pecosbob
pecosbob's JournalCalifornia Is Considering Ending Criminal Court Fees and Wiping Out Billions in Debt
Unlike fines, which include traffic tickets, fees are not meant to be punitive. But because theyre charged to a high proportion of low-income people who cannot afford to pay, they end up being punitive, Stuhldreher said. The only job of a fee is to recoup costs. A recent national report found two-thirds of people on probation make less than $20,000 per year and nearly 40 percent make less than $10,000 per year. A 2015 survey found that mothers pay nearly 50 percent of court costs. A respondent from Oakland said the costs amounted to everything my mother had in savings, and it meant she went back to working paycheck to paycheck. Greene put it simply: We know the way that policing happensyou can map race, ethnicity, levels of poverty by it.
A little over a year ago, San Francisco eliminated many local court fees and some fines after reviewing the coalitions analysis. Neighboring Alameda County followed suit after similar lobbying. Both also discharged debt, eliminating more than $70 million across the two counties. SB 144 would do at the state level what we did in San Francisco, said Stuhldreher.
Theres precedent at the state level too. In 2018, California eliminated juvenile administrative fees, but it didnt include debt elimination. Los Angeles County decided to eliminate juvenile debt independently, and thereby wiped out $89 million in debt.
The problem lies in how that revenue is generated. The US Department of Justices report after the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, showed 40 percent of the city budgets revenue came from fines and fees, which led to a focus on generating revenue in the police department. It brought in money but harmed the city.
San Francisco discovered the same issues. We were handing people a bill for a few thousand bucks when they got out of jail, Stuhldreher noted. It just didnt make sense. The math didnt add up. The fees are charged to very low-income people who cannot pay them.
But there could soon be a solution. PFM launched the Center for Justice and Safety Finance to help forge a national model for reducing revenue from criminal justice fines and fees. The group is working with three countiesDallas in Texas, Davidson in Tennessee, and Ramsey in Minnesotato develop plans. Funded by a $1.3 grant from the Arnold Foundation, its an explicit test run, said Eichenthal, to create a blueprint for local government to end reliance on the criminal justice system for revenue.
He says many local governments want to make the change but are not sure how to do it. Theyre just sort of frozen in their ability to move forward until they can answer the question of, can you do this in a fiscally responsible way? he said.
read more at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/california-is-considering-ending-criminal-court-fees-and-wiping-out-billions-in-debt/
To enjoy with your cofveve
Etta James + Doctor John
Just a plug for a movie airing tomorrow...Deadwood
Not a TV watcher. Don't even have cable now for five years, but I have to put a plug in for a movie airing tomorrow on HBO called Deadwood. You will consider it time well spent. Cheers...heading in for the graveyard shift.
Candidate John Delaney gets booed for trashing Medicaire For All
Medicare for All may sound good, but its actually not good policy nor is it good politics, Delaney said, to which the crowd immediately responded with loud boos.
Im telling ya. Im telling ya, Delaney tried to say over the booing while wagging his finger at the audience. We should have universal health care, but it shouldnt be a kind of health care that kicks 115 million Americans off their health care.
read more at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/john-delaney-hickenlooper-boo-medicare-for-all-socialism
Pretty sure calling Medicaire For All 'socialism' is a disqualifier for me. Thank you for spreading right-wing taliking points.
*Warning* The Hill is linked in the article and I avoid them as right-wing propaganda.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287138377 for AOC's response...
Chomsky and Herman's Propaganda Model Foretells a Weaponized Facebook
Facebooks massive global reach gives the platform immense influence to shape public perception, awareness and opinion. Notably, one of the platforms creators, Chamath Palihapitiya, did admit that the team knew something bad could happen, having created tools that are literally ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. Still, public awareness of this subterfuge has changed nothing.
read more at https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-and-hermans-propaganda-model-foretells-a-weaponized-facebook/
Don't succumb to the culture of fear
What if Pelosi, et al. can build Trump & the GOP's misdeeds into our road to the Senate?
How long did the Watergate Hearings take? I think a year or more. Note I didn't say Nixon Impeachment Hearings, but Watergate Hearings. The crimes are being revealed daily now to those willing to dig...soon they will all become major narratives as long as investigative hearings continue. Pelosi will continue pounding Dem's message on the great legislation they're writing and the Republican Senate is refusing to take up. Pretty soon the evidence piles up to the point until it's drowned out all other conversation. But Pelosi doesn't give McTurtle the opportunity to create a kangaroo trial in the Senate and vindicate Trump, as he would do. Then Dems make sure every eligible voter in America knows that the tool necessary to remove Trump and the racists and the anti-abortion lunatics from control is to take back the Senate. Just my thought (fantasy) for the day...
#GOTV #Talibama
'Why Were You Loaning Trump Money When No Bank Would Touch Him?'
https://twitter.com/sandibachom
Would love to be in that courtroom. I wonder if the great State of New York has any money laundering statutes on the books...I believe they do.
*I just happened to catch this on the feed from this post
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212122754
don't have any more info than that...looking forward to hearing more.
Update *
US Elections Commission Member Helped With Sketchy Fraud Report
Palmer helped devise an approach to collecting certain voter registration data, which was then used to claim that there were thousands of noncitizens on Virginias voter rolls and that many of them had voted, according to the documents. He also helped edit a draft of the report, and he additionally flagged for his collaborators that a Virginia state election official who was resisting turning over the data had previously worked for a civil rights organization.
read more at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/voter-fraud-report-aliens-invasion-donald-palmer
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