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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
You'd think a place with more wealth would have more crime, not less.
F*ck, my family and I could probably be set for life just from pawning ten square feet of Trump's foyer.
Take cues from Brazil's studies in criminology in this one.
Gentrified places and regions which are fairly homogeneous income among its population, are fairly low on crime or almost crime free entirely. Under the notion that due to the lack of disparity between community members, there is little social friction that encourages tough crime, white collar crime still happens tho but it is considered less severe that things like murder and armed robberies.
However, when you have a very affluent community living next to a very poor one, there is enough friction that crime becomes an viable outlet, for that poor community's members to acquire either goods, wealth and most specially a form of social standing.
Ironically enough, while there is crime among poor communities, specially the slums like the ones you can see in Rio de Janeiro, the crimes tend to be theft and drug dealing at their worst, since the own criminal elements and organizations eventually create their own set of rules and establish a sort of order, with the occasional turf war and assassinations to show everyone what happens to those who break the rules.
For the US, I'd say that some areas like Los Angeles, where you have very rich districts just a few miles away from very poor ones, crime would tend to be worse than New York where the poor have been practically cast out by gentrification and the entire city is more or less homogeneous in their social classes.
Edited by AngelusNox on Oct 17th 2018 at 10:11:42 AM
Inter arma enim silent legesThere is no historical precedent for financing this broad and deep for congressional challengers. About half of the 92 GOP incumbents are protecting battleground districts, and some of them posted personal-record fundraising totals in the third quarter of 2018 — but they still found themselves swamped by a combination of incandescent online fundraising for Democrats and bigger donors spreading money to challengers around the country, as 61 Democrats raised over $1 million. Fifty-one House Republicans were outraised at least 2-to-1, according to POLITICO’s analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission filings, while 71 were outspent by their challenger. Only five Democratic House incumbents were outraised.
Meanwhile, 33 GOP representatives have less cash on hand than their Democratic challengers, while no Democratic members lag their Republican opponents in cash. That cash on hand gap has been a particularly dire historical indicator: In the last four elections, two-thirds of the House incumbents who ended September with less cash to spend than their opponents lost their seats weeks later.
Edited by megaeliz on Oct 17th 2018 at 9:44:49 AM
I knew something about this topic reminded me of the "ideal" of Galt's Gulch as it collided with Reality.
Can someone explain to me what people usually mean when they say "Antifa" these days? The contexts I've seen the term used in give the impression that, within the USA, it's essentially shorthand for "self-proclaimed liberals who resort to acts of violence like vandalism, physical assault, and possibly even murder/assassination", but in a way that seems to double as indirect criticism of liberals in general.
Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 17th 2018 at 6:42:46 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.I think it's now commonly used as a slur against left-wing activists in general, even when they have good reason to be violent (e.g self-defense or defense of third parties) or aren't doing anything more than protesting.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanThere are left-wing groups who use violence to achieve political aims. They are very rare, though, and not backed or supported by anyone else on the left. However, they make a great scapegoat and poison pill for the right. "A liberal used violence once, so we are justified in everything we do" and that sort of thing.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2018/10/17/day-636/
Day 636: Natural instinct.
1/ Robert Mueller is expected to issue findings after the midterm elections on whether Trump's 2016 campaign colluded with Russia and if Trump obstructed justice during the probe. Rod Rosenstein has indicated that he wants Mueller's probe to conclude as soon as possible. The findings may not be made public since Mueller can only present the findings to Rosenstein, who can then decide what is shared with Congress and what is publicly released. Trump, meanwhile, has signaled that he may replace Jeff Sessions and there are rumors that Rosenstein could resign or also be fired by Trump after the election. (Bloomberg)
📌 The Re-up: Day 613. Rod Rosenstein did not resign, but "offered to resign" in discussions with John Kelly. Rosenstein and Trump will meet on Thursday to discuss the deputy attorney general's future at the Justice Department. Rosenstein went to the White House this morning for a meeting where he "expect[ed] to be fired." The news follows reports that Rosenstein discussed the idea of wearing a wire last year to secretly record Trump in order to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove the President from office. Rosenstein has been overseeing Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with those efforts. Noel Francisco, the solicitor general, would take on oversight of Mueller's investigation and could fire or limit the investigation. (Axios / New York Times / Washington Post / Bloomberg / CNN / Wall Street Journal / CNBC)
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/24/politics/rod-rosenstein/index.html
2/ A senior Treasury Department employee was charged with leaking confidential government reports about suspicious financial transactions related to Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, the Russian embassy and accused Russian agent Maria Butina. Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards disclosed suspicious activity reports related to Mueller's investigation of possible collusion between Trump's 2016 election campaign and Russia. SA Rs are submitted by banks to alert law enforcement to potentially illegal transactions. (Reuters / Wall Street Journal / Washington Post)
📌 The Re-Up: Day 601. Federal investigators are looking into a series of suspicious financial transactions involving people who attended the 2016 Trump Tower meeting. The transfers reveal how Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire with strong ties to Trump and Putin, used overseas accounts to distribute money through a web of banks to himself, his son, and at least two people who attended the meeting. Investigators are focusing on two bursts of activity: one occurring shortly before the Trump Tower meeting and one immediately after the 2016 election. (Buzz Feed News / The Hill)
A federal judge rejected Paul Manafort's request to wear a suit to his sentencing hearing, because the former Trump campaign chairman is now a convicted felon who has lost the right to wear street clothing in all his court proceedings. (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/17/manafort-court-in-prison-clothing-910679
3/ Trump asked Turkey for audio and video relating to missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi – "if it exists." Turkish officials claim they have audio recordings that prove Khashoggi was beat, drugged, killed and beheaded in the Saudis' Istanbul consulate. Saudi officials have denied any knowledge of what happened to Khashoggi. Before leaving Riyadh, Mike Pompeo said the Saudis didn't want to discuss "any of the facts" in Khashoggi disappearance. (Associated Press / Wall Street Journal / New York Times / CBS News)
https://apnews.com/d5f682c3080b464ba58d092f80090042
Notables.
Trump won't accept blame if Republicans lose control of the House in the midterms. "No, I think I'm helping people," Trump said regarding his campaigning and endorsements of Republican candidates. "I don't believe anybody's ever had this kind of an impact," despite supporters telling him "'I will never ever go and vote in the midterms because you're not running and I don't think you like Congress.'" Earlier this month, Trump urged supporters to vote, telling the crowd, "Pretend I'm on the ballot." (Associated Press / Washington Post)
https://apnews.com/8f4baf7aaddc442dad0a726f3ebe7fff
Mitch Mc Connell said Republicans could try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act if they win enough seats in the midterm elections. He called the failed 2017 effort to repeal the healthcare law a "disappointment." (Reuters)
A federal judge ordered the immediate implementation of an Obama-era rule designed to help students defrauded by for-profit colleges have their federal student loans forgiven. Education Secretary Betsy De Vos initially delayed the rules in 2017 while the Education Department worked on its own set of regulations, which a different federal court called "arbitrary and capricious" and ordered the department to reverse. (CNN / Wall Street Journal)
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/16/politics/devos-borrower-defense-lawsuit/index.html
Trump accused Michael Cohen of lying under oath and giving "totally false" testimony in his August plea deal to campaign finance violations. Cohen alleged that he coordinated with Trump on a hush-money scheme to silence Stormy Daniels and Karen Mc Dougal. Trump characterized Cohen as just "a PR person who did small legal work" for him, who only struck a deal to "achieve a lighter sentence." (NBC News)
Trump will withdraw from a 144-year-old postal treaty that allowed Chinese companies to ship small packages to the U.S. at a discounted rate. The White House claimed the treaty gives countries like China and Singapore an unfair advantage by flooding U.S. markets with cheaper e-commerce packages. (New York Times / Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/17/trump-withdraws-from-postal-treaty-910675
Trump will ask each of his Cabinet secretaries to cut 5% of their respective budgets. On Monday, the Treasury Department reported a $779 billion budget deficit for fiscal year 2018 — a six-year high and a 17% jump from the prior period. (CNBC / Bloomberg / Reuters)
Trump claimed he has a "natural instinct for science" when it comes to climate change. Trump's scientific description of climate change was that it "goes back and forth, back and forth." (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/17/trump-instinct-climate-change-910004
Double post because I forgot yesterday's
https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2018/10/16/day-635/
Day 635: Totally denied.
1/ Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman will support a "thorough, transparent, and timely investigation" into the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. Trump, meanwhile, tweeted that Bin Salman "totally denied any knowledge of what took place in their Turkish Consulate." Trump sent Pompeo to Saudi Arabia as the kingdom was preparing to acknowledge that Khashoggi died at the consulate as a result of an interrogation that went wrong. (Politico / Reuters / New York Times)
2/ Trump said that Saudi Arabia being blamed for the disappearance Khashoggi is "another case of "guilty until proven innocent." Trump has vowed "severe punishment" if the Saudis killed Khashoggi, but he's also speculated that "rogue killers" could be responsible. Trump added: "We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh and he was innocent all the way as far as I’m concerned." (Associated Press / Wall Street Journal)
https://apnews.com/6ef4045b710b411086e93967eb8ffc4f
The Trump administration needs Saudi Arabia's help to implement new sanctions against Iran on Nov. 4. The Saudis could see a significant increase in oil revenues as Congress considers economic or military sanctions against the kingdom for its role in Khashoggi's death. Sanctioning the Saudis would undercut the Iran policy and send the price of gasoline and heating oil significantly higher. (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/khashoggi-trump-iran-sanctions.html
3/ The body of Jamal Khashoggi was cut into pieces after he was killed two weeks ago at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, according to a Turkish official. Saudi Arabia has insisted that Khashoggi left the building alive, but police searching the Saudi Consulate found evidence that Khashoggi was killed there. An autopsy specialist carrying a bone saw was among 15 Saudi operatives who flew in and out of Istanbul the day Khashoggi disappeared. (CNN / New York Times / Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/4ec1eeb6c3464bbc8cda6edb35e964a0
Four of the suspects in the disappearance of Khashoggi are linked to the Saudi crown prince's security detail. A fifth is a forensic doctor who holds senior positions in the Saudi Interior Ministry. (New York Times)
4/ Jared Kushner is "deeply involved" in the White House response to Khashoggi's disappearance and has been working closely with Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton. Kushner also has a close relationship with Prince bin Salman and has been lobbying Saudi Arabia to participate in the Khashoggi investigation. (Yahoo News)
5/ A federal judge dismissed Stormy Daniels' libel lawsuit against Trump, saying Trump's tweet that she had lied about being threatened to keep quiet about their alleged relationship was "rhetorical hyperbole" and is protected by the First Amendment. Daniels was ordered to pay Trump's legal fees for the case. (Washington Post / Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/15/stormy-daniels-trump-libel-suit-903152
6/ Trump celebrated the dismissal of Stormy Daniels' defamation suit by calling her "Horseface" and threatening to "go after" her and "her 3rd rate lawyer." Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, responded by calling Trump a "disgusting misogynist" and a "liar" who has dishonored his family and country. (New York Times / Washington Post / ABC News / The Hill)
7/ Trump called Elizabeth Warren a "phony" and a "fraud" while referring to her as "Pocahontas (the bad version)" a day after she publicly released the results of a DNA test intended to prove her Native American ancestry. The DNA test concluded that there was "strong evidence" that Warren had a Native American in her family tree dating back six to 10 generations, making her between 1/64th and 1/1,024 Native American. The Cherokee Nation, meanwhile, criticized Warren's use of a DNA test as "inappropriate." (The Guardian / Politico / Washington Post / Huff Post / The Hill)
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/16/warren-dna-native-american-905705
8/ Mitch Mc Connell called the rising federal deficits "not a Republican problem" and instead blamed Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. In December 2017, Republicans passed a tax cut. which is projected to add more than $1 trillion to the debt over a decade. (Bloomberg / The Hill / Washington Post)
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/411656-mcconnell-says-deficitsnot-a-republican-problem
Trump escalated his criticism of the Federal Reserve, calling the central bank his "biggest threat" because it is raising interest rates "too fast." (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/16/trump-threat-federal-reserve-powell-908748
poll/ Ted Cruz leads his Democratic challenger, Rep. Beto O'Rourke, 52% to 45% among likely voters. 9% of likely Texas voters say there's a chance they could change their mind before Election Day. (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/16/politics/cnn-poll-texas-cruz-orourke/index.html
Notables.
Jim Mattis: Trump told me he supports me "100 percent." Trump called to give Mattis the assurance after he mentioned during an interview on "60 Minutes" that his Secretary of Defense might be leaving. (NBC News / Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/22252b7ee9414527a98ee284d1a49408
A coalition of free-press advocates are suing Trump, seeking an order directing the president not to use his office to exact reprisals against the press – the kind of behavior those courts have found unlawful. (Politico)
Mitch Mc Connell ruled out a vote on Trump's NAFTA replacement before 2019, setting up a potential fight with Democrats next year if they win the House in midterm elections on Nov. 6. (Bloomberg / CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/mitch-mcconnell-no-vote-on-trumps-nafta-replacement-until-2019.html
Trump threatened to cancel aid to Honduras "if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped." A group of hundreds of Honduran migrants are fleeing poverty and gang violence in Honduras. (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/16/trump-honduras-migrants-905637
The White House is replacing the Interior Department's inspector general, according to an internal Housing and Urban Development email regarding the staffing change. The acting inspector general at the Interior Department will oversee four ongoing investigations into Secretary Ryan Zinke's conduct. Acting inspectors general do not need Senate confirmation. (NBC News / Washington Post)
Trump's reelection campaign has raised at least $106 million. Between the RNC, Trump's campaign committee, and joint fundraising committees, they've raised more than $337 million with at least $88 million of it in cash. (Washington Post)
The Trump campaign has more than doubled its election-related spending over the last three months. The campaign spent $7.7 million between July and the end of September – up from the $3.6 million it spent during the previous three months. The Trump campaign and the RNC have raised more than $18 million in the last quarter alone. (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/us/politics/trump-campaign-spending-midterms-2020.html
Side note: My work is going to have early voting on site next Friday.
Edited by sgamer82 on Oct 17th 2018 at 1:38:30 PM
In other worrying news, Sessions is quietly reshaping all of the Immigration courts
by packing them with as many prosecutors and immigration law enforcement officials as he can find, while denying anyone ever supported by a Democrat.
Why?
That’s the question at the center of a complaint filed by Lay, an Idaho native, with the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative body. In a letter to Lay, 53, the EOIR said it was rescinding her offer because “the needs of the agency have evolved,” even though the agency announced around the same time that it wanted to expand the size of the appeals board. The complaint, which was first reported by CNN, suggests that political considerations may have been taken into account in a review of Lay’s background, citing Lay’s letters of recommendation from people who “had liberal backgrounds or were perceived as having liberal backgrounds.”
The suspicion of politically based hiring has lingered among Democrats, who raised concerns in April and again in May. In the May letter, directed to Michael E. Horowitz, Democrats urged the inspector general of the Justice Department to investigate “allegations of politicized hiring practices,” citing cases in which offers for immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals positions had been delayed or withdrawn. (Lay’s attorney, Zachary Henige, also represents two other people who say their offers were withdrawn over political differences.) Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd responded to the Democrats’ allegations in a letter: “As stated in every immigration judge hiring announcement, the Department of Justice does not discriminate on the basis of political affiliation.”
The investigation into Lay’s complaint is ongoing, so it’s still not clear whether there were ulterior motives behind the withdrawal of her offer. But the case speaks to how DOJ can pick and choose who fills roles and, in doing so, influence who’s at the helm of deciding immigration cases.
This isn’t unique to the current administration. The Justice Department has considerable leeway when appointing immigration judges—the immigration courts are part of its direct purview. The attorney general therefore has unique authority to overrule decisions and hire immigration judges. To that end, Sessions appears to be shaping the court by, at the very least, hiring former law-enforcement officials as immigration judges.
“The more you bring people from the same background, the same set of experiences, the same perspective, the more you expose the court to criticism,” said Ashley Tabaddor, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “Those decisions will be more open to being questioned.”
Of the 140 judges hired since Donald Trump’s inauguration, more than half have past prosecutorial experience or some other government experience. The pace of hiring has also stepped up: In fiscal year 2017, the Justice Department hired 64 immigration judges, compared with 81 in fiscal year 2018—bringing the total of immigration judges to 395, according to data released by the EOIR. Sessions’s hiring spree is not unusual. It’s also not unwarranted: His predecessors brought on new immigration judges, and the immigration-court backlog continues to creep up, with the latest figure at more than 760, 000 pending cases. Of the newly hired immigration judges, at least half had received conditional offers during the Obama administration, said Kathryn Mattingly, assistant press secretary at the EOIR, in an email.
It’s not just how many immigration judges are being brought on but where they’re being located. The EOIR has hired immigration judges for two adjudication centers—in Falls Church, Virginia, and Fort Worth, Texas—where cases from around the country will be heard through video teleconferencing. Judges will be located at the centers, while attorneys and respondents will be in separate locations. According to Rob Barnes, a regional public-information officer for the EOIR, immigration judges at these centers will be evaluated like others. It’s likely, then, that thousands of immigration cases will be heard with respondents never seeing a judge face-to-face.
Across the board, there appears to be a preference for people who come from an enforcement background, according to biographies of newly hired immigration judges posted by the Justice Department. Of the 23 judges announced in August, more than half previously worked with the Department of Homeland Security, and of those remaining, most came from a law-enforcement background. In September, the EOIR announced 46 new immigration judges, two of whom will serve in a supervisory role: 19 previously worked for ICE, 10 had served at DOJ or as a former local prosecutor, and seven had a background in the military (one of whom previously served in Guantánamo). It’s not yet known how these judges will rule once they’re on the bench and whether their enforcement background will inform their decisions. But experts, attorneys, and current and former immigration judges have warned about hiring too many people from government before.
“It’s not that we’re saying [those] with law-enforcement or military background are unqualified,” Tabaddor, the head of the immigration judges’ association, told me. “A diverse bench is what brings fairness and legitimacy to court. It’s very important for a court to be reflective of the people it serves and the community at large to gain legitimacy and respect.”
Mattingly, the EOIR spokeswoman, has provided a series of specific qualifications that all candidates for immigration judge must have.
Previous administrations also pulled from within government, reasoning that candidates have already passed background checks and can therefore be hired more quickly. But that can present some challenges. It’s possible that having spent years fighting in court on behalf of the government, an individual might be biased, said Jeremy Mc Kinney, an immigration lawyer in North Carolina. The American Immigration Lawyers Association, of which Mc Kinney is a part, and the National Association of Immigration Judges have called for the pool of immigration judges to also include people from private firms and academia.
Their concerns were backed up by Booz Allen Hamilton, which conducted a year-long study of the immigration-court system at the EOIR’s direction. The April 2017 study found that at least 41 percent of immigration judges previously worked in the Department of Homeland Security, and nearly 20 percent worked at other branches within the Justice Department. The report recommended broadening “hiring pools and outreach programs to increase diversity of experience among [immigration judges].” It’s not clear whether the Justice Department took the study into account in putting together its hiring plan in April 2017, the same month the study was presumably handed over.
The hiring of immigration judges has always been a contentious issue: Complaints have been lodged about insufficient career diversity; it often takes months to hire judges (though the Justice Department recently pushed the time it took down from an average of 742 days to about 266 days); and political affiliations have previously been weighed in selecting judges. In 2008, the Inspector General issued a report on the hiring practices of DOJ in selecting attorneys, immigration judges, and members of the Board of Immigration Appeals. The report concluded that hiring based on political or ideological affiliation is a violation of department policy.
The fear—as expressed by some Democrats, legal experts, and immigration advocates—is that Sessions is improperly seeking out conservatives in order to influence the tilt of the nation’s immigration courts and hire a large cadre of immigration judges who will likely far outlast his tenure.
“I think he’s trying to get a complacent judiciary: ‘Forget the title—you guys are really DOJ employees. You’re out there to carry out my policies,’” said Paul W. Schmidt, former chairman of the EOIR’s Board of Immigration Appeals from 1995 to 2001 and a former immigration judge.
Beyond whom the Justice Department decides to bring on board, the message Sessions sends down to judges can also heavily influence their decisions, as direct reports to the department, Schmidt, and others argue.
In September, for example, Sessions delivered remarks to a new class of immigration judges, the largest in history, according to the Justice Department, in which he pressed them to decide cases swiftly. “You have an obligation to decide cases efficiently and to keep our federal laws functioning effectively, fairly, and consistently,” he said. “As you take on this critically important role, I hope that you will be imaginative and inventive in order to manage a high-volume caseload. I do not apologize for expecting you to perform at a high level, efficiently, and effectively.”
The message was striking, given who it’s intended for. “If he was speaking to attorneys, that’d be normal. He has the right to set prosecutorial policy,” Mc Kinney said. “That doesn’t translate to immigration judges.” Judges—even when they are DOJ employees—are expected to be independent. By effectively telling them how to handle cases and how quickly, the Justice Department is infringing on that independence, Mc Kinney said.
And Sessions’s words weren’t just an expression of what he hopes judges will do either. As of October 1, the expectation to “efficiently and effectively” adjudicate cases is being enforced. Earlier this year, the Justice Department took the unprecedented step of rolling out quotas for judges. To receive a “satisfactory” performance evaluation, judges are required to clear at least 700 cases a year. According to the Justice Department, judges now complete 678 cases a year on average, meaning they will have to pick up the pace to remain in good standing.
This fall, DOJ expects to bring on at least 75 more immigration judges. Even if Sessions’s days as attorney general are numbered, as Trump has suggested, his selections will decide the fate of immigrants for years to come.

Edited by megaeliz on Oct 16th 2018 at 1:25:52 PM