12 February 20
We offered to give the money back but they said no, “Use the money to some good out there.” That person understands what we are trying to do, what RSN is here for.
Is there someone out there that has a job that can match that donation with what they can afford?
With the greatest respect.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611
11 February 20
Robert Reich | Our Slide Toward Authoritarianism Continues
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook
Reich writes: "On Sunday, Lindsey Graham revealed that Rudy Giuliani was feeding information about Ukraine and the Bidens directly to the Justice Department."
READ MORE
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook
Reich writes: "On Sunday, Lindsey Graham revealed that Rudy Giuliani was feeding information about Ukraine and the Bidens directly to the Justice Department."
Today, Attorney General William Barr confirmed in a press conference that the Justice Department has set up an “intake process” for any information that Rudy Giuliani may have about Ukraine.
So let me get this straight: Rudy Giuliani, who is under a Justice Department investigation that has led to charges against two of his associates, has a direct line to the Justice Department to funnel dirt about one of Trump’s main political rivals? Meanwhile, Senate Republicans requested documents regarding Hunter Biden’s travels during his father’s tenure as Vice President from the Treasury Department last week. I suppose that since Ukrainian President Zelensky was unwilling to dig up dirt on Trump’s political rival, it’s up to Republican senators and William Barr to take the reins. Our slide toward authoritarianism continues.
READ MORE
Roger Stone. (photo: Tom Brenner/Reuters)
DOJ Overrides 'Excessive' Sentencing Recommendation for Trump Ally Roger Stone
Betsy Swan, The Daily Beast
Swan writes: "Department of Justice headquarters has stepped in to try to shorten Roger Stone's still-unannounced prison sentence, a senior Department official confirmed to The Daily Beast on Tuesday."
READ MORE
Betsy Swan, The Daily Beast
Swan writes: "Department of Justice headquarters has stepped in to try to shorten Roger Stone's still-unannounced prison sentence, a senior Department official confirmed to The Daily Beast on Tuesday."
READ MORE
Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg addresses the press from his newly opened Philadelphia field office on Dec. 21, 2019. (photo: Mark Makela/Getty)
Bloomberg Stop and Frisk Comments Resurface, Said He Put All the Cops in Minority Neighborhoods "Where All the Crime Is"
Shane Croucher, Newsweek
Croucher writes: "A clip of Mike Bloomberg's 2015 talk at the Aspen Institute in which he defended stop and frisk and putting 'all the cops' in minority neighborhoods has resurfaced on social media."
Shane Croucher, Newsweek
Croucher writes: "A clip of Mike Bloomberg's 2015 talk at the Aspen Institute in which he defended stop and frisk and putting 'all the cops' in minority neighborhoods has resurfaced on social media."
EXCERPTS - ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON LINK:
The former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman spoke candidly about his self-described "controversial" views and policy to bring down the murder rate.
He also claimed that the way to stop young people from bringing guns out onto the street is to "throw them up against a wall and frisk 'em."
And Bloomberg said you could take a description of murderers and their victims "Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops" because they all "fit one M.O."
According to The Aspen Times, which reported on Bloomberg's comments at the time, the now 2020 Democratic candidate had blocked the release of video from the event.
In the YouTube clip below, Bloomberg's comments about stop and frisk start around the 41:00 minute mark.
Bloomberg apologized for stop and frisk as he entered the Democratic race last year, admitting in a speech: "I was wrong and I am sorry."
The Aspen talk, however, shows the strength of Bloomberg's conviction on stop and frisk just a few years earlier.
"Controversial, but, first thing is…95 percent of your murders and murderers and murder victims fit one M.O.," Bloomberg said in the talk.
"You can just take the description and Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male minorities 15 to 25.
"That's true in New York, that's true in virtually every city in America. And that's where the real crime is. You've got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed."
Bloomberg said the "first thing you can do to help that group is keep people alive," adding that psychologists say "the kids think they're going to get killed anyway because all their friends are getting killed."
"So they just don't have any long-term focus or anything. It's a joke to have a gun, it's a joke to pull the trigger in New York," Bloomberg said, adding "it's all the same group."
Civil rights groups challenged Bloomberg's stop and frisk policy, which disproportionately targeted young black and Hispanic men, and in 2013 a federal judge ruled that it was unconstitutional, paving the way for lawsuits.
The New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union said in a report that since 2002 New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and street interrogations more than 5 million times.
"Black and Latinx communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics," said the NYCLU. "At the height of stop-and-frisk in 2011 under the Bloomberg administration, over 685,000 people were stopped. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent."
Bloomberg claimed in the 2015 talk that stop and frisk reduced gun murders in New York City: "Other people don't like the fact that that's what we do. But that's what stops this."
The media and financial data entrepreneur said it is important to spend more money on police and incarcerate fewer people because the prison system makes problem individuals worse.
"So you want to spend the money, put a lot of cops on the street, put those cops where the crime is, which means minority neighborhoods," Bloomberg said.
"One of the unintended consequences is people say, 'Oh my god, you are arresting kids for marijuana, they're all minorities.' Yes, that's true, why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that's true. Why did we do it? Because that's where all the crime is. And the first thing you can do for people is to stop them getting killed.
"We did the calculation on how many people who would've been dead if we hadn't got the guns, hadn't brought down the murder rate and got the guns off the street. And the ways you got the guns out of the kids' hands is to throw them up against a wall and frisk 'em. They start, they say I don't want to get caught so they don't bring the gun. They still have a gun but they leave it at home," Bloomberg said.
Professor John MacDonald of University of Pennsylvania's criminology department said in a fact-checking blog that the evidence shows stop and frisk "made almost no difference" to crime rates.
"NYPD's deployment of extra police to high crime neighborhoods contributed far more to the crime reduction than the use of stop, question, and frisk," MacDonald wrote on the Penn website.
"Research on the NYPD's program of Operation Impact found that extra police deployed to high crime areas in New York was a major factor in the crime decline: a 12 percent to 15 percent reduction.
"The additional use of stop, question, and frisk made almost no difference. The stops only had a detectable impact on crime when the stops were based on probable cause, and these kinds of stops were very rare."
MacDonald concluded: "Saturating high crime neighborhoods with extra police helped reduce crime in New York, but the bulk of investigative stops did not play a meaningful role in the crime reduction."
Bloomberg said during his Aspen talk that he was invited to speak at a black church in Harlem about his stop and frisk policy shortly before leaving office.
He said the pastor told the congregation if they stopped and frisked their children before they went out at night then the mayor would not need the policy.
"So I knew I was going to be OK in that audience," Bloomberg said. "If there is a constitutional issue, we've always thought we were on the right side of it… But we have to do something."
In a statement after the resurfacing of his past comments, Bloomberg said: "I inherited the police practice of stop-and-frisk, and as part of our effort to stop gun violence it was overused.
"By the time I left office, I cut it back by 95 percent, but I should've done it faster and sooner. I regret that and I have apologized—and I have taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on Black and Latino communities.
"But this issue and my comments about it do not reflect my commitment to criminal justice reform and racial equity. I believe we need to end mass incarceration and during my tenure we reduced incarceration by 40 percent and juvenile confinement by more than 60 percent.
"We created the Young Men's Initiative to help young men of color stay on track for success, which President Obama built on to create My Brother's Keeper. And we overhauled a school system that had been neglecting and underfunding schools in Black and Latino communities for too long."
Crewmasters with Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 352, Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, prepare to refuel an F/A-18 Hornet over the W-291 training area in southern California, March 6, 2019. (photo: Sgt. Dominic Romero/US Marine Corps)
William Hartung | The President Bets on Arms Sales Big Time
William D. Hartung, TomDispatch
Hartung writes: "Donald Trump likes to posture as a tough guy and part of that tough-guy persona involves bragging about how much he's spent on the U.S. military. This tendency was on full display in a tweet he posted three days after an American drone killed Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad."
READ MORE
William D. Hartung, TomDispatch
Hartung writes: "Donald Trump likes to posture as a tough guy and part of that tough-guy persona involves bragging about how much he's spent on the U.S. military. This tendency was on full display in a tweet he posted three days after an American drone killed Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad."
READ MORE
Construction of the border wall in Donna, Texas, in December. (photo: Veronica Cardenas/Reuters)
Trump Looks to Kill Student Loan Forgiveness Program
Annie Nova, CNBC
Nova writes: "As student debt continues to climb, President Donald Trump on Monday released a budget for 2021 that would slash many of the programs aimed at helping borrowers."
READ MORE
Annie Nova, CNBC
Nova writes: "As student debt continues to climb, President Donald Trump on Monday released a budget for 2021 that would slash many of the programs aimed at helping borrowers."
READ MORE
Military seize the Legislation Palace in San Salvador, El Salvador. (photo: EFE)
El Salvador: Supreme Court Halts Bukele's Coup Attempt
teleSUR
Excerpt: "El Salvador's Council of Ministers announced Tuesday that it will abide by the resolution of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) that prevents President Nayib Bukele from using the Army and the Police to convene an extraordinary session in the Legislative Assembly."
READ MORE
teleSUR
Excerpt: "El Salvador's Council of Ministers announced Tuesday that it will abide by the resolution of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) that prevents President Nayib Bukele from using the Army and the Police to convene an extraordinary session in the Legislative Assembly."
READ MORE
Chief Howilhkat, Freda Huson, and her sister Chief Geltiy, Brenda Michell, waiting for the police to enforce an injunction in British Columbia on Saturday. (photo: Amber Bracken/NYT)
Canadian Police Move Against Pipeline Blockades, Arresting Dozens
Ian Austen, The New York Times
Austen writes: "The Canadian police on Monday began moving against protesters who had set up transportation blockades around the country in sympathy with an Indigenous group's campaign to halt construction of a natural gas pipeline to Canada's West Coast."
READ MORE
Ian Austen, The New York Times
Austen writes: "The Canadian police on Monday began moving against protesters who had set up transportation blockades around the country in sympathy with an Indigenous group's campaign to halt construction of a natural gas pipeline to Canada's West Coast."
READ MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.