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posted by Bob at Thursday, February 22, 2007
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THE ROOF GUYS
Mickey's Diner 1950 7th Street West, St Paul, MN
(651) 698-8387
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1639 University Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55104
Tel:(651)646-8653
LANDLORD.COM LINK HERE
SHHHH! While we listen to words of wisdom from a wise man.
Conscience is the light of the Soul that burns within the chambers of our psychological heart. It is as real as life is. It raises the voice in protest whenever anything is thought of or done contrary to the righteousness. Conscience is a form of truth that has been transferred through our genetic stock in the form of the knowledge of our own acts and feelings as right or wrong. A virtuous and courageous person can alone use the instrument of conscience. He or she can alone hear the inner voice of the soul clearly. In a wicked person this faculty is absent. The sensitive nature of his / her conscience has been destroyed by sin or corruption. Hence he or she is unable to discriminate right from wrong. Those who are leading organizations, business enterprises, institutions and governments should develop this virtue of the ability to use their own conscience. This wisdom of using the clean conscience will enable them to enjoy the freedom.
Dr APJ Kalam, President of India given during the inauguration of the seminar on “THE EFFECTS OF CORRUPTION ON GOOD GOVERNANCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
15 Comments:
Communities United Against Police Brutality
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
February 21, 2007
**********************************************
HEARING ON IMPORTANT BILLS TOMORROW (THURSDAY)!
The update below is from Guy Gambill with Council on Crime and Justice, who has followed the progress of bills that would seal arrest records not resulting in convictions and improve expungement procedures to create a more fair criminal justice system. We know it is hard for people to drop everything and run to these hearings on little notice but if you are available tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon, that would be great. If you can testify, so much the better.
___________________________________________________________
Notice from Guy Gambill: Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary will be hearing FIVE bills that will have great impact upon the future of expungements, records sealing, data-practices and collateral consequences in the State of Minnesota for the foreseeable future. For all who work in homelessness and affordable housing, racial and social justice, employment, immigration and in many other related issues, the import of this meeting cannot be understated. I hope that many will decide to attend and watch, closely, the development of this all important issue.
They will be looking for folks to testify on the expungement issues to tomorrow. By my understanding, if folks
Want to testify on this issue it may very well be a great time to give it a shot.
Committee on Judiciary
Chair: Sen. Mee Moua
3 p.m. Room 112 Capitol
Agenda:
Confirmation hearing - Douglas Fuller, Board of Judicial Standards
Confirmation hearing - Commissioner Michael Campion, Department of Public Safety
S.F. 279 Moua Criminal justice data sealing.
S.F. 685 Betzold Criminal records expungement provisions modification.
S.F. 294 Ortman Criminal records expungement provisions restructuring and recodification.
S.F. 914 Betzold Business screening services regulation.
S.F. 823 Moua Mentoring programs BCA criminal background checks request authorization
___________________________________________________________
Communities United Against Police Brutality
3100 16th Avenue S
Minneapolis, MN 55407
Hotline 612-874-STOP (7867)
Meetings: Every Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at Walker Church, 3104 16th Avenue South
http://www.CUAPB.org
But then we will have people who are less than perfect moving into our neighborhoods. This is an outrage, and I will be going to the hearings to voice disappproval of its passage.
That would be Kathy with a K.
Anonymous 2:28 P. M.
Are referring to Kathy Lantry, the St. Paul city council member from ward 7?
Why she is so evil she banned the Easter Bunny fron city hall.
Bad Bunny in St. Paul
I think she was actually jealous because the Easter Bunny looked better than her and had a better personality!
WTF does Kathy Lantry have to do with CUAPB? CUAPB is a Minneapolis organization, and the bills in question are a legislative issue. Aside from the fact that CUAPB is a scam organization that only seeks to give Jill Clark clients and Philander Jenkins a venue to lie about his own bad acts, there is simply no reason to make this about Kathy Lantry. C'mon, if you have a problems with Kathy, there are plenty of other reasons to take shots at her. Stop giving CUAPB a stage and an audience.
CUAPB, is a fine organization. They helped my son and I with volumes of information when my son was brutalized by the police. They even offered to have a group of people go to all the court proceedings with us.
CUAPB, is trying to restore our rights to file a police brutality complaint without the threat of being "maliciously" charged with a crime of filing a false report.
That's right you get beat up by the cops and file a report they charge you with a crime for filing the report. Talk about censoring the truth.
Speak of self serving organizations, the NAACP is as phony as they come when it relates to black folks and police brutality issues. They sit on the "FAKE" worthless puppeteer citizens review board
And let's not forget the Minnesota Dept. Of Humane Rights. Another agency that is awash with Bureaucrats.
MPD4EVAH
CUAPB-
The same group of people that brought us the smoking ban and other ultra-liberal ideas.
Didn't you slam Democrats in the previous post above Bob? You should look at these people's political activity- far left liberals and Green party members.
CUAPB -
Yeah I really think their poster boy Philander Jenkins was innocent.
CUAPB's Exec. Director/Mouthpience has been nutty ever since that house fell on her sister
Who had the biggest ears,
Kathy or the Easter Bunny?
Kathy only heard what she was told, by the mayor.
Not caring about the people in her ward.
For the past thirty years, the United States has been on an imprisonment binge unprecedented in world history. In 1980, the total number of people incarcerated in the U.S. was 500,000. Today the number stands at 2.2 million, with a further 4.8 million on probation or parole. The total U.S. prison budget increased from $9 billion in 1980 to $61 billion by 2003.
While the U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world's population, it now has 25 percent of the world's prisoners. In other words, the country that often proclaims itself the freest in the world, imprisons its population at a rate over six times higher than the rest of the planet. The U.S. incarceration rate stands at 737 per 100,000, over five times higher than Great Britain and over twelve times higher than Norway. The statistics for minority populations are even more shocking. For Latinos, the imprisonment rate is twice the national average. For Blacks it is four times the national average, with over one million African-American men in prison or jail. In 2002, 10.4 percent of all Black males between the ages of 25 and 29 were imprisoned, and the numbers have not improved since then.
In a report presented to Congress last year, the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons concluded, "We should be astonished by the size of the prisoner population, troubled by the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans and Latinos, and saddened by the waste of human potential." The report found medical and mental health care in prisons to be grossly inadequate, and noted a "desperate need for the kind of productive activities that discourage violence and make rehabilitation possible."
Another report, issued in February by the Public Safety Performance Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, predicted that the prison population alone (not including jails, juvenile institutions, and other detention facilities) will rise by 13 percent, or another 192,000 people, over the next five years, at an increased cost of $27.5 billion. The report identified long mandatory minimum prison sentences, reduced use of parole, and harsh parole and probation rules, which often send people to prison for minor violations, as mainly responsible for the increase. "Every additional dollar spent on prisons," it pointed out, "is one dollar less that can go for preparing for the next Hurricane Katrina, educating young people, providing health care to the elderly or repairing roads and bridges."
Nowhere is the crisis worse than in California. In 1977, the state had fewer than 20,000 prisoners. Thirty years later the number stands at 173,000. In its first 130 years as a state, California built twelve prisons. Between 1980 and 2005 it added another twenty-one, at enormous cost. Today, California spends $35,000 a year for every prisoner, compared to $7,000 for K-12 students and only $4,500 in support for college and university students.
Yet despite billions spent on new facilities, California's prisons and jails are bursting at the seams, with many crammed to twice their intended capacity. In nearly every state prison, the gym and every other available space is packed with triple bunk beds, squeezing out opportunities for recreation, education, and rehabilitation. Most California prisons are in a permanent state of lockdown, which confines prisoners to their cramped cells for all but an hour or two a day, while essential services are in a state of collapse. In 2005, a federal court put the California prison health care system under outside control because of its shocking level of deterioration.
While some states have experimented successfully with drug rehabilitation and parole diversion programs, California has failed to reform its parole system and has the highest recidivism rate in the country, with 70 percent returning to prison within three years, often for minor violations such as missing a court appearance. This revolving door costs the state $1.5 billion a year and makes the overcrowding problem even worse.
The situation is so bad, that last October Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the prisons, and began making arrangements to move thousands of inmates to private prisons in Arizona, Tennessee, and elsewhere. Prison wardens are screening a video trying to persuade prisoners to transfer voluntarily, although so far only a few hundred have agreed. The film includes interviews with prisoners who have already been moved. "They talk to us like humans [here]," says one, "not like animals." In reality, the private prisons have their own long record of brutality and abuse.
The predictable result of massive overcrowding has been frequent violence and rioting, with Black and Latino prison gangs frequently pitted against each other. In 2006, for example, the Los Angeles County jails were rocked by a series of riots. "There's no question this city has turned its back on incarcerated youth and turned our jails into a byproduct of such neglect," said Lita Herron, director of Mothers on the March. "Now we've seen the consequences of what happens if we continue to do nothing about it."
But the situation is similar in many other states. "The explosions of violence we are seeing in Los Angeles are systemic nationwide," Terry Jungel, past president of the National Sheriffs Association told the media at the time. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Jungel blamed "Years of get-tough-on-crime policies [that] have emphasized rhetoric over funding, and strict confinement instead of programs to address prisoner problems or conditions."
"Truth in sentencing, three strikes and you're out-it looks great on paper, but try to make it work," Connecticut state Representative Michael Lawlor, a former prosecutor, told the Associated Press.
The huge expansion of the U.S. prison population has little to do with the level of crime. According to the most reliable data, U.S. crime rates have been stable or in decline since the mid-1970s. With the notable exception of homicide, crime rates in the U.S. are comparable to those of other developed countries that imprison their inhabitants at a much lower rate. Moreover, public concern about crime is not closely correlated with the actual crime rate, but shifts in relation to the amount of attention given to crime in the media and to the level of political rhetoric.
Conservative politicians first began making crime a major political issue as part of a strategy to roll back the reforms won by social activists in the 1960s. The civil rights movement made it no longer respectable to make openly racist arguments, so political figures declared a war on crime to send a coded racial message to the voters. One of the first was Richard Nixon. In notes taken at an Oval Office meeting shortly after Nixon's election, H.R. Haldeman, his chief of staff, wrote, "[the President] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the Blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to." Ronald Reagan pushed these policies further in the 1980s. At a time when social spending was being slashed and inequality and poverty were increasing, conservatives blamed bad individuals rather than underlying social conditions for crime.
The policies that created the current crisis were pushed not just by Republicans, but by many Democrats too. In California, it was Democratic Governor Jerry Brown who in 1977 eliminated indeterminate sentencing laws, which had allowed parole boards the option of releasing prisoners after serving relatively short sentences. Soon afterwards, the Democratic-controlled legislature eliminated rehabilitation and treatment as goals of the prison system, and passed legislation defining its purpose as only punishment.
During the 1980s, the Democratic legislature in California passed over 1,000 laws increasing the length of mandatory prison terms. According to a study by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, many of these changes were "enacted as knee-jerk responses by lawmakers to horrific, high-profile and frequently isolated crimes." They laid the ground for the 1994 passage of Proposition 184, the most draconian "three strikes" law in the country, which mandates life sentences for offenders with two prior serious convictions. Hundreds of people in the state are now serving life sentences for offenses such as petty theft or filing a false DMV application.
The American ruling class is well aware that it needs to solve its major prison crisis, but it finds itself unable to abandon the ideological framework that it has relied on for over thirty years. Once again, California provides a clear example. When Schwarzenegger assumed office in late 2003, he set a goal of reducing California's prison population by 15,000, renamed the state's correction department the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and set up a prison review panel headed by former Republican Governor George Deukmejian. "The key to reforming the system," the panel concluded, "lies in reducing the numbers."
Within a few months, however, the new governor began to reverse himself. In 2004 he played a crucial role in defeating Proposition 66, which would have reformed California's "three strikes" law to make the third strike a serious or violent crime. Last year, Schwarzenegger also backed Proposition 83, which increases sentences for sex offenders. Rehabilitation programs have been scaled back and as a result, instead of declining, the California prison population has risen by another 12,000.
When progressive reforms have been passed, they have not been given the funds to succeed fully. In 2000, California voters approved Proposition 36, which requires probation and treatment for first-time drug offenders, rather than prison. Researchers say that the law has saved hundreds of millions in incarceration costs since it was enacted, but lack of money means that demand far outruns availability, increasing the likelihood that participants will suffer a relapse while waiting for treatment.
Two-thirds of California's prisoners read below a ninth-grade level, and over half are functionally illiterate. Despite the fact that education is one of the best ways of reducing recidivism, only 6 percent of prisoners are in academic classes and 5 percent in vocational training. Moreover, many of the work programs are a joke. According to the Washington Post, "they often consist of having an inmate sweep or mop a small section of a hall over and over and over, for six hours."
In the first half of 2006, two successive secretaries of the corrections department appointed by Schwarzenegger resigned, saying that their attempts to introduce changes had been blocked. One of them, Jeanne Woodford (the former warden of San Quentin), testifying recently in federal court before a judge who is considering whether to put the whole system into receivership, said that her proposals for parole and sentencing reform were derailed by Schwarzenegger's aides, who told him, "Governor, it's an election year." By the end of last year, Schwarzenegger was proposing to borrow almost $11 billion to build two new prisons and expand the capacity of California's prisons and jails by 80,000. The Governor has proposed a commission to reexamine the state's sentencing laws, but he also declared that he will oppose any changes to California's "three strikes" law.
But in February, Schwarzenegger started swinging back in the opposite direction. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the had "quietly dropped a call he made last year to build new prisons in the same style the state had built in the past," and backed a plan to move thousands of prisoners to smaller facilities closer to the big cities, with increased resources to help them reenter society on their release. Whether these new plans will come to fruition, and whether they will be adequately funded, remains highly doubtful. More likely, in the next few months Schwarzenegger will again begin to feel the pull of the "tough on crime" ideology on which politicians in both major parties have come to rely.
Meanwhile, the human cost of these policies continues to mount. "It's always prison, prison, prison. It just corrupts you more," Rodolfo Salcido, a drug addict who has been in and out of jail for years, told the Los Angeles Times last Christmas. "We need help. We're sick. It shouldn't just be back to prison."
To 11:50,
Conservative politicians first began making crime a major political issue as part of a strategy to roll back the reforms won by social activists in the 1960s. The civil rights movement made it no longer respectable to make openly racist arguments, so political figures declared a war on crime to send a coded racial message to the voters.
Ya know Democrats are just as guilty of riding the fight crime wave to elected office as Republicans.
Local example- Look at these ignorant fools on the City Council riding around in vans with citizens who stereo type their neighbors.
People of color have been condemned out of their homes because their racist white neighbor didn't like seeing them in the front yard hanging out socializing.
The majority of registered vacant homes are in Frogtown and a small part of the east side where minorities live.
Racism is alive and well in the Saintly City.
NEW BOOK ABOUT CRISIS LEVEL OF BLACK MEN IN PRISON!!!!
Get the book "WHY ARE SO MANY BLACK MEN IN PRISON? A Comprehensive Account Of How And Why The Prison Industry Has Become A Predatory Entity In The Lives Of African-American Men, And How Mass Targeting, Criminalization, And Incarceration Of Black Male Youth Has Gone Toward Creating The Largest Prison System In The World." by Demico Boothe AT WWW.BLACKMENINPRISON.COM , WWW.AMAZON.COM , or WWW.BARNESANDNOBLE.COM!!!
We are not a weak people. We will not allow traps to be set or hostile action, covert or overt, to be taken against us without proper response, and if necessary, proper retaliation. But we do need to be RE-EDUCATED because for so long we have been MIS-EDUCATED.
W.E.B. DuBois
I urge all conscious and truly intelligent Black persons to not only read but study this book. THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IS BEING USED AS A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION AGAINST AFRICAN AMERICANS. The United States has the largest prison system in the world because of the number of Black men behind bars. This subject should be the focus of every Black politician that says they have the Black community's best interest at heart. Just a few facts:
* There are nearly 3 times as many Black men in prison in the U.S. than there are in college.
* 85% of African-American households are headed by single females, and Black females are the most unmarried sector of the American populace.
* The U.S. has more Black men in prison out of only 10.4 million Black men in its populace than China has Chinese men in its prisons out of nearly 300 million men in its populace.
* Many American prisons are privately held and traded on the stock market, almost like a modern day slave trade.
* Once a person gets a felony on his or her record in the U.S., he is by characteristic definition no longer considered a full citizen.
* A young Black male born today has a greater chance of going to prison than of holding any other occupation in life.
The list of horrendous and crisis level facts go on and on and are greatly expounded on in this book. WE ARE IN TROUBLE AS A RACE AND SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE OR 100 YEARS FROM NOW WE WILL BE IN NEAR EXTINCTION IN THIS GREAT COUNTRY THAT OUR FOREFATHERS SUFFERED THROUGH SLAVERY AND OPPRESSION AND DIED IN. GO TO WWW.BLACKMENINPRISON.COM OR AMAZON.COM AND GET THE BOOK. UNDERSTAND WHAT THE NEW MODERN DAY SLAVE TRADE IS ALL ABOUT. THIS BOOK IS GOING TO REVEAL THINGS THAT THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO KEEP QUIET.
Overcrowding in prisons has plagued the United States' penal system for decades, and the problem continues to worsen. As of now, more than 2.2 million people are locked away in American prisons (0.74 percent of our population). By means of comparison, the People's Republic of China, a Communist state with a population of 1.3 billion people, lags behind this total with 1.5 million prisoners (0.12 percent of its population).
Yes, we have six times as many of our citizens behind bars.
While you've got out your calculator, also recognize that it costs $24,000 a year to house a prisoner.
What does this mean? Is this a product of our culture? Does this mean we have become habituated to violence and vice in various forms of media to the point that our consciences are no longer able to rein us in morally?
That could have happened to us, but that isn't why our prisons are overcrowded.
Overcrowding in prisons is instead largely a by-product of the practice of mandatory minimums for sentencing - judicial legislation set at the federal level for drug trafficking and possession during the Reagan/Bush administration. Half a score and a year have elapsed since Congress passed the mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Yet, very little progress has been made in fighting the so-called "War on Drugs." And now our prisons are overcrowded. Violent habitual criminals are being paroled early to make room for non-violent drug dealers.
Why?
Well, although mandatory minimums were set up with the intent of capturing kingpins in drug distribution networks, more than 80 percent of federal drug defendants are, in fact, low-level sellers and drug mules. Also, because they are unable to provide federal agents with names and information (the only thing that would lower their mandatory minimums), these drug mules and low-level drug dealers - the ones the higher-ups would see as expendable - end up being the criminals who spend the most time in jail.
According to the Drug Policy Alliance, more than 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995 was due to drug convictions. Thus, one can reason that prison overcrowding is directly attributable to those convicted of drug offenses. Room has to constantly be made for these new convicts, and many violent felons have to be put on parole as a result.
Here's a head's-up. They aren't releasing the ones convicted of using or selling drugs. Federal law says they've got to stay put!
Instead, the prisons, via our court system, release the scum of the earth - violent criminals convicted of heinous crimes who should be spending the rest of their life rotting away in a jail cell. I point to habitual criminals like the infamous Richard Allen Davis, who, after being paroled three months earlier, kidnapped and murdered Polly Klaas in October 1993. His sickening criminal record fueled support for the implementation of California's "three strikes law." His previous criminal record was lengthy and filled with violent crimes. Yet, he had only served half of a 16-year sentence for kidnapping and assault when he was once again turned loose on society and given the opportunity to kill Klaas. Why would such a person be released from prison? Care to wager a guess?
More recently, and in line with this same "stinking thinking," the DEA has been working very diligently to extradite three Canadian activists for advocating the legalization of marijuana. What monstrous crime did these three perform? They were caught by an undercover investigation selling seeds of cannabis to people in the U.S. for medicinal purposes. American prosecutors are looking to give these three Canadians anywhere from 10 years to life for this crime.
By means of comparison, Davis served only eight years for kidnapping of Selina Varich and less than five years for a previous kidnapping and assault. What is wrong with this picture? When will the sentence begin to fit the crime? In their quest to rid our country of drug pushers, our legislators have stopped along the road, let "common sense" out of the car and sped away with the music blaring.
Certainly, one has to ask why these mandatory minimums are in place. As the late Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist said, "Mandatory minimums are frequently the result of floor amendments to demonstrate emphatically that legislators want 'to get tough on crime.'" I think the legislators who want to seriously "get tough on crime" should stop worrying about Canadian activists selling pot seeds to chemotherapy patients and start focusing on keeping convicted rapists, kidnappers, murderers and sex offenders behind bars where they belong. We have to ask ourselves which of the two groups pose the greatest threat to our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
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