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News Stories Which Highlight the Structure of the System

Started by Telarus, February 16, 2012, 01:06:06 PM

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Anna Mae Bollocks

Scantily-Clad Inspector of Gigantic and Unnecessary Cashews, Texas Division

Cain

Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 17, 2012, 05:42:48 PM
I'll just kinda leave this here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/us/politics/buffett-rule-debate-blocked-by-republicans.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

:lulz:

This article in particular is quite good

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/dear-media-tell-readers-the-truth-about-gop-filibustering/2012/04/17/gIQAIumNOT_blog.html

QuoteThe death-by-filibuster of the Buffett Rule in the Senate yesterday revealed, among other things, that the news media still has a ways to go in learning how to report on the era of the 60-vote Senate.

Most Americans, not surprisingly, do not realize that majorities can no longer get their way in the Senate. After all, it wasn't that long ago that most key votes in the Senate were based on simple majority voting. Only since 1993 has constant filibustering been common, and only in 2009 did Republicans create a situation in which virtually everything requires a supermajority. Reporting in these circumstances is a bit tricky, but if you are going to tell the full story of a bill killed by filibuster, you need to report not just the outcome — a bill lost — but that majority sentiment was thwarted by a minority.

So, how did the major papers do yesterday? Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post had the word "filibuster" in their on-line front page headlines or teasers. The Post story does get the "F" word into her second paragraph, which is good. The Times story merely refers to the 60 votes the Democrats "needed" to pass the bill, without mentioning that the 60 votes were "needed" to break a GOP filibuster until way down in the eighth paragraph. Politico called it a "filibuster" in the second graf. But none of the three stories said explicitly that a minority of Senators defeated a majority.

CNN's web story was particularly awful, reporting simply that "the Democrats fell nine votes short." There was no mention of a filibuster, or that the "nine votes short" added up a 51 vote majority — so no one reading the story could deduce that a majority of the Senate favored the policy. The Los Angeles Times, in a broader story, also claimed that the Buffett Rule was blocked by "Republican-led opposition," whatever that means. Again, no mention at all of a filibuster, or which way the majority voted.

None of this is good enough. Whether one supports the filibuster, opposes it, or (as I do) hopes for a middle course, it's simply not informative enough to just say that something was "blocked" without explaining that it was blocked by a minority of Senators who deployed a filibuster.

The decision of the Republican minority to create the 60 vote Senate — and the willingness of the Democratic majority to go along with it — remains perhaps the most important single structural fact of Congressional procedure. It has been at least as important as any other factor in shaping Obama's legislative agenda. And news organizations still aren't telling readers and viewers the full truth about what's happening.

Doktor Howl

Further proof that the media is nothing but bad signal, these days.
Molon Lube

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on April 16, 2012, 07:57:17 PM
What the fuck. I really wish we were over that.


MOAR TERRIBLE THINGS!
U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money
Quote
Philadelphia, Pa. – Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, plead guilty in open court that they sentenced children to juvenile detention because they were paid off to do it by the PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare corporation that ran the private facilities.

Ciavarella wrote in a letter to the court,

    "Your statement that I have disgraced my judgeship is true. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame."

The two judges face up to seven years in prison under a plea agreement made with the state.

The companies in question paid the two judges more than $2.6 million dollars to send children to detention.  The companies receive a stipend from the government for each inmate they house.  So as more children were sentenced to the detention center, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the government, prosecutors said.

According to the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit group, teenagers were sentenced to detention for simple misdemeanors.

The Constitution guarantees the right to legal representation in U.S. courts. But many of the juveniles appeared before Ciavarella without an attorney because they were told by the probation service that their minor offenses didn't require one.

Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center, estimated that of approximately 5,000 juveniles who came before Ciavarella from 2003 and 2006, between 1,000 and 2,000 received sentences that far outweighed their crimes.  She said the center will be suing the judges and the companies to compensate the victims.

Levick said.

"That judges would allow their greed to trump the rights of defendants is just obscene,"

This nightmare scenario has long been the cry of those trying to end the practice of privatizing prisons in the United States.
Seriously? Fucking seriously?

In the next county over, Washington county, there are at least two judges who own major shares in the private prison there. No one can explain to me in what way that's not a conflict of interest, and yet nothing is done about it.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Telarus

Holyshit, really?


Meanwhile...

http://reason.com/blog/2012/04/17/obamas-new-drug-control-report-calls-for

- The report implicitly blames the debate over drug reform—one Obama recently told Univision he's more than willing to hear—for increased use of drugs by teens [SNIP REPORT VERBIAGE]

- The report encourages carte blanche workplace drug testing, on the grounds that it will curtail productivity losses associated with drug use and improve users' lives. It also describes the Obama administration's attempt to develop on oral test for workplace drug testing [SNIP REPORT VERBIAGE]

- The report contains a request to Congress for $20 million to Revamp and Reenergize the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, which was defunded by Congress last year because it doesn't work [SNIP REPORT VERBIAGE]

The Marijuana Policy Project's Rob Kampia has called the report "appalling," adding, "The drug czar is trying to resurrect those stupid TV ads, like the one where a teenager gets his fist stuck in his mouth. The budget intentionally undercounts the federal government's expenditures on incarcerating drug offenders, who comprise more than half of the federal prison population. And the budget dangerously proposes a massive escalation in using the military to fight drugs domestically. Congress should just ignore this budget and start from scratch. Specifically, Congress should not provide the Obama administration with any money to go after nonviolent marijuana users, growers, or distributors."
Telarus, KSC,
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Doktor Howl

Molon Lube

Juana

Aiyiyi. I sometimes wonder if it's deliberate or just stupidity, this shit with weed.
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on April 18, 2012, 08:42:57 PM
Aiyiyi. I sometimes wonder if it's deliberate or just stupidity, this shit with weed.

It's a religion.  Saint Ronnie said so, Nancy said "Just say no", and that settled it.
Molon Lube

Telarus

I love how the "official position" is now, suddenly and bizarrely, the exact opposite of every-damn-hippie AND RWHN's position on this topic, AT THE SAME TIME.



:fnord:







:argh!:
Telarus, KSC,
.__.  Keeper of the Contradictory Cephalopod, Zenarchist Swordsman,
(0o)  Tender to the Edible Zen Garden, Ratcheting Metallic Sex Doll of The End Times,
/||\   Episkopos of the Amorphous Dreams Cabal

Join the Doll Underground! Experience the Phantasmagorical Safari!

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Telarus on April 19, 2012, 01:15:57 AM
I love how the "official position" is now, suddenly and bizarrely, the exact opposite of every-damn-hippie AND RWHN's position on this topic, AT THE SAME TIME.



:fnord:







:argh!:

It's not a binary situation.
Molon Lube

Anna Mae Bollocks

Accordint to this, he's been trying to get rid of those surreal drug sentences http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rafael-lemaitre/drug-policy-reform-_b_1126225.html

I'd imagine the only way to push that through is to compromise on the other shit.

I'd also imagine that "treatment" is the same thing as "labor camp" if you don't have money to go to the Betty Ford clinic and lounge around by the pool.

:x :x :x
Scantily-Clad Inspector of Gigantic and Unnecessary Cashews, Texas Division

Telarus

#162
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 19, 2012, 02:21:07 AM
Quote from: Telarus on April 19, 2012, 01:15:57 AM
I love how the "official position" is now, suddenly and bizarrely, the exact opposite of every-damn-hippie AND RWHN's position on this topic, AT THE SAME TIME.

:fnord:

:argh!:

It's not a binary situation.

Fair enough.


I guess it makes me wonder what faction is out there that is making enough profits off of this thing to continue to militarize + propagandize the issue.
Telarus, KSC,
.__.  Keeper of the Contradictory Cephalopod, Zenarchist Swordsman,
(0o)  Tender to the Edible Zen Garden, Ratcheting Metallic Sex Doll of The End Times,
/||\   Episkopos of the Amorphous Dreams Cabal

Join the Doll Underground! Experience the Phantasmagorical Safari!

Telarus

Telarus, KSC,
.__.  Keeper of the Contradictory Cephalopod, Zenarchist Swordsman,
(0o)  Tender to the Edible Zen Garden, Ratcheting Metallic Sex Doll of The End Times,
/||\   Episkopos of the Amorphous Dreams Cabal

Join the Doll Underground! Experience the Phantasmagorical Safari!

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on April 18, 2012, 08:42:57 PM
Aiyiyi. I sometimes wonder if it's deliberate or just stupidity, this shit with weed.

It's deliberate. The War on Drugs is only a "failure" in terms of its negative impact on the population; for the prison and weapons industry it's a huge success.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."