Electrikmonkrjs

Deadbeat Donald

by digby

























Oh my:

During the Atlantic City casino boom in the 1980s, Philadelphia cabinet-builder Edward Friel Jr. landed a $400,000 contract to build the bases for slot machines, registration desks, bars and other cabinets at Harrah's at Trump Plaza.

The family cabinetry business, founded in the 1940s by Edward’s father, finished its work in 1984 and submitted its final bill to the general contractor for the Trump Organization, the resort’s builder.

Edward’s son, Paul, who was the firm’s accountant, still remembers the amount of that bill more than 30 years later: $83,600. The reason: the money never came. “That began the demise of the Edward J. Friel Company… which has been around since my grandfather,” he said.

Donald Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who will "protect your job." But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans, like the Friels, who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.

At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.

Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.

In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens — filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work — since the 1980s. The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.

Not that his voters will care. They have been primed to believe that the "liberal media" is lying and the system is rigged so he'll say it's all bullshit and most of them will believe it.

But it's important to keep this drumbeat up anyway. His only claim to the office is that he's an exceptional businessman. The truth is that he sucks at it and only made money because he inherited a boatload from his daddy who co-signed every loan until he was 40. His talent is being a celebrity, period. He has leveraged his celebrity into a "brand" which he licenses to every cheap con-artist who pitches him.

Donald Trump is a phony in every way and all of this has to be exposed over and over again to ensure that nobody but his deluded cult followers don't know about it.

.

New York is one of four states considering legislation that would guarantee your right to get your stuff fixed by independent repair centers, curbing manufacturers' attempts to limit access to technical documentation and parts, meaning you pay less to keep your stuff working, and that means that your gadgets don't become immortal, toxic e-waste. (more…)

This week, the Internet Archive is hosting a three-day event (which finishes today) called The Decentralized Web Summit, whose goal is to figure out how to build a new Internet that is "locked open," an idea that emerged from Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle's 2015 series of talks and articles about how technologists can build networks and protocols that are resistant to attempt to capture, monopolize and control them. (more…)

On Tuesday, the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights released a stockpile of statistics for the 2013-14 school year that highlight racial disparities among the 50 million students across the nation's more than 95,000 public schools. Even as early as preschool, the data shows, the experience of black students is strikingly different from that of their white classmates.

Despite a 20 percent overall drop in out-of-school suspensions since the 2011-12 school year, for example, black students were still nearly four times more likely to be suspended than white students in 2013-14. Beyond telling data on school discipline, the OCR report sheds light on racial gaps in access to certain classes, the caliber of teachers, and enrollment in gifted programs.  

This fall, the office will release data for individual schools. For now, here's a snapshot of what these inequities looked like in classrooms across the United States.

 

Some EU countries' copyright laws allow rightsholders to make claims against street photographers who capture potentially copyrighted works, from the facades of buildings to public art. The EU's plan to harmonize a "right of panorama" (previously) would protect those of us who document the public world and upload our images to public places, from social media to Wikipedia to news-sites. (more…)

In its death throes, the Republican Party is a toilet of racist, sexist, misogynistic bullshit. Today, Iowa State Senator David Johnson has changed his party affiliation to "No Party", and compared the rise of Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for president, to that of the fascist German National Socialists in the 1930s.

Via TPM:

Johnson, who said he would change his registration to No Party, compared Trump’s rise to the top of the GOP ticket to the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

Trump won “by reducing his campaign to reality TV and large crowds and divisive language and all the trappings of a good show for those who like that kind of approach and that’s what happened in the 1930s in Germany,” he told The Guardian.

“I think that’s all I need to say but certainly the fascists took control of Germany under the same types of strategies,” he added.

Johnson, who noted that his own father was part of the first U.S. unit to help liberate a Nazi prison camp, said that Trump’s attacks on the “Mexican” heritage of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel flew in the face of everything he’d been taught as a child.

“If we’re going to exclude Muslims from traveling to the United States, who’s next? Are we going to come down on Jews? ... He’s not fit to be president,” Johnson told the publication.

Brock Allen Turner, the former Stanford swimmer found guilty on three sexual-assault charges in March, received his sentence last week: six months in a county jail. During the sentencing hearing Thursday, Turner's father argued that his son, who had been discovered on top of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster last January, should not be punished severely by the courts for "20 minutes of action." Judge Aaron Persky apparently agreed, explaining that he declined to give Turner the maximum sentence of 10 years in state prison—or even six years, as prosecutors had asked—because "a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him."

But the victim's own words about the assault and its impact—a moving 7,000-word statement directly addressed to Turner in the courtroom—lit up the internet this weekend: BuzzFeed's article alone has racked up more than 5.4 million views.

On Monday, Ashleigh Banfield, who hosts CNN's Legal View, devoted her show to the Stanford case, taking several minutes live on air to read from the victim's letter. Watch the video above.

The victim's supporters are now calling for Persky to be recalled from his seat as a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge. Two Change.org petitions—one calling for Persky to be impeached by the state Legislature and another demanding his recall—have collected more than 94,000 signatures in total. "The judge had to bend over backwards to accommodate this young man," Stanford law professor Michele Dauber told NBC News. "I think he was very persuaded by the background of the young man as an elite athlete."

With Persky up for reelection this year, California voters might have had a chance to hold him accountable in Tuesday's California primary. There's just one problem: Perksy is running unopposed. He will remain on the bench for another six years.

by digby

You may have heard about the rape case in Palo Alto in which a young man was sentenced to nly six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster outside a party.  The judge felt it would be wrong to sentence him for a longer time because it would have a negative impact on his life.

CNN's Ashleigh Banfield read aloud the victim's statement about the negative effect on her life from the assault a factor in this which didn't seem to be of much concern to the judge. It's devastating:



Salon's Sophia Tefaye:

“I fully respected his right to a trial, but even after twelve jurors unanimously convicted him guilty of three felonies, all he has admitted to doing is ingesting alcohol,” Banfield said, reciting the survivor’s words.

“The night the news came out I sat my parents down and told them that I had been assaulted, to not look at the news because it’s upsetting, just know that I’m okay, I’m right here, and I’m okay. But halfway through telling them, my mom had to hold me because I could no longer stand up,” Banfield read, choking up. 

Over the course of 23 minutes, Banfield got emotional at multiple times while reading the letter. 

“Lastly you said, I want to show people that one night of drinking can ruin a life,” Turner’s victim recalled of his defense. 

“A life, one life, yours, you forgot about mine,” Banfield read. 

“Let me rephrase for you, I want to show people that one night of drinking can ruin two lives. You and me. You are the cause, I am the effect”

This is what people are talking about when they talk about rape culture.

.

Since the earliest days of the Snowden revelations, apologists for the NSA's criminal spying program have said that Snowden should have gone "through channels" to report his concerns, rather than giving evidence to journalists and going public. (more…)

If you're a Californian registered Independent/No Party Preference, you are entitled to cast a ballot in the Democratic primary on June 7, but some Orange County poll workers report that they've been instructed to give independent voters "provisional ballots," which, in practice, are rarely if ever counted. (more…)

Dick Van Dyke, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, has written an op-ed in the Hollywood Reporter endorsing Bernie Sanders as the best candidate for senior citizens. (more…)

The United States International Trade Commission, "an independent, bipartisan, quasi-judicial, federal agency of the United States that provides trade expertise to both the legislative and executive branches," has just tabled a deep, 792-page report on the likely economic benefits to the USA from the secretly negotiated, anti-democratic Trans-Pacific Partnership, and they predict that the agreement will deliver 0.01% growth to the US economy between now and 2032, when it will level off altogether. (more…)

We are resisting making any "Hasta la Vista" jokes, but really.

The New York Times reports this morning that Ruth Guerra, the...no, really...head of Hispanic Media Relations for the Republican National Committee, has resigned over disagreement with her party's presumptive nominee for President of the United States.

The head of Hispanic media relations at the Republican National Committee is resigning this month in what appears to be another indication of the lingering discomfort some party officials have about working to elect Donald J. Trump president.

Ruth Guerra, who is of Mexican descent and was in charge of carrying the party’s message to Hispanic voters, ... told colleagues this year that she was uncomfortable working for Mr. Trump, according two R.N.C. aides who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the difficulties surrounding the party’s presumptive standard-bearer.

It is relatively rare for party staff members to leave the national committee in the midst of a presidential campaign unless they are going to work directly for the nominee.

Another not good day at RNC Headquarters. Did anyone else see that empty tequila bottle on Reince Priebus's desk before open of business this morning? I'd be drinking, too.

In his most recent financial disclosure statement, Donald Trump notes he has billions of dollars in assets. But the presumptive GOP nominee also has a tremendous load of debt that includes five loans each over $50 million. (The disclosure form, which presidential candidates must submit, does not compel candidates to reveal the specific amount of any loans that exceed $50 million, and Trump has chosen not to provide details.) Two of those megaloans are held by Deutsche Bank, which is based in Germany but has US subsidiaries. And this prompts a question that no other major American presidential candidate has had to face: What are the implications of the chief executive of the US government being in hock for $100 million (or more) to a foreign entity that has tried to evade laws aimed at curtailing risky financial shenanigans, that was recently caught manipulating markets around the world, and that attempts to influence the US government?

Trump's disclosure form lists 16 loans from 11 different lenders, totaling at least $335 million, and the aggregate amount is likely much more. Deutsche Bank is clearly his favorite lender, and Trump's financial empire has become largely dependent on his relationship with this major player on Wall Street and the global markets. The German bank has lent him at least $295 million for two of his signature projects. In 2012, Deutsche provided Trump with $125 million to help him buy Trump National Doral golf course. Last year, it handed Trump a $170 million line of credit for his new hotel project on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.

Should Trump move into the White House, four blocks away from his under-construction hotel, he would be its first inhabitant to owe so much to any bank. And in recent years, Deutsche Bank has repeatedly clashed with US regulators. So might it be awkward—if not pose a conflict of interest—for Trump to have to deal with policy matters that could affect this financial behemoth?

Richard Painter, an attorney who teaches at the University of Minnesota and who was the chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007, says a situation in which a sitting president owes hundreds of millions of dollars to any entity, especially a bank that jousts with regulators, is disturbing. There have been wealthy presidents and vice presidents, Painter notes, pointing to John Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, and Nelson Rockefeller, but none were as heavily leveraged as Trump. "They had large assets and usually diversified assets. They weren't in a situation where someone could put pressure on them to do what they want," Painter remarks. "Whereas having a president who owes a lot of money to banks, particularly when it's on negotiable terms—it puts them at the mercy of the banks and the banks are at the mercy of regulators." Painter adds: "In real estate, the prevailing business model is to own a lot but also owe a lot, and that is a potentially very troublesome business model for someone in public office."

Members of a Trump cabinet would have to recuse themselves from any government business that would have a direct impact on their personal financial interests. If a Treasury secretary held this sort of loans, he or she could not participate in policy deliberations and actions that might have an impact on Deutsche Bank—and that would likely be many. But the president and vice president are excluded from this requirement. As president, Trump would have no obligation to divest his vast business holdings, though recent presidents and presidential candidates have taken steps to avoid any concern. President Barack Obama has even put off refinancing his Chicago home to save money because it would mean establishing a financial relationship with a bank, and that could prompt questions.  In 2011, Mitt Romney promised to use a blind trust for his substantial personal business interests, though there were concerns regarding how "blind" the trust was.

Trump's relationship with Deutsche Bank means he is in league with a financial giant that has been at odds with US government regulators and has attempted to skirt reforms designed to prevent Wall Street firms from wrecking the US economy once again. Last year, around the same time Trump secured the $170 million for the Washington project, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay a $2.5 billion fine to regulators here and abroad for its role in rigging interest rates. This included $600 million to the New York State Department of Financial Services, $800 million to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and $775 million to the Department of Justice. As Reuters reported, "Slamming Germany's largest lender for 'cultural failings,' regulators squarely blamed senior staff for misleading them, failing to be open and cooperative, and prolonging the investigation." From roughly 2003 to 2010, as the news service put it, the bank ran a scam to "fix rates…used to price hundreds of trillions of dollars of loans and contracts worldwide." The bank also recently reached settlements in lawsuits alleging it had manipulated prices for precious metals and their derivatives.

Like most big banks, Deutsche Bank has been at odds with regulators over the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform measure. But it went to unusual lengths to dodge some of the law's requirements. For years, the bank operated in the United States through two subsidiaries that were legally considered to be American entities. Yet in 2012—after Dodd-Frank was enacted—the bank tried to rewrite its own corporate structure to make it less American. Under the new law, a foreign-based bank's subsidiaries were required to maintain certain minimum levels of capital—as much as $20 billion worth of reserves in Deutsche Bank's case—so that the bank could weather another financial catastrophe like the one that occurred in 2008. The consequence of the rule also restricted how freely an American subsidiary of a foreign bank could invest and how much risk it could assume. This was the point of the law: to prevent gargantuan financial firms from behaving recklessly, collapsing, and, once more, requiring a taxpayer-funded bailout.

Rather than accept these limitations, Deutsche Bank reorganized itself, moving its commercial banking subsidiary out of the holding company for its American operations, which also contained its investment arm. Deutsche Bank then claimed this banking subsidiary was not subject to the new Dodd-Frank regulations. The Federal Reserve didn't fall for this stunt. The bank eventually was forced to comply with Dodd-Frank requirements.

That was only the beginning of Deutsche Bank's problems with Dodd-Frank. Last September, in its first enforcement action on new Dodd-Frank provisions, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined Deutsche Bank $2.5 million for failing to report properly on its trading of swaps, which are complex financial derivatives.

And like most big banks, Deutsche Bank lobbies heavily in Washington. Last year it spent $600,000 on a stable of lobbyists. In 2010, the year Dodd-Frank was enacted, the bank spent nearly $2.6 million on influence-peddlers in the nation's capital.

So how might Trump, should he become president, handle the conflict of interest posed by his relationship with Deutsche Bank?

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but previously Trump has said (without mentioning Deutsche Bank specifically) that he would avoid any conflicts of interest by installing his children at the top of the Trump business empire.

"There would be enormous tax consequences from just giving it all to the children," Painter says. "But just merely letting his [children] run the business doesn't solve the problem. You really have got to figure out a way to sell your interest in the business and sell off the risk." Other wealthy presidents have tended to own assets that could easily be unwound or sold off. But for Trump, disposing of his real estate holdings would be a special challenge. "I think what you need to do is wind down or sell off the real estate portfolio, and that probably takes time," Painter says. "It’s not like liquid securities that are easy to sell. Or he'd need to start to focus on paying off this debt."

Selling the parts of the businesses that he has mortgaged might be particularly difficult, because some of the debt may be tied to him personally. In the past that has led to problems, even with Deutsche Bank. In 2005, Trump borrowed $640 million from Deutsche Bank and several other lenders for the construction of a Chicago hotel tower. When he failed to pay back the money on time in 2008, the banks, including Deutsche Bank, demanded he pay up the $40 million he had personally guaranteed. In response, Trump sued Deutsche Bank for $3 billion, saying the project's financial troubles were the fault of the economic recession, essentially an act of God, and accusing the bank of undermining the project and his reputation.

Trump and Deutsche Bank patched things up, and hundreds of millions of dollars in credit subsequently flowed from the German behemoth to Trump. But with all his debt to Deutsche Bank coming due before the end of what would be Trump's second term as president, there's more to this relationship than what's on the financial ledger. The American public, too, has much at stake when it's possible that the next president will be deeply in debt to a global financial player that has been caught trying to use its influence to rig the financial system.

Eric Holder, who was attorney general when the former NSA contractor leaked highly sensitive documents, said what Snowden did was illegal but that his leak brought up important conversations.

Trump University. By this point, you’ve likely heard of it. Donald Trump’s attempt at creating a “business school” that sounds more like Scientology than Harvard.

At Trump U, you pay $1,495 for three days of classes, and then pay more and more and more for each incremental class and program. Just another 3 days, another week, and on and on and on until you’ve spent over $30,000 on, what several former “students” and employees call, a scam.

What’s worse is new documents made public from a court case, where former employees divulge the pressure techniques they were instructed to use to coerce people of limited means into paying their life’s savings, and then some, to Donald Trump.

First, there’s this from Greg Sargent at the Washington Post:

The Times recounts that one former sales manager alleges that the school “preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.” And there’s this:

Corrine Sommer, an event manager, recounted how colleagues encouraged students to open up as many credit cards as possible to pay for classes that many of them could not afford. “It’s O.K., just max out your credit card,” Ms. Sommer recalled their saying.

Far worse is this, also from the Post:

“A former Trump University staffer, Ronald Schnackenberg, wrote in a formal statement unsealed Tuesday that he quit the program in 2007 after working there for less than a year, deciding that it was engaging in ‘misleading, fraudulent and dishonest’ practices. His statement said he was reprimanded by Trump University for not working harder to sell a $35,000 program to a couple who could not afford it and would have had to use disability pay and a loan taken out against equity in their apartment to pay for it. He said another salesperson talked the couple into paying for the seminar after he refused.”

CNN did a great broadcast a few days ago about a man and his wife who paid, a lot, for courses at Trump University. It’s worth a watch.

More from CNN:

Team members are given scripted rebuttals to address students and prospective students who express doubt about whether they should enroll or sign up for a more expensive package. For example:

I don’t like using my credit cards and going into debt: “[D]o you like living paycheck to paycheck? … Do you enjoy seeing everyone else but yourself in their dream houses and driving their dreams cars with huge checking accounts? Those people saw an opportunity, and didn’t make excuses, like what you’re doing now.”

I’m going to try this on my own: “The risk isn’t spending 35K – it’s entering into the world of REAL ESTATE without specialized knowledge, guidance and trained professionals in the field holding your hand. WE are the safe decision. Fear is preventing you from investing in yourself.”

It reads like a Donald Trump campaign speech. And rings as true.

Follow me on Twitter: @aravosis  — Win a pony! (not really)

"Hollywood" Howard Berman, former-Congressman-turned-MPAA-lobbyist is one of the 15-member panel selected by the Democratic Party establishment to draft the party's platform for this summer's convention. (more…)

This interview with UBS whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld is as neat a case study in financial corruption as you could ask for: Birkenfeld's disclosures detailed 19,000 US tax evaders, including the bank's super-secretive list of "politically exposed persons," including people who laundered money for terrorists, and the US government threw him in prison (as well as paying him the largest reward in US history), declined to prosecute three quarters of those implicated, and then put him in prison. (more…)

Every year, the Senate passes a secret bill (that is, a bill whose text is a secret during its debate) that re-authorizes intelligence agencies' surveillance powers; this year, someone (possibly chairman Richard Burr, R-NC and/or Tom Cotton, R-AR) has snuck in an amendment that would give the FBI the power to demand warrantless access to Americans' email and browsing history, using National Security Letters, a controversial, widely used secret police order. (more…)

Nyree Holmes is a senior at Cosumnes Oaks High School in Sacramento County. When Mr. Holmes tried to express his African heritage by wearing a kente cloth (a cultural cloth from Ghana) to his graduation ceremony, school officials insisted he remove it.

When he refused, school officials called sheriff's deputies to kick the high school senior out of his graduation ceremony.

Police Escort Black Merit Scholar Out of Graduation After Refusing to Remove Kente Cloth

On Monday, the US Senate unanimously passed the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act, bringing the country one step closer to enacting the first piece of federal legislation that would establish rights for survivors of sexual assault.

Central to the bill, which was introduced by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H), is the right for victims' to have their rape kits preserved for free. The law would also prevent rape kits from being destroyed until the statute of limitations ends in the state where the crime occurred. States would be required to inform victims 60 days in advance of the kit's expiration date.

"This bill will send a powerful message to survivors all across the country: You do have rights, we do care about you, if you choose to come forward we're going to be there for you and we're going to ensure a justice system that treats you with dignity and fairness," Shaheen said in a speech addressed to the Senate on Monday.

The Senate's passage is a major victory for Amanda Nguyen, the 24-year-old activist who co-authored the bill alongside Shaheen. More than two years ago, Nguyen reported being raped in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and underwent a rape kit examination within 24 hours of the assault. Since then, she has had to request for an extension to keep her rape kit from being destroyed twice a year—a routine that she says forces her to repeatedly confront her experience of being sexually assaulted. Nguyen must request the extension even though Massachusetts has a 15-year statute of limitations on filing rape or sexual-assault charges.

"The six-month rule makes me live my life by date of rape," Nguyen said in an interview with the site Broadly in February. "It's so ludicrous, because in other states this isn't the case. Had I been raped in a state like California, Illinois, or Texas, this wouldn't happen to me."

"Justice shouldn't be dependent on geography. It's completely unconscionable that a survivor in one state would have a completely different set of rights than a survivor in another state," she added.

The Netherlands' accent on rehabilitation and social re-integration of criminals seems to have finally paid off. The country no longer considers its prisons as economically viable and plans to close down another five such institutions.

The biggest banks in the world have admitted to rigging LIBOR, a key interest rate that determines the value of trillions of dollars' worth of assets -- they paid billions in fines as a result. (more…)

California holds semi-closed primaries: that means that if you want to cast a vote for Bernie Sanders, you have to be registered as an independent (not as a member of the racist, homophobic "American Independent Party") or a Democrat. Today is the deadline and you can change your affiliation online -- the primary is June 7. (more…)

In November 2012, Californians voted in favor of the Three Strikes Reform Act (Proposition 36); no longer would their state be the only one to punish minor crimes with a life sentence. As a result, almost 3,000 inmates—some of whom had been sentenced to life for crimes like stealing a pair of socks—were immediately eligible for parole.

The ballot proposition had been written by Stanford Law professor Mike Romano, whose Three Strikes Project now had a new challenge on its hands: representing possible parolees at their hearing, and trying to line up transitional housing and services for them. Because just as California didn't consider the harm that Three Strikes would have on families and communities, it was now about to release those same prisoners without much, if any, support. Where would they go? What would they do? What was left of the life they'd left behind? And how to avoid the pitfalls that landed them in prison in the first place? 

The Return, a film by Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway that airs Monday night on PBS's POV series, follows two men as they try to reintegrate into society: Kenny Anderson, whose children and ex-wife welcome him back into their lives, but who struggles with mental-health issues, and Bilal Chatman, whose story of redemption is possibly the most heartwarming thing I've seen all year. (See John Oliver interview him here.)

But Kenny and Bilal were lucky to have or forge support systems. Many parolees have none. They are often released with no warning. Sometimes in the middle of nowhere with no way to get home—if home still exists. Some jurisdictions deny federal food benefits to ex-cons with drug convictions. Relatives who live in public housing may be prohibited from even letting relatives with a drug record visit. And of course, job applicants who admit to a felony can be automatically banned. The list of barriers go on and on. No wonder half of all parolees reoffend.

Given that 95 percent of all inmates will eventually be released, it is in all of our best interest to help them try to succeed when they get out. The Return will take you on a roller coaster of emotion—a not insignificant portion of the San Francisco Film Festival audience I saw it with were openly sobbing—but you'll be left with an unshakable conviction that the horrors of mass incarceration don't end upon release. 

Interest declared: I know Kelly, Katie, and Mike. And also Jon Mooallem, who wrote a lovely piece about two ex-cons who drive to distant prisons to make sure parolees get a lift home for the New York Times Magazine.

H/T Capper.

Open thread...

This should come as a shock to exactly no one. Just last week, Donald Trump took quite a bit of heat after the news broke that a white nationalist named William Johnson, was selected as a California delegate.

This week, another one came crawling out out the woodwork from Chicago: Donald Trump Has Another White Power-Loving Delegate:

Donald Trump has another delegate with controversial views on matters of race. Meet Chicago mortgage banker Lori Gayne:

"With all the racism going on today, I'm very proud to be white. Just like black people are proud to be black and now, as white people, whenever we say something critical we're punished as if we're racists. I'm tired of it. I'm very proud," Gayne said.

"I'm so angry I don't even feel like I live in America. You can call me a racist. Black Lives Matter? Those people are out of control," she said.

Gayne's Twitter account, which is only accessible to her followers, is called "whitepride":

The list just keeps growing.

read more

Note: This video ends with a swear word. Headphones at work.

The star of the immensely popular angels-and-devils CW show Supernatural, Misha Collins, posted this video to his Facebook page today. Misha plays an angel named Castiel, and if you don't watch, that's fine -- you don't need to know much more than that.

Just don't tell my 13 year old daughter or her Instagram feed I said that. She "can't even" when it comes to Supernatural, the TV show.

But back to the political angle of this story.

Collins attended a Trump rally, somewhat in disguise. If someone was a fan of the show, they would know it was him; he told them his name was Misha. He carried his phone cam and interviewed people at the rally.

What he found would not be a surprise to anyone who reads C&L on a regular basis. Anti-immigrant, pro-torture, pro-White Supremacy, and aggrieved. That's who Misha Collins found at this rally, and he doesn't mince words about his opinion of this candidate and what he represents:

I am certainly going to actively oppose Donald Trump's candidacy, and I would encourage you to...to not be apathetic. Don't be complacent. Get out there, and make sure that...something...[scoffs] make sure that we don't end up with this f*ckhead in our White House.

read more

We all know how much Donald Trump loves our veterans because he tells us so every chance he gets. He got so mad at Fox News that he skipped one of their debates in January and replaced his appearance there with a fundraiser for our wounded warriors in Iowa.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday he will boycott his party’s next nationally televised debate and instead hold an event to benefit wounded troops.

In comments to journalists before an Iowa rally, first reported by Politico and the Washington Post, the business mogul and GOP frontrunner accused Fox News of picking a “biased” moderator — network personality Megyn Kelly — to drive up ratings and hurt his campaign.

He bragged that he raised six million dollars in one evening, but something happened that has cast a dark shadow over the proceedings.

Where's the money?

One night in January, Donald Trump skipped a GOP debate and instead held his own televised fundraiser for veterans. At the end of the night, Trump proclaimed it a huge success: “We just cracked $6 million, right? Six million.”

read more

If you think discrimination against transgender people has nothing to do with you, think again. A very brave young woman named Aimee Toms was washing her hands in a WalMart ladies' room when another customer flipped her off and called her 'disgusting.' Why? Because she appeared to be transgendered.

Aimee had cut her hair short because she donated her long hair -- for the third time -- to a wig program for cancer patients.

Note: her video contains swear words. Mine would, too.

This video had been viewed over 12,000 times by Sunday night. Aimee's local paper in Danbury Connecticut covered her courageous stand:

Toms believes the incident happened because of the national controversy sparked by a law that was passed in North Carolina attempting to force transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender they were identified as at birth. Since then, religious conservatives have launched a boycott of Walmart competitor Target, which has said transgender people are welcome to use its bathrooms freely. Nationally, Walmart has been silent on the issue.

read more