Jeezus Krrreyest….
Category: Money, Class, and Poverty,
The women fighting a pipeline that could destroy precious wildlife at the mouth of the Mississippi
As colonial encroachment expanded, Houma people, the southern neighbors of the Caddo, moved further south into the remote swamps of the Atchafalaya near the Atakapaw, Choctaw and Chitimacha peoples. There, they evaded forced removals due to their inaccessible locations. Those conditions also brought escaped slaves into bayou communities, along with exiled Acadian French settlers from Canada. The amalgam of ethnicities and cultures led to what is known today as Cajun culture.
…In 1994, Exxon began dumping sludge in a waste dump installed next to the mostly Houma community of Grand Bois, Louisiana, making residents sick.
…The state-appointed toxicologist demonstrated a litany of health issues affecting residents, such as breathing, kidney and eye problems, skin rashes, birth defects, learning disabilities, cancer and high lead levels. She cited environmental contaminants as the likely culprit yet ultimately, she did not testify in court to a conclusive link to the site.
…“The BP spill was a disaster for our communities,” says Friloux. “It shut down our livelihood and the ability to provide for our families.” It destroyed the shrimping industry which is vital to the local economy. Similarly, clear-cutting ancient cypress forest and the disruption of sediment patterns by dredging canals and trenches to lay pipeline has choked out the crawfish population.
…The refinery corridor along the Mississippi river in St James – where the pipeline would end – is known as “cancer alley”. The mostly African American community is surrounded by refineries, and reports many of the same health issues seen in Grand Bois. No evacuation route exists should disaster strike, and the only bridge across the river was recently damaged by a barge carrying oil industry construction equipment, which closed the bridge for two months. Hemmed in on all sides by industry and the Mississippi, residents were forced to drive 40 miles round-trip to get essential supplies and to commute across the river for work.
“Forty-one percent of the United States’ water drains through our mighty river,” says Verdin. “The Mississippi Delta is a power point for the planet, a place where water comes to be purified. Yet we are a sacrifice zone.”
…The common ETP practice when a landowner refuses a buyout is to file an expropriation claim, then begin construction on the assumption it will be approved. In one instance however, the claim was not filed before construction began.
The landowners invited activists to set up camp on their property and mount resistance actions. Officers then arrested the activists, who were on land they had written permission to be on (trespassing on pipeline domain is a felony punishable by five years in prison according to a “critical infrastructure” law recently passed in Louisiana).
Construction of the pipeline is now complete on the disputed property, and 18 felony charges remain pending.
…Foytlin became an environmentalist when she volunteered on the BP spill clean up. “I remember pulling a dying pelican out of the water covered in oil, and thinking that pelican didn’t have a voice and neither did the fisherfolk I was with – who were on their knees crying like children”, she says.
“Our goal is to create space where justice can be found”, she says. “Initially, we had three objectives besides stopping the pipeline. First, to establish an evacuation route for St James (the state says it is evaluating options). Second, to lift up the needs of the Atchafalaya Basin. Third, is to activate a group of people to make a better future for themselves.”
They recently added another goal: to bring light to the brutal tactics being used to attempt to intimidate them into submission.
…“Intimidation works,” she says, “but witnessing courage is like an immunization to that fear. That’s who we are at L’eau Est La Vie.”
The women fighting a pipeline that could destroy precious wildlife | US news | The Guardian
sigh….
Director Hao Wu Explores Live Streaming Revolution and How Technology Affects Human Happiness in his film: People’s Republic of Desire
Wu talked to us at length about the making of this film, what shocked him the most about live streaming culture, the film’s co-star and internet celebrity Shen Man’s interesting reaction to the film, how she and Big Li are doing today, and what China’s “crackdown” on live streaming actually means.
This was the only article/review we could find with a bit of, “where are they now?”
Pentagon Spent $4.6 Million on Lobster Tail and Crab in One Month
The federal government spends a disproportionate amount of its budget for outside contractors in the final month of the fiscal year, as agencies rush to blow through cash before it’s too late. Among the more noteworthy expenditures in 2018, according to the watchdog group Open the Books, was $4.6 million for lobster tail and crab.
Such use-it-or-lose-it spending stems from the fact that each federal agency is given a certain amount of money it can spend on outside contractors for the fiscal year. If the agency comes in under budget, Congress might decide to appropriate less money the following year.
Pentagon Spent $4.6 Million on Lobster Tail and Crab in One Month – Hit & Run : Reason.com
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Repurposing Existing Drugs for New Indications
Many academic researchers are turning their attention to existing drugs as a potential goldmine of therapies that are cheaper and faster to move into the clinic, and they’re getting more methodical in their approach. Stephen Wong, a biomedical engineer at the Houston Methodist Research Institute in Texas, switched his focus from novel drug discovery to repurposing nine years ago when he realized the breadth and depth of clinical trials and basic science information available online. That has “really changed everything for drug development,” he says. Wong’s lab culls and archives publicly available omics research databases, journal articles and conference abstracts, human clinical trial data, patents, and Houston Methodist’s database of longitudinal patient records, as well as privately generated omics data from preclinical disease models. The researchers then mine the information to identify molecules and combinations of molecules that match disease targets and pathways using artificial intelligence algorithms. “We call our technology the DrugX engine,” says Wong. “It’s like Google but for drug discovery.”
…While academic labs continue to churn out new leads, they often encounter difficulties garnering industry interest to support trials for a new use of a generic drug. After Eric Verdin, president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California, and his colleagues identified two possible clinical uses for an aspirin derivative in mice,5,6 for example, the team was unable to find a partner to move the compounds into clinical trials. “I’m becoming disenchanted with drug repurposing,” Verdin says. “It’s impossible to get funding from venture capitalists or even from our institution’s intellectual property office.” Verdin said he was advised to modify the molecules to make them unique, such that they would be patentable and generate revenue. “But [if the generic version works], this is completely the opposite of what one should do with this type of discovery,” he says.
…Due to this lack of monetary incentive, “generic drugs found to work for a new disease are in a state of purgatory,” says Wegner. Indeed, no generic drug has ever been approved for a new indication by a manufacturer without modification of the drug’s delivery or its dose, which would provide renewed patent protection.
Repurposing Existing Drugs for New Indications | The Scientist Magazine®
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The Mar-a-Lago Connection to the Cindy Yang Affair Raises Huge Security Risks
If the president of the United States is letting a Chinese madam sell access at Mar-a-Lago to Chinese business people while his friends are getting serviced at businesses she started, he is making himself and the country vulnerable to massive blackmail risk. It is a textbook story of how foreign actors gain leverage over senior officials.
…Yang also founded a business with her husband in 2017 called “GY US Investments” which offered itself, according to the Mother Jones account, as an “international business consulting firm that provides public relations services to assist business in America to establish and expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace.”
While that sounds like typical consulting firm gobbledygook, the rest of the site makes it clear that what the company did was promise access to the President of the United States, his family and his resort Mar-a-Lago as a way of helping Chinese businesses establish themselves in the U.S. and worldwide.
…Pictures of her clients with the Trump sons Eric and Don, Jr. adorn her own website. She has, it turns out, been a big donor to Trump and to the GOP, even appearing in one picture with Don Jr. while holding a “MAGA” clutch purse.
…It also reminds us of the section of the Steele Dossier which stated that some Republicans welcomed the “distraction” of the Russian interference story because it “deflected” attention from “TRUMP’S business dealings in China and other emerging markets. Unlike in Russia, these were substantial and involved the payment of large bribes and kickbacks which, were they to become public, would be potentially very damaging to their campaign.”
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Study By MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed To A Third-World Nation For Most Of Its Citizens
Temin applied W. Arthur Lewis’s economic model – designed to understand the workings of developing countries – to the United States in an effort to document how inequality has grown in America.
…In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check*. The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses.* Check*. Social control is used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector.* Mass incarceration – check*. The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes.* Check*. Social and economic mobility is low.* Check*.*
Temin describes multiple contributing factors in the nation’s arrival at this place, from exchanging the War on Poverty for the War on Drugs to money in politics and systemic racism. He outlines the ways in which racial prejudice continues to lurk below the surface, allowing politicians to appeal to the age old “desire to preserve the inferior status of blacks”, encouraging white low-wage workers to accept their lesser place in society.
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Why Can’t the United States Build a High-Speed Rail System?
What’s missing is a federal commitment to a well-funded national rail plan. Instead, we have a political system in which the federal government, having devolved virtually all decision-making power to states, cannot prioritize one project over another in the national interest. We have a funding system that encourages study after study of unfundable or unbuildable projects in places that refuse to commit their own resources. And we have a bureaucracy that, having never operated or constructed modern intercity rail, doesn’t understand what it takes. This helter-skelter approach to transportation improvements is fundamentally incapable of supporting large-expenditure, long-range projects like high-speed rail.
This wasn’t always the case. In 1956, Congress approved a significant increase in the federal gas tax, and with it a national plan for interstate highways. That plan, which included a steady stream of funding and a clear map of national priorities, was mostly completed over the next three decades. Though implemented by states, highway alignments were chosen at the national level, with the intention of connecting the largest cities, regardless of political boundaries. Funding came almost entirely (90 percent) from the national government and was guaranteed as long as a route was on the national map. Physical requirements for roadways were mandated at the national level and universally applied. And construction was completed by state departments of transportation that were technically knowledgeable, accustomed to building such public works, and able to make decisions about how to move forward.
…Intercity transportation systems require active federal engagement to guarantee the development of routes that reflect national needs and national priorities.
Why Can’t the United States Build a High-Speed Rail System? – CityLab
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How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country
The group, the local chapter for Americans for Prosperity, which is financed by the oil billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch to advance conservative causes, fanned out and began strategically knocking on doors. Their targets: voters most likely to oppose a local plan to build light-rail trains, a traffic-easing tunnel and new bus routes.
…At the heart of their effort is a network of activists who use a sophisticated data service built by the Kochs, called i360, that helps them identify and rally voters who are inclined to their worldview. It is a particularly powerful version of the technologies used by major political parties.
…i360, the Kochs’ data operation, …profiles Americans based on their voter registration information, consumer data and social media activities. The canvassers divided the neighborhoods into “walkbooks,” or clusters of several dozen homes, and broke into teams of two.
There are rules: No more than two people at a door (to avoid appearing threatening). No stepping on lawns (homeowners don’t like it). And focus strictly on the registered voter. If anyone else answers, say a polite “thanks” and move on.
…Their data zeroed in on people thought to be anti-tax or anti-transit and likely to vote.
…Supporters of transit investments point to research that shows that they reduce traffic, spur economic development and fight global warming by reducing emissions. Americans for Prosperity counters that public transit plans waste taxpayer money on unpopular, outdated technology like trains and buses just as the world is moving toward cleaner, driverless vehicles.
Most American cities do not have the population density to support mass transit, the group says. It also asserts that transit brings unwanted gentrification to some areas, while failing to reach others altogether.
Public transit, Americans for Prosperity says, goes against the liberties that Americans hold dear.
…Another weapon in the Koch arsenal is Randal O’Toole, a transit expertat the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington that Charles Koch helped found in the 1970s. Declaring transit “dead” and streetcars “a scam,” he has become a go-to expert for anti-transit groups.
…One of the mainstay companies of Koch Industries, the Kochs’ conglomerate, is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also makes seatbelts, tires and other automotive parts. Even as Americans for Prosperity opposes public investment in transit, it supports spending tax money on highways and roads.
“Stopping higher taxes is their rallying cry,” said Ashley Robbins, a researcher at Virginia Tech who follows transportation funding. “But at the end of the day, fuel consumption helps them.”
…Americans for Prosperity and other Koch-backed groups have also opposed more than two dozen other transit-related measures — including many states’ bids to raise gas taxes to fund transit or transportation infrastructure — by organizing phone banks, running advertising campaigns, staging public forums, issuing reports and writing opinion pieces in local publications.
…The paucity of federal funding for transit projects means that local ballots are critical in shaping how Americans travel, with decades-long repercussions for the economy and the environment.
…The scale of the Kochs’ anti-transit spending is difficult to gauge at the local level, because campaign finance disclosure standards vary among municipalities. But at the state and national level, the picture gets clearer.
Last year Americans for Prosperity spent $711,000 on lobbying for various issues, a near 1,000-fold increase since 2011, when it spent $856. Overall, the group has spent almost $4 million on state-level lobbying the past seven years, according to disclosures compiled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisannonprofit that tracks political spending.
…In Indiana, it marshaled opposition to a 2017 Republican gas-tax plan meant to raise roughly a billion dollars to invest in local buses and other projects. In New Jersey, the group ran an ad against a proposed gas-tax increase in 2016 that showed a father giving away his baby’s milk bottle, and also Sparky the family dog, to pay for transit improvements among other things. “Save Sparky,” the ad implores.
In Nashville, Americans for Prosperity played a major role: organizing door-to-door canvassing teams using iPads running the i360 software. Those in-kind contributions can be difficult to measure. According to A.F.P.’s campaign finance disclosure, the group made only one contribution, of $4,744, to the campaign for “canvassing expenses.”
How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country – The New York Times
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N.Y. regulators probing Trump Organization’s insurance practices
Asked by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., if Trump ever inflated the value of his assets to an insurance company, Cohen replied, “Yes.”
N.Y. regulators probing Trump Organization’s insurance practices
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Camp Fire: PG&E says it’s ‘probable’ its equipment will be found to have caused blaze
As a result of the blaze, which claimed at least 86 lives and destroyed 14,000 homes, the company said it recorded a $10.5 billion charge ahead of anticipated claims.
…The utility previously said it anticipated being found responsible for damages from the Camp Fire and other California wildfires. The expectation of huge losses led to the company filing for bankruptcy last month.
…Subsequent inspections of this transmission line identified equipment that should have been repaired or replaced, the company said.
Camp Fire: PG&E says it’s ‘probable’ its equipment will be found to have caused blaze – CNN
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In Senate testimony, pharma executive acknowledges that drug prices hit poor the hardest
Top executives from seven major pharmaceutical companies told a Senate committee on Tuesday they could not commit to lower the price of commonly used prescription drugs even as they admitted that they control those prices. And one executive acknowledged that the high cost of medicines hits poorest patients the hardest.
…The finance committee has separately launched an investigation into the sharp increase of insulin and the three top insulin makers, Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk. Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk executives were not present at the hearing. President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was a top executive at Eli Lilly for five years until he was tapped by Trump to run HHS.
In Senate testimony, pharma executive admits drug prices hit poor the hardest
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Former Trump campaign staffer sues, alleging that Trump kissed her without consent
Alva Johnson, a former Trump campaign staffer who lives in Alabama, alleges in a lawsuit filed Monday that Trump grabbed her hand and forcibly kissed her without her consent inside an RV in Florida in August 2016.
…”As Defendant Trump spoke, he tightened his grip on Ms. Johnson’s hand and leaned towards her. He moved close enough that she could feel his breath on her skin,” the lawsuit states. “Ms. Johnson suddenly realized that Defendant Trump was trying to kiss her on the mouth, and attempted to avoid this by turning her head to the right. Defendant Trump kissed her anyway, and the kiss landed on the corner of her mouth.”
The lawsuit alleges that several witnesses saw incident, including then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, then-State Director Karen Giorno, and Regional Directors Earl “Tony” Ledbetter, Mitch Tyner and Nick Corvino.
The lawsuit alleges that Bondi smiled when the incident occurred and Giorno “grabbed Ms. Johnson’s elbow and gave it an approving tug.”
…”Ms. Johnson was also underpaid compared to similarly qualified and less qualified male staffers,” the lawsuit states. “She did not know this fact until very recently. Ms. Johnson’s experience is not isolated— indeed, the Campaign engaged in systemic gender discrimination in pay against its female employees.”
Former Trump campaign staffer sues, alleging that Trump kissed her without consent – CNNPolitics
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Pay-to-Stay: Families of NH juvenile offenders are forced to pay for costs of care
…When juveniles are incarcerated at the Sununu Youth Services Center or other treatment centers, are enrolled in Children in Need of Services (CHINS), [or] are placed into foster care, an elaborate system kicks in to force parents to contribute to the cost of that care.
Formulas come into play, Social Security benefits can be requisitioned, liens can be put on property, people can be hauled into court. Four thousand cases are currently open, the state says.
…Fees rack up quickly. An overnight stay at a secure or intensive facility can top $700 a day, and the state levies charges for services that range from family counseling ($86 an hour) to transportation ($21 an hour) to foster care ($23 per day). Collections continue four years after services end, meaning a person can be well into adulthood while a parent is still paying for their childhood misbehavior or other services.
…Most services continue to fall under the law requiring parental reimbursement: CHINS, whether voluntary or court-ordered; children judged delinquent and placed in the Sununu Center or other residential programs, whether voluntarily or court-ordered; and court-ordered services in cases of abuse and neglect.
…Parents of a minor who is a mother are responsible for their grandchild, if the child is housed at the facility where the minor mother lives. No mention is made of responsibility for the child’s father or his parents.
…When youth become involved with the juvenile justice system, their parents can be desperate for help, she said. They will sign anything without realizing the implications, she said. Then the bill arrives.
Jeezus….
Oh, and the mother who signed her kid away to the courts only to spend all of her time begging the courts to give the kid back? This is what happens when you think the police and courts are going to help you parent. They’re not. They’re really, really not.
Ford investigating possible problems with fuel economy, emissions tests
Ford Motor Co said on Thursday it had hired outside experts to investigate its vehicle fuel economy and testing procedures after employees raised concerns, and did not know whether it would have to correct data given to regulators or consumers.
UPDATE 1-Ford investigating possible problems with fuel economy, emissions tests
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Emails reveal coordination between Chao, McConnell offices
Chao has met at least 10 times with politicians and business leaders from the state in response to requests from McConnell’s office, according to documents provided to Politico by the watchdog group American Oversight. In some cases, those people later received what they were hoping for from Chao’s department, including infrastructure grants, the designation of an interstate highway and assistance in getting state funds for a highway project — although the documents don’t indicate that the meetings led to those outcomes.
…A dozen of the emails show McConnell’s staff acting as a conduit between Chao and Kentucky political figures or business leaders, some of whom previously have had relationships with the couple.
…American Oversight obtained the emails under the Freedom of Information Act. The group’s founder and executive director , Austin Evers, said they show an unusually close relationship between a Senate leader and a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet — and that “Secretary Chao built a political operation in her office to favor Kentucky.”
“We launched this investigation because we were intrigued by the president’s selection of Elaine Chao as Transportation secretary,” Evers said. “The media and political class identified it as a savvy move to hire the spouse of the majority leader of the Senate. We wanted to see what that relationship looked like.”
…Evers from American Oversight contended that in these emails, Chao’s staff appear to go out of their way to make McConnell’s Kentucky contacts “feel special.” In one March 2017 email to Inman, requesting a meeting between Chao and the group Kentuckians for Better Transportation, Carmack suggested that if Chao couldn’t make it, perhaps “an assistant secretary or 2” could. “That way it is not taking up the Secretary’s time but they feel special,” Carmack continued.
…Evers highlighted two instances when DOT’s Inman instructed McConnell staffers to flag requests from Kentuckians for him in addition to sending them to Chao’s schedulers, “to make sure we take an extra look at” them.
…“The Secretary has indicated if you have a [Kentucky-]specific issue that we should flag for her attention to please continue to go through your normal channels but feel free to contact me directly as well so we can monitor or follow up as necessary,” Inman wrote to McConnell’s then-chief of staff, Brian McGuire, in an email from Feb. 28, 2017.
…In one email thread from March 2017, McConnell’s staff describes Hart County, Ky., Judge/Executive Terry Martin — the county’s top elected official — as a “loyal supporter” and “friend.”
…Oversight groups aren’t just worried about the meetings Chao is granting, however. A previously unreleased report from the watchdog group Restore Public Trust questions the 2018 choice of a town of about 25,000 residents situated near the Tennessee, Ohio, Cumberland and Mississippi rivers, as the site of a new DOT maritime gateway office intended to help coordinate between port operators and government bodies to help improve freight movement on inland waterways.
Paducah is the smallest city to host one of DOT’s 10 maritime gateway offices. The nine other such offices are in major cities such as New York, Chicago and Miami.
Emails reveal coordination between Chao, McConnell offices – POLITICO
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In Brexit, Could Ireland Wear the Crown?
In other words, as Britain self-combusts, Ireland—with its young workforce, low taxes, and English fluency—is poised to pounce.
…Ahead of the Brexit deadline, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Barclays moved their EU headquarters from London to Dublin in a bid to minimize disruption; Barclays alone has shifted some $215 billion in asset management to the Irish capital. (Both banks declined to comment on the moves.) Rivals Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs have promised to bulk up their own Dublin operations in the face of U.K. uncertainty, even as they maintain offices in the British capital.
…The ascent of Ireland as a global player and the subtle shift in power between it and the U.K. isn’t going over well with some in Britain—namely, the Brexit supporters who remain in Parliament. One Conservative member derided “the obdurate Irish government” for being overly concerned with border issues. Another was widely condemned in December for suggesting that Downing Street use the threat of economic damage, including food shortages, to compel Ireland to agree to a more favorable deal for the U.K.—an uncomfortable echo of the Great Famine of the 19th century. “We simply cannot allow the Irish to treat us this way,” an unnamed member of Parliament reportedly told a BBC columnist that same month, adding: “The Irish really should know their place.”
…The businesses moving to Dublin, Frankfurt, and Paris are not fly-by-night call centers, sweatshops, or hubs of unattractive work. Rather, they are the white-collar, green-collar, and gold-collar jobs upon which the 21st century’s economic power is being built. Ireland seems prepared to grab them all. “Small is beautiful. It keeps us agile,” says Bushnell, herself not quite 5 feet 3 inches. “We can’t scale nationally. We can only scale internationally. Instead of going wide, we are going deep. That has sent us up the value chain. We’re not call centers anymore. People are taking our calls now.”
If it sounds like the giddy optimism of millennial invincibility, that’s because it is: With a median age of 35.9, Ireland has the youngest population in the EU, putting it on par with such booming populations as those of Brazil, China, Qatar, Singapore, and Thailand. (The EU-wide median is 42.8; Germany claims the highest median age at 45.9.) “We always had cachet but were seen as riding coattails, either of the U.K. or the EU,” says Daniel Mulhall, an Irish ambassador who has served in Britain, Germany, India, and is currently ambassador to the U.S. Times have changed. “We became our own country,” he says. “We have our own ideas at last.”
…A cultural revolution has certainly helped make Ireland more internationally attractive. By referendum, Ireland last year rewrote its constitution to legalize abortion, just three years after it legalized gay marriage, also by referendum. The Irish government last year barred the Catholic Church, which controls 90% of the school system on its behalf, from admissions discrimination on religious grounds. Look no further than Taoiseach Varadkar to mark social progress; he is a gay, unmarried, 38-year-old man of Indian and Irish descent who is the head of government in a country that only decriminalized homosexuality in 1993. In the U.S., this would be the equivalent of the first black president taking office in 1888, not long after the abolition of slavery. “It’s no coincidence,” Traynor says, “that the people fighting for our future here are the ones who can still remember living in its past.”
In Brexit, Could Ireland Wear the Crown? | Fortune
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Supreme Court delivers a win to former addict in excessive fines case
Gorsuch and Thomas, who did not sign onto Ginsburg’s opinion, each wrote separate concurrences agreeing with the majority’s conclusion. The two conservatives would have used a different mechanism to incorporate the 8th Amendment, they wrote, relying on the 14th Amendment’s privileges and immunities clause, rather than its due process clause, as Ginsburg and the rest of the court did..
…Ginsburg delivered a staunch defense of the prohibition against excessive fines, tracing the lineage of the protection back to the Magna Carta to the current day.
She wrote that protection against excessive fines has been a “constant shield” and argued that high tolls can be used to undermine other liberties, to “chill the speech of political enemies,” and as a form of retribution. Citing a brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Ginsburg wrote that the court’s concerns were “scarcely hypothetical.”
In its brief, the ACLU argued that the “explosion of fines, fees, and forfeitures has buried people under mountains of accumulating debt.”
The group wrote that the fines can “lead to a host of collateral harms — wage garnishment, loss of employment and housing, poor credit ratings, driver’s license suspension, incarceration, prohibitions on the right to vote, and even family separation.”
Supreme Court delivers a win to former addict in excessive fines case
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Comments From The Peanut Gallery 