NYC will Spend $1.5 Million a year for Bodyguards and Flunkeys for NYPD Commissioner after he retires

BlackListedNews

Ray Kelly's retiring, but he won't be doing it unaccompanied. According to police sources, Kelly will be taking a small battalion of personal bodyguards with him wherever he goes, post-employment.

The NYPD's Intelligence Division — with Kelly’s input — is recommending that Kelly take with him a 10-officer complement of taxpayer-funded bodyguards, up from the six-officer detail the commissioner had wanted last month.

The detail will now include a lieutenant, three sergeants and six detectives to chauffeur and protect Kelly and his family around-the-clock in the Big Apple and even out of town after he ends his 12-year run atop Police Headquarters — at an estimated cost of more than $1.5 million a year, sources estimate.

US prison population jumps 27% in a decade over harsh drug sentencing

CitizensforLegitgov

The number of Americans incarcerated in federal prisons throughout the country has increased by nearly 30 percent over the past ten years, according to a new report by an investigative arm of Congress.

US government considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist until 2008

CitizensforLegitgov

From the White House to the halls of Congress, U.S. government officials have responded to the death of Nelson Mandela with a hail of testimonials to the late South African president's leadership in the struggle for freedom and human rights. Until five years ago, however, the U.S. officially considered Mandela a terrorist. During the Cold War, both the State and Defense departments dubbed Mandela's political party, the African National Congress, a terrorist group, and Mandela's name remained on the U.S. terrorism watch list till 2008.

NYPD Orders Precincts to Deny Journalists Access to Crime Reports

CitizensforLegitGov

The NYPD has ordered the city's 77 police precincts to stop giving out any information to the media about crimes taking place in their neighborhoods, cutting off a long-standing source of information for New Yorkers. According to a terse NYPD edict transmitted citywide, precinct commanders were instructed: "Any requests by media to view complaint reports be referred to the office of the Deputy Commissioner For Public Information." The move is the latest -- and perhaps not the last -- taken against the media by outgoing Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

DC's Non-Citizens Could Get Right To Vote

ColorLines

More than a quarter of the District of Columbia's City Council members are said to support a newly resurfaced bill to grant voting rights to legal immigrants who are not citizens. Nationwide, at least seven municipalities--six of which are in neighboring Maryland--have already enacted similar laws. 

In order to vote in local elections, residents must be federally-recognized legal permanent residents and live in DC at least 30 days prior to the most recent election.

Bill co-sponsor David Grosso feels confident the bill will pass this time around, owing to a more favorable climate on immigration. A similar measure co-sponsored by then council member and former mayor Adrian Fenty was defeated in 2004. 

Why Don't Supreme Court Justices Ever Change Their Minds in Favor of the Death Penalty?

TheAtlantic

If you spend any time at all studying the death penalty in America today you eventually come across an immutable truth:  No one who digs deeply into these grim cases ever seems to evolve from being a staunch opponent of capital punishment into being a fervent supporter of the practice. The movement, over the past 40 years anyway, has almost always been in the opposite direction: The closer one gets to capital punishment, the more dubious it appears to be.

This has been particularly true of Supreme Court justices since the death penalty was resurrected in America in 1976: The closer these esteemed jurists have gotten to "the machinery of death," the more flawed convictions and death sentences they were forced to review, the more racial inequality they saw in its application—and the more likely they were to recoil from the arbitrary imposition of capital punishment in those states that still practiced it.

This is just one of the many important takeaways from the book of the year about the death penalty, Evan Mandery's work titled "A Wild Justice: The Death And Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America." I will have more on the book—as well as an online interview with Mandery—in a related post tomorrow here at The Atlantic. But for now let us focus on four Republican-appointees to the Supreme Court and the impact their decades-long focus upon capital cases had upon their judicial philosophies toward executing condemned murderers.

Researchers say half of all renters spend more than 30 percent of income on rent; a quarter spend more than half

Aljazeera

People renting apartments in the United States are facing the highest financial burden they have ever faced as a result of the economic recession, driving more people out of the housing market and into rentals, according to a new report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS).

Half of all renters, about 20.6 million people, are spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent. A quarter, 11.3 million, are spending more than 50 percent of their income on rent, forcing them to spend less on food, transportation, entertainment and retirement savings.

“It has never been this bad, we are at record levels,” Chris Herbert, research director at JCHS, told Al Jazeera. "It puts low income people in a real bind. If you don’t have a lot of income to begin with and half of it is going to housing, you don’t have a lot of money left over for anything else.”

The report breaks down the findings across income levels and age groups. The group with the most renters facing a significant cost burden is comprised of renters who make below $15,000 — about the yearly amount of someone earning minimum wage — 83 percent of them are spending more than a third of their income on rent.

According to the report, someone making $15,000 a year would need to find housing that’s only $375 a month to keep costs at a manageable 30 percent of income, a challenge considering only 5 percent of new rental units in 2011 went for less than $400 a month and median rent was $1,000 a month.

Welfare ban for ex-drug offenders hurts Non-white women [and that's the point in a white supremacy system]

SentencingProject

Sadly, thanks to a hastily added provision to the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) also known as the Welfare Reform Act, which aimed to reduce welfare dependence, women with drug convictions are not only unlikely to get the help they need before or during their incarceration, but many of them will also face being barred for life from receiving most forms of public benefits — from cash assistance to food stamps — after they serve their time.

A new report by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit dedicated to reforming the U.S. criminal justice system, examined the impact of the PRWORA provision, which affects those convicted in state and federal courts of federal drug offenses. Titled A Lifetime of Punishment, the report found that an estimated 180,000 women were being subjected to a lifetime exclusion welfare benefits, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

The purpose of the prohibition, presumably, is to deter drug use and the criminal behavior that sometimes arises from it, by making it harder for addicts to trade food stamps or cash benefits for drugs. However, the report found no evidence that this goal was being achieved. On the contrary, by denying benefits to those most in need, the ill-conceived embargo, which is in full effect in 12 states (and in partial effect in 25 others), may be having a particularly devastating impact on women and children of color — and may be more likely to perpetuate the cycle of poverty and addiction that leads people to abuse or sell drugs in the first place.

But the provision was pushed through without any system in place to evaluate it, which, according to Marc Mauer, a co-author of The Sentencing Project’s report and an expert on criminal justice policy reform, was a major oversight.

Congress Job Approval Drops to All-Time Low for 2013

Gallup

Americans' job approval rating for Congress in 2013 averaged 14%, the lowest annual average in Gallup's history, including a 12% reading in December. Congressional approval has averaged below 20% for each of the last four years.

Obama Approval Down Most Among Hispanics in Past Year

Gallup

President Barack Obama's job approval rating of 41% in November is down 12 points from the recent monthly high of 53% in December 2012. His largest declines were among Hispanics, lower-income Americans, nonwhites, and moderates.

Judge Approves Merrill Lynch's $160 Million Racial Bias Settlement

BusinessWeek

After eight years of legal tussles, a federal judge today approved a record $160 million settlement in a racial bias suit against Merrill Lynch brought by black brokers. The settlement, in which Merrill denied any wrongdoing, marks the final resolution to the lengthy case brought by George McReynolds, a broker in Merrill’s Nashville office. McReynolds, as we described in a feature story last week, has continued to work at Merrill throughout the case, despite health troubles and what he describes as a “chilly” reception from co-workers.

The case was an eight-year battle over why black brokers composed fewer than 2 percent of Merrill’s full brokers and generally had smaller books of business. Merrill argued that, in essence, society was the problem—that white brokers had access to more wealth because they had larger social networks of well-to-do potential customers, who in turn were more likely to invest with brokers who are similar to themselves.

The plaintiffs claimed that whatever inequities existed in society were compounded by Merrill’s policies. They focused on two programs: how brokers formed teams to boost their books of business, and how Merrill distributed accounts from new clients and brokers who left the firm. The plaintiffs said that black brokers were less likely to be asked to join teams, which they said deprived them of a key way to get more and larger clients. They also said Merrill transferred more and better accounts to white brokers, even in the very first months of the training program for new brokers.

More GOP (white party) Racist Outreach: Tweet Announces, "Today we remember Rosa Parks' bold stand and her role in ending racism"

"Today we remember Rosa Parks' bold stand and her role in ending racism," tweeted the Republican National Committee's official account on Sunday. Whoops. [MORE]

Racism is one of the most powerful motivating forces in the universe.  Above, provocative racist suspects at the RNC throw out red meat to their "victimized" white people base to get them motivated. (Is this really yet another accidental misstatement in a seemingly endless string of other accidental racist "gaffes" and miscues  - all accompanied by subsequent super-sorry apologies - or do they just want to make racialized statements or buzzwords like "racist", "Black President" and "racism is over" to get the party started?  - this is the only program the White Party (republicans) is running.)

Italian court rules to Kick David Duke out of Country for racism - attempted to create group to exterminate Blacks

Times of Israel and TelegraphUK

An Italian court ruled Sunday to expel former Ku Klux Klan leader and ex-US state congressman David Duke from the country, after the white supremacist violated a travel ban and allegedly planned to establish a pan-European neo-Nazi group.

Duke, 63, had been the subject of a 2009 travel and residence ban issued by Switzerland that was valid in all 26 countries in the Schengen area, including Italy. Upon receiving an order from the Italian police to leave the country, Duke filed an appeal with the Belluno administrative court. Duke had been living in the Northern Italian province of Belluno for a year-and-a-half, prior to the order, under a false name. His appeal was denied by the court Sunday, who lambasted his “socially dangerous racist and anti-Semitic views.”

According to his lawyer, Duke left the country immediately following the ruling, Haaretz reported.

“Official reliable sources have revealed [Duke] plans to establish an organization aiming to exterminate the black and Jewish races in Europe,” the sentence read, according to the International Business Times.

Duke, a noted Holocaust denier and virulent racist, ran for US presidency in 1988 and 1992. He served in Louisiana’s state house.

In 1980 he left the Klan and founded the National Association for the Advancement of White People.

Over 20% of young boys labeled ‘ADHD’ [no racial breakdown provided]

BlackListedNews

It’s no secret that, increasingly, Big Pharma, in cahoots with traditional medicinal practitioners, have created a society of near-zombies with all of the mood altering medications they push on the public. But even these figures are shocking.

According to recently published information from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an astounding 20-plus percent of all 14-year-old boys in the United States have been diagnosed, at one time or another over the course of their lives, with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – a condition that is, of course, treated with dangerous medications.

As reported by CNSNews.com:

The study also said more than 20 percent of 11-year-old boys had been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives.

The study indicated that American boys were 125 percent more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD, and that boys were 127 percent more likely than girls to be medicated for it.

13.3 percent of American 11-year-old boys are being medicated for ADHD, said the study.

That’s incredible; one in five American teenaged boys have been “diagnosed” with this “disorder.

Over 20% of young boys labeled ‘ADHD’ [no racial breakdown provided]

BlackListedNews

It’s no secret that, increasingly, Big Pharma, in cahoots with traditional medicinal practitioners, have created a society of near-zombies with all of the mood altering medications they push on the public. But even these figures are shocking.

According to recently published information from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an astounding 20-plus percent of all 14-year-old boys in the United States have been diagnosed, at one time or another over the course of their lives, with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – a condition that is, of course, treated with dangerous medications.

As reported by CNSNews.com:

The study also said more than 20 percent of 11-year-old boys had been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives.

The study indicated that American boys were 125 percent more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD, and that boys were 127 percent more likely than girls to be medicated for it.

13.3 percent of American 11-year-old boys are being medicated for ADHD, said the study.

That’s incredible; one in five American teenaged boys have been “diagnosed” with this “disorder.