Between 400,000 and 500,000 people are behind bars but haven't been convicted—they're just awaiting their day in court. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is unveiling legislation today to help them, by ending the use of money bail on the federal level and nudging the states to do the same.
The No Money Bail Act would prohibit the federal government from using any payment of money as a condition of pretrial release for criminal cases. It would call for grants to develop alternatives to money bail and to improve pretrial practices with the aim of reducing the number of people detained in jail prior to trial. And it would push states to come along with the shift by denying them access to Justice Department grants if they continue using money bail.
Poverty is not a crime and hundreds of thousands of Americans, convicted of nothing, shouldn't be in jail because they can't afford cash bail. Our destructive and unjust cash bail process is part of our broken criminal justice system and must be ended. https://t.co/IETZaldTwS
A House companion bill was introduced by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.). He has intrduced similar bills in previous sessions that haven't gone far. This time he argued, in a prepared statement, that the
money bail system is irrational and dangerous. People who are not at high risk but are poor remain incarcerated, while people who may be dangerous are set free if they have the funds. It's maddening to see that those with money can buy their freedom while poor defendants languish behind bars while awaiting trial. I'm grateful Sen. Sanders is introducing a bill that moves to end our justice system's reliance on money bail. I previously introduced legislation in the House that addresses this issue and I look forward to working with Senator Sanders. The money bail system warrants sustained outrage because America should never be a nation where freedom is based on cash on hand.
This legislation is unlikely to get anywhere. Last year Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced a bill that would create a grant fund to help states research alternatives to money bail. It has been languishing in committee since last July. What Sanders and Lieu are proposing goes further, and it faces a White House and Justice Department that have been largely hostile to criminal justice reforms.
The American Civil Liberties Union immediately declared its support for the legislation. "Cash bail keeps close to half a million people in jail before trial because they can't afford to pay," ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel Kanya Bennett noted in a statement. "It criminalizes poverty, disproportionately impacts people of color, and entrenches thousands of Americans in an unjust and unfair system. The only winners of the cash bail system are bail agents and their insurance backers who profit between one to two billion dollars a year."
New Jersey eliminated most cash bail as part of a suite of criminal justice reforms that were researched before implementation. Initial results are promising, but the state is still collecting data from its first full year of a system focused more on pretrial monitoring and communication with defendants. (Check out Reason's cover story for our August/September issue for a closer look at how it has all worked out for them.) But bail reform doesn't always work out as planned. In Maryland, a requirement that judges should consider money bail as a last resort led to defendants being denied any form of pre-trial release. The result: more people detained in jail. So there may be drawbacks to a top-down push for fast-tracked changes from people who won't have to deal with anything that might backfire.
Sanders' bill gives states three fiscal years to implement new bail systems before cutting off grants, so it's not expecting a miraculous, immediate shift. But there's been a lot of resistance to these reforms: from the bail industry, from judges who face public backlashes if somebody they've allowed out commits crimes, and from jail and prison staff whose jobs are linked to high incarceration rates.
President Trump's former longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen once intervened with the National Enquirer on behalf of Omarosa Manigault-Newman, ...
(FOX) — A Dutch trial with sildenafil, sold under the brand name Viagra, has been immediately halted after 11 babies of mothers using the medication died, one of the participating hospitals said on Tuesday.
When the trial was stopped on Monday, roughly half of 183 pregnant women participating were taking sildenafil, the Amsterdam University’s Academic Medical Center (AMC) said.
The study started in 2015 and involved 11 hospitals. It was designed to look at possible beneficial effects of increased blood flow to the placenta in mothers whose unborn babies were severely underdeveloped.
National security adviser John Bolton said in a statement on Wednesday that US President Donald Trump believes his next meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin should take place next year, "after the Russia witch hunt is over."
Democrat Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey clashed with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over what transpired during President Donald Trump‘s private two hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland this month, as the administration official accused the lawmaker of playing a pandering “game” while speaking in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“When the president meets alone with President Putin, it allows the Kremlin state media and the Russian ministry of defense to provide more information, at least from their perspective, not only to the American people, but sometimes it seems to members of the president’s own cabinet,” Menendez stated, prior to the start of his interrogation. “Has the president told you what he and President Putin discussed in their two-hour closed door meeting in Helsinki?”
Pompeo responded by declining to answer the senator and added, “The predicate of your question implied some notion that there was something improper about having a one-on-one meeting.”
“I completely disagree with the premise of the question,” the White House official said.
The two continued by arguing over if Pompeo talked to the US translator who was present at the meeting and if he was briefed on any notes taken during the world leaders’ discussion. Additionally, Menendez grilled Pompeo on if Trump talked about decreasing American sanctions on Russia while speaking with Putin.
“The president is entitled to have private meetings,” Menendez shot back “I’m telling you what U.S. policy is.”
He continued: “I’m telling you what he had a conversation with Vladimir Putin about and telling you what U.S. Policy is. Senator, I understand the game that you’re playing. I get it, I do.”
“Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, I don’t appreciate you characterizing my questions,” Menendez responded. “My questions is to get to the truth. We don’t know what the truth is. And the only way we will know what the truth is, what transpired in those two hours, in a highly amazing period of time to spend alone one-on-one is my understanding at least that if you were briefed by the president what he told you, I don’t think that’s unfair to know.”
Before changing the subject to North Korea, the Democratic lawmaker accused Pompeo of refusing to answer “any of the questions to get us to the truth.”
A Baton Rouge man was arrested Wednesday after he had "sexual conversations" online with an undercover officer pretending to be underage, according to a Louisiana State Police arrest report.
Facebook Inc on Wednesday took down a network of pages and accounts used by a right-wing Brazilian activist group, cracking down on what it called a misinformation network ahead of elections in October.
PayPal Holdings Inc on Wednesday reported a second-quarter profit that beat analysts' estimates, but its forecast for third-quarter revenue came up short.
Facebook Inc on Wednesday reported slower user growth, revenue that fell short of analysts' expectations and increased spending to safeguard data, which cut into its profit margin in the second quarter and sent shares down 7 percent after hours.
People often use ad blockers, disk-cleaners, and similar utilities to stop online trackers from monitoring their online activities. Now, researchers have uncovered a host of apps and browser extensions downloaded more than 11 million times that keep a list of every website ever visited and send it to servers operated by the developers.
The snooping wares affect both Android and iOS users, as well as those who installed Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox extensions, according to a blog post published Tuesday by AdGuard, a developer of ad blockers and privacy tools. AdGuard cofounder Andrey Meshkov said in the post that the extensions and apps make a list of every exact address of every page visited and combine it with a unique identifier he believes is generated when the extension or app is first installed.
“There are numerous ways of discovering your real identity from observing your browsing history,” Meshkov wrote. “It can be straightforward, for instance, there is no ambiguity in who can visit this page: https://analytics.twitter.com/user/ay_meshkov/tweets. Even if you do not happen to visit such pages, there is still a high chance of exposing your real identity.”
Twitter’s newest way to attack and limit the reach of the Republican Party has been found, and is being described by VICE News.
The social media site is using “a technique known as ‘shadow banning” to limit the visibility of prominent Republicans in search results,” the news site reports its own research found.
It explains Twitter calls it a “side effect” of its work to improve discourse.
But the effect is that “Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel, several conservative Republican congressmen, and Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesman no longer appear in the auto-populated drop-down search box on Twitter.”
The report said it’s the same maneuver Twitter uses against “prominent racists to limit their visibility.”
The profiles, the report said, continue to appear when conducting a full search, but “not in the more convenient and visible drop-down bar.”
“The notion that social media companies would suppress certain political points of view should concern every American,” McDaniel told VICE News in a statement. “Twitter owes the public answers to what’s really going on.”
The report said there apparently are no Democrats being subjected to the same treatment.
“McDaniel’s counterpart, Democratic Party chair Tom Perez, and liberal members of Congress – including Reps. Maxine Waters, Joe Kennedy III, Keith Ellison, and Mark Pocan – all continue to appear in drop-down search results. Not a single member of the 78-person Progressive Caucus faces the same situation in Twitter’s search,” the report said.
Twitter responded to the report, VICE said, with, “We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box and shipping a change to address this.”
Twitter had revealed months ago that it was going to punish “troll-like behaviors.”
But the report said, “Twitter’s troll hunt, however, has ensnared some of the most prominent Republicans in the country. Type in the names of McDaniel, conservative members of Congress like Reps. Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz, and Trump Jr.’s spokesman Andrew Surabian, for example, and Twitter’s drop-down search bar does not show their profiles. The search menu also does not display the verified profile of Rep. Devin Nunes of California, only his unverified one that he seldom uses to post.”
The effect, VICE explained, is that Twitter’s actions are limiting the visibility of conservative individuals.
However, not all Republicans are being affected, the report said, citing Rep. Steve King.
VICE’s Alex Thompson commented, “Even if the shadow banning is more of a bug than a feature, the demotion of these prominent Republicans could be a political liability for the social media company.”
He pointed out conservatives have been claiming “for months” that Big Tech companies are censoring them.
Hearings on the topic have been held by the House Judiciary Committee.
Explained Thompson, “Democrats, for their part, have largely rolled their eyes at conservative claims of discrimination. At Diamond and Silk’s hearing in April, the committee’s top-ranking Democrat Jerrold Nadler called the idea of Big Tech censorship of conservatives a ‘hoax’ and a ‘tired narrative of imagined victimhood’ that was eclipsing other priorities like election security and online privacy.”
North Korea is continuing to produce fissile material for nuclear bombs in spite of its pledge to denuclearize, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday.
Rep. Jason Spencer had vowed to serve out his term despite the fallout. Now he'll step down at month's end, according to the letter he sent to Speaker David Ralston.
A former lawyer at the movie studio behind 'The Hunger Games' says a powerful boss she once viewed as a father figure demanded she be his slave and subjected her to nonconsensual sexual contact.
Georgia state lawmaker Jason Spencer resigned Tuesday night after he was duped into an appearance on comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's new Showtime series, "Who Is America."
Spencer, a Republican, initially refused to resign after the segment aired, which features him baring his buttocks, shouting the n-word, and doing a terrible impression of a Chinese tourist. He changed his tune on Tuesday after harsh rebuke, with a terse resignation letter which reads: "This email/letter is to serve as an official resignation notice to your office that I will be resigning my post effective July 31, 2018."
Spencer appeared in a segment in which Cohen portrays an Israeli military expert who is making a video about how to mount a personal defense against potential terrorists. In one scene Cohen's character urges Spencer to draw attention to an unfolding attack.
The lawmaker responds by shouting the n-word.
In another, Cohen says that Muslim extremists are religiously repulsed by human buttocks. He persuades Spencer to fend off an attacker by charging at him backwards ― he shouts "USA!" and "America!" ― with his bare bottom exposed. -NBC News
Cohen is known for pranking various public figures with his "Ali G" character, including Donald Trump. After about a minute, Trump realized something was wrong and walked off.
Of course, that wasn't the first time Trump walked out of an interview...
DAX was weak following headlines around 25% auto tariffs...
While Trannies led the day, Nasdaq did its best to show that everything is still awesome...and then EU trade concesssions deal headlines sent traders into a buying panic, sending US stocks soaring...
The S&P 500 surged up towards January's highs...
The Dow ripped to its highest since early March...
Facebook was the big driver for Nasdaq (ahead of earnings)...
VIX tumbled back to an 11 handle.
And FANG Stocks loved it...
US Auto stocks tumbled to 13-month lows (before bouncing after some senators unveiled an auto tariff delay bill and concessions from EU)...
Homebuilder stocks tumbled after yet more dismal data...
A Stellar 5Y auction provided more support for bonds which were also bid on the day but traded in a very narrow range... (chart below includes Friday's spike for context)
In the last few minutes of the day, EU concession headlines sparked selling in bonds...
The yield curve continued yesterday's flattening...
The dollar extended its losses post-Trump to two-week lows...
Euro rallied on the EU concessions headlines...
The Yuan had its best day in 4 months, closing back above the Yuan fix for the first time in weeks...
Emerging Market FX had its best day in July, rising to its highest close in 6 weeks...
Cryptos weakened broadly on the day, but remain positive on the week..
And Bitcoin is holding above $8000...
Commodities were broadly higher with Copper (more china easing) and crude (inventories) leading the way...
Copper is back at 3-week highs (amazing what a bit of China easing will do)...
Crude found resistance at 2-week highs but closed green after a bigger than expected draw...
A democrat congressional candidate in Pennsylvania has desires to tax parents who have more than two children as “irresponsible breeders.” Scott Wallace is a population control zealot who has donated over $7 million to population control groups.
Wallace is also supported and endorsed by both Planned Parenthood and NOW (National Organization for Women). According to The Daily Wire, Wallace, a millionaire and democrat who believes in taxing families with more than two kids for being privileged, also believes that the tax would be on “the privilege of irresponsible breeding.”
Between 1997 and 2003, Wallace gave $420,000 to Zero Population Growth (ZPG) — now Population Connection — an organization co-founded by “Population Bomb” author Paul Ehrlich,Fox News reported.
From before its inception, ZPG had announced its intentions to tax large families for the “privilege of irresponsible breeding.” A 1968 brochure advocated abortion to stabilize population growth and claimed that “no responsible family should have more than two children.” Therefore, “irresponsible people who have more than two children should be taxed to the hilt for the privilege of irresponsible breeding.” –PJ Media
Wallace’s fund (Wallace Global Fund) also gave $20,000 to the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) in 2010. CASSE isan environmentalist group that sees economic growth as undesirable. The group supports an economy with “stable or mildly fluctuating levels” and a society with equal birth and death rates. CASSE calls this stagnant state of affairs “maturing.”
CASSE still supports zero population growth and executive board member Herman Daly has pushed for reproduction licenses (permission from the government to have children). This bureaucratic control over birth would allow women to have only two children unless they buy the license for more children from other women who do not reproduce. Daly called this program the “best plan yet offered” to limit population growth.
If you’ve ever wondered how close we are to totalitarianism, you no longer have to. It’s right around the corner. Abortion and population control movements can be traced back to the horrific racism of the early eugenics movement, where activists like Margaret Sanger called for more babies for the “fit” and less for the “unfit.”
Bloomberg reports that farmers across the United States are pushing back against the Trump administration's pledge to provide $12 billion in assistance to farms impacted by the ongoing trade war.
Neal Bredehoeft, a corn and soybean farmer in Missouri, summed up the current sentiment across the Midwest. In interview after interview, farmers delivered essentially the same response to President Donald Trump’s pledge yesterday to provide $12 billion in assistance: It’s nice to know you’re thinking about us, Mr. President, but what we want is a quick return to free trade. It’s “better to get our income from the marketplace than from the government,” Bredehoeft said. -Bloomberg
We assume this means farmers, or at least Neal and whoever else Bloomberg is talking about, will promptly refuse their portion of up to $20 billion per year in federal agriculture subsidies.
The planned assistance will be a mix of direct payments to farmers, purchases of various commodities for food-aid programs, and "the stepped up promotion of new export markets,"
According to Bloomberg, however, "The package has offended the sensibilities of many farmers who supported both Trump and a party that historically champions small government and free trade"
Agriculture is the third-biggest U.S. export industry. American farmers ship about one-third of their output abroad, generating an estimated $21 billion trade surplus this year, though that’s now under threat after China imposed tariffs on U.S. soybeans and other farm products.
“We want access to markets,” Stan Nelson, a fourth-generation corn and soybean farmer in Middletown, Iowa, said by phone as he was en route to check in on his combine at the local tractor dealer in preparation for the fall harvest. “We don’t want government payments, but we do appreciate President Trump recognizing the concern out in the country.” -Bloomberg
“We would prefer trade not aid,” said Dave Struthers, a soy farmer who also raises 6,000 hogs a year in Collins, Iowa. “We’d like to see things figured out on these trade issues.”
The government’s proposed package is like a Band-Aid that “slows bleeding -- it doesn’t heal the wound,” said Struthers, a Trump supporter. “It’s a temporary fix. That’s all any government influx of money would be. It is better than nothing.”
Earlier Wednesday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CBS This Morning that the planned $12 billion stimulus package is a short-term solution and that the Trump administration won't be making a habit of aid programs.
"What we’ve put on the board is what I think is a temporary assistance measure, I don’t think it’s going to get near to $12 billion," said Kudlow. "Nobody’s really thrilled about this. We’re just trying to protect American agriculture from some of the unfair trading practices."
Kudlow said the attempt to shore up markets is a reaction to a “broken” system of world trade that has worked against the U.S. in the past. He called for patience in allowing the U.S. to achieve reciprocity in trade. -Bloomberg
“No one is thrilled with subsidies, I get that,” Kudlow said. “On the other hand, we need a backstop for our patriotic farmers who have been hurt.”
Some Congressional GOP panned the plan, saying it failed to address the underlying issues of the White House's brewing trade wars.
Extra farm aid would be a balm to producers who are seeing prices drop and inventories rise because of disputes with China, Canada and other trade partners who are significant purchasers of U.S. pork, soybeans and other products.
While the overall economic impact of tariffs on steel and aluminum and Chinese imports already implemented by President Donald Trump is expected to be muted, American industry has warned it could hurt their earnings and lead to higher prices for consumers. On Wednesday, General Motors Co. cut its profit forecast this year on surging metals prices. -Bloomberg
That said, extra farm aid would help producers of targeted goods, such as pork, soybeans and other crops.
Infowars founder Alex Jones was hit with yet another strike on his YouTube channel on Tuesday for violating the site's community guidelines, while four videos have been removed from his channel which has 2.4 million subscribers, according to The Verge.
While YouTube removed four videos, they were bundled together into a single strike due to a quirk in how the system manages violations. Creators are asked to acknowledge strikes the first time they log in following one of their videos being removed. If more than one video receives a strike, they can be “bundled” into a single violation.
...
The offending videos do not include Jones’ threatening rant about Robert Mueller, which stirred a controversy earlier this week after it was posted on Facebook. That video does not appear to have been uploaded to YouTube. -The Verge
YouTube's community guidelines say that if an account receives two strikes in a three-month period, it will not be able to upload content for two weeks. If three strikes are given within three months, the account will be terminated. Meanwhile, Jones won't be able to broadcast live for 90 days, when the current strike expires.
Two of the removed videos reportedly contained hate speech against Muslims, a third against transgender people, and a fourth featured Jones mocking a child who was gently pushed to the ground by an adult man, before the kid begins shrieking for his life titled: How to prevent liberalism.
All four videos are still posted to Infowars and Facebook, for example, the one "mocking" a whiny kid who gets a taste of his own medicine.
The Alex Jones Channel received a strike in February over a video suggesting that the survivors of the Parkland school shooting were coached and given lines for interviews with various media outlets following the Valentines Day massacre which left 17 dead.
The video was removed for a violation of YouTube's "harassment and bullying" policy. It revolved around this clip of Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, who appeared to be having trouble remembering his account of the shooting.
Earlier this week, Infowars sparked controversy over a video in which Jones slammed Special Counsel Robert Mueller, accusing him of covering up sex crimes by convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
"I mean, Mueller covered up for a decade for [Jeffrey] Epstein kidnapping kids, flying them on sex planes, some kids as young as seven years old reportedly, with big perverts raping them to frame people," Jones says in the video, referring to billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of sex crimes after being accused of soliciting multiple teenage girls as young as 13. -The Hill
"Mueller is a monster, man," Jones continues in the video. "People say, 'Well, God, aren't you scared of him?' I'm scared of not manning up. I'm constantly in fear that I'm not being a real man, and I'm not doing what it takes, and I'm not telling the truth."
Wildlife officials in Arizona said toads are being stolen from a conservation area and the thieves are believed to be planning to lick them.
