Why Blacks Running From Cops Is Entirely Logical -- and So Common

An excerpt from the book "On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City" and an interview with author Alice Goffmann.

By Neeraja Viswanathan

Michael Brown. Walter Scott. Eric Harris. Freddie Gray.

As the list of victims of police violence grows longer, the public outcry is getting louder. Not because this is a new phenomenon, but because so many communities have seen the police act as an occupying force for so long.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, by Alice Goffmann, chronicling the six years she spent immersed in the Philadelphia neighborhood of “6th Street.” 

Documenting interactions between the police and her roommates, friends and neighbors, Goffmann shows us a community living under the shadow of mass incarcerations and police violence, trapped by the vagaries and technicalities of the criminal justice system, where minor infractions can result in a lifetime on the run. In the “fugitive world,” running not only becomes a way of life; it’s the science and art of survival.

I had a conversation with Goffmann, speaking from her office at the sociology department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, earlier this week. The following is edited for clarity.

6th Street isn’t poorest, or most crime-ridden neighborhood in Philadelphia—it’s a mixed income neighborhood, with some middle class families. Yet, according to your book, you saw the police detaining or arresting someone within that four block radius, with a few exceptions, every single day.

It’s a fact in America that in these poorer communities—and in largely African-American neighborhoods like the one I was in—you’re much more likely encounter a police officer. The level of police presence is  just off the charts compared to similar white neighborhoods. So you have the increased likelihood of interaction, and the high probability that that interaction will not be good. 

Even if there’s no arrest, there can still be a detention, a search, whatever, and who knows how long that’s going to last? It means you won’t be home to dinner tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow. It makes you not only fearful of police contact, but also of the places where the police might go to find you—your girlfriend’s house, your kid’s school, your place of employment.

You noted that your assumptions behind the project changed very quickly, from the idea that only felony offenders were marginalized, to the idea of a “fugitive” subclass that’s far more complex.

Definitely. When we began, we were focusing on the impact of mass incarceration on a community. It was based on a lot of quantitative research, and the image that we had from this research was that: first you were free, then you were charged with a felony and hauled off to jail, and after you got out came all the financial, emotional, political pressures of being a felon. That was the model: free, prison, felon. But that just wasn’t what I was seeing. I was seeing a lot of non-felons—people with low-level warrants, on probation or parole, with traffic fines or custody support issues, in halfway houses or rehab—living like fugitives, under the radar.

These low-level warrants in particular are a huge issue with police interactions.

When I was writing this book, we didn’t know was how many people had low level warrants; we just weren’t collecting that data nationally. We now know that there’s about 2 million warrants that have been reported voluntarily to the database, and leaving a huge number that haven’t been reported. 

About 60% of these warrants are not for new crimes, but for technical violations of parole, unpaid court fees, unpaid child support, traffic fines, curfew violations, court fees. And it’s this group of people that are terrified. If they’re stopped by the cops, any of these reasons is enough to bring them in, to get them trapped into the system again.

It goes well beyond being guilty, or even just running from the cops. There’s this story in your book where this young man wants to get a state I.D. during the time he’s clean (i.e. free of warrants). But he just sits there—this big tough guy—and he can’t bring himself to go in.

If you’re part of this class, it means you don’t go to the hospital when you’re sick. You’re wary of visiting friends in the hospital, or attending their funerals. Driving your kid to school can be daunting. You don’t have a driver’s license or I.D. Most of the time, you can’t seek legal employment. You can’t get help from the government. It comes from, partly, growing up in a neighborhood where you’ve watched your uncles and brothers go to jail, and your aunts and mom entangled in the court system without ever getting free.

You note that women in particular face a great deal of police pressure to inform or cooperate in some fashion.

In a poll I did of the women [living in the four block radius of 6th Street], 67% said that they’d been pressured by the police to provide information on a male family member or partner in the last 3 years. If you’ve got a low-level warrant or some probation issue, you can be violated by authorities if you don’t inform when asked. So you’re really talking about a policing system that hinges on turning families against each other and sowing a lot of suspicion and distrust. It’s very ironic that people blame the breakdown of black family life on the number of black men behind bars when the policing strategies that put them there are exactly about breaking those family bonds.

It seems like once you have a family member in trouble, you could be in trouble by association.

In terms of public policy, we’re having the opposite effect that we want to see. We should be encouraging people to go work, to go to the hospital when they’re sick, to get a proper I.D. We should be making those paths stronger and easier to follow. Now we have a system where, to avoid staying out of jail, you have to avoid your friends, your family, your job. All of those are pressure points that can be used by the police to get to you.

And as long as we have a policing model that’s based on arrest counts and convictions, as long as there’s a legal right to bring in people for things like court fees or traffic fines or technical violations of parole, your ‘re creating a class of people who are arrestable on sight—a fugitive class. And then the people who don’t have these legal entanglements but are still worried that something might come up, are this secondary “maybe” fugitive class.

What’s amazing is how this subculture is almost completely based around the criminal justice system. Almost all social interactions have adapted to it.

Once you have so many young men in a neighborhood coming of age not at school or work, but in court, in probation hearings, in jail, then the whole round of social life—dating, friendship, family—it actually all gets moved into those institutions. So your first time visiting your boyfriend in jail is a big day. Supporting your husband on his court date is how you show your devotion to him. Standing in front of your house while it’s being raided by police looking for your son is what a good mother does. It’s not about checking tests, going to soccer practice or parent-teacher conferences. It’s going to fight for the freedom of your children.

And running--from the police, from the legal system-- is central to all this, from a very early age.

I know this guy driving his 11 year old brother to school in his girlfriend’s car when he got stopped. Turns out that the car was stolen, so the cops charged the guy with receiving stolen property. And then they charged the 11 year old with accessory to receiving stolen property, and gave him 3 years of probation. So from now on this 11 year old is in legal jeopardy. Any less-than-positive encounter with the police could mean a violation of his probation, and send him straight to juvenile hall for the entire three years. He could be out past curfew, or sitting on the stoop with his brother’s friends, or asked to inform—anything could lead to a violation.

So now his older brother sits him down and teaches him the basics of running. How to spot undercover officers and cars. How to negotiate a stop without escalating it. How to find a hiding place. Teaching his little brother to do this becomes what being a big brother is all about.

There’s a lot of violence in your book, but what’s surprising is how much forgiveness and reconciliation there is. You would think that some of the transgressions, like informing on someone and sending them to jail, would damage a relationship beyond repair but your book had numerous examples of rebuilding and re-bonding.

There’s clearly a lot of love for family. But it’s also about resistance—against a system that is incredibly destructive. It’s amazing how people fight to preserve family or forgive friends who have informed or testified against them. In this neighborhood, it’s understood that you can be placed in a position where you’ll have to choose your freedom over someone else’s. Any one of us likes to think that in that position we’d be honorable or selfless, but we don’t know. For most of us that’s a hypothetical. But there are families making this choice over and over and then trying to come back together.

It sounds like it becomes a survival instinct to run from the police, even after seeing something like the Walter Scott shooting in South Carolina.

It’s going to continue so long as the police act like an occupying force in some of these neighborhoods. When the police see and treat young black men with low-levels of schooling as the enemy, and when being a good police officer means putting as many of these men behind bars as possible, it becomes possible to justify any amount of violence and psychological pressure.

Now, this was definitely not my experience growing up in a largely white, middle-class neighborhood. And in college—we had campus police whose sole role was to prevent us from being arrested by the city police. They’d break up fights, help people home when they’re drunk, or to the hospital when they’re too drunk. But they’re not raiding parties or doing stop and frisks or looking to make as many busts as possible. If they were, a good percentage of the kids I went to school with would have records. And almost no one does.

But the level of scrutiny on the police has increased dramatically since your book came out last year.

What’s been great about that is that we are now, finally, getting the data about what’s happening—not just the Justice Reports, but first-hand observations and journalists actively investigating these incidents. We’re finally getting the numbers on the unauthorized use of force by the police in Philadelphia and other cities, which we never tracked before. It’s really important.

It makes a huge difference when you’re watching a video of the interaction.

Well, now people are actively recording their lives, and this is what it’s showing. But it’s been a change that’s a long time in coming. The public debate had been about federal sentencing reform, marijuana law reform, curtailing stop-and-frisks—really trying to reform sentencing and end the drug war. But policing wasn’t really part of the conversation until Ferguson happened. Now there’s this incredible, African American led protest movement, mostly working class people, that’s telling the public—showing the public—what’s been happening. It’s an amazing moment to be involved.

Do you think the protests around police violence will lead to real change?

The question is: how much are we going to make of this moment? You see the right and left coming together on these issues and asking for bipartisan reform. But are we really going to see an overhaul of the criminal justice system? Or will we see moderate reforms that still leave a lot of racial disparity, police violence and the highest per capita incarcerated population in the world?

After my time on 6th street, seeing how hard people tried to find and keep jobs, seeing how many kids have records for the same things that go unchecked on college campuses, it makes it harder to believe in the U.S. as a place of opportunity that doesn’t discriminate, no matter what color you are. 

So this reform and protest movement is really trying to hold us accountable to these ideals and meet them better than we have been. And that’s pretty exciting.

Read “The Art of Running,” excerpted from On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, below:

Learning the Art of Running in “On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City”

by Alice Goffmann

A young man concerned that the police will take him into custody comes to see danger and risk in the mundane doings of everyday life. To survive outside prison, he learns to hesitate when others walk casually forward, to see what others fail to notice, to fear what others trust or take for granted.

One of the first things that such a man develops is a heightened awareness of police officers—what they look like, how they move, where and when they are likely to appear. He learns the models of their undercover cars, the ways they hold their bodies and the cut of their hair, the timing and location of their typical routes. His awareness of the police never seems to leave him; he sees them sitting in plain clothes at the mall food court with their children; he spots them in his rear view mirror coming up behind him on the highway, from ten cars and three lanes away. Sometimes he finds that his body anticipates their arrival with sweat and a quickened heartbeat before his mind consciously registers any sign of their appearance.

When I first met Mike, I thought his awareness of the police was a special gift, unique to him. Then I realized Chuck also seemed to know when the police were coming. So did Alex. When they sensed the police were near, they did what other young men in the neighborhood did: they ran and hid.

Chuck put the strategy concisely to his twelve-year-old brother, Tim:

If you hear the law coming, you merk on [run away from] them niggas. You don’t be having time to think okay, what do I got on me, what they going to want from me. No, you hear them coming, that’s it, you gone. Period. ’Cause whoever they looking for, even if it’s not you, nine times out of ten they’ll probably book you.

Tim was still learning how to run from the police, and his beginner missteps furnished a good deal of amusement for his older brothers and their friends.

Late one night, a white friend of mine from school dropped off Reggie and a friend of his at my apartment. Chuck and Mike phoned me to announce that Tim, who was eleven at the time, had spotted my friend’s car and taken off down the street, yelling, “It’s a undercover! It’s a undercover!”

“Nigga, that’s Alice’s girlfriend.” Mike laughed. “She was drinking with us last night.”

If a successful escape means learning how to identify the police, it also requires learning how to run. 

Chuck, Mike, and their friends spent many evenings honing this skill by running after each other and chasing each other in cars. The stated reason would be that one had taken something from the other: a CD, a five-dollar bill from a pocket, a small bag of weed. Reggie and his friends also ran away from their girlfriends on foot or by car.

One night, I was standing outside Ronny’s house with Reggie and Reggie’s friend, an eighteen-year-old young man who lived across the street. In the middle of the conversation, Reggie’s friend jumped in his car and took off. Reggie explained that he was on the run from his girlfriend, who we then saw getting into another car after him. Reggie explained that she wanted him to be in the house with her, but that he was refusing, wanting instead to go out to the bar. This pursuit lasted the entire evening, with the man’s girlfriend enlisting her friends and relatives to provide information about his whereabouts, and the man doing the same. Around one in the  morning, I heard that she’d caught him going into the beer store and dragged him back home.

It wasn’t always clear to me whether these chases were games or more serious pursuits, and some appeared more serious than others. Regardless of the meaning that people ascribed to them at the time or afterward, these chases improved young men’s skill and speed at getting  away. In running from each other, from their girlfriends, and in a few cases their mothers, Reggie and his friends learned how to navigate the alleyways, weave through traffic, and identify local residents willing to hide them for a little while.

During the first year and a half I spent on 6th Street, I watched young men running and hiding from the police on 111 occasions, an average of more than once every five days.

Those who interact rarely with the police may assume that running away after a police stop is futile. Worse, it could lead to increased charges or to violence. While the second part is true, the first is not. In my first eighteen months on 6th Street, I observed a young man running after he had been stopped on 41 different occasions. Of these, 8 involved men fleeing their houses during raids; 23 involved men running after being stopped while on foot (including running after the police had approached a group of people of whom the man was a part); 6 involved car chases; and 2 involved a combination of car and foot chases, where the chase began by car and continued with the man getting out and running.

In 24 of these cases, the man got away. In 17 of the 24, the police didn’t appear to know who the man was and couldn’t bring any charges against him after he had fled. Even in cases where the police subsequently charged him with fleeing or other crimes, the successful getaway allowed the man to stay out of jail longer than he might have if he’d simply permitted the police to cuff him and take him in.

A successful escape can be a solitary act, but oftentimes it is a collective accomplishment. A young man relies on his friends, relatives, and neighbors to alert him when they see the police coming, and to pass along information about where the police have been or where and when they might appear next. When the police make inquiries, these friends and neighbors feign ignorance or feed the police misinformation. They may also help to conceal incriminating objects and provide safe houses where a young man can hide.

***

Running wasn’t always the smartest thing to do when the cops came, but the urge to run was so ingrained that sometimes it was hard to stand still.

When the police came for Reggie, they blocked off the alleyway on both ends simultaneously, using at least five cars that I could count from where I was standing, and then ran into Reggie’s mother’s house. Chuck, Anthony, and two other guys were outside, trapped. Chuck and these two young men were clean, but Anthony had the warrant for failure to appear. As the police dragged Reggie out of his house, laid him on the ground, and searched him, one guy whispered to Anthony to be calm and stay still. Anthony kept quiet as Reggie was cuffed and placed in the squad car, but then he started whispering that he thought Reggie was looking at him funny, and might say something to the police. Anthony started sweating and twitching his hands; the two young men and I whispered again to him to chill. One said, “Be easy. He’s not looking at you.”

We stood there, and time dragged on. When the police started searching the ground for whatever Reggie may have tossed before getting into the squad car, Anthony couldn’t seem to take it anymore. 

He started mumbling his concerns, and then he took off up the alley. One of the officers went after him, causing the other young man standing next to him to shake his head in frustrated disappointment.

Anthony’s running caused the other officer to put the two young men still standing there up against the car, search them, and run their names; luckily, they came back clean. Then two more cop cars came up the alley, sirens on. About five minutes after they finished searching the young men, one of the guys got a text from a friend up the street. He silently handed me the phone so I could read it:

Anthony just got booked. They beat the shit out of him.

At the time of this incident, Chuck had recently begun allowing Anthony to sleep in the basement of his mother’s house, on the floor next to his bed. So it was Chuck’s house that Anthony phoned first from the police station. Miss Linda picked up and began yelling at him immediately.

“You fucking stupid, Anthony! Nobody bothering you, nobody looking at you. What the fuck did you run for? You a nut. You a fucking nut. You deserve to get locked up. Dumb-ass nigga. Call your sister, don’t call my phone. And when you come home, you can find somewhere else to stay.”

Excerpt from On the Run by Alice Goffmann. On the Run copyright © 2014 by The University of Chicago. Originally published in hardcover by The University of Chicago Press. First trade paperback edition published April 7, 2014, by Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All rights reserved. www.picadorusa.com/ontherun

What's Behind Michael Dyson's Over The Top Takedown Of Cornel West?

Hoping to salvage Obama’s legacy and his own reputation, Michael Eric Dyson is lashing out at their most relentless African-American critic.

By Max Blumenthal

As the Obama era sputters to an end, new social movements are erupting in rebellion against a bankrupted bipartisan order that has doomed Americans to record levels of economic inequality, warehoused black bodies in a rapidly privatizing prison system, torn thousands of migrant families apart, outsourced unionized jobs to China and spread a dystopian assassination program across the far reaches of the globe. 

Activists confronting militarization on the US-Mexico border and organizers protesting lethal police violence under the banner of Black Lives Matter are sharing tactics with their counterparts from the Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) movement challenging Israeli apartheid on university campuses. 

The personal and intellectual cross-pollination between these variegated struggles is producing the most exciting surge of grassroots mobilization I have witnessed in my adult life. Not everyone is happy about it, however, and it’s not hard to understand why.

The structure under-girding movements like Black Lives Matter is intentionally non-hierarchical, making them difficult for institutional liberal political entities to co-opt or control. Organizers eschew a programmatic agenda that demands alliances of convenience with entrenched power, resorting instead to divestment drives, civil disobedience and Situationist-style urban disruptions. With their populist sensibility, they are capturing the sense of betrayal that is mounting among millenials, and they show little appetite for electoral contests that fail to answer the crisis. “I decided it is possible I’ll never vote for another American president for as long as I live,” the Ferguson-based rapper and activist Tef Poe has said about his past support for Obama.

Organized with little regard for the imperatives of the Democratic Party, and often aligned against them, the wave of grassroots mobilization is increasingly viewed as a wild beast that must be tamed. The condescending rants delivered against Black Lives Matter activists by Oprah Winfrey and Al Sharpton are salutary examples of the irritation spreading within established Democratic circles.

Few public intellectuals have positioned themselves at the nexus of these emerging movements as firmly as Cornel West has. Earlier this month, I joined him on a panel at Princeton University to support a group of students and faculty seeking to pressure the school into divesting from companies involved in human rights abuses in occupied Palestinian territory. His presence boosted the morale of the young student activists who had suddenly fallen under attack by powerful pro-Israel forces. 

Days later, West joined veteran human rights activist Larry Hamm at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark for a discussion on local efforts against police brutality. It was in places like this, away from the national limelight, where West gathered his vital energy and his righteous anger.

West’s investment in grassroots struggles ignored and even undermined by the Democratic Party has thrown him in direct conflict with the president and his supporters. He has been particularly withering in his criticisms of high profile African-American intellectuals and activists who have served as Obama’s loyal defenders. 

In an August 2013 episode of the radio show he hosted at the time with Tavis Smiley, West mocked Sharpton as “the bonafide house negro of the Obama plantation.” He then let loose on his former friend and understudy, Michael Eric Dyson, describing him and Sharpton as White House tools “who’ve really prostituted themselves intellectually in a very ugly and vicious way.”

The stage was set for an epic response from Dyson, the Georgetown University professor of sociology, frequent MSNBC contributor, and committed Obama ally. Dyson’s counter-attack arrived on April 19 in The New Republic with an essay that read more like a diatribe, and which seemed unusually disproportionate, not only because it clocked in at 9309 words. 

Re-purposing attacks on West by Leon Wieseltier and by Larry Summers, Dyson excoriated his one-time mentor as “a scold, a curmudgeonly and bitter critic who has grown long in the tooth but sharp in the tongue when lashing one-time colleagues and allies.” (He would later accuse West of "assaulting Black people.") The malevolent thrust of the piece was encapsulated in its title: “The Ghost of Cornel West.” Dyson had condemned West as politically irrelevant and intellectually exhausted — a dead man walking. Back in the early 1990's, West served on Dyson’s dissertation committee, helping earn him admission to Princeton’s school of religion. Two decades later, Dyson authored West's obituary.

Much of Dyson’s harangue was comprised of complaints about West’s unnecessarily ornery tone. Dyson went to great lengths to demonstrate that West’s experiments in spoken word poetry and acting were cringe-worthy, and he wrote miles to prove that West was not, in fact, a Biblical prophet. But these details of what Dyson described as West’s “rise and fall” were at best peripheral to his real grievances. The fact is, if West had not taken on Obama so forcefully, Dyson would not have tried so hard to take him out.

Having spent much of the past seven years slathering praise on Obama to an almost embarrassing degree, Dyson was unable to find any space in TNR to acknowledge the president’s shortcomings. Refusing to concede the sincerity of West’s criticisms, he dismissed them instead as the product of personal pathology, casting West as a jilted lover who “felt spurned and was embittered” by Obama. 

Dyson went on to belittle West’s arrest in Ferguson alongside 49 others at a Moral Monday protest as a “highly staged and camera-ready gesture of civil disobedience.” At no point did Dyson recognize West’s outspoken opposition to the Obama-backed decimation of the Gaza Strip, his rejection of Obama’s drive to pass the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal, or his condemnation of the administration’s embrace of drone warfare. According to Dyson, West’s opposition to the president’s agenda could only be guided by an irrational madness.

While West engages with a panoply of urgent, interconnected human rights issues driving activism around the country, from mass incarceration (he authored the foreword to Michelle Alexander's groundbreaking "The New Jim Crow") to Palestine, Dyson has kept at a convenient arm's length from any cause that might conflict with White House imperatives. BDS might be sweeping American campuses, but Dyson has been largely silent on Israel's endless occupation. Dyson carps about character assassination, but he is reticent on drone assassinations. Since Obama entered the Oval Office, Dyson has had much more to say about Nas than the NSA.

There was a fleeting moment when Dyson’s language on Obama tracked closely with West’s. It was back in March 2010, at Tavis Smiley’s “We Count!”  convention, an experience he briefly alluded to in TNR, but which he failed to convey in detail. Before an audience of thousands, at a roundtable filled with civil rights icons from Jesse Jackson to Louis Farrakhan to West, Dyson launched into an impassioned sermon accusing Obama of abandoning black America. “Why is it that to deal with black folk, we are persona non grata?..” Dyson boomed. “You bailed out the notorious AIG, you bailed them out. You bailed out General Motors but you can’t bail out African American people who put together dimes and nickels…to make sure that you could get up in the White House?” 

As West gestured his enthusiastic approval and the crowd roared, Dyson ratcheted up his rhetoric: “You think Obama is Moses. He is not Moses, he is Pharaoh!” All of a sudden, Dyson’s audience turned against him, groaning its disapproval. With his confidence visibly shaken, he quickly qualified his comments: “I’m not doggin’ [Obama], I’m talking about his office!”

In the months and years that followed his dramatic We Count! appearance, Dyson registered at least 19 visits to the White House. He became a fixture on MSNBC, delivering regular punditry on the Comcast-owned network that was functioning as the outsourced public relations arm of the Obama administration. By Obama’s second term, Dyson was filling in for MSNBC host Ed Schultz, rattling off teleprompted scripts about Republican wingnuttery while hailing Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice as “one of the most brilliant minds alive.” Following the publication of his TNR essay on West, he has begun trumpeting the book he is writing on Obama.

"You know, I got like 17 books in," Dyson boasted to Ebony. "I gotta make my first like my last and my last like my first."

In the twilight of the Obama era, Dyson has become a political prisoner trapped within the stultifying confines set by the president, his party, and network executives with little patience for dissent. He has linked his reputation to Obama’s legacy to an inextricable degree, prompting him to defend them both against their most relentless critic. Dressed up as a high-minded scholarly critique, his attack on West was ultimately an exercise in self-justification.

Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. Find him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal

President Obama dings MSNBC's TPP coverage

Ed Schultz delivers a passionate commentary on the dangers the TPP poses to American workers, a reaction to President Obama’s most recent comments on the trade deal. Sen. Bernie Sanders joins the conversation.

 

Why Is MSNBC Stonewalling On Hosts Tax Issues?

By Josh Feldman

It’s been a while now since reports about the millions MSNBC host Al Sharpton owes in taxes, and just a few days ago, reports revealed that another MSNBC host, Melissa Harris-Perry, also owes a lot of money to the IRS.

But that’s not all, according to a new report from National Review. Touré, one of the hosts of The Cycle, reportedly owes over $59,000 in taxes, while thegrio.com Mgr. Editor and former host Joy Reid reportedly owes roughly $5,000.

MSNBC did not respond to National Review (though they note reps for the above two hosts said they’re currently resolving their tax issues), but Washington Post media reporter Erik Wemple tried to get comment from the cable network too. He didn’t receive one and wasn’t happy about it:

In the collective ethic of MSNBC, there can be no excuse for tax delinquency.
And there’s even less of an excuse for MSNBC’s non-response to all this news. National Review fetched no response from the network. When the Erik Wemple Blog knocked today, the network again clammed up. A spokeswoman offered to go off-record with an explanation of things. We responded that we weren’t interested in spin that we couldn’t publish. Is it that hard for MSNBC to take a simple stand in favor of our common civic obligations?

For the record, Mediaite also reached out to MSNBC and similarly received no comment.
You can read Wemple’s full post here.
[image via screengrab]

Jimmy Kimmel Makes Stoners Look Like Idiots on 4/20

By Matt Wilstein

To celebrate 4/20 yesterday, Jimmy Kimmel sent his Pop Pot Quiz correspondent out onto Venice Beach to ask some stoners questions about both the U.S. government and marijuana.

You will just have to watch the video to see how they did…

Watch video below, via ABC:

Hillary is playing progressives for fools: Why you shouldn’t believe her populist talk on trade

Hillary Clinton is allegedly still making up her mind about TPP. Does anyone really believe this?

By Jim Newell

Last week, congressional Democrats and Republicans reached a deal to give the Obama administration Trade Promotion Authority, which would give the administration more leeway to negotiate trade treaties, like the 12 country Trans Pacific Partnership, with less congressional interference. It’s being billed as the first big fight within the Democratic presidential primary, pitting labor groups, environmentalists and other progressive activists against the more New Democrat, “corporate-friendly” wing of the party.

Since the great battles within the Democratic presidential primary will most likely be played out within the Hillary Clinton campaign, not among various competitive candidates, all eyes turned to the former secretary of state for her position on TPP. Her campaign’s spokesperson, Nick Merrill, issued a statement last Friday saying Clinton had not made up her mind yet:

A statement from her spokesperson, Nick Merrill, Friday afternoon struck a delicate balance. “Hillary Clinton believes that any new trade measure has to pass two tests: First, it should put us in a position to protect American workers, raise wages and create more good jobs at home. Second, it must also strengthen our national security. We should be willing to walk away from any outcome that falls short of these tests,” Merrill said.

“The goal is greater prosperity and security for American families, not trade for trade’s sake. She will be watching closely to see what is being done to crack down on currency manipulation, improve labor rights, protect the environment and health, promote transparency, and open new opportunities for our small businesses to export overseas. As she warned in her book, “Hard Choices,” we shouldn’t be giving special rights to corporations at the expense of workers and consumers,” Clinton’s spokesperson continued.

Uh-huh. So, here’s a question: If Clinton does eventually come out against TPP, why would anyone in their right mind believe that? If candidate Clinton says that as president, she would either withdraw from or renegotiate TPP, how naive would you possibly have to be to believe that she would follow through with that?

---

Within hours of Merrill’s statement, IBT reporter David Sirota dug up a Clinton statement from 2012 swooning over TPP. You know all that stuff about labor and environmental protections that Clinton says she’s going to keep a close eye on? In 2012, she referred to TPP as the “gold standard” there.

In November 2012, the then-secretary of state declared that “we need to keep upping our game both bilaterally and with partners across the region through agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. … This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world’s total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment.”

You could argue that Clinton was only saying that in her official capacity as secretary of state, serving at the pleasure of the Obama administration. That in her heart of hearts, she was always mighty suspicious of this gargantuan trade deal. Perhaps her campaign will try to run with that excuse.

So what does Clinton believe deep down? The best way to decide how Hillary Clinton really feels about trade deals is to delve into her history. Hillary was a consistent supporter of the North American Free Trade Agreement from the time her husband pushed it through upon entering office through the early 2000s. Only when she launched her first presidential bid, in 2007, did she begin to argue that NAFTA “has not lived up to its promises.”

Both Clinton and then-Sen. Barack Obama made suckers out of progressive primary voters when it came to trade issues in the 2008 election. Each promised to renegotiate NAFTA if they became president. This was a big deal ahead of the Ohio primary, where trade agreements have served the working-class economy poorly.

Clinton won the primary safely thanks in part to “NAFTAgate.” In the days ahead of the vote, you see, a Canadian government memo leaked, revealing a meeting Obama campaign economist Austan Goolsbee conducted with a Canadian government official. Goolsbee reassured the Canadians that Obama’s anti-NAFTA rhetoric was just for the sake of “political positioning,” and that they had no reason to worry otherwise. The Obama campaign tried to deny the story, but that didn’t work so well.

The kicker here is that a couple days after Clinton won the primary, a report came out that Clinton’s team had told the Canadians more or less the same thing: that Clinton’s rhetoric about wanting to renegotiate NAFTA should be taken “with a grain of salt.”

As we know, Obama became president of the United States and appointed Clinton his secretary of state. The two of them combined spent approximately zero seconds working to renegotiate NAFTA, but they did push forward on new, bigger, more opaque trade agreements.

If Hillary Clinton comes out against TPP, or promises to renegotiate TPP to make it perfect and great for workers (should it reach the finish line), there’s little reason to digest it as anything other than pandering. The only interesting aspect of her public statements on TPP — and trade deals in general — is political: what hedged language she’ll settle on to secure access to labor unions’ campaign cash ATM's, and how low labor sets its bar because it’s a captive interest of the Democratic Party and has nowhere else to go.

Jim Newell covers politics and media for Salon.

It ate our brains

Police Cadet Quits Academy, Reports Cops After Witnessing Homeless Man Being Beaten By Officers

Notorious Albuquerque, NM police department reaches an all new low

By Cassandra Fairbanks 

 

District Attorney Kari Brandenburg has provided new details in the case of two Albuquerque police officers who are under investigation for brutality after allegedly beating a homeless man on March 20.  According to Brandenburg, the person who reported the assault was a police cadet who has since resigned.

 

 

Few details are known about what exactly transpired, and Police Chief Gorden Eden told KOAT that it is partly because he’s concerned for the safety of the cadet who reported the incident. Mayor Richard Berry says the fact that it was an employee shows there is a level of comfort and internal accountability within the department, as someone felt safe enough to come forward. However, the department is afraid for anyone to know the identity of the cadet – possibly implying that they do not even trust their own officers.

The department has not named the officers involved, provided any details on the beating or condition of the victim, or even reported where exactly the incident took place.

The only information shared by the chief came from a YouTube video posted to the department’s Facebook page. He stated that an internal affairs investigation was immediately launched and the Department of Justice, FBI, and US Attorney’s Office were also notified. The case is now being investigated by the state police.
 

 

Since 2009, the troubled department has been involved in 47 shootings, 32 of which were fatal.

Chief Eden has stated that these numbers reflect a “systemic failure in our ability to track employee misconduct.”

In April of last year, the department was accused of using excessive force by the Justice Department after the frightening murder of the homeless James Boyd when he was approached for “illegally camping.”  Boyd was shot by an officer who had discussed his plans to shoot him in the penis, hours prior to his death.  Their own police chief openly admitted that he is stuck with officers who should not be on the force.

“Based on our investigation, we have reasonable cause to believe that APD engages in a pattern or practice of use of excessive force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and Section 14141. Our investigation included a comprehensive review of APD’s operations and the City’s oversight systems. We have determined that structural and systemic deficiencies—including insufficient oversight, inadequate training, and ineffective policies— contribute to the use of unreasonable force,” the Department of Justice wrote of the department.

While the APD may have lost a desperately needed actual “good cop”, the violent duo accused of the assault are currently on paid leave.

7 Times Bill Maher Revealed Himself to Be a Bigot

The host's Islamophobia isn't a recent development.

 By Joanna Rothkopf

SACRAMENTO, CA - AUG 19: Bill Maher performs at Sacramento Convention Center in Sacramento, California on August 19th, 2011
Photo Credit: Randy Miramontez/Shutterstock

Bill Maher’s long, illustrious career is perhaps, more than anything else, an excellent example of mass public manipulation. Under the guise of being a liberal comedian, he has managed to build for himself an ultra-successful career predicated on being a massive dick.

Maher has been consistently racist, sexist, transphobic and otherwise ignorant throughout his career, and responds to each allegation of hatred with more indignation than before. Let’s set the record straight: Bill Maher is a bigot. A bigot with a HBO show, but a bigot nonetheless.

Here are some of his worst moments:

1. When he compared former One Direction member Zayn Malik with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
“Just tell me two things, Zayn,” Maher said in a Web clip. “Which one in the band were you? And where were you during the Boston Marathon?”

Malik is half Pakistani. The Boston Marathon bombers were half-Chechen. The joke is 100 percent bad.



2. When he defended NFL player Shawne Merriman for choking Tila Tequila

Back in 2009, Maher responded to the news that Tila Tequila had been assaulted by her then-boyfriend: “New rule: Stop acting surprised someone choked Tila Tequila! The surprise is that someone hasn’t choked this bitch sooner.”

3. When he attempted to stand up for Muslim women’s rights, but was flat-out racist against Arab men

On an episode of “Real Time” from 2011, Maher said, “Talk to women who’ve ever dated an Arab man. The results are not good.”

4. “[Islamophobia] is not a real thing when we do it.”

In a now-notorious debate between Maher, Sam Harris and Ben Affleck, Maher defended his own Islamophobia as nothing of the sort.

“All these billion people don’t hold these pernicious beliefs? That’s just not true, Ben.”



5. When he said Hillary Clinton tried crying to get her way

In 2008, Maher discussed Clinton’s campaign strategy: “I’m not trying to be sexist here, but I’m just saying that women try a lot of different tacks when they’re in arguments… I’m not being sexist, I’m just saying that men, when we argue, we’re kind of a one-trick pony — we try our thing, and then we sulk when we don’t get our way.”

“But look at Hillary Clinton,” he said before playing a number of clips of Clinton on the campaign trail. “Because the first thing a woman does, of course, is cry… and then they go to sweet talking… and then they throw an anger fit totally unrelated to anything…. And when it doesn’t work, they bring out the sarcasm.”

6. When he suggested that all Muslims support the Charlie Hebdo attack

Days after the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris, Maher appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to condemn the second-largest religion in the world.

“I know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this,” he said. “But here’s the important point. Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this. What they say is, we don’t approve of violence, but you know what, when you make fun of the prophet, all bets are off.”

7.

Click to enlarge.

Walmart closes 5 stores: Walmart trots out 'sham' excuse to shutter five stores?

By Linsey Bald
 
Employees at five Walmart stores find themselves out of a job this week after the multinational retailer temporarily shuttered a number of its stores and super centers – because of alleged plumbing problems. Thousands of workers were laid off by the discount department store, surprising everyone, especially the over 2,200 employees, many of whom say they were literally only given hours notice.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Writes CNN Money: “The reason for the shut down: plumbing problems, according to the retailer. Two of the stores are in Texas, and the others are in California, Florida and Oklahoma. They will be closed for ‘extended repairs’ for approximately six months, the company said. The stores closed at 7 p.m. Monday, after workers were notified just hours before that they were losing their jobs.”

The abruptness of the announcement has left many employees questioning if Walmart is being truthful about the cause of the hasty closings. Officials at area locations have said that there is no record of any work or building permits being filed by Walmart prior to undertaking these “major pluming repairs.”

Rene Bobadilla, a city repair manager from Pico Rivera, Calif. said of their local Walmart store: “This is the first time we're hearing of their sewer problems.”

According to ABC Action News, the Midland, Texas store, “which, until Monday, was home to one of the 10 busiest Wal-Mart stores in the country,” was visited by City Building Official Steve Thorpe.

According to ABC, “his plumbing inspector was sent away” when he arrived.

Each store followed the same protocol – Walmart corporate officials arrived unannounced, called an impromptu meeting of the senior staff, and told them that the store would be closed that evening.

Venanzi Luna, who managed the deli department at the Pico River Super Walmart, said of the announcement: “Everybody just panicked and started crying.”

Walmart released a statement, indicating that full-time and part-time employees will receive two months worth of paid leave. They are also free to look into the possibility of transferring to another Walmart. If they cannot, then some of the former employees – only those who worked full-time – may be eligible for a severance package. When the stores reopen, some may be eligible to return.

“Our goal, of course, as a business is to keep our stores open and serving customers,” the company’s statement read. “We made a tough business decision in five locations around the country to fix recurring plumbing problems in these stores. We understand this decision has been difficult on our associates and our customers and we aim to reopen these stores as soon as these issues are resolved and improvements are made.”

Plumber Codi Bauer, who did previous pipe and drainage work at the now closed Walmart in Brandon, Florida, questioned the repair time frames given.

“Even if they had to replace the whole sewer line, it wouldn't take six months,” Bauer said.

Luna, like many employees, think the plumbing repairs are a smokescreen to weed out employees.

Many local contractors say that for almost all plumbing issues, the store could certainly remain open.

If they were forced to close, then six months is excessive. Brand new Walmarts can be built from the ground up in six month’s time, they say.

Luna said she believes her location was targeted for its involvement in Black Friday protests and demonstrations demanding higher pay. Other employees are coming up with similar thoughts as they find themselves without a job this weekend.

WikiLeaks Republishes Hacked Sony Data In Searchable Database

Cache of data stolen in crippling hack includes emails, company documents, and personal information of studio employees and celebrities.

• by Steven Musil
  @stevenmusil
• April 16, 2015 4:22 PM PDT

Sony condemns WikiLeaks' republishing of data stolen in a crippling hack last year. AFP/Getty Images

WikiLeaks has republished the data stolen in last year's crippling hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment, making all the documents and emails available in a "fully searchable" format.

Although hackers had released the data in raw, bulk form last fall, WikiLeaks -- best known for the release of classified government and military documents - announced Thursday it has published the information in a searchable database called "The Sony Archives." The release of the data cache, which includes 30,287 documents, 173,132 emails, and other sensitive information, proved a disruptive and embarrassing security gaffe for the studio - one that the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant is still trying to contain.

"This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation," WikiLeaks editor in chief Julian Assange said in a statement on the website. "It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there."

Sony representatives condemned WikiLeaks' republishing the data, calling the initial cyberattack a "malicious criminal act."

"The attackers used the dissemination of stolen information to try to harm SPE and its employees, and now WikiLeaks regrettably is assisting them in that effort," Sony Pictures said in a statement. "We vehemently disagree with WikiLeaks' assertion that this material belongs in the public domain and will continue to fight for the safety, security, and privacy of our company and its more than 6,000 employees."

The security breach, which Sony discovered in late November, turned out to be more serious and pervasive than initially believed, forced Sony to shut down its computer network for several weeks and delay issuing its quarterly results. A group calling itself #GOP, aka "Guardians of Peace," claimed responsibility and said it had obtained internal information. Hackers leaked the personal information -- including Social Security numbers - of more than 47,000 celebrities, freelancers. and current and former Sony employees. They also leaked then-unreleased movies, as well as embarrassing emails between Sony Pictures executives, among other internal documents.

The hackers, which the FBI traced to North Korea, were apparently trying to prevent the release of the satirical movie "The Interview," which depicts actors Seth Rogen and James Franco as TV journalists drawn into a CIA plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

In a sternly worded letter sent to news organization in December, Sony Pictures general counsel David Boies referred to the leaked Sony documents as "stolen information" and warned them against any use of the leaked data. Later that month, Boies sent a similar letter to Twitter, warning that if "stolen information continues to be disseminated by Twitter in any manner," Sony "will have no choice but to hold Twitter responsible for any damage or loss arising from such use or dissemination by Twitter."

Despite the negative attention generated by the hack, Sony said in January that it didn't expect the security breach to have a substantial impact on its earnings. While some reports pinned Sony's cost to overcome the hack as high as $100 million, Sony's preliminary fiscal third-quarter financial results in February revealed that the company planned to take a $15 million charge in the current quarter to cover "investigation and remediation costs" related to the breach.

Terrified ‘Tea Party Patriot’ Realizes He Could Lose Healthcare If GOP Wins in 2016

"The Republican Party, they haven’t done nothing for me, man. Nothing."

By Dave Edwards 

A conservative video blogger with over a million views on YouTube said this week that he would likely vote for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton because he was terrified that a Republican president would take away his affordable health insurance.

James Webb, a 51-year-old YouTube celebrity who devotes his “Hot Lead” channel to topics like his love of guns and ranting about gay men kissing on The Walking Dead, may have shocked his viewers on Monday when he revealed that he was torn over which party to vote for in the 2016 election.

“And I’m serious because I asked myself, ‘Which party has helped me out the most in the last, I don’t know, 15 years, 20?’ And it was the Democrat [SIC] Party,” Webb lamented. “If it wasn’t for Obama and that Obamacare, I would still be working.”

“With Obamacare, I got to retire at age 50 because if it wasn’t for Obamacare, I would have had to work until I was 65 and get on Medicare because health insurance is expensive when you’ve got medical problems,” he continued.

Webb said that he hoped to lose some weight and get in shape by taking advantage of a gym membership that was covered by his health insurance.

“But you know, the Republican Party, they haven’t done nothing for me, man. Nothing,” he remarked. “So, I’m leaning toward voting for Hillary unless something major comes up. I don’t trust the Republicans anymore because they’re wanting to repeal the Obamacare. And I don’t want them to do that, man, because then I’ll have to go to work again. My life’s already planned out.”

“Just a tough decision,” Webb sighed. “I voted for Republicans for 32 years, I’m a charter member of my Tea Party Patriots chapter. I’m also a veteran of the U.S. Army under Reagan, when Reagan was in. That was great when Reagan was in there.”

“Things have changed. So unless the Republicans change with it, I’m probably going to have to swing my vote over toward Hillary.”

Watch the video below from the Hot Lead YouTube channel.

Cops Only Do Bad Things When They’re Being Filmed

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - New Gameplay Trailer!

Find out all about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's story, characters and the locations all while watching a load of brand new game play.

Paul Ryan's immoral act requires a response

By Egberto Willies



It is hard to believe that Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his ilk would be so blatant in showing that their main purpose in Congress is to serve the wealthy. This is neither hyperbole nor an exaggeration. Matt O'Brien in the Washington Post says it best:

A specter is haunting America's super-rich — the specter of progressive taxation. Don't worry, though, the Republican Party is manning the barricades against this menace. That's been true for the last 35 years, and it's no less so now. Indeed, the Paul Ryan-led House Ways and Means Committee just symbolically voted to end the estate tax entirely. In other words, to stand in solidarity with the heirs of the top 0.2 percent.

That's how many households pay the estate tax now: 2 out of 1,000. Why so low? Well, the first $5.43 million that an individual or $10.86 million that a couple leaves behind isn't taxed when they pass away. The estate tax, with its 40 percent top rate, only kicks in for anything more than that. And even then, creative accountants and big deductions can shield a lot of the rest from Uncle Sam. So it's important to remember that there's a difference between the top marginal tax rate and the effective tax rate that estates pay.

Since the super-rich only owe the estate tax on some of what they own, they actually pay, on average, 16.6 percent of the value of their estate.

Here is the thing: According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the estate tax repeal would cost $269 billion in reduced revenues between fiscal 2016 and 2025. If one counts the incurred interest on the debt from the deficit it would create, the figure jumps to $320 billion.

Worse, the estate tax repeal affects only 0.2 percent of Americans—in other words, 99.8 percent of Americans get no benefit from said tax cut because they could not possibly inherit, or receive income and capital they did not work for, that would qualify for the estate tax repeal.

At the same time that Ryan and his ilk are willing to donate more financial benefits to their wealthy benefactors, their proposed budget would cut $5 trillion in programs during the same period for low- and moderate-income Americans. They also make deep cuts in investments that strengthen productivity and future economic growth such as education, training, and basic research.

The estate tax repeal is an immoral act. First, the rich did not get wealthy in a vacuum. Absent a system that transfers the value of one's excess labor to the employer/shareholder, the rich would not have more than the working person. As such, they owe our entire society for existing within an economic model that affords them their wealth. Transferring said wealth tax-free upon death to an heir who did not earn it is a supremely immoral act. It is a transfer of unearned wealth without a pay-in to the society that allowed for its existence.

There are over 300 million Americans, and as pointed out by Ed Schultz and Congressman Chris van Hollen, Ryan and his allies are willing to inflict further pain on the poor and the middle class to give free money to about 4,000 super-rich Americans. That is immoral. One can only guess that Ryan and his ilk follow the doctrine of this Christian conservative who believes it’s heresy to deny that God entitles the rich at the expense of the masses.

These politicians will continue acting with disregard for the masses until the masses mobilize with a conviction politicians cannot deny. Mobilization does not only mean street protest, although that is part of it.

Mobilization means doing what you are capable of doing to be a part, however small or large, in forcing a change—hounding your representative on the phone, fax, and via letters. Mobilization means calling into Koch-inspired right-wing talk shows to use their platform to tell the truth, even if you simply get 10 seconds to do so.

Mobilization means voting, and encouraging and taking others to vote. Mobilization means civilly providing truth in a digestible manner to your family, neighbors, and acquaintances anywhere (grocery store, coffee shop, hair salon, barber shop, etc.)

Mobilization means being involved and engaged. Paul Ryan and his allies can lie, confuse, and misinform because enough of us in the grassroots and in the know are not as relentless in enlightening our family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. Let's get busy.

Bill Maher’s Bigoted Atheism: His Arrogant Shtick Is Just as Ugly as Religious Intolerance

As the 'Real Time' host and his ilk prove, you don’t need a religion to be in the business of spreading hate.

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

You know what you call someone who makes sweeping generalizations on billions of people based on the extreme actions of a few? A bigot. Bill Maher, for example, is a bigot. And if you’re a fan of his smug, dismissive shtick, you’re a bigot too.

On Friday’s “Real Time,” Maher, who has been openly atheist his whole career but has been increasingly vocal against organized religion in recent years, squared off against Fareed Zakaria, who gave a powerful rebuttal to Maher’s reiteration of the “Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas”assertion.

“My problem with the way you approach it,” Zakaria said, “is I don’t think you’re going to reform a religion by telling 1.6 billion people — most of whom are just devout people who get some inspiration from that religion and go about their daily lives — I don’t think you’re going to change religion by saying your religion is the motherlode of bad ideas, it’s a terrible thing. Frankly, you’re going to make a lot of news for yourself and you’re going to get a lot of applause lines and joke lines.” Instead, he urged, “Push for reform with some sense of respect for the spiritual values.”And on behalf of Muslims, Christians, Jews and anybody else who prays to somebody sometimes, let me just say, thank you.

As the threats of terrorism and right-wing Christianity have risen in the past few years, Maher’s aggressive brand of atheism — also popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris — has gained a strong following among a certain type of self-professed intellectual. Maher has famously said, “Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do” — which is pretty funny, given the know-it-all arrogance of the anti-religion big leaguers like Maher himself.

As Zakaria very eloquently pointed out, that stance has given Maher more power and reach than he’s ever had in his long career. But whatever you believe or don’t, if you’re selling blanket intolerance, you don’t get to call yourself one of the good guys. You shouldn’t even get to call yourself one of the smart ones.

I’m a Christian, which in my urban, media-centric world is basically equivalent to self-identifying as a hillbilly. It also means that I have to accept that I apply the same word to myself that a lot of hateful morons do. But on Sunday at my little neighborhood church, our priest delivered a sermon in which he said, “I can’t understand how in places like Indiana, people are using Christianity as an excuse to close their doors, when we should be welcoming to everyone.” Guess what? That’s faith too. I am also keenly aware that in other parts of the world, people are being murdered for a faith that I am privileged to practice openly and without fear. And anyone, anywhere, who is openly hateful to others for their religion is part of a culture that permits that kind of persecution to endure.

Here’s what I would like Bill Maher and his smug, self-righteous acolytes to understand. There are literally billions of individuals in this world who are not murderous, ignorant, superstitious, hatemongers, who also happen to practice a religion. Billions of people who I swear — to God — have no investment in forcing their beliefs on Bill Maher. Right here in the U.S., there are millions of my fellow Christians who are strongly committed to the ideals of the Constitution, and who don’t want to live in a theocracy any more than they do.

I recently had a conversation with an atheist friend who asked why, knowing all I do of the wrongs committed by the Catholic Church, disagreeing as strongly as I do with many of its positions on women’s rights, LGBT equality and reproductive justice, I continue to stay within it. And my reply was that this is where I feel I can do the most good. I am not a disinterested party. I’m a citizen of my church and I’m going to continue to demand better of it. I don’t, however, want to sell it to anybody else. You don’t have to believe in God — or however else you may define the concept of something else out there. I don’t have all the answers to life, the universe and everything; I’m just trying to get through this plane of existence in a manner that’s philosophically satisfying and guides me in the direction of not being a selfish jerk. That’s it.

All I ask — all that many, many, many of us who practice their respective religions ask — is that you conduct yourself with respect and compassion and a spirit of coexistence, and we’ll do the same. I ask that you not make assumptions about the vast majority of the world’s population based on your own need to feel good about yourself and how smart you are. Like Zakaria says, you’re not going to bring about reform that way. And as Maher and his ilk prove, you don’t need a religion to be in the business of spreading hate.

Hillary declares for 2016

Hillary's running for president because everyday Americans need a champion—and she wants to be that champion. Watch her announcement video to kick off the campaign.

http://hillaryclinton.com/join/

Ted Cruz Is Practically President Already

If Rand Paul Fucks Up One More Day This Week, He Wins A New Car!

By Gary Legum

Senator Dr. Rand Paul has fucked up in so many ways since kicking off his presidential campaign on Tuesday that we are probably going to be able to write a daily “How Is Rand Paul Fucking Up Today?” feature for this here Wonkette for the next year.

We’re really looking forward to documenting all the ways Paul will fuck up between now and the day next February when he suspends his campaign after finishing ninth in Iowa behind Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Zombie Orval Faubus, and a placemat from a Council Bluffs Denny’s.

Anyway, how has Rand Paul fucked up today, on day three of his galactic fuck-up of a campaign?

• A spot on the Senate Homeland Security Committee is a plum assignment, one that a presidential candidate could really use to burnish his national security credentials during a time when, Republicans keep reminding us, President Golf Bag’s own fuck-ups have made the world such a dangerous place. This could especially be a good spot for a candidate who keeps screaming “BENGHAAAZI!!1!” at Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. The Republican base loves a person who will scream “BENGHAAAZI!!1!” at Clinton until he is hoarse. So why has Rand Paul skipped 68 of 73 Homeland Security Committee meetings in the last 15 months? An anonymous aide tells BuzzFeed:
  

  In that same timeframe, he has made more than 98 percent of the votes in the Senate and authored more than 50 bills and amendments, all the while maintaining a full schedule of meetings with Kentuckians in his office. When schedules conflict, he has chosen to spend his time hearing the thoughts of Kentuckians.

  Come on, guys. Have you seen that magnificent mop top of Rand Paul’s? Just admit he has to spend a lot of time in the Senate barbershop getting that perm spiffy and the hair curled just so, and all that follicle maintenance takes time away from Homeland Security meetings. We understand he has priorities.
•  
• BuzzFeed also reports the Paul campaign is threatening to sue TV stations that run a commercial made by a Republican group attacking the candidate for not being fully on board with bombing Iran into a rubble-strewn wasteland. The commercial actually uses Paul’s own quotes, and we know how candidates feel about opponents quoting the words that they said with their mouth holes against them. (Hint: They do not care for it!) We don’t think this tactic is going to make the senator look like less of a dick, but he has won exactly one more Senate campaign than we have, so what do we know.

• Some footage in the video Paul showed at his kick-off on Tuesday may have violated rules against Senate members using official government resources for a campaign. At issue is a brief clip of the senator during his 13-hour “filibuster” two years ago over John Brennan’s appointment to head the CIA. According to Time:
  

  “The use of any tape duplication of radio or television coverage of the proceedings of the Senate for political campaign purposes is strictly prohibited,” the Senate Manual states.

  There is no word yet on whether Senate Democrats will lodge an official complaint with the chamber’s Rules Committee or just note this fuck-up and then let the Paul campaign flounder around whining about it.
• 
  
• Paul has made history – dubious who-gives-a-shit history, but apparently history nonetheless – by becoming the first presidential candidate to accept campaign donations in Bitcoin through his website. As the New York Times points out, this does raise some questions about whether some tech-savvy contributors could use the relative anonymity of Bitcoin to get around donation limits.The campaign has limited online Bitcoin donations to $100, but as one election law expert points out, the currency is essentially untraceable. Could motivated dudebros get around this limit through straw donors and multiple accounts? The Times seems split on the issue. In any case, Bitcoin is still new enough that the amount Paul is likely to collect is probably pretty small. This only becomes a major fuck-up if anyone decides to care.

• Following up on that fuck-up from Wednesday when Paul gave his prickly interview with Savannah Guthrie, the ladies on Fox’s “Outnumbered” today went on the air to say that … the senator is the one who looked bad in the exchange? Hang on, we’re going to slap our face a few times and re-watch the video. Okay, yes! 
•  
• We can confirm (EXCLUSIVE! MUST CREDIT WONKETTE!) that Rand Paul was such a dick to Guthrie that even Andrea Tantaros noticed. Even Andrea Tantaros thinks the senator needs to work on his temperament, particularly with women reporters. It’s bad optics, which as Yr Doktor Zoom points out, is an area that one would think an eye doctor would be particularly concerned with. There does seem to be a split here amongst right-wing females on this point. Disagreeing with Tantaros is Megyn Kelly, who interviewed Rand Paul on her show last night and gave him some free advice, just in case there is anyone out there who still pretends Fox is not a propaganda organ for the Republican Party.
  

  “Chuck Todd came out and said you had to be careful because you attacked two prominent female interviewers. The Guardian said you were condescending to female reporters,” Kelly told Paul.

  “I, as a female reporter, would say to Chuck Todd and The Guardian, we don’t need your help. Savannah Guthrie doesn’t need your help. Kelly Evans doesn’t need your help, and you are entitled to push back on the interviewer just as much as you would if you are a man.”

  Also on his side is – ugh – Dana Loesch. Always a good ally to have if you want to run your campaign directly into a wall.
  Sure, being a combative, bad-tempered jackwagon in interviews is a great strategy for winning an election. Just ask President John McCain. For the record, yr Wonkette is split on this issue. While we agree that Rand Paul’s dickishness knows no gender bias, some of us also can’t imagine him shushing a male reporter the way he did to Kelly Evans on CNBC recently. But the fact this will remain an issue until Paul gets through one interview with a woman without turning into Sean Connery in Goldfinger is a pretty major fuck-up.

Join us again tomorrow, when Rand Paul will surely fuck something else up.
[Buzzfeed / Buzzfeed again / Time / New York Times / TPM]

Big banks require tellers to use predatory practices

By Moyers & Company

Front-line workers at our nation’s big banks — tellers, loan interviewers and customer service representatives — are required by their employers to exploit customers, according to a revealing report out today from the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD). Big banks have internal systems of penalties and rewards that entice employees to push subprime loans and credit cards on customers who would be better off without them.

CPD’s report outlines several illegal predatory practices big banks have been caught employing, usually via their front-line workers:

• Blatantly discriminatory lending:
  In 2011 and 2012, Bank of America and Wells Fargo paid out settlements for charging higher rates and fees to tens of thousands of African American and Hispanic borrowers than to similarly qualified white customers. Minority customers were also more likely to be steered into (more expensive, riskier) subprime mortgages.
• Manipulating payment processing to maximize overdraft charges:
  When a savings account balance drops too low, the bank charges a hefty overdraft fee on each subsequent purchase. Both Bank of America and US Bank paid settlements for intentionally processing customers’ largest debit card payments first, regardless of chronological order, in order to hit $0 faster and maximize overdraft fees. US Bank was also accused of allowing debit card purchases on zero-balance accounts to go through (and incur overdraft fees), instead of denying the charges upfront.
• Forcing sale of unneeded products:
  Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup were accused of forcing customers to purchase overpriced property insurance.
• Manipulative sales quotas:
  Lawsuits show Wells Fargo and Bank of America created incentive programs for employees with the interests of the company — not the customer — in mind. Wells Fargo’s sales quotas encouraged bank workers to steer prime-eligible customers to subprime loans, while falsifying other clients’ income information without their knowledge. Bank of America’s “Hustle” program rewarded quantity over quality, encouraging workers to skip processes and checks intended to protect the borrower.

Instead of cutting back on the risky, unethical practices that led to the Great Recession, the CPD report asserts that big banks have not learned from their mistakes. Bank workers report higher levels of sales pressure in 2013 than in 2008, and most do not have the job security or seniority to simply refuse to hawk credit cards or steer customers into risky financial situations. While the financial sector is turning near-record profits, the average bank teller made just $12.25 an hour in 2013 (a real-dollar decrease from 2007), causing 31 percent of tellers’ families to rely on public assistance. What’s more, 85 percent of these underpaid front-line bank employees are women, and one-third are people of color. Most are in no position to risk losing their job or having their pay docked for stepping out of line.

Several anonymous big bank employees went into detail about how their employers incentivize sales:

• An HSBC employee reported that when workers fell short of sales goals, the difference was taken out of their paychecks.
• A teller at a major bank said she is expected to sell three new checking, savings, or debit card accounts every day. If she falls short, she gets written up.
• Customer service representatives at one major bank’s call-center said everyone is expected to make at least 40 percent of the sales of the top seller. Credit card sales count for extra, encouraging callers to push credit cards on customers who would be better served with checking or savings accounts.
• A call-center worker said she offers a credit card to every customer, regardless of whether it would be beneficial. She explained: “If you aren’t offering, you can get marked down — the managers and Quality Analysts listen to your call, and can tell if you aren’t offering.”

“We’re not servicing their needs,” said one front-line worker. “What they want, what they need, isn’t important to us. Selling them a product is … Some of our customers just have their savings, many are just retirees.”

As the report concludes, “Our nation’s big banks are committed to a model that jeopardizes our communities and prevents bank employees from having a voice in their workplace.”

April 9, 2015 by Katie Rose Quandt
This post first appeared on BillMoyers.com.

Could Rand Paul’s Incoherence Be An Asset?

By Taegan Goddard

Marc Ambinder: “As the press struggles to label him, Paul’s plunge into the primaries has the potential to upconvert his opponents. His value to Republicans is that his final position on a number of issues cannot be predicted from his past statements. This is valuable, and not a knock against him, because his unpredictability will force the rest of the field to respond in real time to a politician who seems willing to change his mind.”

“Paul can’t quite acknowledge his penchant for inconsistency, because there’s a convention in politics that equates consistency with strength. But it’s perhaps his most genuine quality.”

Boston Globe: Paul’s tough task in New Hampshire

Package Installer through WebKit

By Reprep · April 8, 2015

Do you remember the last time you heard about the WebKit exploit of Vita? Was it the Pong? It seems our good friend SMOKE is baking something.

It has been sometime since the WebKit on Vita has been exploited. This WebKit exploit works up to 3.20 firmware. Even though the progress continues, we rarely hear about it.

If you are following SMOKE on twitter, you must have noticed he is into Vita hacking lately. He posted a video where he manages to open Package Installer through WebKit.

I can already hear you saying we can run Package Installer through the e-mail application. That is true, but the e-mail application was introduced in Vita Firmware 2.00, and this is confirmed to work on 1.80. Without further ado, I present you the video:



You can contact SMOKE through his twitter account, he says he can share the script if you have a 1.80 Vita.



For more info about the WebKit exploit, visit the thread on /talk or go to the github page of Vitasploit.

MSNBC Analyst Found Dead From Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound

By Andrew Kirell

Prominent attorney and frequent MSNBC legal analyst John “Jay” Fahy was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot near his office in Rutherford, N.J on Wednesday afternoon.

Fahy was a frequent guest on MSNBC, most recently appearing to discuss George Zimmerman‘s now-concluded second-degree murder trial. His body was discovered under a railroad bridge, little more than 300 yards from his office. He was discovered by two juveniles.

Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli confirmed the death, which he said was “the result of a single gunshot wound to the head, fired with a handgun.”

A close associate of Fahy’s expressed bewilderment at his colleague’s death: “I feel like I just lost my brother,” the unidentified person told the Cliffview Pilot. “Everybody’s in tears right now.”

“Something happened in the last two weeks,” the person added. “But none of us can figure out what it is.”

Police have indicated that there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of foul play. But the investigation is ongoing.

Fahy was once the Bergen County Prosecutor, and before that, the chief of the political corruption unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark, N.J. Most recently, he worked at his firm Fahy Choi, LLC, before which he was a partner at Cole Schotz Meisel Forman & Leonard, PA; Water McPherson McNeill, PC and Reed Smith LLP.

Man Commits Suicide, Blames Casino and Loss of Free Buffet for Life

By Josh Feldman

A Las Vegas man committed suicide and, in material he left behind, blamed the M Resort Spa Casino, its employees, and the fact that he ended up being banned from free buffets for life.

John Noble had apparently won free buffets for life, but according to The Las Vegas Review-Journal, he was banned two years ago after he harassed some of the female employees.

Noble caused a panic when he committed suicide on Sunday because he took out a gun and killed himself at the buffet. When authorities arrived on the scene, his car outside was burning.

Noble mailed a lengthy suicide note to the Review-Journal, replete with “a table of contents, photographs and a two-hour DVD of him talking about his troubles.” He had reportedly gone after employees of the casino online and was harassing them, even posting their personal information online.

In all the documents the Review-Journal received, Noble “spells out all the harm he wishes on those he believed wronged him,” including multiple female employees who worked at the buffet.

You can watch parts of his video message here, via the Las Vegas Review-Journal:



If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, make sure to reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline here.