Here Are Some Of The Most Shocking Parts Of DOJ’s Report On Baltimore Police

WASHINGTON ― The Justice Department formally released a damning report on Wednesday detailing the routine abuse inflicted on Baltimore residents by the city’s police department.

Baltimore police regularly performed unconstitutional stops, frisks and arrests ― which disproportionately targeted black residents ― and held an “us-versus-them” mentality, the report says. The Justice Department also found that officers retaliated against citizens, took a lax approach to sexual assault cases, employed excessive force too freely and used slurs against LGBT people.

A list of abuse with excerpts from the report at the link.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/baltimore-police-doj-report_us_57ab4624e4b0db3be07c7e8a?section=&

Limbaugh Renews His Contract, But At What Price?

The campaign against Rush Limbaugh has not only worked against Limburgher, but has sent shock waves throughout right wing talk radio:

..struggling iHeartMedia is in no position to take any “financial risk” on Limbaugh, or anybody else. Instead, the once-dominant radio behemoth is saddled with $20 billion in debt, thanks to a misguided leveraged takeover engineered by Bain Capital in 2008.

Consider this:

Clear Channel stock value, April 2007: $39.

iHeartMedia stock price, July 2011: Approximately $8

iHeartMedia stock price at close of Tuesday: $1.30.

But even with a sturdy corporate parent, it’s likely Limbaugh was facing a pay cut thanks to the historic advertising exodus that has wreaked havoc on his business model. The widespread Madison Ave. rejection was sparked by in part by the talker’s days-long sexist meltdown over Sandra Fluke in 2012. With advertisers staying away, and ratings down, station owners were suddenly less interested in carrying his expensive program.

In key major markets such as Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis, Limbaugh has been demoted on the AM dial, onto often struggling, underperforming stations — the type of affiliates that Limbaugh was rarely associated with during his glory days as the king of talk radio.

Parks last week looked at Limbaugh’s most recent ratings in Boston:

Limbaugh’s show has been banished to WKOX-AM, a iHeart Radio owned station, and in June ‘16 that station ranked #23 with a 0.2. That’s just two tenths of a point away from a DNS or “did not show,” meaning not having enough listeners to show in the ratings.

Limbaugh’s show airs on a station in Boston that basically has no listeners.

The Buffalo News recently looked at Limbaugh’s local ratings and found that for the months of January, February and March this year, his audience declined “14 percent in age 12 plus, 16 percent in the age 25-54 category and 5 percent in the older age 35-64 demographic.” And that was during the height of the political primary season.

The paper also reported that the Buffalo station, like so many other Limbaugh affiliates, was having trouble selling ads on the program.