Category: Domestic Affairs,

Genealogists outraged by Trump administration plans to hike fees for immigration records

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Race,Leave a comment

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials declined to explain exactly how they arrived at the new fee amounts. But the agency has said it must increase fees across the board — including substantial hikes for green card and citizenship applications — to avoid a $1.26 billion annual budget shortfall. By law, USCIS must fund itself through fees.

…Some of the files are scheduled to transfer to the National Archives, where they can be accessed free by the public in person, but the vast majority of the information contained in the files is not available outside of the USCIS program, he said.

Venezia said he is puzzled by the jump in fees, especially given that the program nearly tripled fees in 2016, explaining at the time that the new fees would fully cover the program’s costs, he said.

“What could possibly have changed in three years to warrant such a huge increase?” he asked.

Genealogists outraged by Trump administration plans to hike fees for immigration records – The Washington Post

hmmm

University of Farmington: ICE arrests more at fake Michigan college

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Race,, Schools,Leave a comment

A total of about 250 students have now been arrested since January on immigration violations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of a sting operation by federal agents who enticed foreign-born students, mostly from India, to attend the school that marketed itself as offering graduate programs in technology and computer studies, according to ICE officials. 

…The students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. The school was staffed with undercover agents posing as university officials. 

…Attorneys for the students arrested said that they were unfairly trapped by the U.S. government since the Department of Homeland Security had said on its website that the university was legitimate. An accreditation agency that was working with the U.S. on its sting operation also listed the university as legitimate. 

,,,The U.S. “trapped the vulnerable people who just wanted to maintain (legal immigration) status,” Rahul Reddy, a Texas attorney who represented or advised some of the students arrested, told the Free Press this week. “They preyed upon on them.”

The fake university is believed to have collected millions of dollars from the unsuspecting students. An email from the university’s president, Ali Milani, told students that graduate programs’ tuition is $2,500 per quarter and that the average cost is $1,000 per month.

University of Farmington: ICE arrests more at fake Michigan college

jesus-facepalm1

A view on a mental health plan Harris proposed

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

…People who take these medications need to have an open, cooperative process with their prescribing physician; finding a drug or drug combination that both works and is tolerable is an important part of mental health treatment. When treatment is mandated by law, that just isn’t possible. Assuming that a person is incompetent and that their perceptions are irrelevant will not make that person want to participate in mental health treatment.

Another extreme measure proposed by Harris in her plan: weakening privacy protections afforded by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA. Currently, medical professionals are not legally allowed to share people’s treatment information without consent. Harris would allow health care providers to disregard the consent of their patients if they happen to think doing so is important.

Making rights provisional on the discretion of providers’ judgment will disproportionately impact women, young people, transgender people, and people of color and any permutations thereof — basically any of the people on the receiving end of well-documented health care disparities. Even the most well-intentioned doctors can make mistakes and are subject to bias. Privacy rights should not be a judgment call.

…The current plan envisions an America where forced drugging and locked wards are positioned as freedom for people with mental health conditions.

How Kamala Harris’s mental health plan could hurt the most vulnerable  – Vox

Curious how extreme this response is.

The tyranny of a traffic ticket

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

A single ticket can turn into years and years of legal battles.

…The system can also make these encounters happen frequently, and with increasing weight in a person’s life. It begins with one ticket or a traffic stop. But if someone can’t afford to pay that fine, police might try to stop or arrest him or her again to get the person to pay up.

This can lead to someone getting fined again for not paying up the first time. And again. And again. One ticket leads to a vicious cycle that can sink someone for life.

With each of these encounters, someone’s record piles up — giving officers more reason, in their view, to stop him or her, because they recognize the person, or perhaps see the person’s record when running a license plate, for example. And with each of these stops, people are exposed to more instances in which a police encounter could go tragically wrong.

And it happens disproportionately to poor people of color.

…Castile is stopped. He can’t afford to pay the fine. His license is suspended. He’s then stopped and fined for driving without a license. He again can’t pay that fine. And so on. All along the way, Castile is buried further into debt and punished with more penalties — just because he couldn’t afford that first ticket.

“It’s a never-ending loop,”

…Court records show that she twice attempted to make partial payments of $25 and $50, but the court returned those payments, refusing to accept anything less than payment in full. One of those payments was later accepted, but only after the court’s letter rejecting payment by money order was returned as undeliverable. This woman is now making regular payments on the fine. As of December 2014, over seven years later, despite initially owing a $151 fine and having already paid $550, she still owed $541.

…Police in North Carolina — where researchers obtained their data — had a significantly lower threshold for searching black and Hispanic drivers compared to white drivers. 

…”Sometimes we’ll hear the assertion that if you’re not doing anything wrong, the police won’t stop you. That is clearly untrue,” Natapoff said. “Police stop individuals, particularly individuals in communities of color, for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with whether that individual is committing a crime.”

…Officers are frequently evaluated for their productivity based on how many stops and arrests they make. Knowing this, they’re more likely to seek easy arrests and infractions in low-income, black neighborhoods with little political power compared with a wealthy, white community that’s very likely to complain to the mayor’s office and be taken seriously by public officials.

…Cops were pressured by the city government — as they are in other jurisdictions — to raise as much revenue as possible by ticketing residents.

Since police were most active in neighborhoods that are predominantly black, these residents were targeted at hugely disproportionate rates: Ferguson is about 67 percent African-American, but from 2012 to 2014, 85 percent of people who were stopped, 90 percent of people who received a citation, and 93 percent of people who were arrested were black.

…One black man in his mid-50s was stopped 30 times in less than four years, despite never being charged for anything.

One reason for such frivolous stops and citations may be what’s known as a “pretextual stop,” when cops stop someone for a minor violation — such as a broken taillight — as a pretext to investigate the suspect’s possible involvement in a more serious crime.

…Another issue is what criminologists call “net widening”: Increasingly, local, state, and federal governments have criminalized more and more behaviors that are part of everyday life, adding harsh fines and possible jail time to misdemeanors and crimes that weren’t punished so harshly or even at all before. 

…With red light cameras, all infractions are ticketed, no matter the circumstance.

“We’re casting a net even wider and criminalizing more people,” Gonzales Van Cleve said. “It doesn’t mean they’re often put into jail, but they certainly are punished by the fact that they have to go to court, they have to pay these fines.”

…The excessive enforcement of low-level offenses can help explain why black people are disproportionately likely to be shot and killed by the police.

…So not only are we burdening individuals with arrest records and individual records, not only are we holding them to the burden of fines and fees that impoverish them or impede their economic prospects, we are also exposing them, sadly, to the greatest risk of all — a violent encounter with a police officer.”

There’s a law of averages at play: If there’s a small chance that police will shoot someone during any given stop, those who are stopped more often by police are exposed to this chance — however small it may be — much more frequently.

The tyranny of a traffic ticket – Vox

hmmm

Facial-recognition systems misidentified people of color more often than white people, according to a federal study

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Chick Stuff,, Privacy,, Race,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search. Native Americans had the highest false-positive rate of all ethnicities, according to the study, which found that systems varied widely in their accuracy.

…The faces of African American women were falsely identified more often in the kinds of searches used by police investigators.

…Women were more likely to be falsely identified than men, and the elderly and children were more likely to be misidentified than those in other age groups, the study found. Middle-aged white men generally benefited from the highest accuracy rates.

…The study could fundamentally shake one of American law enforcement’s fastest-growing tools for identifying criminal suspects and witnesses, which privacy advocates have argued is ushering in a dangerous new wave of government surveillance tools.

..Searches are critical to functions including cellphone sign-ons and airport boarding schemes, and errors could make it easier for impostors to gain access to those systems.

Facial-recognition systems misidentified people of color more often than white people, according to a federal study – The Washington Post

hmmm

Pennsylvania’s crimes code is packed with redundant, harmful charges

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,Leave a comment

In 1972, there were 282 possible criminal charges a Pennsylvania prosecutor could bring against a person accused of breaking the law.

Those charges, enumerated in Pennsylvania’s crimes code, outlawed offenses ranging from murder to petty theft.

In the past four decades, they’ve nearly quintupled in number — a trend that’s helped Pennsylvania’s prison populations skyrocket.

…Pennsylvania’s crimes code now contains 1,500 unique offenses.

…“These new[er] laws are a boon that allows [prosecutors] to bring numerous charges for a single crime,” Taylor said Thursday.

…Before lawmakers in Pennsylvania can pass any piece of legislation, staffers must prepare a fiscal note that analyzes its anticipated cost to taxpayers. Taylor said the Legislature should require a similar exercise for bills that would expand the crimes code, and complete an “existing crimes comparison statement” that would analyze similar offenses already on the books and justify the addition of a new one.

…The Legislature should create a dedicated task force to review the current code, drop all unnecessary and duplicative offenses, and reset the grades of all offenses in a way that truly reflects the appropriate seriousness of the crime.”

ACLU: Pennsylvania’s crimes code is packed with redundant, harmful charges | State & Region | phillytrib.com

Not just PA

 

How the Police See Us, and How They Train Us to See Them

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Race,Leave a comment

The true horror of the video is that there is a video at all, that Reynolds knows just what to do.

…Reynolds knows to de-escalate the situation by being reassuring, even encouraging, to the man who just shot her boyfriend. She knows that her boyfriend is likely to die. She knows to document everything, to give her own accounting of events, to create a record.

…“I told him not to reach for it!” the officer shrieks.

“You told him to get his ID, sir,” Reynolds softly corrects. It isn’t until she’s handcuffed in the back of the police cruiser that she finally breaks down and sobs.

… A black person’s rights, even inalienable ones, can be stripped from them without due process. And, almost always, an officer who does so won’t be convicted of any wrongdoing.

…In a vacuum, police officers shouldn’t kill the very citizens they swear to protect.

…In a vacuum, it isn’t natural to pre-emptively shoot people to death, just as, in a vacuum, it isn’t natural to keep your gun trained on a person who has been rendered incapacitated and is bleeding out before you. This is specialized behavior, the sort expected from military forces entering unfamiliar war zones. Soldiers are trained to consider everyone and everything a potential threat, to neutralize any man, woman or child who could potentially cause them harm. The highest priorities are to protect themselves and to accomplish their mission, and that requires the trained dehumanization of the local population. In such an environment, the burden of not killing is lifted from the soldiers, and local people are tasked with the burden of not provoking death.

… This is seen as just, supported by the conceit that black citizens brought this upon themselves. The aggressive posture of the police, the fear that every man reaching for a wallet may be reaching for his weapon, only deepens. And everyone insisting on black citizens’ rights — to life, to due process, even to bear arms — is blamed for instigating violence against the police.

How the Police See Us, and How They Train Us to See Them – The New York Times

sigh…

Senate removes phrase ‘white nationalist’ from measure intended to screen military enlistees

On By peanutgallerynhIn Military,, Race,Leave a comment

The Republican-controlled Senate quietly cut the phrase “white nationalist” from a measure in the National Defense Authorization Act, which was intended to explicitly address the threat of white nationalists in the military.

The House amendment, which was passed in July, was drafted to explicitly study the feasibility of screening for white nationalist beliefs in military enlistees. 

…The news comes days after the US military and naval academies launched internal investigations after cadets and midshipmen were captured on ESPN’s pre-game show for the Army-Navy game making a hand gesture that some interpreted as white nationalist.

Senate removes phrase ‘white nationalist’ from measure intended to screen military enlistees – CNNPolitics

hmmmm

Sanders’s Climate Ambitions Thrill Supporters. Experts Aren’t Impressed.

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Environment,, Infrastructure and Transportation,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

Bernie Sanders’s $16 trillion vision for arresting global warming would put the government in charge of the power sector and promise that, by 2030, the country’s electricity and transportation systems would run entirely on wind, solar, hydropower or geothermal energy.

…The federal government to build and generate renewable energy, and sell it to publicly owned distribution systems, with preferential prices for utilities that pledge to break themselves of fossil fuels.

….Mr. Sander’s plan envisions expanding the four existing federal agencies that market electric power …[and] create a fifth such agency that would spend $1.52 trillion on developing renewable energy and another $852 billion on technology like advanced batteries to store energy for days when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow.

…Congress would have to create and fund these new entities, a heavy lift even with a Congress in Democratic control.

…Economists said, his climate plan fails to consider his larger agenda, such as the new infrastructure projects in his economic plan that would create a burst of new emissions. High-speed rail, wind turbines and mass transit need steel and concrete, the production of which requires energy.

…[Oppenheimer] said he was disappointed that Mr. Sanders no longer supported a carbon tax, a position he embraced in 2016. Economists say a fee on the burning of fossil fuels is the most efficient way to drive down global warming, but Mr. Sanders says that would not work quickly enough.

…Other analysts criticized Mr. Sanders’s rejection of nuclear energy and technology to capture and store carbon emissions. His plan calls both of those “false solutions” to climate change and calls for a moratorium on the renewal of nuclear power plant licenses.

Yet nuclear power currently accounts for 20 percent of the nation’s energy mix and more than half of its carbon-free power. Allowing aging plants to close would likely mean that natural gas, a fossil fuel, would fill the void and emissions would rise.

…Mr. Sanders is not a newcomer to the climate issue; he has spent decades fighting, largely unsuccessfully, for ambitious legislation to increase clean energy, reduce carbon emissions, and end fossil fuel subsidies. He distinguished himself in the 2016 Democratic primaries by calling for a tax on carbon emissions and declaring global warming a national emergency.

…Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist, said Mr. Sanders was more focused on signaling his ambitions to the party’s liberal wing than sweating policy details.

“People who care about these issues want a warrior,” Mr. Payne said. “Whether or not the battle plans they draw up exactly check out is kind of beside the point.” [emphasis: Peanut Gallery]

Sanders’s Climate Ambitions Thrill Supporters. Experts Aren’t Impressed. – The New York Times

hmmm

Bots in Blackface – The Rise of Fake Black People on Social Media Promoting Political Agendas

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

…Perceptive social media users have even unearthed fake black accounts using Google’s reverse image search feature. One such Twitter account, @Mike47441781, was proven to use a stock image as the account’s avatar.

…Mitchell says the activity behind these fake accounts boils down to “getting people not to vote for Democrats.” She points out that social media is the ultimate affordable platform for white supremacists.

…“The 3,500 ads on Facebook by the Russian Internet Research agency were centered largely on Black American Culture over all other identity and race-based narratives. …The themes of Black Identity and culture were the focus of the majority of the ads with the intent to engage in voter suppression of Black voters.” 

…The report found that Russian actors specifically manipulated topics such as Hillary Clinton’s “super predator” comment from 1996; and issues related to race and policing, immigration, and guns.

…Clearly, there are concerted efforts to splinter the powerful black voting bloc and to keep black people from voting. 

Bots in Blackface – The Rise of Fake Black People on Social Media Promoting Political Agendas – Black Enterprise

Sigh…

Leaked Trump Administration Memo: Keep Public in Dark About How Endangered Species Decisions Are Made

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Environment,Leave a comment

In a Trump administration memorandum leaked to the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is directing its staff to withhold, or delay releasing, certain public records about how the Endangered Species Act is carried out. That includes records where the advice of career wildlife scientists may be overridden by political appointees in the Trump administration.

…The memo recommends that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service limit the information released to the public for decisions regarding species protected under the Endangered Species Act. It provides a list of types of records for agency staff to withhold, including drafts of policies and rules, briefing documents and decision meeting notes and summaries.

The agency has already implemented aspects of this guidance in actions like the Keystone XL pipeline construction lawsuit, and in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision last year to prematurely remove endangered species protection from Yellowstone grizzly bears, as the memo confirms.

Leaked Trump Administration Memo: Keep Public in Dark About How Endangered Species Decisions Are Made – EcoWatch

Agggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh

Commandant Responds to Troubling Study on Marine Corps Culture

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Military,Leave a comment

The commandant of the Marine Corps has a message for fellow Marines who have a problem with women wearing the uniform: “Go somewhere else.”

“If we have one leader, one Marine, who thinks that females are really a pain in my backside and they don’t help my combat readiness, he’s either or she’s either got to change their mind, or go somewhere else,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger said during a discussion with reporters at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday. “We have one standard in the Marine Corps. Not two, not three. One.”

Commandant Responds to Troubling Study on Marine Corps Culture | Military.com

Thank you, Commandant. The Peanut Gallery has been saying this for years.

If you can’t take orders (and that includes accepting women, etc. into the ranks,) you can’t be in the military. Period.

Mississippi Blues Trail

On By peanutgallerynhIn Gulf Coast Region,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Race,Leave a comment

North of Bentonia, the road enters the vast alluvial plain known as the Mississippi Delta. Two hundred miles long and 70 miles across at its widest point, reaching from Memphis to Vicksburg, the Delta was the original epicenter of the blues. The music emerged at the turn of the 20th century and was characterized by raw emotional intensity, the use of repetition, and bent or sliding notes on the guitar or the diddley bow, a one-stringed instrument played with a slide. Most scholars trace the blues back to the field hollers and spirituals sung by slaves, and perhaps further back to West Africa, where similar musical scales and techniques can still be heard.

The Delta was a feudal, apartheid cotton society. White landowners ruled over huge plantations, and black sharecroppers toiled in the fields. For early bluesmen like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, playing music for money and whiskey was a way to escape hard labor, entertain a crowd, attract women and achieve a measure of freedom. 

…Holmes County, an hour north of Bentonia, is the poorest county in Mississippi, with a median household income of $22,325 and 62 percent of children living in poverty. “Mechanized farming hurt this place more than anything,” says Sam Calahan, 67, a retired music promoter standing by a blues marker in the small, rough town of Tchula.

“One good-sized plantation used to employ hundreds of men,” he says. “Now it don’t take but five or six tractor drivers, and there’s nothing else. A lot of people here have been on welfare for two or three generations. The stores have closed.

…Hoover takes visitors to the grave and some civil rights locations and the dusty old preserved shack that serves as his museum. “I’m making more with my tours than my store now.”

He’d like to see more support for blues tourism from local business leaders and politicians. “I’m trying to get grants and raise money to do more. We should have a couple of blues clubs with live music, a bigger museum, a soul food restaurant. These tourists got money. They just need somewhere to spend it.”

…Clarksdale, a town of 17,000 in the northwest Delta, is the undisputed capital of Mississippi blues tourism. It has live music seven nights a week and more than a dozen festivals through the year. 

…The old downtown is undergoing a major revitalization, with entrepreneurs, most of them white, opening restaurants, cafés, clubs, hotels, music stores and souvenir shops in previously run-down buildings. Many of the buildings have been left partially decrepit for a hard-bitten look. 

Buster Moton, a firebrand city commissioner representing a low-income, predominantly black ward, welcomes the tourists, but says there are too many white people profiting from an African-American art form. “Blues tourism is not providing jobs for the people who really need jobs or solving any problems in my part of town,” he says. “And we’re seeing more and more white musicians playing in white-owned clubs.”

…“A lot of money has gone into buildings and tourism,” says Abel. “But these old guys like John and Duck Holmes and a few others are still playing for peanuts, when they can even get a gig. I’d like to see them honored more, because they’re the last guys playing the real thing.”

…“If we’re basing economic development on the blues, then we must be concerned about the individuals who gave us this music,” he says, speaking from his home in Jackson. “We owe them that.”

Mississippi Blues Trail | Al Jazeera America

hmmm