Border agent demands ID from woman in Montana after hearing her speak Spanish – CNN
Your papers. please.
N.J. cop caught on camera punching woman during beach arrest
Video showed the officer straddling the woman in the sand, and wailing away at her head as he ordered her to “stop resisting.”
…Neither the officer who hit Weinman nor another cop that grabbed her legs or a third one who stood by has been identified.
N.J. cop caught on camera punching woman during beach arrest
Until we insist on orderly and lawful behavior from “officers of the law,” we will never be a society of law and order.
The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism
Their study finds a correlation between white American’s intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.
…Based on surveys from the United States, the authors found that white people who did not want to have immigrants or people of different races living next door to them were more likely to be supportive of authoritarianism. For instance, people who said they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race were more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results.
…In practice, the GOP has increasingly been embracing a politics of white resentment tied to disenfranchisement. “Since Richard Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy,’ the GOP has pigeon-holed itself as, in large part, an aggrieved white people’s party,” Miller told me.
Trump’s nativist language made the GOP’s sympathies more explicit, leading to further erosion of support among non-white voters.
…The GOP, seeing their coming demographic apocalypse, has pushed voter ID laws and other barriers to voting to try to prevent black and other minority voters from getting to the polls. In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker even attempted to delay elections for state seats that he believed Democrats would win.
…”Social intolerance isn’t just leading to GOP support as we know it and see it now,” Miller says. “It’s leading to preferences in favor of the kind of candidate the GOP ultimately nominated and supported for president.” In embracing the politics of white identity, then, the GOP made a Trump possible — and is likely to make more Trump-like candidates successful in the future.
hmmm
Why trains run slower now than they did in the 1920s.
The aforementioned Montreal Limited, for example, circa 1942, would pull out of New York’s Grand Central Station at 11:15 p.m., arriving at Montreal’s (now defunct) Windsor Station at 8:25 a.m., a little more than nine hours later. To make that journey today, from New York’s Penn Station on the Adirondack, requires a nearly 12-hour ride. The trip from Chicago to Minneapolis via the Olympian Hiawatha in the 1950s took about four and a half hours; today, via Amtrak’s Empire Builder, the journey is more than eight hours. Going from Brattleboro, Vt., to New York City on the Boston and Maine Railroad’s Washingtonian took less than five hours in 1938; today, Amtrak’s Vermonter (the only option) takes six hours—if it’s on time, which it isn’t, nearly 75 percent of the time.
… 220 mph would be phenomenal, but we would also do well to simply get trains back up to the speeds they traveled at during the Harding administration. Consider, for example, the Burlington Zephyr, …which barreled from Chicago to Denver in 1934 in a little more than 13 hours. (It would take more than 18 today.) An article later that year, by which time the Zephyr had put on the “harness of a regular railroad schedule,” quoted a conductor complaining the train was “loafing” along at only 85 mph. But it was not uncommon for the Zephyr or other trains to hit speeds of more than 100 mph in the 1930s. Today’s “high-speed” Acela service on Amtrak has an average speed of 87 mph and a rarely hit peak speed of 150 mph. (The engine itself could top 200 mph.)
…Less rail capacity (and rail quality) has coincided with a dramatic rise in freight traffic in recent years, owing in part to a buoyant economy and in part to trains’ improving (and now superior) fuel efficiency to trucks—particularly as diesel fuel prices have risen. Despite recent infrastructure spending, bottlenecks are routine, as passenger trains typically yield to passing freight trains.
…As it turns out, there are actually plenty of examples of “technological regress” throughout history. As this fascinating paper notes, the process of building with cement had reached a high point during the Roman Empire, only to be “lost” until its reinvention in the early 13th century. The United States has lost not so much the technology of rail speed as the public will, the cultural memory; this may have made sense for a historical period, but now, weighed in terms of the congestion, carbon emissions, and comfort of other travel modes, it seems time to reach for the way-back machine. As journalist Philip Longman has pointed out, where “fast mail trains” once “ensured next-day delivery on a letter mailed with a standard two-cent stamp in New York to points as far west as Chicago,” today, “that same letter is likely to travel by air first to FedEx’s Memphis hub, then be unloaded, sorted, and reloaded onto another plane, a process that demands far greater expenditures of money, carbon, fuel, and, in many instances, time than the one used eighty years ago.” In building our “bridge to the 21st Century” we might remember the Roman god Janus, patron of, among other things, bridges: He looked backward as well as forward.
Why trains run slower now than they did in the 1920s.
Sigh…
Medical Marijuana May Be Slowing Opioid Epidemic : Shots – Health News : NPR
Medical marijuana appears to have put a dent in the opioid abuse epidemic, according to two studies published Monday.
The research suggests that some people turn to marijuana as a way to treat their pain, and by so doing, avoid more dangerous addictive drugs.
…Many people end up abusing opioid drugs such as oxycodone and heroin after starting off with a legitimate prescription for pain. The authors argue that people who avoid that first prescription are less likely to end up as part of the opioid epidemic.
…They estimate that these dispensary programs reduced the number of opioid prescriptions by 3.7 million daily doses. States that allowed homegrown marijuana for medical use saw an estimated 1.8 million fewer pills dispensed per day. To put that in perspective, from 2010 to 2015 Medicare recipients received an average of 23 million daily doses of opioids, the researchers say.
…The authors write that laws that permit both medical marijuana and recreational marijuana for adults “have the potential to reduce opioid prescribing for Medicaid enrollees, a segment of population with disproportionately high risk for chronic pain, opioid use disorder and opioid overdose.”
Medical Marijuana May Be Slowing Opioid Epidemic : Shots – Health News : NPR
No shit, Dick Tracy?
Grocery bags and takeout containers aren’t enough. It’s time to phase out all single-use plastic
The state and local rules certainly have raised public awareness about the problem. Denying free plastic bags at checkout or providing plastic straws only on request sends consumers an important message that there’s a bigger cost to these everyday items than they may have considered. But the actual flow of trash has been disrupted only modestly.
…Cutting jobs on a disposable plastic product line doesn’t automatically translate into fewer people employed. If the door closes on polystyrene takeout containers, for example, it will open for cardboard and other biodegradable alternatives.
No one expects consumers to give up convenience completely. In fact, the market for bio-plastic alternatives, which are made from corn starch and other biodegradable sources, is already growing thanks to public awareness and the sporadic efforts to curb plastic waste.
Opponents will insist that the answer is just to encourage more recycling. Not only is recycling not the answer (see China’s diminished appetite for imported plastic trash), it has only enabled our addiction to convenient, disposable plastic packaging to deepen for some 60 years.
Grocery bags and takeout containers aren’t enough. It’s time to phase out all single-use plastic
hmmmm
‘Welfare Makes People Lazy’: A Myth That Needs Busting
“Welfare makes people lazy.” The notion is buried so deep within mainstream political thought that it can often be stated without evidence. It was explicit during the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt’s WPA (Works Progress Administration) was nicknamed “We Piddle Around” by his detractors. It was implicit in Bill Clinton’s pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” Even today, it is an intellectual pillar of conservative economic theory, which recommends slashing programs like Medicaid and cash assistance, partly out of a fear that self-reliance atrophies in the face of government assistance.
…the United States, where a core mission of the Republican Party is to reduce government aid to the poor, on the assumption that it makes them lazy. This attitude is supported by many conservative economists, who argue that government benefits implicitly reward poverty and thus encourage families to remain poor—the idea being that some adults might reject certain jobs or longer work hours because doing so would eliminate their eligibility for programs like Medicaid.
But this concern has little basis in reality. One of the latest studies on the subject found that Medicaid has “little if any” impact on employment or work hours. In research based in Canada and the U.S., the economist Ioana Marinescu at the University of Pennsylvania has found that even when basic-income programs do reduce working hours, adults don’t typically stay home to, say, play video games; instead, they often use the extra cash to go back to school or hold out for a more desirable job.
But the standard conservative critique of Medicaid and other welfare programs is wrong on another plane entirely. It fails to account for the conclusion of the Prospera research: Anti-poverty programs can work wonders for their youngest beneficiaries. It’s true north of the border, as well. American adults whose families had access to prenatal coverage under Medicaid have lower rates of obesity, higher rates of high-school graduation, and higher incomes as adults than those from similar households in states without Medicaid, according to a 2015 paper from the economists Sarah Miller and Laura R. Wherry. Another paper found that children covered by Medicaid expansions went on to earn higher wages and require less welfare assistance as adults.
‘Welfare Makes People Lazy’: A Myth That Needs Busting – The Atlantic
hmmmm
Leaked: Cambridge Analytica’s blueprint for Trump victory
[The Trump campaign worked with Cambridge Analytica to] micro-target US voters with carefully tailored messages about the Republican nominee across digital channels.
Intensive survey research, data modelling and performance-optimising algorithms were used to target 10,000 different ads to different audiences in the months leading up to the election. The ads were viewed billions of times, according to the presentation.
…None of the techniques described in the document are illegal. However, the scandal over Cambridge Analytica’s acquisition of data from more than 50 million Facebook users is lifting the lid on an industry that has learned how to closely track the online footprint and daily lives of US voters.
…The Republican nominee, who had just secured sufficient delegates to become the party’s candidate, still had “no speakable data infrastructure” and “no unifying data, digital and tech strategy”, the document states.
…“There was no database of record. There were many disparate data sources that were not connected, matched or hygiened,” she said of the process of ordering, sorting and cleaning enormous data sets. “There was no data science programme, so they weren’t undertaking any modelling. There was no digital marketing team.”
…The document contains very little information about how the campaign used Facebook data. One page, however, suggests Cambridge Analytica was able to constantly monitor the effectiveness of its messaging on different types of voters, giving the company and the campaign constant feedback about levels of engagement on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat.
The feedback loop meant the algorithms could be constantly updated and improved to deliver thousands of different messages to voters depending on their profile.
…Voters in areas where people were likely to be Trump supporters were shown a triumphant-looking image of the nominee, and help finding their nearest polling station.
Those whose geographical information suggested they were not fervent Trump supporters, such as swing voters, were shown photos of his high-profile supporters, including his daughter Ivanka Trump, a celebrity from the reality TV show Duck Dynasty, and Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
One of the most effective ads, according to Kaiser, was a piece of native advertising on the political news website Politico, which was also profiled in the presentation. The interactive graphic, which looked like a piece of journalism and purported to list “10 inconvenient truths about the Clinton Foundation”, appeared for several weeks to people from a list of key swing states when they visited the site. It was produced by the in-house Politico team that creates sponsored content.
…Advertisements on Facebook, Twitter, Google and the music-sharing app Pandora were used to help convince 35,000 supporters to install an app used by the most active supporters.
According to the presentation, Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign also used a new advertising technique offered by Twitter, launched at the start of the election year, which enabled clients to kickstart viral tweets.
The “conversational ads” feature was used to encourage Trump’s followers to tweet using a set of pre-determined hashtags.
The campaign also took advantage of an ad opportunity provided by Snapchat, enabling users to swipe up and immediately see a preloaded web page. While not useful for securing donors, Cambridge Analytica deemed the tool useful for engaging potential voter “contacts”, according to the presentation.
One of the final slides explains how the company used paid-for Google ads to implement “persuasion search advertising”, to push pro-Trump and anti-Clinton search results through the company’s main search facility.
Leaked: Cambridge Analytica’s blueprint for Trump victory | UK news | The Guardian
hmmmm
Trump Failed the Americans of Puerto Rico
It’s going to be difficult, perhaps impossible, to assess how much of it had to do with the federal government’s indifference and ineffectiveness; how much was the fault of current Puerto Rican government officials; and how much was the effects of long-term Puerto Rican poverty and structural conditions.
Even so, President Donald Trump’s reaction was awful. He picked fights with local government, and during his visit to the island he focused far more on congratulating himself than on doing something worth bragging about.
Worse, he didn’t follow up. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands simply disappeared from his public statements, and there’s no reporting to indicate that anything was different behind closed doors. There’s no record of FEMA officials or anyone else being summoned to the White House and urged to do more. No evidence of high-level White House coordination of the efforts, such as they were, from the various agencies involved. In fact, the best reporting on the government response, from Politico’s Danny Vinik, shows that it was botched from the get-go, with the government going all out to assist Houston but not Puerto Rico.
Trump Failed the Americans of Puerto Rico
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Facebook Gave 60 Tech Firms Including Apple, Samsung ‘Deep Access’ to User Data-But Denies It Was Wrong
The U.S. social networking website set up data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 phone and tablet makers over the past 10 years. In the exchange, Facebook could expand its reach while the companies could implement features such as “like” buttons and image sharing. It alleged Facebook gave access to user data without consent.
Experts voiced concern that reckless sharing of data could lead to security and privacy risks. Accessed Facebook information, meanwhile, allegedly included political preferences, relationship statuses and upcoming diary dates—even for users who had not given explicit permission for their data to be shared.
The profile information was allegedly obtained via privately-built application programming interfaces (APIs) which are the back-end protocols that are used to develop mobile apps, functions and systems. It has been confirmed that Facebook user data was stored on the technology companies’ servers.
When commodification of your customer base goes wrong and it should have dawned on you that if it wasn’t wrong to treat people, at the very least it was going to come back and bite you on the ass a bit but you never admit any wrong doing or make admissions that might open the corporate entity up to lawsuits so you double-down on delusional and obnoxious positions. Doh!
Seriously, any more of these delusional denials from facebook and I’m going to start rooting for all of the insufferable eggheads who’ve made money of this to be thrown unceremoniously in jail.
Claudia Gómez González Wasn’t Killed by a Rogue Border Agent—She Was Killed by a Rogue Agency
Since 2003, CBP agents have killed 97 people. While the causes of death span a wide range—from being run over by agents’ cars to being killed by tasers or beatings—the majority of killings were from bullet wounds, in many cases from shots to the back. Of the 97 people killed by CBP in this timespan, at least six were children.
Nor is CBP violence limited to immigrants crossing the southern border. No fewer than 28 of those killed were US citizens. And, while most of the CBP killings recorded by The Guardian occurred in Texas, Arizona, and California, CBP agents also operate with impunity along the northern border. Since 2003, CBP agents have killed people in Maine, Michigan, Montana, New York, and Washington State.
…As Americans are awakening to the news that children are being separated from their parents at the border, we must also heed the findings of a recent American Civil Liberties Union report that reviewed 30,000 pages of federal records and found evidence of “rampant abuse” of unaccompanied minors by CBP, including threats of rape and children “being stomped on, punched, kicked, run over with vehicles, tased, and forced to maintain stress positions by CBP officials.” Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) oversight entities, unsurprisingly, have dismissed the findings.
In this context of zero accountability….
As a nation we give those individuals with badges to kill, steal and commit crimes as they see fir, with no consequences. If we don’t admit that to ourselves than we can never improve.
Black activist jailed for his Facebook posts speaks out about secret FBI surveillance
Handcuffed and shaking in the cold wind, Balogun thought a misunderstanding must have led the FBI to his door on 12 December 2017. The father of three said he was shocked to later learn that agents investigating “domestic terrorism” had been monitoring him for years and were arresting him that day in part because of his Facebook posts criticizing police.
…Balogun spoke to the Guardian this week in his first interview since he was released from prison after five months locked up and denied bail while US attorneys tried and failed to prosecute him, accusing him of being a threat to law enforcement and an illegal gun owner.
…Balogun, who lost his home and more while incarcerated, is believed to be the first person targeted and prosecuted under a secretive US surveillance effort to track so-called “black identity extremists”.
…The government’s own crime data has largely undermined the notion of a growing threat from a “black identity extremist” [BIE] movement, a term invented by law enforcement. In addition to an overall decline in police deaths, most individuals who shoot and kill officers are white men, and white supremacists have been responsible for nearly 75% of deadly extremist attacks since 2001.
…The official one-count indictment against Balogun was illegal firearm possession, with prosecutors alleging he was prohibited from owning a gun due to a 2007 misdemeanor domestic assault case in Tennessee. But this month, a judge rejected the charge, saying the firearms law did not apply.
Add kidnapping to the list of crime United States “law enforcement” personnel can commit without repercussions or consequences.
A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on. U.S. Customs took it without charging him with a crime.
Aggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Instituionalized theft.
Crime without consequence.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggggh!
‘Black lives don’t matter,” lawyer says after jury awards family $4 in police killing
‘Black lives don’t matter,” lawyer says after jury awards family $4 in police killing – CNN
Aaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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