Thousands of bikers heading to South Dakota’s 10-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally will not be allowed through Cheyenne River Sioux checkpoints, a spokesman for the Native American group said on Saturday.
The decision to prevent access across tribal lands to the annual rally, which could attract as many as 250,000 bikers amid fears it could lead to a massive, regional coronavirus outbreak, comes as part of larger Covid-19 prevention policy. The policy has pitted seven tribes that make up the Great Sioux Nation against federal and state authorities, which both claim the checkpoints are illegal.
A duty officer for the Cheyenne River Sioux told the Guardian Saturday that only commercial and emergency vehicles will be let through the checkpoints onto reservation land.
A number of bikers had tried to enter but had been turned back, they said. Other reservations in the region, including the Oglala Sioux, were also turning away bikers that had attempted routes to Sturgis that pass through sovereign land.
Under Cheyenne River tribal guidelines non-residents driving non-commercial out-of-state vehicles are never allowed through the reservation. During the rally, non-commercial vehicles with South Dakota plates are also not allowed through.
The clampdown comes as fears mount that mask-free bikers visiting Sturgis for the largest gathering of people since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic could spread the virus to tribal groups that are already experiencing a rise in cases.
Oglala Sioux recorded 163 cases last week, while the Cheyenne River Sioux has seen cases rise to 79, according to the tribe’s website.
The restrictions come as local law enforcement reported a convergence of bikers from all directions. According to reports, many bikers heading for Sturgis expressed defiance at rules and restrictions that have marked life during the coronavirus pandemic.
While South Dakota has fared better than most states – it ranks 38th in Covid deaths per capita, according to a Reuters tally – cases have spiked in recent weeks as hotspots move into the midwest.
During the rally, people are expected to cram bars and pack concerts with at least 34 acts playing. “Screw COVID,” read the design on one T-shirt on sale. “I went to Sturgis.”
Stephen Sample, who rode his Harley from Arizona, told the Associated Press that the event was a break from the routine of the last several months.
“I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to be cooped up all my life either,” Sample, 66, said, adding that he’d weighed the risks of navigating the crowds, but the same thrill-seeking that attracted him to riding motorcycles seemed to win out.
“I think we’re all willing to take a chance,” he said, but acknowledged the trip “could be a major mistake.”
South Dakota’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, has supported holding the Sturgis rally, pointing out that no virus outbreak was documented from the several thousand people who turned out to see Donald Trump and fireworks at Mount Rushmore last month.
The rally is marking its 80th anniversary this year and typically injects $800m into South Dakota’s economy. Meade county sheriff, Rob Merwin, said: “It’s going to be a lot of people and a lot of motorcycles all over the place. People are tired of being penned up by this pandemic.”
On Friday, a worker at the event told the Guardian on Friday crowds seemed larger than in previous years and warned that Sturgis attendees were paying little heed to medical advice.
“I’ve not seen one single person wearing a mask,” said bartender Jessica Christian, 29. “It’s just pretty much the mentality that, ‘If I get it, I get it.’”
“In downtown Sturgis it’s just madness,” Christian added. “People not socially distancing, everybody touching each other. It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out.”
Over 60% of Sturgis 6,900 residents who responded to a city council survey in May said they wanted the rally canceled.
A month later, the council voted to move ahead, saying it would cancel official events but set up hand-sanitizer stations. Sturgis mayor Mark Carstensen said throughout the pandemic, “the state of South Dakota has been the freedom state and the city of Sturgis has stayed true to that”.
OpEd: Most of the bikers are Trumpanzees and South Dakota is a red state. The bikers are coming in from all regions of the country and you can bet a lot of them are infected with the coronavirus. This 10 day event will become a super spreader and most of the victims will be MAGAts. Oh happy day!
Coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths per day compared to all causes US 2020
Published by John Elflein, Aug 7, 2020
As of August 6th, 2020, the average daily death toll due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the U.S. was around 936 since the occurrence of the first case on February 15th. Based on data from 2019, almost eight thousand people die every day in the United States from all causes, on average.
If this chart is true more than .64% of people who get COVID 19 will die. If everyone in the US gets infected 2,205,000 of them will die. This doesn't factor in individuals in regions of the country, specifically the Bible Belt that is known for it higher rates of smoking, heart disease, diabetes, poor diet, sloth and other co-morbid features of obesity. An educated guess suggests that the percentage of deaths for all age groups in the deep South could exceed 1%.
Preliminary maximum estimates tell us that during the 2019-2020 (October to April) influenza season, around 332 people died daily on average from influenza. Taking the latest numbers into account, it seems that since mid-February on average one out of eight deaths in the United States every day have involved COVID-19.
On August sixth 1203 Americans died of COVID-19. As of August 8th 1:44 pm 1,455 Americans have died of COVID-19.
The former PNC Plaza office tower at 500 West Jefferson Street in downtown Louisville. Fri, Aug. 7, 2020.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Federal prosecutors are suing to seize control of the building in downtown Louisville formerly known as PNC Plaza, alleging it issecretly owned by billionaire Russian oligarchsand used to launder billions of dollars they plundered from a bank they owed in the eastern European country.
In a lawsuit filed this week in Miami, the government says the oligarchs and their operatives in the United States bought the 29-story office tower — as well as property in Dallas and Cleveland — with money “traceable to an international conspiracy to launder money embezzled and fraudulently obtained from the bank.”
The scheme was run in the United States by Ukrainians operating out of a 55th-floor penthouse office in Miami using companies with some variation of the name “Optima,” according to the lawsuit.
The Louisville tower at 500 W. Jefferson St. was purchased in 2011 by Optima Management Group LLC for $77 million, but it ran into hard times after the largest tenant, PNC Financial Services, moved out.
The 580,000-square-foot building was purchased out of receivership last year by New York-based Somera Road Inc., according to an article in Business First, but the government’s forfeiture suit says 95% is still owned by an Optima affiliate.
Jefferson County property records show the owner is listed as 500 West Jefferson Street LLC, and corporate records show the sole owner of the company is Ruairidh Henderson, who works for Somera Road in New York.
But in a telephone interview Friday, Henderson said he had never heard of the building and didn’t know anything about it.
In a follow-up interview, when a reporter pointed out that Somera Road was listed as the buyer in a published account — and that a plaque with its name is posted in the lobby — he declined to comment further.
Louisville attorney Don Cox, whose law firm has been in the building for about 10 years, said he was shocked to learn about the background of its secret owner.
The government said that over the course of more than a decade, billionaires Igor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov used their control of PrivatBank to steal billions of dollars of its funds.
The losses were so great that Ukraine had to bail out the bank by providing $5.5 billion to stave off an economic crisis for the country.
In 2017, Kolomoisky, one of the world’s richest men, went into self-imposed exile in Switzerland and then Israel after the government seized his prize asset, Privatbank, and accused him of embezzling billions of dollars, The New York Times reported.
He returned to Ukraine after the comic Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a former business partner of the oligarch, was elected president last year.
The former PNC Plaza office tower at 500 West Jefferson Street in downtown Louisville. Fri, Aug. 7, 2020.
FBI agents this week raided Optima properties in Cleveland and Miami, according to press reports.
The suit says dozens of Optima entities in the U.S. were managed by a man named Mordechai Korf, also known as “Motti,” a Miami-based business associate of Kolomoisky and Boholiubov.
Cox said he saw Korf in the building and he appeared to be managing it.
The government said PrivatBank accounted for about one-fourth of the banking sector in Ukraine and one-third of the individual deposit accounts, but that after Kolomoisky and Boholiubov looted it, it was nationalized in 2016.
Prosecutors say the basic idea of the scheme was simple. Kolomoisky and Boholiubov requested money from PrivatBank, which, based on their control and ownership, they always received.
They rarely paid the loans back, except through new loans, the suit says.
The mechanics of the scheme were complex, according to the government. Kolomoisky and Boholiubov used a substantial collection of companies they owned or controlled to apply for loans from PrivatBank.
An army of functionaries at PrivatBank then papered and processed the loans as if they were legitimate.
A “special” credit committee at the bank approved the loans, despite misrepresentations in the applications.
When the loans came due, other loans were used to pay off the old loans, or, in some cases, they were repaid with income from the investment of the misappropriated money, the suit says.
Kolomoisky’s Boston-based attorney, Michael Sullivan, did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.
Jerry Falwell Jr., president and chancellor of Liberty University, is taking an “indefinite leave absence from his roles” at the school, the university’s board of Trustees announced Friday.
The announcement comes after Falwell, a top evangelical Christian personality in the U.S., shared ― and then deleted ― a vacation photo on Instagram in which his pants were unbuttoned and unzipped.
Falwell has faced pressure this week to resign over the photo, which he defended as having been taken “in good fun.”
Jerry Falwell Jr. (Photo: Robert Downen/Twitter)
Liberty’s board of trustees said it had requested Falwell take the leave of absence and that he had agreed to do so. The change is “effective immediately,” the board said.
Falwell, a vocal supporter of pedophile President Donald Trump, is no stranger to controversy.
Liberty was slapped with a class-action lawsuit in April after Falwell insisted on keeping campus open during the coronavirus pandemic. And last year, several current and former Liberty University employees told Politico of multiple instances of questionable behavior by the school president, including his penchant for graphically discussing his sex life with staffers and fostering a toxic, fear-based workplace.
“Everybody is scared for their life. Everybody walks around in fear,” one employee said at the time.
President Donald Trump is facing heat for his ugly attack on Democrat Joe Biden’s religious faith.
Although Biden is a practicing Catholic who has for years talked openly about his faith, Trump claimed he was “against God,” then launched into a rambling attack on Thursday:
“Take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything. Hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns. He’s against energy. Our kind of energy.”
Biden later defended his faith as the “bedrock foundation” of his life.
“It’s provided me comfort in moments of loss and tragedy, it’s kept me grounded and humbled in times of triumph and joy,” he said. He described Trump as “shameful” for the attack.
“It’s beneath the office he holds and it’s beneath the dignity the American people so rightly expect and deserve from their leaders,” Biden said.
He added: “My faith teaches me to love my neighbor as I would myself while President Trump only seeks to divide us. My faith teaches me to care for the least among us while President Trump seems to only be concerned about his gilded friends. My faith teaches me to welcome the stranger while President Trump tears families apart. My faith teaches me to walk humbly while President Trump teargassed peaceful protestors so he could walk over to a church for a photo op.”
Op Ed: Let's hope they all die but sadly at most 2% or 2,000 of the attendees will die if 1/2 get infected. The good news is, they will infect their asshole families and asshole friends and that will help to cleanse the gene pool.
The good news is a lot of those assholes will get drunk, get on their bike and crash and die or get maimed.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
Friday is the official start of the 80th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, where 250,000 people are expected to gather in the South Dakota town of that name for nine days of defying proven precautions against the spread of COVID-19.
“Nobody is social distancing and none of them are wearing masks,” local psychologist Michael Fellner told The Daily Beast. “None.”
Fellner is originally from Brooklyn in New York City, which was once the nation’s COVID-19 epicenter but has just reported three straight days without a single death from the virus. The transformation is almost certainly the result of the same precautions the bikers in Sturgis are ignoring.
The Sturgis Rally’s own official website has a “COVID tracker” tab that links to the South Dakota Health Department site, where offerings include a risk assessment for public gatherings.
“Highest risk: Large, in-person gatherings where it is difficult for individuals to remain spaced at least 6 feet apart and attendees travel from multiple areas,” it advises.
Only motorcycles are allowed into the center of tiny town of Hulett, WY which is overun by cyclists from the 61st annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, August 8, 2001, held in Sturgis, SD.
David McNew/Getty
As the rally’s Facebook page attests, the bikers come from across the country.
“Leaving from NH today. See ya soon!” posted Howard Saborn of New Hampshire.
“Coming for the 1st time on Saturday from Virginia,” Vickie Farmer announced.
“On our way now. Stopped in Missouri to sleep. Be there Thursday night,” Jesse Robison of Georgia posted.
“Be there Friday from San Angelo Tx.,” David Buckner said.
“On my way I ain’t scared of the media flue or as we call it round here election flue see ya soon sd,” J.F. Watson of Ohio said.
“Just call it a big protest !! And it be A-Ok!!” J. Toothman, also of Ohio, suggested.
Rod Florquest of Wyoming was among the thousands who had arrived early.
“You really have to look to see someone wearing a mask,” he reported, as though this was a good thing.
And, having come from seemingly everywhere with whatever virus they might happen to carry, they will all mingle and return home with any virus they happen to pick up. Some will have purchased one of the souvenir T-shirts that retired school counselor Linda Chaplin of Sturgis saw a street vendor selling. The front reads:
“Screw COVID-19
I came to Sturgis”
David McNew/Getty
That is far from what the 70-year-old Chaplin imagined when she initially learned of the pandemic.
“One of my first thoughts was, ‘Oh, we won’t have the rally this year,’” she told The Daily Beast.
She allows that she is “not a rally person,” having in the past hopped on a bicycle to negotiate the annual gridlock of Harleys. But she understands the economic importance of the event to the town, having in past years picked up some extra money sewing patches on jackets. She nonetheless did not expect her town to prize livelihoods over lives.
“I was rather aghast that our little town was still planning to go ahead with the rally,” she said.
Chaplin was among the citizens who addressed Mayor Mark Carstensen and the City Council at a June 10 hearing about the rally. Chaplin was not speaking to strangers. She used to change the mayor’s diapers when he was a toddler and childhood friend of her daughter.
“It is my deepest conviction that this is a huge, foolish mistake to make to host the rally this year," Chaplin said at the hearing. “The government of Sturgis needs to care most for its citizens.”
She offered a solution to the rally problem: “Have a bigger one next year.”
Other speakers included ICU nurse Linda Janovy, who said the regional medical facilities are not equipped to handle an outbreak.
“We have freedom, but we also have responsibility,” she said. “You are not going to make everybody happy. Your responsibility is to keep the public safe, as safe as you can.”
Then came Lynn Burke, a nurse at the local VA facility.
“What’s the price of human life?” she asked. “I hear a lot of people saying we’re going to lose money. What about the lives we’re going to lose?”
But several local business people spoke of how dependent they are on the revenue generated by the rally. And there were also folks such as a lifelong Sturgis resident named Bob Davis.
“Freedom, God, and Donald Trump,” he said.
The City Council had never considered whether or not to approve the rally because that had never been a question. There had only been the formality of approving the necessary road closures. The council did so again on June 15 even though a survey showed that 60 percent of Sturgis residents favored canceling this year's rally.
Sturgis officials sought to calm rally opponents by saying the city was seeking to reduce the turnout by curtailing the usual advertising. The official Sturgis website nonetheless listed various exciting events for anyone tempted to attend. There was this:
“JOIN US AUGUST 10TH, 2020 FOR THE 18TH ANNUAL MAYOR’S RIDE!! The City of Sturgis is excited to be hosting the 18th Annual Sturgis Mayor’s Ride during the 80th Annual City of Sturgis Motorcycle Rally! This ride has been a special part of the City of Sturgis Motorcycle Rally; not only for the amazing beauty of the Black Hills but that it brings people together from all over the word [world].”
The ultimate justification offered by the mayor and other city officials was that the hordes of bikers were going to come anyway. They noted that Rod Woodruff, owner of the Buffalo Chip campground and concert venue, had announced his intention to be open for a 39th consecutive rally. The campground’s Facebook page had this posting with a message from a Hollywood actor:
“Hey there, Tom Berenger here. Have you heard? Well, my friend Rod Woodruff at the Buffalo Chip let me know that Sturgis 2020, the 80th anniversary, is ON! I don’t know about you, but I’m packin’ her up here. I hope to see ya out there. God bless America. And God bless the Buffalo Chip.”
The Buffalo Chip is the area’s biggest, a biker mecca. It is also just outside the city limits and an incorporated town unto itself. Sturgis could do nothing to regulate it.
“We’re just celebrating good old American freedom,” Woodruff told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
He said he had unfolded the world’s largest American flag on July 3, so Trump could see it while flying over on the way to the event at nearby Mount Rushmore.
Even though the rally did not officially begin until Friday, bikes had started to arrive mid-week.
“What a release to hear the sound of Harley-Davidson engines in the campground again,” Woodruff said. “Just marvelous.”
He figured the turnout would at least equal—maybe exceed—last year’s. He has had several bands cancel on him in recent weeks as a result of COVID-19 concerns, but others had signed on. And he had additional events such as the Lingerie Fighting Championship.
The producer of the all-woman lingerie event, Sean Donnelly, assured The Daily Beast that the participants had been offered a chance to opt out of the rally. He added that they would be staying at a hotel 30 miles away in Rapid City and would be bused in two hours before the bouts, returning directly to the hotel afterwards. They would have custom-designed masks.
“Not a bad look,” Donnelly said. “Of course, they won’t be fighting in them.”
Few of the quarter-million people expected to attend the rally will likely be doing anything in masks. A shopkeeper friend of Chaplin’s made an attempt at humor on Facebook.
“Welcome rally goers, we’re dying to serve you,” the shopkeeper posted.
“Not funny,” Chaplin replied.
The 2003 Sturgis rally.
Scott Olson/Getty
Chaplin and her husband usually leave town during the rally and decided to depart two days early this year. She will return to a county where there have been only 82 COVID-19 cases, but there is no telling what the rally will leave behind besides piles of garbage by which the city estimates the number of attendees. She has a son and a daughter who teach in the Sturgis schools and grandchildren who attend them.
To add to her worries, Gov. Kristi Noem has declared that all South Dakota families should send their kids back to school without masks.
“We believe that when it comes to children, masks have the potential to do more harm than good,” Noem wrote in a fundraising email.
During an appearance on The Ingraham Angle on Fox News, Noem voiced support for the rally.
“We know we could have these events, get people information, let them protect their health, but still enjoy their way of life and enjoy events like the Sturgis motorcycle rally,” she said.
Michael Fellner and his wife, Carol, will wait out the rally in self-quarantine on their eight acres just outside of town.
“I think this year we are on the road to making a super-spreading event,” she said. “Not just for your state, not just for your region, but for your country. That’s my statement.”
Michael said of the rally, “The sad thing is that you find common sense is not as common as people believe.”
He suggested what deprived Sturgis of that sense.
“I hate to put it that way, but it’s the smell of money.”
Michael noted that one of his daughters and her husband are Broadway actors. The daughter had already taken a break to concentrate on being a mom. The son-in-law lost a starring role when Broadway shut down.
“He’s now selling insurance,” Michael said.
The consolation is that the virus has been brought under control in New York, as it likely could be everywhere if everyone followed the city’s example.
But COVID can just as easily spike anywhere that example is ignored. And the virus might be spreading across the country on motorcycles by the end of next week.
“This is going to be just the start of it,” Linda Chaplin said.
