
Baller said Bransfield insisted on landscaping a large portion of the seven-acre property, planting trees to create a buffer between the home and a nearby interstate and installing a fish pond and waterfall as the focal point of the grounds.  
Inside the home, Bransfield requested heated floors and jets in the master bathroom, five bay windows, a sun room, refurbished fixtures and a climate-controlled wine cellar with room for hundreds of bottles. 
The unfinished basement was transformed into a sunken basement bar, where Bransfield allegedly plied young priests with alcohol and made unwanted advances on them. 
Bransfield wanted the bar to be modeled after the cocktail lounge in entertainer Bob Hope's Hollywood home.  
'The bishop said he wanted to bring clergy into the room and make a pleasant place where they could play cards,' Denis Gill, the lead architect on the project, told the Post.  
A crew of 25 to 30 masons spend a year constructing a stone fireplace in the basement, Baller said.  
The Vatican investigation detailed how Bransfield would host lavish dinner parties at his home. Guests were seated in front of a massive portrait of the Last Supper as they dined on meals prepared by a personal chef. 
After dinner, Bransfield would invite guests down to the basement bar, where he downed a half-bottle of Cointreau or more out of a tea cup, along with opioids like oxycondone. 
'Dinner guests who only visited occasionally were not invited to join the Bishop in the basement for after-dinner drinks, but he expected his Priest-Secretary, the Vicar General, overnight guests, and certain of his "favorite" young priests . . . to sit in the basement and be in his company,' investigators wrote in the report. 
'One witness described this as "watching the Bishop watch television". It was a ritual that none of the witnesses who experienced it reported that they enjoyed.' 
The report includes an account from one seminarian who said he loathed staying at Bransfield's home and 'described multiple instances of overly aggressive hugs in which the Bishop would grab and squeeze various parts of the witness's body'. 
Witnesses also said that Bransfield would often invite guests upstairs to show them portraits of himself with important figures in the church, some of which were hung in his bedroom.  
Bransfield 'denied engaging in any sexual harassment or sexual activity with any priest or seminarian, either verbally or suggestively by his conduct', the report states. 
Bransfield (pictured in 2016) resigned as head of the Catholic Church in West Virginia in September 2018 amid allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. He was barred from public ministry by Pope Francis earlier this year
Bransfield (pictured in 2016) resigned as head of the Catholic Church in West Virginia in September 2018 amid allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. He was barred from public ministry by Pope Francis earlier this year
When questioned about the renovations by the Post, Bransfield said he didn't 'know anything about' the exorbitant spending on the home and declined to comment further. 
Speaking to Vatican investigators who compiled the report on his alleged misconduct, Bransfield said he didn't have much say in the renovations and blamed subordinates for the high costs.   
Investigators wrote that Bransfield's 'version of events is inconsistent with a number' of other witness accounts.  
The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston also blamed Bransfield for the costly renovations when approached for comment by the Post.  
'The former bishop engaged in a luxurious lifestyle and misused diocesan funds, both in conducting his official responsibilities, and personally, when no official purpose was involved,' spokesman Tim Bishop said.
Baller said that the renovations were not well-received by the community, which saw the home as a prime example of overspending by the church.   
'I'm a Catholic — I'm a parishioner down the street, and for years it has just bugged me to no end,' Baller said. 
'I've seen them waste all that money on that place and then turn around and ask us every Sunday to donate more, donate more — always asking for money. It's sickening.'
After the allegations against Bransfield were made public over the summer, the diocese sold the Wheeling residence (pictured) for $1.2million in August
After the allegations against Bransfield were made public over the summer, the diocese sold the Wheeling residence (pictured) for $1.2million in August
The home was purchased by David H and Meredith McKinley (pictured). David is the son of Congressman David B McKinley
The home was purchased by David H and Meredith McKinley (pictured). David is the son of Congressman David B McKinley
After Bransfield's abrupt resignation in September 2018, his former home sat vacant for months until David H McKinley, who owns a wealth management firm in Wheeling, approached the diocese about purchasing it.   
'My wife and I had been looking for a home for several years,' McKinley told the Post. 
'The truth is, there are not a lot of homes of this size and with such characteristics in the Wheeling area. We happened to be in the right place at the right time.'
McKinley also had insider information about the home because his congressman father founded the firm that oversaw Bransfield's renovations.   
The church said four other buyers expressed interest in the property before it was sold to McKinley, but declined to offer additional details.  
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Bishop spent $4.6m renovating mansion churc

IS AMERICA TIRED OF THESE POLS SURRENDERING OUR JOBS TO "CHEAP" LABOR FOREIGNERS???


Rasmussen Shows 2:1 Opposition to Cheap Labor Legal Immigration

Pickers at the W.T. Ruark Seafood Co., in Hoopers Island, Maryland.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
4:49

Voters overwhelmingly want companies to train and hire Americans before importing more legal immigrants or visa workers.
But liberals are far more likely than conservatives to say Congress should allow companies to import more immigrants to take jobs sought by U.S. graduates and sidelined workers, according to Rasmussen’s December survey of 1,250 likely voters.
The survey asked voters:
When businesses say they are having trouble finding Americans to take jobs in construction, manufacturing, hospitality and other service work, what is generally best for the country? Is it better for businesses to raise the pay and try harder to recruit [Americans]?
Sixty percent of likely voters agreed it is “better for businesses to raise the pay and try harder to recruit non-working Americans even if it causes prices to rise.”
Just 22 percent of Americans, including 28 percent of liberals and 16 percent of conservatives, say “better for the government to bring in new foreign workers to help keep business costs and prices down.”
Seventeen percent said they were “not sure.”
The Rasmussen survey also asked the respondents: “Should Congress increase the number of foreign workers taking higher-skill U.S. jobs, or does the country already have enough talented people to train and recruit for most of those jobs?
Sixty-one percent of likely voters agreed that “the country already has enough talented people to train and recruit for most of those jobs.” That pro-Americans perspective was backed by 73 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of conservatives, but only 48 percent of Democrats and 39 percent of liberals.
Just  27 percent of voters — including 21 percent of conservatives, 42 percent of liberals, and 38 percent of Democrats — said Congress should “increase the number of foreign workers taking higher-skill U.S. jobs.”
The answers showed that a plurality of liberals — 42 percent to 39 percent — prefer to import foreign graduates than to help American graduates get better jobs, pay, and training. The growing support for cheap labor migration reflects the growing support among “woke” Democrats for the migration-induced “demographic change” that is helping Democrats to win more elections.


The public’s deep hostility to outsourcing helps to explain why many legislators are so reluctant to publicly vote for business’s demands for more foreign workers for jobs in farmwork, labor, or college graduate work. For example, GOP Sen. Mike Lee has been unable to clear away opposition to his S.386 bill which would encourage more graduates from India to take jobs from American graduates.
But this strong public opposition to wage-cutting migration also co-exists with a sympathetic attitude to migrants, even towards illegal migrants.
This sympathy is spurred by pro-migrant media coverage, but also by many Americans’ respect for hard-working migrants. For example, 45 percent of likely voters said they favor “giving lifetime work permits to most of the estimated 12 million illegal residents of all ages who currently reside in the United States.”
However, 51 percent oppose an amnesty — often because many Americans recognize the likely impact on wages.
The race of respondents had a modest impact on the work-related answers.
For example, 62 percent of whites, 57 percent of Hispanics, and 52 percent of blacks agreed that it is “better for businesses to raise the pay and try harder to recruit non-working Americans, even if it causes prices to rise.”
The 61 percent of likely voters who agreed that “the country already has enough talented people to train and recruit for most of those jobs” included 63 percent of whites, 55 percent of Hispanics, and 54 percent of blacks.
Education status had modest impacts.
The importation of more foreign graduates is opposed by 56 percent of people with college degrees and by 66 percent of people without college degrees.
Thirty-one percent of people with college degrees agreed that the government should “increase the number of foreign workers taking higher-skill U.S. jobs.”
The number is relatively high, given that business groups lower Americans’ salaries by keeping a workforce of roughly 1.5 million visa workers in college-level jobs throughout the United States.

So 500 US graduates lost jobs b/c huge Indian outsourcer imported 500 workers via the B-1 no-work visa.
A private lawsuit exposed the crime.
No response by feds. A Democrat AG set a tiny $800k fine.
IOW, woke US grads robbed by bipartisan open borders. http://bit.ly/2Z1vPwB 

189 people are talking about this

Many respondents said they were not sure which answers they preferred. The “not sure” respondents likely include people who do not care and people who want to conceal their views. Evangelical Christians were the least likely to give a “not sure” answer.
Read the survey here.



EconomyImmigrationPoliticsH-1BH-2AH-2BMigrantMike LeeOutsourcingpollRasmussenS. 386visa worker



4.3M Migrants Caught at SW Border in Decade — More Than Los Angeles Population

FILE - In this April 20, 2019, file photo, Central American migrants, part of a caravan hoping to reach the U.S. border, move on the road in Escuintla, Chiapas state, Mexico. The number of migrants apprehended at the Southern border topped 100,000 for the second month in a row, as …
Moises Castillo/AP Photo, File
5:00
Border Patrol agents apprehended more than four million migrants who illegally crossed the southwest border with Mexico during the past 10 fiscal years. If these migrants were placed into a single city, it would be larger than Los Angeles by population.
During the past 10 fiscal years, October 1, 2009, through September 30, 2019, U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to the nine sectors that make up the United States’ southwest border with Mexico apprehended 4,318,200 migrants. The highest year during that decade for apprehensions occurred during Fiscal Year 2019 when agents apprehended 851,553 — including 76,020 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and 473,682 Family Unit Aliens (FMUA), according to reports obtained from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Apprehensions by Fiscal Year:
  • FY2019 —  851,553
  • FY2018 —  396,579
  • FY2017 —  303,916
  • FY2016 — 408,870
  • FY2015 —  331,333
  • FY2014 —  479,371
  • FY2013 —  414,397
  • FY2012 —  356,873
  • FY2011 —  327,577
  • FY2010 —  447,731
During the past decade, Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended the largest numbers of migrants. Between fiscal years 2010 and 2019, RGV Sector agents apprehended 1,600,663 migrants who illegally crossed the border into South Texas, the reports state.
Agents assigned to the Tucson Sector had the second-highest number of total apprehensions — 946,948. The Big Bend Sector in West Texas had the lowest number of total apprehensions — 56,149.
The report shows a shifting in migration traffic during the past decade. In FY2010, the Tucson Sector reported the highest number of apprehensions — 212,202. This changed in FY2013 when the largest apprehension numbers shifted to the RGV Sector.
In Fiscal Year 2019, RGV agents apprehended 339,135 migrants including 34,523 UACs and 211,631 FMUAs.
During the past 10 fiscal years, Border Patrol agents apprehended a total of 433,216 unaccompanied minors. Officials reported that more than half of those apprehensions, 235,050 took place in the RGV Sector.
FMUA apprehension numbers for the decade were not readily available. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials provided statistics for Fiscal Years 2013 through 2019. During that period, Border Patrol agents apprehended 857,328 family units. More than half of these, 463,811, occurred in the RGV Sector.
FMUA apprehensions represent the largest increase in migrant demographics. The number of apprehensions jumped from 14,855 in FY2013 to 473,682 in FY2019 — an increase of more than 3,000 percent. Again, more than half of the FMUA apprehensions occurred in the RGV Sector — 463,811.
With three fiscal years missing from the FMUA report, FMUA and UAC apprehensions account for 1.3 million of the total 4.3 million apprehensions. These demographics also represent the highest cost to U.S. taxpayers in terms of processing, transporting, feeding, and providing healthcare, Border Patrol officials repeatedly state.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.


CALIFORNIA: now a colony of Mexico

By Jessica Vaughan

Earlier this week ICE released its 2019 report on enforcement activity. While overall removals increased due to a record number of illegal arrivals at the southwest border, removals from the interior declined by 10 percent. Meanwhile, ICE's caseload grew by 24 percent, with more than 630,000 cases added to its docket, which has grown to a record high of more than three million cases.



THOMAS HOMAN, the former acting head of 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 

warned Democrats running in 2020 about 

“enticing” illegal immigrants with lax policies.
"They say they care about these people, they 
care about children dying and women being 
raped... they need to look in the mirror 
because if you keep offering enticements...
 'sanctuary cities'... free health care... in-state 
tuition... people are going to put themselves in
harm's way to come to this country," Homan 
told Steve Hilton on "The Next Revolution."

Six-Time Deported Illegal 

Alien Accused of Killing 

Colorado Grandmother

Six-Time Deported Illegal Alien Accused of Killing Colorado Grandmother
GCSO
1:57

A six-time deported illegal alien has been arrested for allegedly killing a 51-year-old Colorado grandmother after being released from local law enforcement custody.
Juan Sanchez, a Mexican illegal alien who has already been deported from the United States six times over the last decade, was arrested last week and charged with vehicular homicide and fleeing the scene of an accident after he allegedly hit and killed Annette Conquering Bear, a grandmother, while she was walking home from Walgreens, 9 News reported.
Sanchez, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials revealed, was deported from the U.S. twice in 2002, three times in 2008, and in 2012. Sometime after his last deportation, he illegally re-entered the U.S. for the seventh time.
“Sanchez is an ICE enforcement priority,” ICE officials said in a statement.
Four days before Conquering Bear’s killing, Sanchez was in local law enforcement custody on suspicion of drunk driving but was released after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said they did not have enough time in advance to lodge a detainer against him so he could be turned over to their custody.
During that arrest, Sanchez was allegedly driving drunk with a blood-alcohol level of 0.183, which is twice the legal limit. Police said Sanchez admitted to having had “two beers” before getting in his car and driving with an “international driver’s license.”
Sanchez was taken into custody at the time and was then quickly released after he became uncooperative and allegedly telling officers, “I’ll fight my way out of jail.”
The illegal alien is now being held on a $500,000 bond.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder



Sanctuary City Released Human Rights Violator

And then NYC hit the snooze button on this wake-up call





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By Andrew R. Arthur on December 21, 2019
In my last post, I discussed a Liberian amnesty provision that was snuck into section 7611 of the National Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2020. I specifically referenced the case of Liberian human rights violator Charles Cooper, who was removed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to Liberia in June 2018. I left out the part about how the New York Police Department (NYPD) failed to honor an ICE detainer for him, and released him without even notifying the agency. The incident does not reflect well on those who set the rules for New York's finest.
Cooper entered the United States in January 2006 on a nonimmigrant visa, and remained beyond his authorized return date. He was no ordinary visa overstay. According to ICE, Cooper "served as a bodyguard to former Liberian President Charles Taylor and was a member of a paramilitary police unit called the Secret Security Service (SSS)."
ICE continued: "Cooper, while a member of the SSS and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia [NPLF], was directly involved in the persecution of civilians in Liberia." In addition to identifying Cooper as "a human rights violator," the agency asserted that he was "a member of an organization known for setting fires to whole villages."
The aforementioned Charles Taylor is a special case. He was a Liberian civil servant in the 1980s, and was accused of embezzlement. He made his way to the United States, but escaped from prison in Massachusetts where he was being held for extradition, and travelled back to West Africa. He thereafter formed the NPFL, and in 1989 launched attacks against the Liberian government from the Ivory Coast, igniting Liberia's first civil war.
Global Security explains that between December 1989 and the middle of 1993, the NPFL "is estimated to have been responsible for thousands of deliberate killings of civilians. As NPFL forces advanced towards Monrovia in 1990, they targeted people of the Krahn and Mandingo ethnic groups, both of which the NPFL considered supporters of [then-Liberian President Samuel] Doe's government."
Various factions became involved in the conflict, including the NPFL; forces that were loyal to Doe; the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and their Nigerian-led peacekeeping force, ECOMOG; and the breakaway Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), which was led by Prince Johnson. INPFL captured, mutilated, and killed Doe on September 10, 1990.
The first bloody civil war ended with Taylor's election as president in 1997. According to Britannica, however:
As president, Taylor restructured the army, filling it with members of his former militia. Conflict ensued between Taylor and the opposition, and Monrovia became the scene of widespread gun battles and looting. Governments around the world accused Taylor of supporting rebels in Sierra Leone, and in 2000 the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Liberia. The country was subsequently gripped again by civil war, and Taylor, accused of gross human rights violations, was indicted by a UN-sponsored war-crimes tribunal (the Special Court for Sierra Leone) in 2003.
Following widespread international condemnation, Taylor agreed to go into exile in Nigeria. In March 2006, however, the Liberian government requested Taylor's extradition, and Nigeria announced that it would comply with the order. Taylor subsequently attempted to flee Nigeria but was quickly captured. Charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during Sierra Leone's civil war, he was later sent to The Hague, where he was to be tried before the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Taylor was found guilty in April 2012 on 11 counts "of bearing responsibility for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by rebel forces during Sierra Leone's civil war", and subsequently sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Back to Cooper. As noted, he entered as a nonimmigrant with permission to remain until August 2006. When he failed to depart, he was placed into removal proceedings. He was ordered removed by an immigration judge and appealed the decision, which was dismissed by the Board of Immigration Appeals in February 2016.
According to ICE:
On Aug. 11, 2017, Cooper was arrested by the New York Police Department, and charged with DWI. On that same date, [ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO)] deportation officers lodged an immigration detainer with the NYPD's Richmond Central Booking. Cooper was released from NYPD custody, without the detainer being honored and without notification to ICE.
Fortunately, in May 2018, ICE deportation officers arrested Cooper in Staten Island, New York, leading to his removal.
As my former colleague Preston Huennekens reported: "In March 2013, New York City began ignoring [ICE] detainer notices." According to ICE, the agency had "not been notified about the release of aliens in custody at New York City facilities since 2014, except for those that fall within the 170 crimes considered egregious by the Mayor's Office." Apparently, human rights violators do not make the cut.
Huennekens noted that in just one three-month period (January to mid-April 2018), the NYPD and the New York Department of Corrections together ignored 440 detainers; "40 of those individuals released from custody subsequently committed more crimes and were arrested again." About this, ICE stated: "In just three months, more than three dozen criminal aliens were released from local custody. Simply put, the politics and rhetoric in this city are putting its own communities at an unnecessary risk."
To restate the obvious: Sanctuary policies, including those that prevent ICE from finding out about the release of dangerous aliens and that require police to ignore ICE detainers, make no sense. They only serve as sanctuary for criminals, or in Cooper's case, human rights violators.
Cooper should have served as a wake-up call to those in power who, for purely political reasons, require the NYPD to turn a blind eye to ICE's requests for help. But instead, as Huennekens' reporting demonstrates, Gotham's officials simply hit the snooze button.