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April 2015

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Demand a Higher Wage, People!

Why everyone should join the Fight for $15 protests, regardless of who they are or what they make.

2015/04/18-Chasten Florence was on his lunch break when he decided to join a protest outside a McDonald’s in New York City on Wednesday. To be honest, Florence wasn’t really sure what he was helping protest. But as he lay his body down on the sidewalk at a die-in of low-wage workers demanding a $15 wage and a union, Florence simply explained, “These are my people.”

Didn’t Florence need to eat lunch? Sure, but he could spare five minutes. Working concrete on construction jobs, Florence earns more than $15 an hour and thinks everyone else should, too. “I don’t know how you can raise a household on less,” said Florence. And he’s right. You can’t.

On April 15, workers from McDonald’s, Walmart and other low-wage employers were joined by college students and adjunct faculty, domestic workers and leaders from the Black Lives Matter movement. In all, tens of thousands participated in protests in 200 cities across the United States to demand a $15 minimum wage and a union. The #FightFor15 is unconventional in that, instead of focusing on Congress to raise wages, workers and advocates are pressuring employers and also the general public—trying to foster awareness about dismal wages and working conditions and create a groundswell of support for change.

The nationwide protests were organized on Tax Day, April 15, because 4/15 is a short-hand for the campaign’s wage demands. But it was also meant to highlight the fact that the poverty wages paid by fast food restaurants and employers are so low that many low-wage workers are forced to rely on public assistance benefits to get by. In fact, almost three-quarters of Americans who depend on public assistance programs like food stamps and Medicaid are members of a family headed by someone who has a job.

In other words, in America today, many people are poor not because they don’t have a job but because they have a job that pays poverty wages. If the minimum wage had grown at the same rate as overall productivity since 1968, then the minimum wage would now be $18.50 an hour—instead of $7.25, the current federal minimum wage. In fact, adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage has actually dropped. In 2014 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was equal to $9.54 an hour.

The stagnation of working class wages cannot be explained by a lack of hard work or skills. Low-wage workers have more education than their 1968 counterparts—and yet are still being paid less. And as this graph from Mother Jones shows, while worker productivity has steadily risen over the past several decades, overall wages have not grown at the same pace—even though the income of the top 1% has spiked dramatically.

As taxpayers, we foot the bill for greedy employers who pay poverty wages. For instance, because McDonald’s won’t pay its workers a living wage, taxpayers are paying $1.2 billion per year in food stamp costs and other public assistance just for McDonald’s workers alone. That’s like our tax dollars subsidizing McDonald’s profit—and greed.

Recently McDonald’s announced it would raise wages by $1.00 an hour for workers in its corporate-owned stores, which since most McDonald’s are franchise operations, means the raise will affect less than 10 percent of McDonald’s workers. Beth Schaffer, who works at a McDonald’s in Charleston, South Carolina, and came to New York for the protests, shrugged her shoulders about the raise. After all, every single McDonald’s in South Carolina is a franchise not covered by the $1.00-an-hour increase. “My customers show me more respect than my employer,” said Schaffer. As her tone made clear, that’s not saying much.

As I left the Fight for $15 protest, one of several staged throughout New York on Wednesday, Chasten Florence walked one way back to his construction site and I walked the other way. I passed the tony restaurants of New York’s Upper West Side, on what seemed like one of the first real days of spring, men and women in business suits sitting at tables on the sidewalk, taking in the sun. Most were probably spending more on lunch than the workers at the protest earn in a week. Myself included.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, with wealth and success and enjoying what comes with it. The question is, are we paying enough attention to the costs? I wondered whether the people eating their expensive lunches knew that the bussers taking their plates can barely afford to feed their own families, that the workers at their children’s daycares don’t have health insurance, that the cheap stuff they order conveniently on Amazon.com is definitely comes at a high cost to the workers who make and ship those goods.

The construction worker who joined the Fight for $15 protest didn’t know that much about the issues or the protest demands, either. But he was going out of his way to learn, and to be supportive. “These are my people,” he said. Yes, they’re all of our people. It’s time we all wake up, pay attention, be angry and stand with our fellow human beings to do something about it. The status quo of wage injustice and greed-driven inequality relies on our complicity, whether by silence or ignorance. But it cannot survive if we all stand up together and fight.

 

Source: The Daily Beast

Sally Kohn

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Justices Rule That Police Can’t Extend Traffic Stops

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the police may not prolong traffic stops to wait for drug-sniffing dogs to inspect vehicles.

—“A police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. The vote was 6 to 3.

The case, Rodriguez v. United States No. 13-9972, started when a Nebraska police officer saw a Mercury Mountaineer driven by Dennys Rodriguez veer onto the shoulder of a state highway just after midnight. The officer, Morgan Struble, performed a routine traffic stop, questioning Mr. Rodriguez and his passenger and running a records check. He then issued Mr. Rodriguez a written warning.

That completed the stop, Justice Ginsburg wrote. But Officer Struble then had his drug-sniffing dog, Floyd, circle the vehicle. Floyd smelled drugs and led his officer to a large bag of methamphetamine. About eight minutes elapsed between the written warning and Floyd’s alert.

Mr. Rodriguez moved to suppress the evidence. Lower courts, relying on a 2005 Supreme Court decision that allowed drug-sniffing dog use during traffic stops, said brief prolongations of those stops to allow for such inspections did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

Justice Ginsburg, who dissented in the 2005 case, Illinois v. Caballes, said that decision had merely “tolerated certain unrelated investigations that did not lengthen the roadside detention.”

“An officer, in other words, may conduct certain unrelated checks during an otherwise lawful traffic stop,” she wrote. But, she added, “he may not do so in a way that prolongs the stop, absent the reasonable suspicion ordinarily demanded to justify detaining an individual.”

The majority sent the case back to a lower court for a determination of whether that reasonable suspicion existed.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Justice Ginsburg’s majority opinion.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying the majority had drawn artificial and unworkable distinctions. He was joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and, for the most part, by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

“If a driver is stopped by a particularly efficient officer,” Justice Thomas wrote, “then he will be entitled to be released from the traffic stop after a shorter period of time than a driver stopped by a less efficient officer. Similarly, if a driver is stopped by an officer with access to technology that can shorten a records check, then he will be entitled to be released from the stop after a shorter period of time than an individual stopped by an officer without access to such technology.”

In a separate dissent, Justice Alito added that much will now turn on the order in which police officers complete their tasks during traffic stops. Issuing a ticket or warning, he said, will now become the last step.

“Most officers will learn the prescribed sequence of events even if they cannot fathom the reason for that requirement,” he wrote. He added, “I would love to be the proverbial fly on the wall when police instructors teach this rule to officers who make traffic stops.”

Justices Thomas and Alito also said that there was no reason to have further proceedings about whether Officer Struble had a reasonable suspicion that justified using Floyd, as they said he had ample reason to be suspicious. There was, they said, an overwhelming odor of air freshener in the vehicle. The reasons Mr. Rodriguez offered for veering onto the shoulder and for his trip were open to question. And the passenger appeared nervous.

“These facts, taken together, easily met our standard for reasonable suspicion,” Justice Thomas wrote.

Source: NY Times

ADAM LIPTAK

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Mississippi Jobless Rate Dips in March Even as Payrolls Fall

2015/04/21 – Mississippi’s jobless rate dipped in March for the third month in a row, although employer payrolls shrank.

The unemployment rate fell to 6.8 percent, down from 7 percent in February and 7.8 percent in March 2014. The number of Mississippians saying they had a job rose, while the number of unemployed people fell.

Mississippi continues to have the second highest jobless rate behind Nevada

A separate survey shows payrolls fell by 4,300 in March, as gains recorded in February slipped away. Total payrolls were about 7,000 higher than in March 2014.

Both sets of figures — adjusted to cancel out seasonal changes — were released Tuesday by the U.S. Labor Department.

The report found 85,000 Mississippians were unemployed in March, down slightly from February and almost 13,000 below March 2014.

 

Source: Associated Press 

Jeff Amy 

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Suit Says Mississippi Lethal Injections are Unconstitutional

2015/04/21 – JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Two Mississippi prisoners condemned to death are challenging the legality of the state’s lethal injection procedures.

A lawyer for Richard Jordan and Ricky Chase writes in a suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Jackson that Mississippi prisoners face risks of excruciating pain and torture during an execution that violates the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

A prison spokeswoman declined to comment.

Mississippi plans to execute prisoners by mixing pentobarbital from ingredients it purchased from a compounding pharmacy in Grenada. Lawyer Jim Craig said Mississippi doesn’t seem to have ever used the drug in an execution before and questioned whether the state can mix a safe and effective anesthetic for prisoners.

Even if it can, Craig warns that the drug may act more slowly than drugs used previously, meaning that prisoners could be conscious as a paralyzing agent is injected, causing them to know they’re unable to breathe. They might remain conscious as potassium chloride is injected to stop their hearts.

“The defendants’ untried and untested drugs create a substantial risk that plaintiffs will suffer unnecessary and excruciating pain, either by injection of the compounded pentobarbital causing a painful reaction itself, or by the compounded pentobarbital failing to work, resulting in a torturous death by life suffocation and cardiac arrest,” the suit states.

The prisoners also allege using pentobarbital is illegal under state law, because it doesn’t meet the legal mandate for an ultra-fast-acting barbiturate. Mississippi formerly used a different drug, but the supplier cut off use in executions.

Craig has fought the state Corrections Department in court seeking information about Mississippi’s suppliers of execution drugs. The new lawsuit argues that the secrecy is a separate constitutional violation, because it retards prisoners’ ability to mount Eighth Amendment challenges.

“Under the due process clauses of the United States and Mississippi constitutions, plaintiffs are entitled to notice of the defendants’ intended method of execution,” the suit states.

Craig argues that under evolving standards of decency, U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate should bar Mississippi from using the paralytic agent and potassium chloride, though they are required by state law. He said executing people using only barbiturates, as Texas now does, could meet these standards.

Jordan was convicted of capital murder committed in the course of kidnapping Edwina Marta in Harrison County in 1976. At 68, Jordan is the oldest inmate on Mississippi’s death row, having won three successful appeals only to be resentenced to death. He’s also the longest serving, having spent 38 years in death row. What would likely be Jordan’s final appeal is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Hood’s office could ask the state Supreme Court to set an execution date within weeks if Jordan’s appeal is refused. That’s important, because Mississippi’s current supply of pentobarbital is supposed to expire May 20.

Chase was convicted and sentenced to death in 1990 for the 1989 killing of an elderly vegetable salesman in Copiah County.

 

Source: The Associated Press 

 

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Why Are So Many Americans Criminals?

2014/4/21-Criminal justice reform is rapidly becoming one of the few bipartisan issues of our time. It’s about time.

America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners. Nearly 2½ million Americans are in prison. Over 65 million people, or 20% of the country, have criminal records. Most disturbingly, nearly 40% of our country’s prisoners are African-Americans, who only make up 13% of the general population.

It’s time for policymakers to address this criminal justice crisis head on. We must change the dismal status quo. We must start by asking a simple question: Why are so many Americans criminals? Look no further than Washington, which has spent the past century devising the most complicated — and nonsensical — criminal code known to man.

The federal criminal code includes over 4,500 laws and counting, not to mention government regulations for which there are criminal penalties. The list of federal crimes is so long, so broad and so vague that you and I likely commit three felonies every day, unwittingly breaking numerous federal laws as we go about our daily business.

No wonder America’s prison population is out of control. Americans aren’t addicted to crime; our politicians are addicted to criminalizing things.

Sadly, the criminalization of Americans also traps them in poverty. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, incarceration leads to reduced wages (11% drop), employment (nine weeks lost annually), and earnings overall (40% annually). Making matters worse, over half of new prisoners are at or below the poverty line and three-quarters of former prisoners are sent back to jail within five years of their release.

The deck is stacked against my generation in particular. Young adults are 10% of the population yet comprise 29% of the country’s arrests. Young African-Americans are particularly at risk: They’re 15 times more likely to be in prison than whites. No wonder 18-to-29-year-olds have the lowest level of trust of any age group that our justice system treats everyone equally.

Thankfully, there is a bipartisan consensus in Washington that something needs to be done, and fast. On the left, civil rights groups and their allies in Congress have been demanding that the criminal system be fixed for years. On the right, politicians from Paul Ryan to Rand Paul are now recommending the same thing.

If politicians are serious, they should consider three specific areas for reform.

1. Reduce punishment for nonviolent crimes

Politicians should consider reducing nonviolent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, and end mandatory sentencing for nonviolent crimes. The federal government’s unsuccessful war on drugs has led to unfair punishments for nonviolent drug offenders who made youthful mistakes.

While some policies may have made sense in the 1980s and ’90s, they now do more harm than good. Those involved in the buying and selling of small amounts of drugs shouldn’t be subjected to years or decades in prison for their crimes. And more generally, judges should be free to tailor their rulings to the specific facts and details of the case — and the person standing before them.

2. Rebuild respect between communities and police

One-size-fits-all mandates and decrees from Washington — from drug laws to civil asset forfeiture to no-knock warrants — create divisions between local law enforcement and the local communities they serve. Practices, policies and programs that create unnecessary distrust and unease should be eliminated.

It’s the same for police militarization, which has occurred in large part because Washington has supplied local agencies with weapons and tools that are inappropriate for use in local communities. Letting local communities set their own law enforcement policies will go a long way toward restoring the trust that right now seems almost nonexistent.

3. Give ex-nonviolent offenders a second chance

Too many reformed convicts return to jail because they face insurmountable barriers that keep them from living a normal life. Legislators can begin fixing this by encouraging greater record-sealing and expungement for youthful, non violent offenders, thereby giving people who made mistakes a greater chance of finding work and rejoining society. Reducing licensing barriers and restoring voting rights for those with criminal backgrounds should also be considered.

This list is only a starting point, yet our elected officials could — and should — quickly and easily take it up. In our era of hyperpartisanship, we should focus on those few things on which Americans agree. Fixing our country’s broken criminal justice system should be at the top of the list.

 

source CNN

Evan Feinberg