Mueller reportedly has enough evidence to indict Michael Flynn and his son
Ken’s Comments:
Those in high office, in the public trust, should do prison time if convicted. Prison serves 4 purposes: 1. Protect the public, 2. Deterrent to others, 3. punishment, and 4. rehabilitation (which we know is practically non-existent. To me, 2 and 3 are paramount in such cases.
I believe Donald Trump himself will be indicted. The indictment of so many around him is another indication of his incompetence. He had no plan for transition to the office, no adequate personnel to vet properly the lackeys he hired, and no interest in checking their financial dealings. This, of course, is not a crime, but I would bet my life that the Donald has committed financial crimes, has already committed obstruction of justice, and once the prosecutors examine his tax returns, will be indicted. There is a reason Trump will not release his tax returns.
Excerpts from the Article:
Special counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly compiled enough evidence to bring charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his son, Michael Flynn Jr., according to NBC News. The evidence relates to Flynn’s lobbying work throughout the latter half of 2016 — while he was a top Trump campaign surrogate — for a businessman with ties to the Turkish government. Flynn did not register with the US Justice Department as a foreign agent until March 2017.
Mueller’s mandate gives him permission to investigate “any matters” that arise out of his investigation into Russia’s election interference and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. The possibility of Flynn indictments suggests Mueller’s Russia investigation isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Last Monday, Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Manafort’s former business associate, Rick Gates, pleaded not guilty after a grand jury indicted them on 12 counts.
Trump waited nearly three weeks to fire Flynn after former acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned him that Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail over his conversations with former Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
Trump also ignored advice by President Barack Obama — who fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 — to steer clear of him entirely.
The president asked former FBI director James Comey to “let go” of the FBI’s investigation into Flynn’s activities during a February meeting shortly after Flynn was forced to resign.
Flynn Jr. appears to have been closely associated with his father’s work. In addition to co-founding and working for Flynn Intel Group, he joined Flynn during a trip to Moscow in December 2015, NBC News reported, during which Flynn was paid $34,000 to deliver a speech at an event celebrating the state-sponsored news agency RT. A former business associate of Michael Flynn’s told NBC News that Flynn Jr. had a prominent role in Flynn Intel Group’s day-to-day operations and served as his father’s chief of staff.
Mueller’s additional focus on Flynn Jr. is likely an attempt to coerce his father’s cooperation in the investigation, legal experts have said. This possibility may be especially significant given that Flynn declined a new request in September to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Jens David Ohlin, a criminal law expert and vice dean at Cornell Law School, told Business Insider in September that while it’s difficult to evaluate “the factual or legal strength” of a possible case against Flynn Jr., it’s clear that Mueller “is following a classic prosecutorial strategy: start along the perimeter and work your way to the center.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent Vice President Mike Pence a letter in November 2016 requesting more information about the potential conflicts of interest posed by Flynn’s lobbying work. But Pence told Fox earlier this year that he first heard about Flynn’s undisclosed lobbying work after reports surfaced in March that Flynn had registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department.
Flynn was paid $530,000 last year by the businessman, Ekim Alptekin, who is a member of a Turkish economic-relations board run by an appointee of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Alptekin is also the head of Inovo, a consulting firm.
Flynn’s firm was tasked with fomenting dissent inside Turkey, and with lobbying the US government to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania, who Erdogan believes is responsible for planning last year’s attempted coup.
Mueller’s team also subpoenaed the lobbying firm SGR LLC in August after Flynn Intel Group hired the firm to ostensibly “promote a good business climate in Turkey,” The Washington Post reported. Flynn’s firm hired SGR as part of its work with Inovo. Although Flynn’s group’s initial stated goal in hiring SGR was to foster a stronger business climate in Turkey, it was later forced to indicate that it brought SGR on to “raise concerns” to the US about Gulen.
Flynn’s op-ed seemed out of place amid his work with Trump’s campaign, where he was national security adviser at the time. His work for Inovo did not come to light until after he registered as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice in March — four months after his contract with Alptekin ended.
Alptekin paid the Flynn Intel Group half a million dollars to produce a documentary about the dangers of Gulen that he had hoped would be “a small, ’60 Minutes’ kind of a thing, where these conclusions are brought to the public,” the businessman told The Wall Street Journal in May. “We thought that might have a good effect.”
In his Foreign Agent Registration Act filing, Flynn said his firm had conducted research for Inovo that “focused on” Gulen. But it may have gone further than that: Flynn met with Turkish government ministers in September, where he discussed removing Gulen from US soil, according to former CIA Director James Woolsey, who was at the meeting.
Trump Declares Opioid Crisis a ‘Health Emergency’ but Requests No Funds
Ken’s Comments:
Trump is merely “jumping on the political bandwagon”, joining countless politicians who see the crisis and do not see the solution!
Trump is so ill informed, I am a bit surprised he did not say something like “Opioids are right up there, just as dangerous as Marijuana”! The federal law classifies both as in the same category – a “Schedule 1 drug”. Ridiculous.
Without funding, his declaration is virtually meaningless. Addicts need treatment, not prisons.
READ How to WIN the War on Drugs!
Excerpts from the Article:
President Trump on Thursday directed the Department of Health and Human Services to declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency, taking long-anticipated action to address a rapidly escalating epidemic of drug use. But even as he vowed to alleviate the scourge of drug addiction and abuse that has swept the country — a priority that resonated strongly with the working-class voters who supported his presidential campaign — Mr. Trump fell short of fulfilling his promise in August to declare “a national emergency” on opioids, which would have prompted the rapid allocation of federal funding to address the issue.
His directive does not on its own release any additional funds to deal with a drug crisis that claimed more than 59,000 lives in 2016, and the president did not request any, although his aides said he would soon do so. And he made little mention of the need for the rapid and costly expansion of medical treatment that public health specialists, including some in his own administration, argue is crucial to addressing the epidemic.
To combat the epidemic, the president said the government would produce “really tough, really big, really great advertising” aimed at persuading Americans not to start using opioids in the first place, seeming to hark back to the “Just Say No” antidrug campaign led by Nancy Reagan in the 1980s.
Congressional Republicans as well as law enforcement and physicians’ groups said the president’s announcement was a crucial first step in building awareness about the opioid crisis and confronting its causes and devastating effects.
“America is hemorrhaging lives by the day because of the opioid epidemic, but President Trump offered the country a Band-Aid when we need a tourniquet,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts. “Instead of a commitment to emergency funding for our states and communities, President Trump offered empty words and half-measures.”
“What we need is for the president to seek an appropriation from Congress, I believe in the billions, so that we can rapidly expand access for effective outpatient opioid addiction treatments,” Dr. Kolodny said in an interview. “Until those treatments are easier to access than heroin or fentanyl, overdose deaths will remain at record-high levels.”
Among the questions left unanswered by the president’s announcement is whether the Department of Health and Human Services will use its authority under the public health declaration to negotiate lower prices for naloxone, a drug that quickly counteracts the effects of opioid overdoses. Lawmakers and public health and anti-addiction organizations have argued that such a measure is crucial to expand access to the drug.
“That undercurrent that if all of you just decided not to do this, we’d be in a better place — I can tell you, my son did not decide that he wanted to become addicted, much less die,” Mr. Hood said. “We might have been much better served by framing this as a very serious illness, a very serious health issue.”
Read the Whole Story:
Immigrant Prisons — 440,000 Locked Up Each Year, Billions In Profit = Obscene, Unjust, and Cruel! kra
Ken’s Comments:
Jaws dropped when I gave a short talk in Wilmington, DE, a few months ago, about the inhumane conditions of “detainment” in ICE private prisons. Most folks have no idea what really goes on, but you should, because IT IS YOUR GOVERNMENT AT ITS WORST!
Excerpts from the Article:
Few Americans know about our nation’s system of immigrant detention centers. Each year, the U.S. government locks up roughly 440,000 immigrants in over 200 immigrant prisons. These facilities have grown into a highly privatized, lucrative and abusive industry that profits off the misery of immigrants awaiting deportation. Here at Brave New Films, we’re doing everything we can to expose the abuses of the deportation industrial complex. In our new film, Immigrant Prisons, we explore conditions inside the detention centers, exposing substandard medical care, widespread physical and sexual abuse, virtual slave labor working conditions and more. These abuses happen behind closed doors with little to no oversight.
Our film, created in partnership with advocates for detainee rights, is shining a light on a particularly dark corner of the American justice system. Watch now and share with friends.
It’s important to remember that immigration detention is a civil form of confinement. “This is not criminal custody, this is not someone who’s been convicted of a crime,” says attorney James Fife of the Federal Defenders of San Diego. “This is just someone who’s being held for the government’s convenience so that the person’s available” for processing, said Fife.
Unlike with criminals who have been convicted of a crime, there’s no time limit on how long people can be held at immigration detention centers. It’s hard to believe, but immigrants can be locked up indefinitely without a criminal offense or bond hearing. In the film we highlight the case of a Kenyan immigrant, Sylvester, who spent 9 years and 4 months in immigration detention. Another immigrant describes her time in detention as being “like a legal kidnapping.”
Immigrant detention centers are overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. Since ICE was created in 2003, there have been 177 confirmed deaths in detention centers. Medical neglect is the greatest contributing factor.
In the film, we speak with Gerard, a former detainee who almost died during his 11 months at a California facility. He was denied medical care for two weeks as a severe infection spread in his body. The private facility managers kept ignoring his requests until it was nearly too late. Such medical neglect contributed to nearly half all of deaths in immigrant prisons.
Adding insult to injury, detainees at for-profit detention centers are often coerced into working for virtually no money. The for-profit companies that run the facilities have all the wrong incentives and a captive workforce at their disposal. The food they provide detainees is frequently so inadequate that detainees feel they have no choice but to work for $1 a day to buy additional food from the commissary, often at inflated prices. Fialho doesn’t mince words about this practice: “Detention centers are starving people into working in order to then cut staff salaries.”
The two largest private detention center operators, CCA and Geo Group, got started in the 1980s. In fact, CCA’s very first contract was for locking up immigrants. In the past twenty years, the two companies have made over $12 billion in profits, largely from immigrant detention.
Wrongful death lawsuits and class action lawsuits alleging forced labor have helped expose abuses at private immigrant prisons, but systemic reforms are needed. Stock in CCA and Geo Group slid after the Obama administration moved to end the use of private prisons by the federal government, but the stocks rocketed up after the 2016 election. President Trump, who received major contributions from the private prison industry, reversed President Obama’s order on private prison use and has proposed a 25% increase in ICE’s budget.
Immigrant Prisons is our first film on the deportation industrial complex. In future films we’ll explore how private prison companies promote policies and procedures that line their own pockets and profile the individuals who are working to perpetuate our abusive immigration enforcement system.
Read it all and watch the Video
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/immigrant-prisons-440000-locked-up-a-year-billions_us_59e69723e4b0153c4c3ec3ae
Brave New Films: “Immigrant Prisons”
Ken’s Comments:
Yes, too few Americans know what really happens to innocent people, law abiding people, in our ICE detention centers. A true nightmare.
Says Brave New Films:
In our newest film “Immigrant Prisons”, we expose the abuses of the deportation industrial complex, substandard medical care, widespread physical and sexual abuse, virtual slave labor working conditions and highlight the incredible stories of three former detainees. This is the first in a series of exposés on the immigration system. Each year, the U.S. government locks up roughly 440,000 immigrants in over 200 immigrant prisons. These facilities have grown into a highly privatized, lucrative, and abusive industry that profits off the misery of immigrants awaiting deportation.
Oprah Goes to Prison for ’60 Minutes’ Report on Solitary Confinement
Great! Another spotlight on the inhumanity of isolation cells. Maybe she will get into the fact that prisons also use isolation cells for criminal, illegal, retaliation against inmates who speak out!
Watch the Video http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/26056-oprah-goes-to-prison-for-60-minutes-report-on-solitary-confinement
WeedWeek for the Week of 10/7/17 – ALL the MARIJUANA NEWS!
Subscribe to it, for it is THE source for all the latest Pot news: Politics, Health and Science, Culture, Criminal Justice, Business, Products …. they cover it ALL. 🙂
My time is so limited, I highlight only one article here, though I read many of them. This is very frustrating because there are many VERY informative articles.
LA Considers First Ever City-Owned Public Bank In US – A great idea, due to the absurd federal laws on pot, causing marijuana businesses innumerable problems. kra
Excerpts:
Would a city-owned public bank address some of Los Angeles’ pressing issues — such as affordable housing, small business growth and financing for municipal projects — while also freeing the city from the influence of private banks who put shareholder interests over those of the public good? That’s what L.A. City Council President Herb Wesson believes. In July, Wesson issued a challenge to the council to create the nation’s first ever city-owned bank.
The city currently does the majority of its banking with Wells Fargo through roughly 800 different accounts, but the City Council is exploring cutting ties with Wells Fargo following the scandal in which bank employees created more than 3.4 million unauthorized accounts as a way to meet aggressive sales goals set by management. L.A. settled a lawsuit with Wells Fargo in September 2016 for $185 million.
Wesson’s motion cites the only current publicly-owned bank in the nation, the Bank of North Dakota, as a successful model for L.A. The Bank of North Dakota “was created in 1919 in a populist wave when farmers there were unhappy with decisions being made by major banks heavily influenced by railroads and out-of-state agricultural interests,” Wesson wrote in his motion.
BND, which in 2016 reported 12 straight years of record profits, does not have ATMS or debit and credit cards. It has only one location. Among its services, BND offers low-interest student and school construction loans.
A city-owned bank “may also provide the best financial solution to reducing the cost of the creation and rehabilitation of affordable and workforce housing in the City of Los Angeles, while at the same time providing low cost financial services for city residents and local governments,” Wesson said in his motion. Wesson isn’t alone in his thinking. In May, California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Twitter proposed a state bank that would “build our infrastructure, construct new health care facilities, provide student loans, & build 3.5 million new housing units by 2025.”
Jack Humphreville with LA Watchdog argues that funding for such a bank would be a challenge for the cash-strapped city. He says that the city would need between $125 million and $250 million in equity to support a bank with up to $2 billion in assets.
Along with financing for local entrepreneurs and affordable housing, Wesson also argues that such a bank will allow the marijuana dispensary operators a place to access banking services. Due to the current discrepancy between federal and state laws on marijuana, many banks are wary to provide financial services to cannabis-related businesses.
“We cannot bury our heads in the sand on the issue of recreational and medical cannabis legalization. Instead we must strive to reasonably regulate the emerging industry while creating opportunities for Angelenos,” Wesson said back in July.
Cannabis, which has been legal for medical purposes for more than two decades in California, will become legal for recreational use in 2018. Legalized cannabis could bring the city up to $100 million in new tax revenues per year, and the City Council is currently working on multiple motions and ordinances to create a legalized industry in the city that can be taxed and regulated.
Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish moves to video-only inmate visitation Citing security concerns, local sheriff eliminates in-person visits to 1,200-person prison
Ken’s Comments:
Another step backwards! All studies show that in-person visits reduce recidivism and improve inmate behavior! They always cite “security” for their bad policies, and here that is more nonsense from prison officials. This comment is downright laughable: “the agency expects that by eliminating in-person visitations, it will also eliminate the entry of contraband into the facility “almost completely.”” I bet my life that guards bring in more contraband than inmates ever did!
I know that when I got a visit – I got 2 in 5 years – I was so happy to see someone from the outside I felt like a kid at Christmas. Prison is such a ZOO! The animals are the ones in uniform! 🙂 You’ll see when my book on prison abuse hits the fan 🙂
Excerpts from the Article:
In a policy move first for the country’s most carceral State, the Sheriff of Jefferson Parish in Louisiana announced Wednesday that video conferencing will soon be the only way for inmates at Jefferson Parish Correctional Center (JPCC) to receive visitors. According to expectations laid out in the Sheriff Department’s press release, the agency expects that by eliminating in-person visitations, it will also eliminate the entry of contraband into the facility “almost completely.”
The use of prison video visitation has increased in recent years, as the technological barrier to entry has dropped and promotional efforts by major prison telecommunication companies, like Securus and Global Tel Link, have grown. By one estimate, well over half of prisons that begin utilizing video visitation equipment ultimately prohibit in-person visits altogether; at each of these facilities, the service provider often waives fees for the purchase, installation, and maintainance of equipment, instead offering the prison a cut of the costs charged to inmates and an incentive structure that threatens to emphasize profits over rehabilitative best practices.
For Jefferson Parish, these costs for inmates and their families will amount to about $13 for a 20-minute video call. Once a week, would-be visitors will have the option to use the video service free of charge from the department’s visitation center – which, like the correctional facility, is just 20 minutes from downtown New Orleans. All seven days a week, individuals will have the option of video visitation via computer and cell phone app for up to three visits a day. The policy is scheduled to go into effect October 10.
Jefferson Parish, like prisons in Texas and South Carolina that have also transitioned to a video-exclusive visitation option for inmates, cited as its primary motivator the benefits for the security and safe operations of the jail, which houses nearly 1,200 people and will no longer require as many guards to monitor visits and control illicit interactions.
The new policy has also been criticized by prison rights’ advocates for the harshness it imposes upon those under custody but not yet charged with a crime; a large percentage of JSCC’s inmate population is comprised of pre-trial detainees.
Public record requests for the details of the policy change are currently pending with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Read the Whole Story and See the Charts
Wrongful Convictions – A National Disgrace – Excellent Video! kra
Thanks to Cindy Rook of our FB group for sending me this one. Ask to JOIN Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE on FB! 🙂
This excellent video explains the causes and some of the solutions. This judge says that in his career he had over 200 trials. In my 10 year career in law I had over 55. This is because these days 95% to 97% of all felony cases end in a plea! READ Rush to Sentence – A Major, Awful Consequence of our “War on Drugs”!
Thousands of wrongful convictions attest to the extreme dysfunction of our justice system.
Watch the video:
WeedWeek for the Week of 9/9/17 – ALL the Marijuana News
This is THE newsletter with all the pot news,. There are so many articles I would like to mention here, but time does not permit. They cover Business, Culture, Product Reviews, Criminal Justice, Politics, and Health and Science. If you are interested in the myriad developments concerning Marijuana, you MUST subscribe to WeedWeek!
He is one Article I highlight: House GOP blocks vote protecting medical marijuana states – Given A G Sessions’ rediculous stance on marijuana, this could portend very bad news and widespread legal chaos! If you don’t think that Trump and his followers are a disaster for criminal justice reform, just look at this nonsense and at the proliferation of private prisons!
Excerpts:
Several lawmakers said Wednesday that GOP leaders won’t allow the full House to vote on an amendment that bars the Justice Department from pursuing states that have legalized medical marijuana. Without legislation, states would lose protection they have enjoyed for the past four years, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions could begin his long-sought crackdown on the rapid expansion of legalized pot.
“The status quo for four years has been the federal government will not interfere because the Department of Justice is not permitted to use its resources to supercede a state that has legalized the medical use of marijuana,” Rohrabacher said.
He said that without his amendment, “we’re changing the status quo in a way that undermines the rights of the states and the people … to make their policy.”
At one of the largest jails in the U.S., – Cook County, Il – Sheriff Tom Dart sees his job as not just keeping people in jail, but helping some of them get out
Watch this excellent 60 Minutes piece to see a prison administrator who “gets it”! 🙂
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