Brandi Buchman @Brandi_Buchman
"Everything we need to build a guillotine could be bought at Home Depot"
This is what Oath Keeper defendant Kelly Meggs allegedly wrote on FB before 1/6 under a picture of a guillotine and what his attorney wants to keep out of evidence today.
9:30 AM · Oct 12, 2022

The 13th Amendment effectively codified unpaid coerced labor in the US Constitution through the Exception Clause, banning slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” The United States incarcerates 1.8 million people — more than any other country in the world — and Texas has brought in millions from their labor.

Texas has the largest state prison population in the country, and state law requires the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to use their labor as much as possible without pay. [snip]

“All inmates who are able are assigned a job and are required to work,” Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jeremy Desel said in an email exchange. “If inmates refuse to work, they can lose privileges like commissary, recreation and in the worst-case scenarios good time credits related to work.”

Texas Correctional Industries brings in more than $70 million a year for the prison system, and private companies can outsource work to prisons. Under the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program, incarcerated people can work for private firms and earn a wage, but there’s a catch: the state deducts the bulk of the earned income for taxes, room and board, family support, restitution and a crime victims’ fund.

Texas is one of seven states, all in the South, that does not pay people in prison for their work. A new report by the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School and the American Civil Liberties Union estimates about 800,000 people in prison perform labor, many under dangerous conditions.

Michael Barajas, managing editor at Bolts — a digital magazine covering criminal justice and voting rights — reports on how Texas agencies profit from goods and services produced by people in prison. David Johnson, an activist and formerly incarcerated worker, is part of a growing movement to stop forced labor in prison. They joined Texas Standard to talk about the report’s findings and what activists are trying to accomplish in the state. [snip]

[Johnson:] My specific experience – the imagery that you’ve seen in many movies of the chain gang – my experience was being in a line of men dressed in white, two-piece jumpsuits, holding what they call aggies, but are garden hoes, wearing work boots, standing in fields, counting out slave counts. “One, two, three.” And we’re rocking on it while we’re chopping grass that isn’t even there, just to make us work, while individuals armed and in uniform sit on horses overlooking us, making sure we know that if we err in any way, we’re at their mercy.

If that doesn’t evoke the call of slavery, I don’t know what does. A lot of people believe, because of the programing of our culture, that this is deserved and that this is what people should be doing if they’re in jail. The Baretta’s Theme, “don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time,” when in fact, it’s an exhaustion of our humanity.

Saving the world is voluntary. You could certainly argue against that statement from a moral point of view, but the fact remains: there are no laws or restrictions in place that will force anyone to take the necessary steps towards safeguarding our future living conditions on planet Earth. This is troublesome from many perspectives, not least because – as much as I hate to admit it – Beyoncé was wrong. It is not girls who run the world. It is run by politicians, corporations and financial interests – mainly represented by white, privileged, middle-aged, straight cis men. And it turns out most of them are terribly ill suited for the job. This may not come as a big surprise. After all, the purpose of a company is not to save the world – it is to make a profit. Or, rather, it is to make as much profit as it possibly can in order to keep shareholders and market interests happy.

This leaves us with our political leaders. They do have great opportunities to improve things, but it turns out that saving the world is not their main priority, either.

Approaching the issues of the climate and ecological crisis inevitably involves confronting numerous uncomfortable questions. Taking on the role of being the one who tells the unpleasant truth, and thereby risking one’s popularity, is clearly not on any politician’s wishlist. So they try to stay clear of the subject until they absolutely cannot avoid it any longer – then they turn to communication tactics and PR to make it seem as if real action is being taken, when in fact the exact opposite is happening.

Nguyen is the founder of a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating, inspiring and empowering teen girls. She first ran for elected office in 2017, winning the Georgia House seat formerly held by Abrams. She is the first Vietnamese-American to hold a Georgia House seat and served two terms. If the elected secretary of state, she would be the first Asian-American to hold statewide political office in Georgia.

Nguyen’s campaign for secretary of state is grounded in “access, equity, efficiency,” references to the voting reforms enacted during Raffensperger’s tenure that some Georgians argue fosters voter suppression. Nguyen was among the lawmakers to challenge the signature match absentee ballot verification process, which was removed following the 2020 election. She was also a vocal defender of Georgia’s election integrity in the face of Trump’s fraud claims.

Nguyen, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, has risen swiftly in the state’s Democratic politics. The founder of a youth-focused nonprofit was first elected in late 2017 to fill the Atlanta-area state House seat then held by Stacey Abrams, who was seeking the governorship at the time. Abrams, the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor, is making her second consecutive bid for the office this year.

Nguyen’s victory in a runoff made her the first Asian American woman in the Georgia General Assembly. But Nguyen (pronounced “win”) vaulted to national prominence in December 2020 when a video of her methodical and public takedown of election fraud claims by Trump allies went viral. [snip]

Since announcing her bid last year, Nguyen has racked up national endorsements, including the support of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and EMILY’s List, the influential Democratic political committee that backs female abortion-rights candidates.

This month, EMILY’s List gave her the Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award, named for the former Arizona Democratic congresswoman and gun-safety advocate. Previous honorees include Abrams.

And just days before the primary, Atlanta’s Mayor Andre Dickens, who scored an upset in last year’s elections, added his backing.

According to a study conducted by the USDA, veterans in the United States have a 7.4 percent greater chance of experiencing food insecurity than do non-veterans. If they are disabled, this number triples to 22.5 percent. [snip]

New Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska, fresh off of beating one Sarah Palin in a special election, also thought it was kind of messed up that veterans were going hungry and decided to do something about it, by making the first bill she introduced the Food Security for All Veterans Act. The act will establish an an Office of Food Security in the Department of Veterans Affairs that would be responsible for developing initiatives meant to address food insecurity among veterans, as well as providing information and assistance in enrolling in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other federal programs designed to address hunger.

And it passed! It even passed bipartisan-ly, 376-49, likely due to the fact that even a lot of Republicans don't want to be seen taking the bold stance of being basically cool with veterans starving to death.

Forty-nine of them, however, were — including such favorites as Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Dan Crenshaw, Jim Jordan, Thomas Massie, and Louie Gohmert, whom we can assume was very concerned that those veterans might go and spend their SNAP money on king crab legs. Oh! Or that this was a plot devised by the congresswoman from Alaska to increase sales of Alaskan king crab legs across the country. Could be!

Brennan Prill @WxBrenn
I've been capturing video from this webcam in Fort Myers all day and I've put it into a Timelapse. Check out the storm surge rushing in! Crazy. #Ian #flwx
[video]
2.2M views
6:37 PM · Sep 28, 2022

Brennan Prill @WxBrenn
Those asking for time length. 10:17am-11:43am (camera connection cuts out) — 1 hour, 26 minutes.
9:45 PM · Sep 28, 2022

In late 2013, however, Mark Lillienfeld’s focus was on a subject far from his usual beat: a middle-aged San Fernando Valley housekeeper named Connie Romero.

Lillienfeld scoured Romero’s past for any criminal history, tracked down her personal details and ran her name through confidential databases, according to law enforcement records reviewed by The Times. One evening, he drove to her Porter Ranch home and poked through a Dumpster, the records say.

But Romero was no killer. Rather, prosecutors considered her the victim of a crime.

She had, in fact, suffered bruises and cuts to her face during a confrontation over dog poop months earlier in a Chatsworth neighborhood. The case was investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department, not Lillienfeld’s agency. A battery charge had been filed against one of Lillienfeld’s longtime acquaintances, another veteran of the county’s justice system: Superior Court Judge Craig Richman.

The unit, named the Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail, has pursued a long-running investigation into one of Villanueva’s most vocal critics, L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman, and others despite sheriff’s officials being told by the FBI and state law enforcement officials that it appeared no crimes had been committed, a senior sheriff’s official said.

The team also has an open criminal inquiry into a nonprofit that is run by a member of a county board that oversees the sheriff and is associated with county Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, both of whom have clashed fiercely with Villanueva and called for his resignation. [skip]

The unit has spurred a bitter confrontation between Villanueva and the Civilian Oversight Commission, which oversees the sheriff and his agency. Commission members say they fear the sheriff is using it to intimidate people who challenge him and to score points in personal vendettas, not conduct legitimate inquiries into possible crimes. [snip]

A central member of the team, several law enforcement sources said, was Mark Lillienfeld, a longtime homicide investigator who had retired in 2016.

Caren Carl Mandoyan played a special role last month at the swearing-in of Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, standing on stage and holding the box of gold pins that would adorn the collars of the top cop and his senior executives.

Mandoyan served as a trusted member of Villanueva’s campaign team, acting as his driver and rallying rank-and-file deputies to lobby their union to endorse his long-shot candidacy.

But Mandoyan didn’t have the typical resume of a campaign worker. He served as a deputy for 10 years until he was fired in 2016 by then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell in connection with allegations of domestic abuse and stalking. A county appeals board heard evidence and upheld the dismissal.

Despite this, Villanueva decided to reinstate Mandoyan as a deputy in the Sheriff’s Department, where he is assigned to the South Los Angeles station.

Scott Stedman @ScottMStedman
Newly unredacted. DOJ is calling Christina Bobb "INDIVIDUAL 2"

Notably, not calling her "counsel" as they do for Corcoran...
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4:08 PM · Sep 13, 2022