February 17, 2021

'weak will parish', 'lazy' , Texas mayor attacks citizens and quits

'Get off your a** and take care of your own family': Texas mayor quits after calling snowed-in residents 'lazy' and attacking them for complaining about power outages as he warns 'the weak will perish'

Tim Boyd was mayor of Colorado City, 220 miles west of Dallas, until Tuesday

He attacked the town's 4,000 residents on Facebook in a post that went viral

Boyd called them 'lazy' and said they were socialists seeking handouts

In a second post he said he had already resigned and was a private citizen

Texas is experiencing the worst cold snap in decades with freezing weather

In his town over a quarter of the homes were without power on Tuesday

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9268797/Get-ass-Texas-mayor-quits-calling-snowed-residents-lazy.html

February 17, 2021

The New Debt Prisons: Entrapping debtors betrays the American idea. It must end.

Most people are probably unaware of the breadth of punitive user fees that Americans are saddled with when they go through our criminal justice system. In North Carolina, as of 2019, people were charged $10 per day in jail, and faced a $600 crime lab fee if their case had forensics, and an additional $600 fee if an expert witness testifies. That was on top of a $173 fee for appearing in criminal court. In 2014, NPR found that in over 40 states defendants can be billed for services that might include a public defender, room and board for time in jail and prison, their own probation and parole supervision, and even court-required electronic monitoring devices.


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Cindy Rodriguez, for example, is a disabled, middle-aged woman in Tennessee who was arrested on a charge of shoplifting in 2014. She followed her public defender’s advice, pleaded guilty, and accepted probation. Her probation lasted nearly a year under the supervision of a private probation contractor. The company charged her $35-45 a month and $20 for each randomly administered drug test, on top of the $578 she owed the court. She had to sell her van to keep up with these payments and lost her apartment. Still, she was booked into jail for owing money.

Deepening Racial Bias in the Criminal Justice System:

This method of funding law enforcement only magnifies the systemic racial discrimination in our criminal justice system. This was seen starkly in Ferguson, Mo. The Department of Justice found that the city’s predatory practices against its Black residents were driven by a toxic combination of explicit racial prejudice and callous fiscal manipulation. In 2013, city officials expanded the use of fines to the equivalent of half of its police budget. Ninety-two percent of Ferguson’s court warrants, almost exclusively used to compel fee payments, were against Black residents.

Study after study confirms that Ferguson is far from the exception. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found in 2017 that “municipal fee targeting tends to aggregate in communities of color,” whose governments use “law enforcement as ticketing and collections agencies to increase municipal revenues as distinct from focusing on public safety and civil compliance.” A nationwide study of over 9,000 cities found that cities with the largest share of Black residents collect over five times as much in fines and fees per capita as the cities with the smallest share of Black residents. In places where police can keep seized property, the negative racial impact is even worse. A nationwide study revealed that where police departments are allowed to permanently seize property, budget shortfalls lead to major increases in Blacks and Latinos experiencing arrests and property seizures for D.U.I.’s and drugs offenses, while the treatment of whites remains largely unchanged.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/opinion/politics/debt-america.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

February 17, 2021

Trying to stay warm

Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon stands on his kitchen counter to warm his feet over his gas stove Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021, in Austin, Texas. Power was out for thousands of central Texas residents after temperatures dropped into the single digits when a snow storm hit the area on Sunday night.




Natalie Harrell holds her sleeping daughter, Natasha Tripeaux while sitting in a recliner at a Gallery Furniture store after the owner opened his business as a shelter for those without power at homes Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021, in Houston



People seeking shelter from sup-freezing temperatures gather at a make-shift warming shelter at Travis Park Methodist Church, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021, in San Antonio.


https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-complete-bungle-Texas-energy-pride-goes-out-15954690.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-CP-Spotlight#photo-20618384

February 16, 2021

Houston deaths of woman and child - ran car to create heat in garage attached to condo

Ahead of a historic storm, KBMT in Beaumont, Texas, warned residents about the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning, which killed a dozen people in Texas and Louisiana amid last year's Hurricane Laura.

The notice apparently wasn't enough. Ninety miles west in Houston, a woman and her 8-year-old daughter were found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning on Tuesday, per KTRK.

Police said a car had been running in a garage attached to a condo "to create heat" because the power was out.

The brutal storm left 4 million Texans without power amid record-low temperatures, per NBC News.

The woman was in her car speaking on the phone to a relative when she passed out, per KTRK. Her daughter was found inside the condo. A man and 7-year-old boy also found at the scene were rushed to the hospital for treatment.

https://www.newser.com/story/302616/houston-woman-child-die-while-trying-to-stay-warm.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top

A day earlier, six members of a Houston family, including four children ages 5 to 10, were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after using a charcoal grill to heat their apartment for four hours, per KLTV. The outlet reported one adult and one child were in critical condition.

February 16, 2021

downtown Houston glows while outskirts are in the dark, some sleep in their cars

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9266809/Deep-freeze-paralyzes-Texas-knocks-power-grid.html

Deep freeze paralyzes Texas and knocks out its power grid - sending cost of oil surging to over $60 a barrel for first time in a year
and leaving 5 million shivering at home without power or sleeping in their cars as Storm Uri leaves its mark

The cold bast caused by winter storm Uri is wreaking havoc on the energy industry with Texas oil wells and refineries halted and natural gas pipelines and wind turbines frozen

Oil production in the country's largest crude-producing state has plunged by more than two million barrels a day due to the storm, which has sent prices surging to $60 a barrel for the first time in a year
Wind turbines, which account for a fifth of the state's energy, have frozen solid and are contributing to the state's power woes as temperatures plummet to a bitter -20F
Nearly five million households in Texas were without power overnight and many residents took desperate refuge in their cars for warmth
The Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities across 14 states, were forced to impose unprecedented rolling blackouts because the supply of reserve energy had been exhausted
The current crisis started to unfold when freezing temperatures that started at the beginning of the month sent prices for heating fuels, including oil and natural gas, surging higher

February 16, 2021

Doctored photo purports to show US President Biden sleeping in Oval Office

be prepared to fight against these memes. Lazy Trump was allowed be as lazy as f*Ck. Now suddenly they care about work ethic.

https://factcheck.afp.com/doctored-photo-purports-show-us-president-biden-sleeping-oval-office

An image purporting to show US President Joe Biden sleeping at his desk in the White House’s Oval Office has been shared on Facebook and Twitter. The image, however, has been manipulated; a photo of Biden appearing to fall asleep during a budget speech in 2011 has been digitally inserted onto a photo of him signing executive orders on January 20, 2021.
The image was published on Facebook here on January 28, 2021.

“AMERICA IN DECLINE,” a text caption on the picture reads. “This decrepit old grifter works MAYBE five hours a day. We traded in a work horse, for someone that belonged out to pasture or sent to the glue factory a long time ago. Nothing says we threw in the towel better than this nauseating image, the 'commander in chief' can't even stay awake.”

?itok=q9jjfS0D

February 16, 2021

Mayor, police chief and clerks all arrested in small Iowa town

https://nypost.com/2021/02/14/mayor-police-chief-and-clerks-all-arrested-in-small-town/







Mayor, police chief and clerks all arrested in small Iowa town

The mayor, police chief, city clerk and a former city clerk of a small Midwest town were all arrested for allegedly abusing their power — with crimes including stealing money, falsifying records and strong-arming civilians, officials said.

In one instance, a resident in Armstrong, Iowa — population 840 — was attacked by one of the defendants with a stun gun to shake them down for money, authorities said.

“Mayor Greg Buum, police chief Craig Merrill, city clerk Tracie Lang, and former city clerk Connie Thackery were charged with felony and misdemeanor offenses in a 21-count joint trial information approved by the Emmet County District Court,” the Emmet County sheriff said in a statement.

The Iowa Attorney General’s Office filed charges on Feb. 11 after a multi-year investigation uncovered allegations of theft, felonious misconduct in office, tampering with records, assault with a dangerous weapon and falsifying public records, according to the release.


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In the first charge of ongoing criminal conduct, Mayor Gregory Wayne Buum, 69, Police Chief Craig Juan Merrill, 43, City Clerk Tracie Jean Lang, 57, former City Clerk Connie Marie Thackery, 66, are accused of committing wrongdoing for financial gain, according to court papers obtained by Law&Crime.

Authorities claim Buum and Merrill misappropriated checks totaling more than $10,000 and that, together with the city clerk, the mayor and Lang made a false entry in the public record regarding money in that amount. Buum and Thackery are also accused of misappropriating funds, resulting in a charge for theft in the second degree. The two assault charges against the police chief stem from him allegedly using using a Taser on someone.

The Emmet County Sheriff’s Office says this is the result of a multi-year investigation with help of the Division of Criminal Investigation, and following a special investigation by the Auditor of State. They claimed wrongdoing included misappropriating city funds, presenting fraudulent public records, using a Taser on a civilian for a pay, and falsifying ledgers to hide embezzlement.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/mayor-police-chief-clerk-and-former-clerk-of-iowa-town-all-arrested-in-corruption-case/ar-BB1dHAOI

February 16, 2021

Resentment against Californians bringing their larger housing budgets to other states

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/The-Californians-Are-Coming-So-Is-Their-Housing-15947410.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-CP-Spotlight

The Californians are coming. So is their housing crisis.
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But there is another factor at play: Californians, fleeing high home prices, are moving to Idaho in droves. For the past several years, Idaho has been one of the fastest-growing states, with the largest share of new residents coming from California. This fact can be illustrated with census data, moving vans — or resentment.


Home prices rose 20% in 2020, according to Zillow, and in Boise, Idaho, “Go Back to California” graffiti has been sprayed along the highways. The last election cycle was a referendum on growth and housing, and included a fringe mayoral candidate who campaigned on a promise to keep Californians out. The dichotomy between growth and its discontents has fused the city’s politics and collective consciousness with a question that city leaders around the country were asking even before the pandemic and remote work trends accelerated relocation: Is it possible to import California’s growth without also importing its housing problems?

“I can’t point to a city that has done it right,” said Lauren McLean, Boise’s Democratic mayor.

That’s because as bad as California’s affordable housing problem is, it isn’t really a California problem. It is a national one. From rising homelessness to anti-development sentiment to frustration among middle-class workers who’ve been locked out of the housing market, the same set of housing issues has bubbled up in cities across the country. They’ve already surfaced in Boise, Denver, Nashville, Tennessee, Austin, Texas, and many other high-growth cities. And they will become even more widespread as remote workers move around.

Housing costs are relative, of course, so anyone leaving Los Angeles or San Francisco will find almost any other city to have a bountiful selection of homes that seem unbelievably large and cheap. But for those tethered to the local economy, the influx of wealthier outsiders pushes housing costs further out of reach.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/The-Californians-Are-Coming-So-Is-Their-Housing-15947410.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-CP-Spotlight

According to a recent study by Redfin, a national real estate brokerage, the budget for out-of-town homebuyers moving to Boise is 50% higher than locals’ — $738,000 versus $494,000. In Nashville, out-of-towners also have a budget that is 50% higher than locals. In Austin it’s 32%, Denver 26% and Phoenix 23%.

February 16, 2021

excellent video of homeless communities in Los angeles

something to notice... the community aspect of this homeless community... the spacing of the tents, the collaboration. its sad but its not chaos.

February 16, 2021

Biden poised to swing the important 9th US Circuit court of appeals back to the left

Former President Donald Trump consistently pulled rightward the West Coast’s most powerful federal court through his appointments. Now, as President Biden eyes the judiciary, he will have the chance to swing it back to the left.

Since the election, a number of aging judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have indicated that they are preparing to take senior status, a state of semi-retirement that frees up the president to pick a replacement. These nine members were all appointed by then-President Bill Clinton, and for years, they gave the court a reliable liberal bent.

Trump upended that power balance. During his term, he cut the 11-seat lead Democratic-appointed judges held on the 29-judge court to a margin of three. The court governs a massive amount of territory (California and six other Western states, as well as Alaska and Hawaii), and the consequences were considerable. The once-liberal bastion now often delivers conservative opinions on hot-button issues such as abortion, gun rights, and religious freedom cases.

A greater number of 9th Circuit court cases make it to the Supreme Court than any other court, in part because of the massive jurisdiction, but also because it has long attracted legal activists of all stripes seeking to win controversial cases. Trump in 2018 vowed to turn it conservative in 2018 after a rant in which he denigrated the court as “a disgrace.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-ninth-circuit-swing-left