March 15, 2020

Safe In My Garden

Safe in my garden,
An ancient flower blooms.
And the scent from its nature
Slowly squares my room;
And its perfume being such
that it's causing me to swoon.
Could it be we were hot-wired
(Safe in my garden, an ancient flower blooms...)
Late one night while very tired?
They stole our minds and thought we'd never know it.
(And the scent from its nature slowly squares my room...)
With a bottle in each hand; too late to try to understand.
We don't care where it lands - we just throw it.

Somebody take us away...
Somebody take us away...

Safe in my garden,
(Could it be we were hot-wired late one night while very tired...)
An ancient flower blooms.
(They stole our minds and thought we'd never know it...)
And the scent from its nature
(With a bottle in each hand; too late to try to understand...)
Slowly squares my room.
(We don't care where it lands - we just throw it...)

(Somebody take us away...)
And it's perfume being such
That it's causing me to swoon.

When you go out in the street, (Safe in our garden...)
So many hassles with the heat;
No one there can fill your desire. (And the scent...)
Cops out with the megaphones,
Telling people stay inside their home.
Man, can't they see the world's on fire?

Somebody take us away...take us away...

Safe in our garden,
An ancient flower blooms.
And the scent from its nature...
(Cops out with the megaphones;
Tellin' people stay inside their homes.)
Man, the world's on fire.)
Slowly squares my room.

Take us away...take us away...

February 27, 2020

Colbert/Warren full interview, includes wealth tax explained by ribs

February 24, 2020

Medicare Advantage Private Option Is Gaining Popularity, and Critics - NYT

Medicare's Private Option Is Gaining Popularity, and Critics

As more Americans sign up for Medicare Advantage, detractors worry that it’s helping private insurers more than patients.

By Mark Miller

Feb. 21, 2020


. . . “When we talk about Medicare for all or public options,” said Tricia Neuman, director of the Medicare policy program at the Kaiser Family Foundation, “people may not realize that we already have a Medicare program that is coming to be dominated by some very large private insurance companies.”

. . . The rise of Advantage has also been aided by changes in federal law and regulation in recent years. And under the Trump administration, critics say, Medicare’s administrators have been tipping the scales improperly in favor of Advantage.

. . . Under President Trump, some critics contend, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers Medicare, has become a cheerleader for Advantage plans at the expense of original Medicare.

. . . If the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is tipping the scales, it would be a violation of federal law, Mr. Lipschutz argued.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/business/medicare-advantage-retirement.html


Not good.

February 20, 2020

"Just brutal."

https://mississippitoday.org/2020/02/20/marshall-ramsey-bloombergs-debate/


Got that right.

February 19, 2020

"MSNBC , why do y'all have Amy Klobuchar's face for Elizabeth Warren? C'mon man."

https://twitter.com/damonbethea1/status/1229974458045288449

Nice catch, Damon.

Tonight on The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell said that since the NBC poll had "inexplicably" excluded Elizabeth in the match-up against Trump section, he would use the PBS poll instead and then put it up to see and went on with the show.

Problem was, nobody at MSNBC had noticed Klobuchar's picture where Warren's should have been. Or did they notice?

For now, I suspect some techbro with sympathies for another of a couple of possible candidates. I know, I know - it could have been an accident. Riiiiiiiight.

February 18, 2020

Bloomberg builds 'massive' Mississippi campaign, most other 2020 Democrats focus elsewhere

Bloomberg builds ‘massive’ Mississippi campaign as other 2020 Democrats focus elsewhere

By Adam Ganucheau

Bloomberg, a former New York City mayor and a billionaire with virtually unlimited capital to spend this cycle, has hired 24 full-time staffers in Mississippi, giving his campaign what several veteran political operatives say is the largest full-time staff of any presidential candidate in the state’s history. It is also one that would rival or exceed the largest statewide campaigns in the state’s history.

“The campaign that Michael Bloomberg is running throughout the country is unprecedented in scale and scope,” said Nathan Shrader, chair of the Department of Government and Politics at Millsaps College. “His campaign has flooded states such as Mississippi, which are often forgotten until the days prior to the primary election, with competent field organizers and advisers, advertising featuring persuasive messages and a data-driven approach designed to maximize their vote share.”

With three weeks until the March 10 primary, when the state’s 41 convention delegate votes are up for grabs, most presidential candidates have spent little money in Mississippi. Bloomberg, with a large investment in the state, is the exception.

While Bloomberg has nearly two dozen paid staffers in the state, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has two paid staffers, is the only Democratic contender with full-time employees working in the state. Former Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg have volunteers or surrogates in the state.

https://mississippitoday.org/2020/02/18/bloomberg-builds-massive-mississippi-campaign-as-other-2020-democrats-focus-elsewhere/


Right on. Make Republicans waste their campaign funds or risk disaster.

February 15, 2020

US Attorney for SDNY Withdraws from White House Log Case, Will Leave Office

https://www.usatoday.com/documents/6776860-Withdraw-as-Attorney/

"Lindsay, pitchfork populist • 37 minutes ago

There's been another apparently Barr-related resignation from the US attorney's office - Geoffrey Berman at SDNY.

Berman apparently got his way on indicting state-owned Turkish Halkbank, but has posted his resignation from the US Attorneys Office in a case involving the attempt to get Trump's WH visitor logs.

Information pieced together by me, a rank amateur, from tweets and a CNN article cited in one of the tweets."

https://twitter.com/eorden/status/1228695248580366336

https://twitter.com/big_cases/status/1228462812621660160


from Lindsay at Eschaton

https://www.eschatonblog.com/2020/02/viva-la-resistance.html#comment-4797326322

February 5, 2020

Answer for Iowa caucus, from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert

January 20, 2020

Trump calls children of struggling farmers "spoiled, rotten brats."

https://twitter.com/joncoopertweets/status/1219243732190580736

Jon Cooper Verified account @joncoopertweets

Trump calls children of struggling farmers “spoiled, rotten brats.” I wonder how many farmers will STILL vote for him.

January 12, 2020

"It's a futile system that penalizes the poorest residents of the poorest state in the country"

Mississippi Today https://mississippitoday.org/

Working Toward Freedom

To pay off fines and other debts, inmates in Mississippi’s little-known restitution centers must work grueling low-wage jobs, pay rent and endure strip searches.

In this world between prison and freedom, they often don’t know when they’ll get to go home.

By Anna Wolfe and Michelle Liu | January 9, 2020
Data analysis by Andrew Calderón, The Marshall Project

JACKSON, Miss. – During her shifts at a Church’s Chicken, Annita Husband looked like the other employees. She wore the same blue and red polo shirt, greeted the same customers, and slung the same fried chicken and biscuits.

But after clocking out, Husband, a mother in her 40s, had to wait for a white van with barred windows and the seal of the Mississippi Department of Corrections on its sides. It delivered her to the Flowood Restitution Center, a motel converted into a jail surrounded by razor wire, nestled among truck stops and an outlet mall. Here, Husband slept in a room with seven other women, sharing a mirror to get ready in the mornings, enduring strip searches for contraband at night.

A judge sentenced Husband to the restitution center in 2015 to pay off almost $13,000 she owed from an embezzlement conviction in 2009. The corrections department would not release her until she earned enough money at her $7.25-an-hour part-time job to clear her debts and cover $11 a day for “room and board” at Flowood.

“If I wasn’t at work, I was in prison,” Husband said.

The corrections department took her paychecks, she said, giving her back just $10 a week — all in quarters — so she could buy things like soap and deodorant.

The state of Mississippi had locked Husband into a modern-day debtors prison. She had other plans.

Mississippi appears to be the only state where judges lock people up for an indefinite time while they work to earn money to pay off court-ordered debts. While there is no comprehensive data, legal experts who study fines, fees and restitution say Mississippi is unusual at the very least.

“We don’t know of any other states that have a program quite like Mississippi’s,” said Sharon Brett, a senior staff attorney with Harvard’s Criminal Justice Policy Program.

A handful of states experimented with restitution programs starting in the 1970s, but abandoned them as expensive and ineffective.

Not Mississippi. Judges have sentenced hundreds of people a year to four restitution centers around the state, almost always ordering them to stay until they pay off court fees, fines and restitution to victims, according to four years of government records analyzed by Mississippi Today and The Marshall Project.

People sent to the centers had been sentenced for felonies but didn’t commit violent crimes, according to the program rules. When we tracked down the cases of more than 200 people confined there on Jan. 1, 2019, we found that most originally got suspended sentences, meaning they did not have to go to prison.

They didn’t usually owe a lot of money. Half the people living in the centers had debts of less than $3,515. One owed just $656.50. Though in arrears on fines and court fees, many didn’t need to pay restitution at all — at least 20 percent of them were convicted of drug possession.

But people spent an average of nearly four months — and up to five years — at the centers, working for private employers to earn enough to satisfy the courts. Meanwhile their costs continued to balloon, since they had to pay for room and board, transportation to their jobs, and medical care.

They didn’t get paid much. Between 2016 and 2018, workers at the centers made an average of $6.76 an hour in take home pay, according to our analysis of state data.

It’s a futile system that penalizes the poorest residents of the poorest state in the country, said Cliff Johnson, director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi.

“Debtors prisons are an effective way of collecting money — as is kidnapping,” he said. “But there are constitutional, public policy and moral barriers to such a regime.”

(continued . . . )
https://mississippitoday.org/2020/01/09/restitution/

More in this excellent series ...
https://mississippitoday.org/restitution-series/

https://www.facebook.com/MSTODAYnews

https://twitter.com/MSTODAYnews

This investigation was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, the USA TODAY-Network, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system; sign up for The Marshall Project’s newsletters, or follow them on Facebook or Twitter.

(published under Creative Commons license)