Thursday Toon Roundup 1- Trump Card

Ex-Oklahoma deputy Robert Bates guilty of killing unarmed suspect

Source: CNN

Tulsa, Oklahoma (CNN)A jury in Oklahoma found a sheriff's deputy guilty of second-degree manslaughter Wednesday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed suspect.

Robert Bates, who was a volunteer reserve sheriff deputy for the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office last year at the time of the shooting, never denied killing Eric Courtney Harris.

Bates, 74, said he meant to use his Taser stun gun, not his revolver, on the suspect, who had been tackled by other deputies and was being held on the ground.

The jury deliberated less than three hours and recommended Bates be sentenced to four years in prision. Preliminary sentencing is set for May 31. After the verdict, Bates was escorted out of the courtroom by two deputies.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/27/us/tulsa-deputy-manslaughter-trial/index.html

Hazel Park officer accused of spying on nursing woman with confiscated smartphone

NEW BALTIMORE, Mich. - A Hazel Park Police Officer is accused of spying on a nude woman who was breast-feeding her son using an iPhone connected to a baby monitor that was confiscated during an arrest.

In a federal lawsuit, the woman said her “world has been shattered” and that “she no longer feels safe and secure in her own home.”

The woman has worked as a Warren police dispatcher for four years.

...

In the lawsuit, the woman said she knows police placed her fiancé’s phone into evidence, a phone that is linked to her baby monitor. The only other devices connected to the baby monitor are the woman’s iPhone and iPad.

The woman said the baby monitor indicated that she was being watched while she was naked and nursing her baby. She used the “Find My iPhone” feature which led her to an address in Macomb Township, the home of the officer that confiscated the phone.

She attempted to disable the monitoring capabilities. Later that evening, after giving her child a bath, the light began flashing again. The woman screamed out that she was being watched and the light stopped blinking.

more

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/hazel-park-officer-accused-of-spying-on-nursing-woman-with-confiscated-smartphone

Sick.

The Arctic is melting - and scientists just lost a key tool to observe it

Chelsea Harvey
Special to The Washington Post
Earlier this month, a U.S. satellite known as F17 - which was primarily used for meteorological measurements - experienced operational failures that compromised the integrity of its data. And while there are similar satellites in orbit that can take over the data collection for now, they're old enough that scientists are unsure how much longer they'll last.

Now, with no government plans to launch a replacement any time soon, scientists who rely on these satellites for valuable climate data are beginning to worry about the future of their research. The problem comes at a vital time, too - one when the Arctic, and other remote regions, are seeing rapid changes and scientists badly need these instruments to track them.

Just last month, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported that the maximum extent of Arctic sea ice this past winter - the time of year when the ice reaches its annual peak - was at a record low for the second straight year. The Arctic sea ice record has been one of the most important ways scientists have tracked the progress of climate change over time. But as of April 12, the NSIDC was forced to release a statement explaining that its daily sea ice updates were suspended until further notice due to technical difficulties with F17.

F17 - and its predecessors - have been "one of the primary resources for monitoring sea ice extent and concentration," said Walt Meier, a research scientist and sea ice expert at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
more
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-arctic-melt-20160425-story.html

Where Did the Government Jobs Go?

Long a ticket to the middle class, especially for
African-Americans, they have become increasingly difficult to find.

By ANNIE LOWREY
APRIL 27, 2016

On a muggy afternoon in April, Angelina Iles, 65, folded herself into my passenger seat and took me on a tour of her beloved Pineville, La., a sleepy town smack in the middle of the low, wet state. We drove past spaced-out, low-slung houses and boarded-up businesses — shuttered restaurants, a decrepit gas station — as Iles, an African-American retired lunchroom worker and community activist, guided me toward the muddy banks of the Red River. Near there stands the locked-up Art Deco shell of the Huey P. Long hospital, which once served the poorest of the poor in Rapides Parish — and employed more than 300 workers.

When employers leave towns like Pineville, they often do it with a deaf ear to the pleading of state and local governments. But in the case of Huey P. Long, the employer was the government itself. Its demise began, arguably, in 2008, when Bobby Jindal was swept into the Louisiana governor’s mansion on a small-government-and-ethics platform, promising to modernize the state and unleash the power of American private industry along the Gulf Coast. At the time, Louisiana was flush with federal funds for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction and running a budget surplus. Jindal and the State Legislature slashed income taxes and started privatizing and cutting. This was a source of great pride for Jindal. During his failed bid for the presidency last year, he boasted that bureaucrats are now an endangered species in Louisiana. “I’ve laid off more of them than Trump has fired people,” he said, “and I’ve cut my state’s budget by more than he’s worth.”

He laid off more than just bureaucrats. Jindal cut appropriations for higher education, shifting the cost burden onto students themselves. (State spending per student was down more than 40 percent between 2008 and 2014; just one state, Arizona, cut more.) And he shuttered or privatized nine charity hospitals that served the state’s uninsured and indigent. They were outdated and costly, Jindal argued, and private management would improve access, care and the bottom line. Huey P. Long was one of those hospitals.

Iles, along with dozens of other workers and activists, helped organize a protest against the cuts, she told me. They held a vigil on the hospital’s front lawn. Iles even helped produce an anti-Jindal documentary called “Bad Medicine” that was broadcast on local television. But it was all for naught. “The good governor did not want to listen to us,” Iles said, checking her constantly buzzing phone in the car. The hospital closed its doors in 2014, and its patients were redirected to other local medical centers and clinics. All of the hospital’s workers lost their jobs.

more

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/magazine/where-did-the-government-jobs-go.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Study: Opioid Abuse Rates Lower In Medical Marijuana States

By Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director

Rates of prescription opioid abuse are significantly lower in jurisdictions that permit medical marijuana access, according to data reported by Castlight Health, an employee health benefits platform provider.

Investigators assessed anonymous prescription reporting data from over one million employees between the years 2011 and 2015.

In states that did not permit medical marijuana access, 5.4 percent of individuals with an opioid prescription qualified as abusers of the drug. (The study’s authors defined “abuse” as opioid use by an individual who was not receiving palliative care, who received greater than a 90-day cumulative supply of opioids, and received an opioid prescription from four or more providers.) By contrast, only 2.8 percent of individuals with an opioid prescription living in medical marijuana states met the criteria.

The findings are similar to those reported by the RAND Corporation in 2015, which determined, “[S]tates permitting medical marijuana dispensaries experience a relative decrease in both opioid addictions and opioid overdose deaths compared to states that do not.”

http://www.theweedblog.com/study-opioid-abuse-rates-lower-in-medical-marijuana-states/

Many Tricare Users to Pay Enrollment Fee under Congressional Proposal

by Amy Bushatz
Many Tricare users would face annual enrollment fees in a newly named plan under a draft proposal released Monday by the House Armed Services Committee.

Under the plan, current users of Tricare Standard and Tricare Extra would fall into the newly minted Tricare Preferred plan. Users would continue to be permitted to self-refer to providers, but doing so would come with an annual enrollment fee of $100 for individuals and $200 for families starting in 2020.

New Tricare users would pay even greater fees. Active-duty family members would pay $300 for an individual or $600 for families to enroll each year, while future retirees who joined the service after 2020 would pay $425 for an individual or $850 for families.

New beneficiaries who want to use Prime can do so, but also at a cost. Active-duty families would pay $180 for an individual or $360 for a family, while retirees would pay $325 for an individual or $650 for a family. Current users would not pay to use Prime.

Under the new Preferred option, users would have no annual deductible, but would pay set fees out of pocket. For example, emergency room visits would cost $40 in network for active-duty families, and $60 for retirees. The catastrophic yearly cap would be at $1,000 for active-duty families and $3,000 for retirees.

more
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/04/25/all-tricare-users-to-pay-enrollment-fee-congressional-proposal.html

Wednesday Toon Roundup 2- The Rest

Primaries






Saudis



NC








The Issue



Homeless



Schilling



Football

Wednesday Toon Roundup 1- 2 against 1

Wednesday Bernie Group Toon Roundup