We previously discussed an Ohio judge who chastised a jury and threatened a defendant that his acquittal would not end the matter for her. Now Texas visiting Judge Jerry Ray has joined the ranks of judges who express their anger at juries for not ruling as they expect. Ray told a jury that it violated its oath and acted like the jury in the O.J. Simpson case.
Category: Politics
The Obama Administration has been widely criticized for being captured by the pharmaceutical industry, which has gotten the White House to block efforts to guarantee lower cost drugs and increase profits for these companies. Pharmaceutical lobbyists have in turn given huge amounts of campaign money to President Obama and Democratic members as well as jobs to former members. Even with this record, however, many are shocked by the White House pushing of a trade agreement that would undermine international efforts to reduce the cost of drugs and extend the patents for these companies to further increase their profits. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) allows for techniques like “evergreening” to extend patents for the industry, which in turn has continued its own evergreen record of high-paying jobs for political allies and massive campaign contributions for the White House and Congress. Everyone wins . . . except the tens of millions who cannot afford medicine. While these companies have valid interests in recouping their investment and making profits on new drugs (which are expensive to develop), the secrecy and sweeping impact of the TPP deserves far greater attention in the media.
David Noel James, Baron of Blackheath, and his wife were horrified. The conservative Tory peer and his wife (who is a youth justice officer) were driving to Twickenham for a rugby game when they drove past a bus of children mooning them. Lord James wants the government to mete out punishment and not simply turn the other cheek at the little hoodlums.
Continue reading “Cheeky Children: British Lord Demands Punishment For Children Who Moon”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
We have all heard the cries that so-called entitlement programs like Social Security need to be cut in order to “save” them from extinction. Now that I am 62 years of age, I have become more interested in the issue of Social Security’s solvency.
CEO’s have gotten involved in the process through the now infamous Fix the Debt campaign initiated and funded by Billionaire Pete Peterson and the parallel campaign started by the Business Roundtable. Both of these campaigns are supported by big business and CEO’s of large corporations with no concern where their retirement funds are going to come from. Continue reading “Fix Social Security By Expansion”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
My attention turned toward public schools once again this week when I read reports about Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s apologizing for using “clumsy phrasing” when he made comments about some critics of the Common Core Standards—which he has championed. (Note: Common Core—a set of educational standards developed for public school students in kindergarten through twelfth grade—has been adopted by most of our states.) Duncan was speaking to a group of superintendents recently and just couldn’t help himself—it appears—when he said the following:
“It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary. You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on, ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut.”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
The picture above really says it all. Walmart, our country’s largest retail operation is run by people who are so clueless that they’ve created a culture that doesn’t even understand the massive irony in running a Thanksgiving Food Pantry for its own employees. The photo comes from a Walmart in Canton, Ohio. The concept of food collections for the poor at retail establishments is widespread in America, even as many Americans deny that anyone in this country goes hungry. The irony of this food drive though is that it is asking Walmart employees, who are already low paid, to donate food to fellow employees who are even worse off than they are. It is also ironic that the food drive is for Thanksgiving Dinner, since almost all Walmart Stores have been open all day for Thanksgiving for many years, so one wonders what type of Thanksgiving Dinner Walmart associates will have at all? What is new this year is that “Black Friday” for Walmart customers will begin at 6:00pm on Thanksgiving Day and run through the night.
The average Walmart Associate makes $8.81 per hour which translates into a yearly income of $15,576 if the Associate works a full time schedule. Most Associates don’t work full time because working full time would entitle them to benefits that Walmart doesn’t want to pay. Interestingly, the current U.S. poverty level for a three person family in our country is $19,530. So we see that the rare Walmart full time employee, with two dependents, earns about $4,000 per year below the nation’s poverty level. Indeed, Walmart has made it a practice to inform its employees about benefits like Snap and Public Assistance. At the risk of being portrayed as a “bleeding heart” by some of our readers, let me state that I think this company is disgusting in its personnel policies and is an example of what is worst about our country. Let me explain further. Continue reading “To Walmart with Contempt”
There is renewed calls for the United States Supreme Court to end its ban on cameras in the courtroom. This clip might reinforce the opposition of members. Member of Parliament Gary Gray has discovered the perils of televised legislative sessions. The former resources minister appears to view things in his hair as a resource worth digesting. Of course, the image of justices grooming each other would be too much to take.
Continue reading “Australian Politician Caught Grooming Himself Chimp Style”
There is an interesting nuisance case in Detroit where Alan Markovitz has erected an art piece in his backyard. It so happens to be lighted at night and fully visible when his ex-wife looks out of her windows next door. It is a large piece giving a middle finger salute.
I find myself not only in agreement with Sarah Palin but angry at her treatment by a MSNBC host. Palin recently canceled a NBC interview with Matt Lauer over the failure of MSNBC to discipline host Martin Bashir for saying that someone should defecate in Palin’s mouth after she compared federal debt to slavery. While I once worked for MSNBC, I have been shocked by the effort of the network to be the Fox News of the left — with hosts often blindly supporting the President, seriously comparing Holder to Moses, and even defending the surveillance of journalists (which Bashir did) in defense of the Administration. For civil libertarians, it has been a blow to see MSNBC yield to a type of cult of personality around Obama while basic civil liberties are being denied by this Administration. However, Bashir was able to hit truly a new low and the lack of a serious response beyond an on-air apology sends the message that anything goes when the target is a conservative and critic of the President.
Spain is on the verge of passing a draconian measure that threatens fundamental values of free speech. Faced with ongoing protests over economic conditions, the Spanish government is about to make insulting police officers and protesting without permission crimes punishable by fine greater than dealing drugs or prostitution. Not since Franco has the country turned so decidedly against civil liberties and free speech.
The Palestinian Authority embraced a curious hero this week among those released as part of an agreement with Israel. Issa Abed Rabbo was the longest serving prisoner of the 104 released this week. Rabbo, 49, was heralded as a hero and given a pension and a large sum of money by the PA. However, Rabbo was convicted of taking two young hikers, binding them, putting bags over their heads, and then shooting them to death in 1984. That is not the makings of any freedom fighter that I know of.
Republican Florida Rep. Trey Radel has been charged with misdemeanor cocaine possession in Washington, D.C. A newly elected Tea Party Republican, Radel issued a contrite statement that he has struggled with alcohol and that his alcoholism led to “an extremely irresponsible choice.” UPDATE: Radel has pleaded guilty and received a one year probation sentence.
Continue reading “Tea Party Republican Arrested For Cocaine Possession (Updated)”
I previously wrote a column about how government officials waste billions or plow whole programs in the ground without nary a reprimand. If that column bothered you, you might want to sit down. A new report has detailed how the military has cooked the books to hide trillions, that’s right trillions, in missing money and equipment. The military calls them “plugs,” a curious term for fraud. These are knowingly fake figures used to hide the fact that there is no accurate record of the money. In one finding, a single office in Columbus, Ohio, made at least $1.59 trillion in errors with $538 billion in plugs. The study reveals that government accounting records are fraudulent but that congressional oversight has been equally illusory.
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
A recent report published by the Center for Media and Democracy has alleged that there is a network of think tanks across this country that has been “quietly pushing the agenda of right-wing groups with funding from Koch brothers-affiliated organizations.” The umbrella organization that these sixty-four think tanks are collaborating with is called the State Policy Network (SPN)—“a nonprofit that nurtures conservative think tanks in all fifty states.”
From SPN’s website:
Founded in 1992 by Tom Roe at the urging of Ronald Reagan, State Policy Network is the only group in the country dedicated solely to improving the practical effectiveness of independent, non-profit, market-oriented, state-focused think tanks. SPN’s programs enable these organizations to better educate local citizens, policy makers and opinion leaders about market-oriented alternatives to state and local policy challenges.
According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s report, SPN and its “member think tanks” promote an “extreme right-wing agenda” that is much the same as that of “David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, Charles Koch’s Cato Institute, and Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy spin-off FreedomWorks–all of which happen to be associate members of ALEC.”
Continue reading “State Policy Network—The “PR Firm” for ALEC and a Right-Wing Agenda”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
The Electronic Privacy Information Center recently won the first round of a court action asking that the Department of Homeland Security be required to disclose its plans to pull the plug on regional or national mobile telephone and internet communication systems pursuant to its Standard Operating Procedure 303.
“In the classicly-rendered case, DHS has argued that shutting down entire communication networks might be necessary in order to prevent the detonation of radio-controlled bomb or explosive device.
However, siding with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which brought a suit demanding more transparency for the DHS program known as “Standard Operating Procedure 303” (or SOP303), the federal judge at the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that because the release of the protocol could not reasonably be seen as harming law enforcement “investigative techniques or prosecutions” it’s cited reasons for keeping the details of the program secret did not hold up.” Common Dreams
The so-called SOP 303 could allow DHS to cut-off all internet and mobile phone communications at a regional level or a national level if it determined that there was a national security concern. We have already seen this government tactic used in Oakland in 2011 and that alleged over reach by the Bay Area Rapid Transit authorities may be the reason for EPIC’s lawsuit. Continue reading “Internet Kill Switch Plan is Killed…For Now.”