Barack Obama's imperial presidency is just what his controversial predecessor wanted.
This month, I spoke at an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Watergate scandal with some of its survivors at the National Press Club. While much of the discussion looked back at the historic clash with President Nixon, I was struck by a different question: Who actually won? From unilateral military actions to warrantless surveillance that were key parts of the basis for Nixon's impending impeachment, the painful fact is that Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results ~ Albert Einstein
Did you know the state of California spends $11.7 b, 11% of the annual budget on incarceration? Which is chimerical at best, because legislators, and many people think that the more money you spend on locking people up, the more you’re deterring crime, but evidence suggests that that’s not close to being true. To be honest, there are exceptions to the rule, but in the vast majority of cases all you’re doing is setting people up for a life of crime
The current California criminal justice system as it currently exists, is highly dysfunctional, and inefficient, as far as rehabilitation goes, and also from a budgetary standpoint.
ACLU Sacramento Town Hall Meeting to Address Impact of Mass Incarceration on Education Funding
Assemblyman Roger Dickinson (D-Sacramento) to Lead Discussion of California Budget Crisis and the Need to Re-Order Budgetary Priorities on THURSDAY, April 25 at 6 p.m. at Sacramento Convention Center
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 22, 2013
CONTACT:
Will Matthews, ACLU of Northern California, (415) 293-6409 or wmatthews@aclunc.org
SACRAMENTO – The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California is convening a town hall meeting at the Sacramento Convention Center Thursday, April 25 at 6 p.m. featuring Assemblyman Roger Dickinson (D-Sacramento), who will lead a discussion about the ways in which California’s outsized spending on incarceration has a direct impact on the state’s decreasing investment in higher education.
The above video is from a different event, but gives much of the same info as I have below
This weekend former National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn was here in Sacramento for a panel discussion about drones during the California Democratic convention at the California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus meeting on Saturday. I didn’t make it downtown for the panel discussion, but she graciously accepted an invitation to a Sunday morning potluck brunch discussion on drones. I made a point to get myself to this.
I’m not a professional writer or anything, and I write slower than I type ;-) and I missed some things while taking my notes, so hopefully I won’t misrepresent anything that was said, too badly.
The Jail Action Group says it has received many complaints from inmates about food, medical and health conditions at the jail, claiming inhumane conditions.
"Our ultimate plan is to have the jail removed, all of the correctional facilities removed from the sheriff's hands," said Rev. Ashiya Odeye, of the Jail Action Group.
In a news conference outside the county jail on Tuesday, Odeye said he wanted "a whole separate county correctional division set up" to take over for the sheriff.
Jason Ramos, a spokesman for Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, told KCRA 3 the sheriff remains committed to transparency and is receptive to appropriate oversight with respect to the jail.
WASHINGTON -- Free birth control led to dramatically lower rates of abortions and teen births, a large study concluded Thursday. The findings were eagerly anticipated and come as a bitterly contested Obama administration policy is poised to offer similar coverage.
The project tracked more than 9,000 women in St. Louis, many of them poor or uninsured. They were given their choice of a range of contraceptive methods at no cost - from birth control pills to goof-proof options like the IUD or a matchstick-sized implant.
When price wasn't an issue, women flocked to the most effective contraceptives - the implanted options, which typically cost hundreds of dollars up-front to insert. These women experienced far fewer unintended pregnancies as a result, reported Dr. Jeffrey Peipert of Washington University in St. Louis in a study published Thursday.
Amnesty International (AI) on Thursday urged California authorities to end "shocking conditions" in high-security prison isolation units. In a report [text, PDF] entitled "The Edge of Endurance: Conditions in California's Security Housing Units," AI examined the prison conditions of over 3,000 individuals who have been confined in isolation in California prisons. The prisoners, who spend over 22 hours each day in their cells without work, activities or rehabilitation, endure "inhuman suffering," AI asserted. US Researcher for AI Angela Wright visited several prisons in the state and deplored the conditions:
The mass arrests of Occupy Chicago demonstrators that city leaders held up as a model for how to respect protesters' rights has been ruled unconstitutional and tossed out of court by a Cook County judge.
In a 37-page ruling issued today, Associate Judge Thomas Donnelly ruled the October 2011 arrests were unconstitutional because the city routinely chooses not to enforce the curfew for events the city supports, such as the 2008 Election Night rally for President Barack Obama. The judge noted that no arrests were made at that event, even though it went well past curfew.
This ordinance has been changed to accommodate many of the ACLU/NC's objections, specifically no requirement of a permit for
a protest. However, it still has some very restrictive portions: (1) a curfew from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. (no curfew now) and (2) a buffer area around entrances will sounds reasonable but really is not and (c) a host of other "rules" from not being able to give food to someone, to not being able to sit around the fountain, to not have tables to disseminate literature any closer than about 50-75 feet from the building (essentially not in the plaza but the outside sidewalks). Also, if someone has the $$ for a permit, it will be keep those without a permit away from the area because those with permits/with money will take precedence over those without means.
