He was undocumented. Now he’s exposing detention center abuse

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

Roughly, 85% reported that immigration detention facilities failed to provide adequate food and water and that they were unable to sleep due to overcrowding, cold temperatures and other conditions. Only 20% reported being able to take care of basic hygiene, such as showering and brushing their teeth.

More than half said they faced verbal abuse inside detention, with some saying they also suffered physical abuse. Roughly 25% also had their property seized when taken into detention, including important documents and cash that was not returned to them, he said.

A majority said they were forced to return to Mexico without any further investigation of the violence they might face there, which Wong said was a direct violation of the policy.

While waiting in Mexico, one out of four said they were threatened with physical violence, and more said they ended up homeless.

…Individuals are getting instructions about critically important steps in languages that they don’t speak: often Central American asylum speakers who speak an indigenous language by default are given instructions in Spanish. In San Diego, there are a lot of different languages – Asian Indians seeking asylum who speak Hindi were given instructions in English or Spanish. I find it hard to believe that we as a country can’t find a Hindi speaker.

He was undocumented. Now he’s exposing detention center abuse | US news | The Guardian

sighh

“Whoa,” says Edward Snowden as Sanders vows to end prosecution of whistleblowers under Espionage Act

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

Asked if the Espionage Act of 1917 should be used against those who raise the alarm about government wrongdoing, Sanders said, “Of course not.”

“The law is very clear: Whistleblowers have a very important role to play in the political process and I am very supportive of the courage of that whistleblower, whoever he or she may be,” Sanders said of the individual who filed the complaint about Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Grim pointed out that the 1917 law “had largely gone out of fashion until it was deployed heavily by the Obama administration, which prosecuted eight people accused of leaking to the media under the Espionage Act, more than all previous presidents combined.”

“Whoa,” says Edward Snowden as Sanders vows to end prosecution of whistleblowers under Espionage Act | Salon.com

hmmm

HUD officials knowingly failed ‘to comply with the law,’ to stall Puerto Rico hurricane relief funds

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

Two top officials with the Department of Housing and Urban Development admitted at a congressional hearing this week that the agency knowingly missed a legally required deadline that would have made desperately needed hurricane relief funding available to Puerto Rico.

…The housing agency was supposed to issue funding notices to 18 states affected by disasters on Sept. 4. They published all the notices except Puerto Rico’s. The publication of the notice would have allowed Puerto Rico to start drafting a plan that would create the structures needed to manage the much-needed funds.

…Woll admitted that HUD had “no statutory authority” to miss such a deadline.

…“As the HUD Inspector General’s letter clearly states, HUD officials misled congressional staff about the conclusions of the IG’s review of Vivienda’s capacity to administer disaster recovery funds in an attempt to justify their violation of the law,” Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., who brought up the letter during the hearing, told NBC News.

…So far, Puerto Rico has received only the first $1.5 billion of a total of $20 billion granted through the agency’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery Program, or CDBG-DR, for infrastructure repairs and rebuilding homes.

Experts have anticipated that the flow of housing funds will be paralyzed until HUD appoints a financial monitor for Puerto Rico.

HUD officials knowingly failed ‘to comply with the law,’ stalled Puerto Rico hurricane relief funds

sigh…

How California’s data privacy law will change your online experience — no matter where you live

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Privacy,Leave a comment

The California law goes further than any other U.S. law when it comes to who has access to a consumer’s personal data online. Beyond opting out, individuals can ask the company for what reason the data is being collected and sold, learn about the types of third-party companies buying the data and find out the financial incentives for the business selling user data. The law also applies not just to an individual, but personal data for a household or connected devices.

How California’s data privacy law will change your online experience — no matter where you live – The Colorado Sun

hmmm

Leo Lech not entitled to money after police blew up his Colorado home, court rules

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

Robert Jonathan Seacat, had stolen a shirt and a couple of belts from a Walmart in neighboring Aurora. …A police officer pursued him in a high-speed chase until Seacat parked his car. …He climbed the fence on the other side — and then, shortly thereafter, came upon the Lech residence.

A 9-year-old boy, John Lech’s girlfriend’s son, was home alone at the time. …“He said, ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody. I just want to get away,’ ” Lech said. Minutes later, the boy walked out of the house unharmed.

…Police had pulled into the driveway. Seacat fired a shot at them through the garage.

…Thus began the 19-hour standoff.

“They proceed to destroy the house — room by room, by room, by room,” Lech said. “This is one guy with a handgun. This guy was sleeping. This guy was eating. This guy was just hanging out in this house. I mean, they proceeded to blow up the entire house.”

…[the victim’s] expenses to rebuild the house and replace all its contents cost him nearly $400,000, he said. While insurance did cover structural damage initially, his son did not have renter’s insurance and so insurance did not cover replacement of the home’s contents, and he says he is still in debt today from loans he took out.

“This has ruined our lives,” he said.

…On Tuesday, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit unanimously ruled that the city is not required to compensate the Lech family for their lost home because it was destroyed by police while they were trying to enforce the law, rather than taken by eminent domain.

…The court said that Greenwood Village was acting within its “police power” when it damaged the house, which the court said doesn’t qualify as a “taking” under the Fifth Amendment. The court acknowledged that this may seem “unfair,” but when police have to protect the public, they can’t be “burdened with the condition” that they compensate whomever is damaged by their actions along the way.

…Police must be forced to draw the line at some point, [the victim] said — preferably before a house is gutted — and be held accountable if innocent bystanders lose everything as a result of the actions of law enforcement.

…“This can’t go on in this country,” he said. “There has to be a limit. There has to be accountability.”

Leo Lech not entitled to money after police blew up his Colorado home, court rules – The Washington Post

Over a shirt and some belts from WalMart???! That’s beyond unnecessary escalation all the way to egregiously irresponsible to start with and then the city refuses to pay more than $5000? Criminal.

 

Becoming by Michelle Obama review: race, marriage and the ugly side of politics

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

First ladies both feed into, and reflect, our patriarchal values, and so, in this world still so intolerant of female domination, making their husbands look good inevitably involves diminishing themselves, and a decoupling from their own achievements, so as not to outshine the president.

…But this protective love of Obama’s childhood did not shut out the communal sense of suffering and injustice that is, for any observer of America, impossible to avoid. The neighbourhood she grew up in was transformed by white flight, and later “deteriorated under the grind of poverty and gang violence”. An early experience with the police via her beloved brother Craig taught her that “the colour of our skin made us vulnerable.” Persistent experiences of discrimination bred in her family “a basic level of resentment and mistrust”.

Most of Obama’s narrative on race, however, comes courtesy not of her own perspective, but that of the many commentators who weaponised her blackness against her. “The rumours and slanted commentary always carried less than subtle messaging about race, meant to stir up the deepest and ugliest kind of fear within the [white] voting public.

…The New Yorker magazine cover depicting her as an armed Black Panther, for example, the time Fox News ran an onscreen graphic describing her as Barack Obama’s “Baby Mama” – like the earlier “welfare queen” trope, a dog whistle appeal to the idea that, if the black family is at the root of America’s problems, how could one of them possibly be part of its solution? Or the time Fox host Bill O’Reilly said: “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there is evidence.”

…During Barack Obama’s tenure, it was Michelle Obama’s roots in the African American experience, in the history of the south that she understood innately as “knit into me”, that lent him crucial legitimacy among black voters. It resurfaces here, adding the profound warnings of past suffering to the observation that, as she sees the Trumps take over the White House, …“the kind of overwhelmingly white and male tableau I’d encountered so many times”.

Becoming by Michelle Obama review – race, marriage and the ugly side of politics | Books | The Guardian

sigh…

Cillizza on Obama’s words on ‘cancel’ culture

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,Leave a comment

The underpinnings of this worldview — is that there are only good people (aka people who agree with me on all things) and bad people (those who don’t agree with me on everything.) There is no gray area. It’s black or it’s white.

The point Obama is making is that politics — and life — are rarely that cut and dry.

What Barack Obama gets exactly right about our toxic ‘cancel’ culture – CNNPolitics

Mostly silliness but he right on about the binary nature of it.

The Trump administration may be making the same mistake Obama White House did

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Middle East,, Military,Leave a comment

The Levant continues to be the battleground of regional rivalries, which destabilise the region and leave space for ISIL to stage a comeback. Right now Russia, Turkey and Iran, the key players in the Syrian conflict, all want the US to leave Syria but this consensus may not last after the US withdrawal.

Iran already feels that it is being excluded from the understandings between Russia and Turkey on one hand, and the US and Turkey, on the other hand.

In fact, Iran fears that the new arrangements in northern Syria, wherein Turkey and Russia try to fill in the vacuum resulting from the departure of US troops, will be at its expense. Ankara and Moscow may well be working towards preventing Tehran from establishing a “Shia crescent” across east Syria, which both the US and its closest ally Israel fear.

To complicate things even further, the Pentagon decided to keep the Syrian oil fields under US control. Oil income, according to Secretary of Defence Mark Esper, will help fund Kurdish fighters, including the ones guarding prisons that hold captured ISIL fighters. The Syrian regime cannot survive in a post-conflict environment without recovering the oil fields too.

Turkey will interpret the US move as a step towards creating a local economy for a possibly independent Kurdish entity in east Syria. Russia will not tolerate that either. This means renewed turmoil in northeast Syria is quite likely.

Second, the maladies which plague Arab countries and which ISIL exploited to recruit and expand, are still very much present. Sectarian politics in the Middle East are still raging across the Middle East, marginalising various communities; social-economic problems, like poverty, corruption, injustice, repression, etc have still not been resolved.

If these conditions are not dealt with, ISIL will no doubt make a comeback, just as al-Qaeda did in the past.

Trump may be making the same mistake Obama did | Syria | Al Jazeera

hmmmm

Sen. Shaheen named 2019 ‘beer champion’ for brewery support

On By peanutgallerynhIn Drugs & Drink,, Granite State,, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Shaheen was selected for her leadership in championing policies that provide tax relief for all brewers and beer importers and encouraged free trade.

…New Hampshire is home to 116 breweries, and the beer industry helps create 13,000 jobs in the state.

Shaheen cosponsored the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act (S. 362) to provide permanent excise tax relief to America’s brewers and beer importers, ensuring they have the resources to reinvest in their businesses, hire new employees and continue to innovate and create America’s favorite beers. She also cosponsored the Aluminum Pricing Examination (APEX) Act (S. 1953) to allow more oversight and investigation into the aluminum market, providing transparency and stability brewers need to can their beer for consumers.

Sen. Shaheen named 2019 ‘beer champion’ for brewery support – News – seacoastonline.com – Portsmouth, NH

hmmm

For 23 years, he’s delivered crosses after massacres. This was his hardest week yet

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

Since 1996, when he found his father-in-law murdered, Zanis has built 26,680 crosses, he said on the drive. He would add nine names to his orange notebook after Dayton, he said.

He estimates 21,000 are shooting victims. He’s also taken his white crosses to the aftermath of tornadoes and wildfires, bus and boat crashes, and to Martha’s Vineyard after JFK Jr. and his relatives died in a plane crash. He took five in February to the Henry Pratt Company after a shooting unfolded in his hometown.

Asked how he staves off sadness, he said he doesn’t.

…The victims’ religions, however, don’t matter to Zanis. He scans their obituaries to determine whether he should bring crosses, Stars of David or crescent moons. He’s memorialized Buddhists and atheists, as well. 

For 23 years, he’s delivered crosses after massacres. This was his hardest week yet – CNN.com

hmmm

Robots aren’t taking warehouse employees’ jobs, they’re making their work harder

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

The report shows how technologies are modifying the day-to-day work of people who organize, store, and package physical goods in warehouses. It found that technology and automation can help workers by reducing the “monotonous and physically strenuous activities” of, say, lifting heavy packages. But it also could affect workers’ health, safety, and morale, and accelerate the rate at which employees are replaced. That’s because tools like self-driving shelving carts, body sensors, and AI-powered management systems are putting pressure on workers to work harder, faster, and under more scrutiny. This is helping boost productivity but could be bad for workers, the report argues.

…“Technology has led to workers being pushed harder and also their privacy getting violated.”

…Even though some new technologies “promise to alleviate the most arduous activities” for workers, they can also contribute to an overall greater workload and more intense supervision.

…The report says technology can intensify warehouse work in two main ways. The first is by limiting the amount of human interaction, including in cases where employees can help each other. The second is by allowing the “micromanagement of work tasks at an unprecedented scale.”

That’s because many of these new machines are dissecting workers’ every move — like sensors that measure the time it takes a worker to reach a location where they can pick up an item, scan a label, select a product, and place it in a bin.

…“The assumption that streamlining processes leads in a linear fashion to greater efficiencies, and thus cost reductions, may be fundamentally flawed,” the report states. “Gains could be counteracted by new health and safety hazards as well as increased employee turnover due to overwork and burnout.”

There are also questions about data privacy and whether workers have a right to know how the data being collected on them on the job is being used — including if it’s being used to feed the AI behind new autonomous warehouse machines. If that’s happening, it would mean that workers may unwittingly train their own replacements.

Robots aren’t taking warehouse employees’ jobs, they’re making their work harder – Vox

hmmm

‘We’re building a wall in Colorado,’ Trump claims

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

“We’re building a wall in Colorado. We’re building a beautiful wall – a big one that really works, that you can’t get over, you can’t get under.”

…“And we’re building a wall in Texas. And we’re not building a wall in Kansas, but they get the benefit of the walls that we just mentioned,” Trump added.

It was not immediately clear what the president was talking about. [emphasis: peanut gallery]

‘We’re building a wall in Colorado,’ Trump claims at energy summit in Pennsylvania

n/t

Airline food is coming to Amtrak

On By peanutgallerynhIn Infrastructure and Transportation,Leave a comment

Possible solutions going forward:

Repeal PRIIA. As the ICC discovered in the 1970s, federal agencies are not equipped to micromanage the rail system. Fines don’t work; in fact, they are counterproductive as disputes have moved to the snail’s pace of courts, and the operating relationship between freight railroads and Amtrak has turned hostile.

Invest in sidings. If Amtrak wants to be able to overtake freight trains at will, the simple solution is for Amtrak to provide sidings at regular intervals. The cost per siding is estimated at about $15 million.

If no money is available for sidings, run closer to freight speed. Long distance Amtrak trains could reduce the amount of overtaking by a simple reduction in speed. If Amtrak ran at, say, 60 or 65 mph instead of the current maximum permissible 79 mph, its capacity footprint would be greatly reduced. Because maximum track speed would remain at 79, the engineer on a late train could potentially make up time by running at 79 mph where the track is clear. In fact, adjusting the Amtrak timetable to lower speeds would make Amtrak long distance trains much more reliable, and at a lower cost than new sidings.

Revise schedules to focus on reliability. Amtrak creates schedules using a best-case scenario called “pure run time.” A “fudge factor” is added to account for “unavoidable” delay. Realistically, schedules should be based on what is achievable on a consistent basis, not ideal conditions on a sunny day as Amtrak assumes in its “best-case” scenario. In fact, the FAA requires airlines to advertise schedules that can be achieved reliably. Amtrak should follow the same rules—rules well known by its new president.

Want airline food? Take Amtrak – Railway Age

hmmm

Kamala Harris 2020 Campaign: Not Dead Yet, But Lacking Clear Rationale

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

The problem for Harris to this point has been that she’s run a cautious, calculating campaign, as if she were the front-runner, when she really needed to run as if she were an insurgent, and her missteps — her failure to land on a clear, consistent message, her transparent efforts to appeal to all sides of burning policy questions such as Medicare for All, her gimmicky debate attacks — have led voters to see her as inauthentic. She may get another look from persuadable Democrats during the homestretch, but she’s going to need to give them the clear rationale for her candidacy that she has so far failed to deliver.

Kamala Harris 2020 Campaign: Not Dead Yet, But Lacking Clear Rationale | National Review

The rest of the article is snarky fluff the closing paragraph (above) is on point.