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@Salacious-Crumb I don't know anything about him but if that is his quote I love the cut of his jib
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@Rembrandt said in US Politics:
@Salacious-Crumb I don't know anything about him but if that is his quote I love the cut of his jib
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@Rembrandt said in US Politics:
@Salacious-Crumb I don't know anything about him but if that is his quote I love the cut of his jib
The quote is fucking pathetic. Equating incarceration with such atrocities as gun control and universal healthcare. Nice one ideologues, liberal = bad, we get your dumb as dogshit point.
As for pardoning someone who seems demonstrably incompetent, corrupt, and violent - simply because he supports you and is racist as well - well, that's a real win for trump. -
@Rembrandt said in US Politics:
So reading between the lines many think he doesn't deserve a pardon. I wonder what Trump's reasoning is.
The mugshot of the day program did make me laugh a little.
Yes, that was the little buttercup in a field of cowshit.
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Finnegan described a federal investigation that found that:
deputies had used stun guns on prisoners already strapped into a “restraint chair.” The family of one man who died after being forced into the restraint chair was awarded more than six million dollars as the result of a suit filed in federal court. The family of another man killed in the restraint chair got $8.25 million in a pre-trial settlement. (This deal was reached after the discovery of a surveillance video that showed fourteen guards beating, shocking, and suffocating the prisoner, and after the sheriff’s office was accused of discarding evidence, including the crushed larynx of the deceased.)
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@Tim said in US Politics:
Finnegan described a federal investigation that found that:
deputies had used stun guns on prisoners already strapped into a “restraint chair.” The family of one man who died after being forced into the restraint chair was awarded more than six million dollars as the result of a suit filed in federal court. The family of another man killed in the restraint chair got $8.25 million in a pre-trial settlement. (This deal was reached after the discovery of a surveillance video that showed fourteen guards beating, shocking, and suffocating the prisoner, and after the sheriff’s office was accused of discarding evidence, including the crushed larynx of the deceased.)
Difficult to understand why you'd expend your limited political capital pardoning him. I'd have him well down my list.
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I think the real question is was this Sheriff guilty of the charge that Trump is now pardoning him for. Everything else is irrelevant if there were no charges.
As to the truth, who knows. It looks bad but Trump doesn't care what the media thinks which isn't necessarily always a bad thing.
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It seems that the contempt of court was rather clear:
Arpaio’s counsel in the civil rights case, Timothy Casey, testified he told MCSO leaders, including the sheriff, that the order meant he had to “arrest or release” illegal immigrants without evidence of further crimes. Deputies could no longer turn them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement because MCSO no longer had federal authority to enforce civil immigration laws.
But Arpaio, Bolton concluded, came up with what he described as his backup plan: turn illegal immigrants over to the U.S. Border Patrol instead. In total, prosecutors showed, the Human Smuggling Unit directed 171 people to the Border Patrol station in Casa Grande.
When plaintiffs in the original civil rights lawsuit complained, Casey confronted Arpaio, who told him it was a mistake and would stop. It didn’t, prosecutors showed in court.
She cited a string of Arpaio’s own statements in the days and weeks after Snow’s temporary injunction.
Seven days after Snow’s preliminary order, Arpaio said he “will continue to enforce illegal immigration laws.” In subsequent interviews, he told news crews: “I won’t back down and I will continue to do what I’ve been doing,” and, “Until the laws are changed, my deputies will continue to enforce state and federal immigration laws.”
Arpaio has very little credibility, as established by the settlements that have had to be paid to victims of his malfeasance:
Taxpayers spent $1,102,528.50 this year to settle another of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's lawsuits, New Times has learned through a public records request. The suit was brought by a man whom Arpaio framed in 1999 in a staged murder plot against the sheriff.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors this afternoon voted unanimously to approve a $3.75 million settlement for New Times' co-founders, whose false arrests in 2007 were orchestrated by Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and jailed on misdemeanor charges alleging that they violated the secrecy of a grand jury -- which turned out never to have been convened.
The saga began in 2004, when then-New Times reporter John Dougherty dug into Arpaio's commercial real estate transactions, questioning how a county sheriff could amass so much cash to invest in property and why records of the transactions were hidden from public view.
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@Tim said in US Politics:
Lurid Trump allegations made by Louise Mensch and co-writer came from hoaxer
Laffing my farkin arse off!!!!!!
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Details, details...
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@Rembrandt said in US Politics:
I think the real question is was this Sheriff guilty of the charge that Trump is now pardoning him for. Everything else is irrelevant if there were no charges.
As to the truth, who knows. It looks bad but Trump doesn't care what the media thinks which isn't necessarily always a bad thing.
Trump's base is in turmoil rebelling against him & his policies, the Arpaio pardon was throwing them a bone, it was a Big F.U. to the leftists and their media cohort. But again, it was about placating the base who are in open revolt.
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Pearl-clutching limousine liberal Dem Minority leader in House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi goes where mainstream lib news media and even Republicans don't dare go -- she unequivocally condemned antifa thug violence and didn't make excuses, called their behaviour "hate" and said they should be prosecuted.
http://www.democraticleader.gov/newsroom/82917/
Credit where credit is (surprisingly) due.
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... it was about placating the base who are in open revolt.
FMI see: Mike Cernovich's
Dispatches from Trumpland — Part 1
and
Dispatches from Trumpland Part 2— Mike Pence, the Silent Killer -
@Salacious-Crumb said in US Politics:
Pearl-clutching limousine liberal Dem Minority leader in House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi goes where mainstream lib news media and even Republicans don't dare go -- she unequivocally condemned antifa thug violence and didn't make excuses, called their behaviour "hate" and said they should be prosecuted.
http://www.democraticleader.gov/newsroom/82917/
Credit where credit is (surprisingly) due.
Good political move. And morally right.
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Interesting piece from The Eocnomist on the impact of Harvey. Here's an extract:
Houston, which has almost no restrictions on land use, is an extreme example of what can go wrong. Although a light touch has enabled developers to cater to the city’s rapid growth — 1.8 million extra inhabitants since 2000 — it has also led to concrete being laid over vast areas of coastal prairie that used to absorb the rain.
According to the Texas Tribune and ProPublica, a charity that finances investigative journalism, since 2010 Harris County has allowed more than 8600 buildings to be put up inside 100-year floodplains, where floods have a 1 per cent chance of occurring in any year. Developers are supposed to build ponds to hold runoff water that would have soaked into undeveloped land, but the rules are poorly enforced. Because the maps are not kept up to date, properties supposedly outside the 100-year floodplain are being flooded repeatedly.
Government failure adds to the harm. Developing countries are underinsured against natural disasters. Swiss Re, a reinsurer, says that of the $US50 billion or so of losses to floods, cyclones and other disasters in Asia in 2014, only 8 per cent were covered. The Bank of International Settlements calculates that the worst natural catastrophes typically permanently lower the afflicted country’s GDP by almost 2 per cent.
The US has the opposite problem — the federal government subsidises the insurance premiums of vulnerable houses. The National Flood Insurance Program has been forced to borrow because it fails to charge enough to cover its risk of losses. Underpricing encourages the building of new houses and discourages existing owners from renovating or moving out. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, houses that repeatedly flood account for 1 per cent of NFIP’s properties but 25-30 per cent of its claims. Five states, Texas among them, have more than 10,000 such households and, nationwide, their number has been going up by about 5000 each year. Insurance is meant to provide a signal about risk; in this case, it stifles it.Re: floodplains, I've seen the same issue with new developments here too. Every time a tropical storm/ cyclone turns up I reiterate my advice; live on a floodplain, buy a boat. The problem for consumers is their ability to determine whether they are in fact on a historical floodplain and then find their insurance doesn't cover them when they wake up to water flowing inside.
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US Politics