January 12, 2019

cartoons

January 12, 2019

How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor

n a muggy afternoon in October 2017, Jamie Tillman walked into the public library in Corinth, Miss., and slumped down at one of the computers on the ground floor. In recent years, Tillman, who is slight and freckled, with reddish blond hair that she often wears piled atop her head, had been drifting from her hometown, Nashville — first to southern Tennessee, to be with a boyfriend and their infant son, and then, after she and the boyfriend split, across the state border to Corinth to look for work. The town, to Tillman, represented a chance for a turnaround. If she was able to get a part-time job at a big-box store, she could put a deposit on a rental apartment and see a psychiatrist for what she suspected was bipolar disorder. She could take steps toward regaining custody of her son from her boyfriend’s mother. “I needed to support myself,” she told me recently. But potential employers weren’t calling her back, and Tillman was exhausted. In the hushed calm of the library, she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

When she awoke, a pair of uniformed police officers were standing over her. “I was terrified,” she recalled. “I couldn’t figure out what was happening.” (Library patrons had complained about her behavior.) Ignoring Tillman’s protests that she wasn’t drunk — she was just scared and tired, she remembers saying — the officers handcuffed her wrists behind her back and took her to the jail in Corinth to await a hearing on a misdemeanor charge of public intoxication. Five days later, clad in an orange jumpsuit, her wrists again cuffed, Tillman found herself sitting in the gallery of the local courthouse, staring up at the municipal judge, John C. Ross.

Tillman did her best to stay calm. She had been arrested on misdemeanor charges before — most recently for drug possession — and in her experience, the court either provided defendants with a public defender or gave them the option to apply for a cash bond and return later for a second hearing. “But there was no lawyer in this courtroom,” Tillman says. “There was no one to help me.” Instead, one after another, the defendants were summoned to the bench to enter their pleas and exchange a few terse words with Ross, a white-haired, pink-cheeked Corinth native who dismissed most of them with the same four words: “Good luck to you.” Many of the defendants were being led back out the way they came, in the direction of the jail.

Around 11 a.m., the judge read Tillman’s name. She stood. “Ms. Tillman, you’re here on a public drunk charge,” Ross said. “Do you admit that charge or deny it?”

Tillman told me that she thought she had no choice but to plead guilty — it was unlikely, she believed, that the judge would take her word over that of the arresting officers. “I admit, your honor,” she said. “I just want to get me out of here as soon as possible.” Under Mississippi state law, public intoxication is punishable by a $100 fine or up to 30 days in jail. Ross opted for the maximum fine. Tillman began to cry.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/magazine/cities-fine-poor-jail.html

No government agency comprehensively tracks the extent of criminal-justice debt owed by poor defendants, but experts estimate that those fines and fees total tens of billions of dollars. That number is likely to grow in coming years, and significantly: National Public Radio, in a survey conducted with the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Center for State Courts, found that 48 states increased their civil and criminal court fees from 2010 to 2014. And because wealthy and middle-class Americans can typically afford either the initial fee or the services of an attorney, it will be the poor who shoulder the bulk of the burden.

“You think about what we want to define us as Americans: equal opportunity, equal protection under the law,” Mitali Nagrecha, the director of Harvard’s National Criminal Justice Debt Initiative, told me. “But what we’re seeing in these situations is that not only are the poor in the United States treated differently than people with means, but that the courts are actually aggravating and perpetuating poverty.”

Why they do so is in part a matter of economic reality: In areas hit by recession or falling tax revenue, fines and fees help pay the bills.

January 11, 2019

He worked 64 hours this pay period. Here's what his pay stub looks like

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/politics/shutdown-paycheck-what-it-looks-like-trnd/index.html

January 11, 2019

Government workers launch 1,000 GoFundMe pages as shutdown drags on

Government workers launch 1,000 GoFundMe pages as shutdown drags on
Campaigns seeking to cover daily necessities have raised about $100,000 in total: ‘It’s the last resort’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/10/government-shutdown-gofundme-employee-assistance-trump


People affected by the government shutdown have established approximately 1,000 fundraisers on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe to help cover their expenses, a spokeswoman for the company said on Wednesday.

The campaigns, often seeking a few hundred to thousands of dollars to cover necessities such as rent, groceries and utilities, have raised about $100,000 altogether – or an average of just $100 each.


Trump walks out on Democrats and calls shutdown talks 'a waste of time'
Read more
GoFundMe has become an ad hoc social safety net for millions of Americans seeking assistance with essentials, from housing to healthcare. If Instagram is where Americans construct a fantasy version of their lives, GoFundMe is where reality reasserts itself. For many of the 800,000 federal employees who have either been furloughed or forced to work without pay since 22 December, their reality is increasingly one of desperation. Those workers have missed out on $1.4bn in wages each week of the shutdown, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, pushing those who live paycheck to paycheck to the brink of disaster.

“It’s the last resort,” said Brandon Taijeron, a corrections officer who has been working without pay for the Bureau of Prisons since the shutdown began. “I don’t usually go to the public, but that’s how bad the government shutdown is affecting federal workers.”

Taijeron said that he set up his GoFundMe page in the early hours of Wednesday morning. He has already missed a payment on his car, and is worried about keeping food in the refrigerator and gas in the tank. “You can’t really sleep, just wondering if it’s going to get better,” the 23-year-old said by phone. He posted a photo of his wife and five-month-old son on the page, and set a goal of raising $1,500.

GoFundMe page for Brandon Taijeron, a government worker affected by the shutdown.

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https://www.gofundme.com/r52q4-federal-employee-government-shutdown since the article he has raised $3300

January 11, 2019

Steve King talks about electrifying border fence... "We do that to livestock all the time!"

Steve King built a wall on the House floor.
He put a wire across the top.
He wants to electrify that wire.
Cuz, "We do that to livestock all the time!"
Really, Steve?

https://twitter.com/LMAO_in_Fla/status/1083430693693214721

January 10, 2019

Merriam Webster word of the day: Venal

venal

adjective | VEE-nul


Definition

1 : capable of being bought or obtained for money or other valuable consideration : purchasable; especially : open to corrupt influence and especially bribery : mercenary

2 : originating in, characterized by, or associated with corrupt bribery

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I think MW trolls Trump. When he misbehaves more than normal, they post words like this.

January 10, 2019

in absence of Rangers, Joshua Tree National Park visitors are behaving like a**holes, at crisis pt

Amid closure at Joshua Tree National Park, volunteers struggle to clean up after unruly visitors

In this high desert enclave, Rand Abbott is a well-known man of action. He’s a paraplegic rock climber; a vocal lightning rod at town hall meetings; and a tireless promoter for the desert landscape and its resident creatures.

So it came as little surprise to friends two weeks ago when he volunteered to clean restrooms and remove trash that was littering Joshua Tree National Park due to a partial government shutdown over funding for President Trump’s border wall.

Unfortunately, the park was in far more disarray than a one-man army could handle.

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While Joshua Tree is famous for its otherworldly landscape of weather-beaten rocks and spindly, namesake trees, unruly visitors have turned it into a worst-case example of parkland abuse, officials say.

With no rangers in sight for roughly three weeks, visitors have fought over official campsites and driven through off-limit areas to create illegal encampments. They have littered, set illegal fires, defecated in the wild, and chopped down vegetation to drive around barriers intended to keep people out of sensitive wildlife corridors.

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-joshua-tree-cleanup-20190109-story.html

Abbott, one of dozens of ardent volunteers helping out in the park, figures he’s spent nearly $5,000 on bleach, rags and garbage bags and driven 702 miles while cleaning overflowing toilets, picking up garbage and documenting the mess from his wheelchair.

The 55-year-old said that last Sunday, he confronted a group that had used a chain saw to cut up a Joshua tree and a pine tree for firewood. In a separate incident, he cautioned a man who had illegally parked a pickup truck and trailer in a rocky cove frequented by bighorn sheep.


“That guy was casually brushing teeth when I pointed out that he’d run over and crushed creosote and cactus,” Abbott recalled. “He just flipped me off.”

Then, a mile up the road, Abbott said he spotted “a pile of beer bottles beside a rock facing the highway that someone had desecrated with graffiti.”

Environmental and community groups say the conditions have reached a point of crisis.

January 10, 2019

Michigan dems and repubs work together to end police property grabs

Michigan House takes aim at police property forfeitures

The Michigan House is taking aim at the state’s civil asset forfeiture laws with a new bipartisan plan that would require a conviction in most cases before police can permanently confiscate cash, cars or other property from residents.

Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield of Levering, formally elected to the leadership post by his peers on Wednesday, announced the renewed reform push as the 100th Legislature convened for the first time. He was joined at a press conference by Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel.

"We can work together, and we will work together,"Chatfield said, referencing the Republican-led Legislature and Democratic officials like Nessel and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. "This is a step in the right direction for the people of our state and for law enforcement."

Current Michigan law allows police to take property from suspected criminals even if charges are never filed. The legislation would require a conviction to forfeit property worth less than $50,000 and raise the standard of evidence to permanently confiscate more valuable property.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/09/michigan-legislature-priorities-forfeitures-2019/2517650002/

January 10, 2019

Did past presidents require so much ego stroking... "our great POTUS"

After this evenings Presidential Address, we joined our great POTUS for a photo. We are all on the right side of history! #FACT

https://twitter.com/Scavino45/status/1082877853258141696

January 10, 2019

his tweet today includes "we are rebuilding our military"... implied lie that Obama gutted it

Our Country is doing so well in so many ways. Great jobs numbers, with a record setting December. We are rebuilding our military. Vets finally have Choice & Accountability. Economy & GDP are strong. Tax & Reg cuts historic. Trade deals great. But we MUST fix our Southern Border!

Trump HAS NO SHAME.