turbinetree
turbinetree's JournalPolice in Washington sell seized assault weapons back to the public
SEATTLE (AP) — When law enforcement agencies in Washington and other states sell guns they've confiscated during criminal investigations, they're not just selling pistols and hunting rifles, they're also putting assault weapons, including AR-15s, back on the street.
Sheriff's offices and police departments across Washington state have sold dozens of AR-15s, AK47s and other assault weapons since 2010, an Associated Press investigation found.
Most states allow law enforcement agencies to decide whether to sell, trade or destroy their confiscated firearms, but a growing list of states has passed laws in recent years requiring agencies to sell all forfeited guns. Supporters say selling seized guns provides law enforcement with needed revenue, and if the practice were abandoned, people would just buy weapons somewhere else.
But Yakima Police Captain Jeff Schneider said it's "absolutely insane" that police are selling assault weapons.
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2018/02/police_in_washington_sell_seiz.html
Inside Atomwaffen As It Celebrates a Member for Allegedly Killing a Gay Jewish College Student
ProPublica obtained the chat logs of Atomwaffen, a notorious white supremacist group. When Samuel Woodward was charged with killing 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein last month in California, other Atomwaffen members cheered the death, concerned only that the group’s cover might have been blown.
by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica, Ali Winston, special to ProPublica, and Jake Hanrahan, special to ProPublica Feb. 23, 5 a.m. EST
Late last month, ProPublica reported that the California man accused of killing a gay and Jewish University of Pennsylvania student was an avowed neo-Nazi and a member of Atomwaffen Division, one of the country’s most notorious extremist groups.
The news about the murder suspect, Samuel Woodward, spread quickly throughout the U.S., and abroad. Woodward was accused of fatally stabbing 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein and burying his body in an Orange County park.
The report, it turns out, was also taken up in the secretive online chats conducted by members of Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist group that celebrates both Hitler and Charles Manson.
“I love this,” one member wrote of the killing, according to copies of the online chats obtained by ProPublica. Another called Woodward a “one man gay Jew wrecking crew.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/atomwaffen-division-inside-white-hate-group
I was living in Riverside, California when Manson was committing murders in the LA areas.........................
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/charles-manson-today-the-final-confessions-of-a-psychopath-20131121
An obscure State Department policy change is likely to send immigrants to their death
Asylum seekers are likely to be sent back to their home countries to be tortured or killed.
IAN MILLHISER
FEB 25, 2018, 11:00 AM
The State Department has “been ordered to pare back passages in a soon-to-be-released annual report on global human rights that traditionally discuss women’s reproductive rights and discrimination,” Politico reported earlier this week. This change is likely to have a devastating impact on many foreign nationals seeking asylum in the United States after facing persecution, or even the threat of death, in their home nation.
A trio of federal immigration laws and human rights treaties permit individuals, who otherwise would be subject to deportation, to remain in the United States — if they are likely to face certain kinds of persecution in their home country. An immigrant seeking asylum, for example, may remain in the United States if they can establish that they have a “well-founded fear of future persecution” in their country of origin. Similarly, under Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the United States agrees not to “expel, return, or extradite” a foreign national if it is “more likely than not that they would be tortured if removed to a specific country.”
Immigrants seeking asylum or similar protections often rely heavily on the State Department’s annual human rights reports to establish that their fear of persecution or torture in their home nation is well-founded. For example: The 2016 State Department report on the northwestern African nation of Mauritania warns that members of the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement, an anti-slavery organization that advocates for the rights of Mauritania’s Haratine ethnic group, were arrested and tortured there. This report could provide members of this organization (or even members of Mauritania’s Haratine minority more generally) who arrive in the United States with the evidence they need to be able to stay.
https://thinkprogress.org/an-obscure-state-department-policy-change-is-likely-to-send-immigrants-to-their-death-faece8bc18ba/
This current administration is just plain fucking sick
Union workers rally ahead of major Supreme Court case
Unionized workers and their allies held rallies across the country Saturday to support unions in advance of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could significantly weaken the power of organized labor. Workers are attending rallies as part of a “working people’s day of action.”
There’s a rally in Foley Square in New York City, a street party in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a Columbus, Ohio party on the statehouse steps, and a gathering at Clayborn Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. Clayborn Temple has historical significance. It’s the place where striking sanitation workers, who had the support of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., began their march to City Hall in 1968 and where they gathered during another march when police attacked them with tear gas.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the Mark Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 (AFSCME) case. Non-union public school teachers in California brought the case.
Mark Janus, a child support specialist who chose not to join the union, said “fair-share” fees levied on non-members, amounting to 78 percent of full union dues, are a violation of his First Amendment rights. A Supreme Court decision in his favor, which is expected, would be a huge setback for public sector unions, which depend on these funds.
https://thinkprogress.org/union-workers-rally-ahead-of-major-supreme-court-case-cc1445955d66/
Now "SCABS" the fucking freeloading SCABS and the National Right to Work for Less and the fucking Bradley Foundation, have finally got there main SCAB on the bench, Gorsuch ...............................
I strongly feel that if we take back the house and the senate, we should move to have him (Gorsuch) impeached under the due process and advise and consent rule of the senate being violated, by Grassley and McConnell and all of those assholes that voted him him everyone of them .........................
I hate fucking free loading SCABS, that infringe on my right to have "majority" vote and ask to be represented by a UNION, and then use the bullshit minority to over rule a majority.......................FUCK YOU, Citizens United.......................
America's bump stock capital: can this tiny Texas town survive Trump's ban?
When Don Boyett was asked if he believes that bump stocks should be banned, he gestured to the moss green SUV in his driveway.
“Let’s take my Ford Expedition here. Let’s say I get drunk and I run over 30 people out in the middle of the road. Are we going to sue Ford and get rid of Ford Expeditions? It’s the person behind the wheel. The same thing with a gun. To me, it’s the person behind that gun that’s at fault. It’s not the gun’s fault,” he said.
Amid the renewed push for gun control after the deaths of 17 students and teachers in a Florida school shooting 11 days ago, Donald Trump last Tuesday told the justice department to issue a ban on bump stocks – attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at greatly increased rates akin to fully automatic firearms.
The obscure accessory was not a feature of the Florida shooting, but its profile was raised after it was used in the Las Vegas mass shooting last October, which killed 58. Even the National Rifle Association contemplated supporting some restrictions on their use after that, although it opposes an outright ban.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/25/americas-bump-stock-capital-can-this-tiny-texas-town-survive-trumps-ban
Blood money and the supporters of Blood money are losing, we will not stand by anymore, and let greed and a minority, 3 million run around with this tired old blood money bullshit basically attacking 240 million that want:..........................
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
It does not say anything about a fucking gun
The terrifying phenomenon that is pushing species towards extinction
There was almost something biblical about the scene of devastation that lay before Richard Kock as he stood in the wilderness of the Kazakhstan steppe. Dotted across the grassy plain, as far as the eye could see, were the corpses of thousands upon thousands of saiga antelopes. All appeared to have fallen where they were feeding.
Some were mothers that had travelled to this remote wilderness for the annual calving season, while others were their offspring, just a few days old. Each had died in just a few hours from blood poisoning. In the 30C heat of a May day, the air around each of the rotting hulks was thick with flies.
The same grisly story has been replayed throughout Kazakhstan. In this springtime massacre, an estimated 200,000 critically endangered saiga – around 60% of the world’s population – died. “All the carcasses in this one of many killing zones were spread evenly over 20 sq km,” says Kock, professor of wildlife health and emerging diseases at the Royal Veterinary College in London. “The pattern was strange. They were either grazing normally with their newborn calves or dying where they stood, as if a switch had been turned on. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/25/mass-mortality-events-animal-conservation-climate-change
Anyone not thinking that climate change is fake fucking news....................
Your fucked up in the head.............Pruitt, sexual predator, Zinke, Carson, ect.......................
Tech billionaire, ordered to reopen public beach, appeals to supreme court
A Silicon Valley billionaire who was ordered by California courts to restore public access to a popular surfing beach is seeking to take his case to the US supreme court.
The case could entirely upend public access to beaches in a state with more than 1,000 miles of shoreline.
Vinod Khosla, the influential technology investor and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has been battling California regulators and environmental advocates for years over access to Martin’s Beach, a picturesque cove about 30 miles south of San Francisco that can only be reached by a private road across Khosla’s property.
Khosla has consistently lost his legal fight, thanks to California state law that regulates access to the coastline – and prioritizes public access to beaches. In August 2017, a California appeals court ordered him to restore access by unlocking the gate to the road, an order with which he has only intermittently complied.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/23/martins-beach-california-vinod-khosla
Poverty Pay and Food Stamps at American Airlines
Envoy Air is a wholly-owned subsidiary of American Airlines, the largest passenger airline in the United States. Envoy employs more
than 3,800 passenger service agents whose responsibilities range from guiding planes on the tarmac to de-escalating tense situations
among customers. Envoy agents work at some of the nation’s biggest and busiest airports as well as smaller regional airports that
connect flyers to travel destinations around the country.
Wages for Envoy agents are among the lowest in the airline industry and start as low as $9.48 an hour. Many agents say they must rely
on public assistance programs because of the low pay. This report explores the use of public assistance and the effects of low wages
among Envoy passenger service agents, drawing on data from a survey of 900 employees across the country, as well as first-hand
accounts of their experiences. The online survey was conducted by the agents’ union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
Approximately one quarter of all Envoy agents participated. The survey’s major findings include:
https://www.cwa-union.org/sites/default/files/20180221-report-poverty-pay-and-food-statmps-at-american-airlines.pdf
This is disgusting.............and other multi-billion monopolies have the same issue, and the right wing Supreme Court is getting ready to fuck union members, sitting on bench with Samuel Alito, who has ruled against unions , right along with that appointed and anointed Gorsuch.............................
5 Places Where GOP Hypocrites Ban Guns (For Their Own Safety)
Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.
After every mass shooting, a portion of this country insists the real problem is that there aren’t enough guns. The group that pushes this absurd lie includes Republican politicians, many of whom fear that admitting otherwise would drive away NRA donor funds. There’s been a lot of recent discussion about how GOP legislators do nothing in response to gun massacres, but a 2016 Harvard Business School study proves that’s not quite true. In states with overwhelmingly Republican legislative bodies, after mass shootings, “the number of laws passed to loosen gun restrictions [increases] by 75 percent.” Despite being counterintuitive and demonstrably dangerous, more firepower is the GOP’s go-to solution because “something something don’t tread on me.”
It’s a bad-faith proposition. A party that truly believes guns are the way out of this thing, and that an even more heavily armed populace will ensure American safety, would make different personal choices. In fact, we can gauge GOP disingenuousness on the gun issue just by noting all the places Republican politicians frequent where weapons are banned. Pointing out their hypocrisy has never helped to shame the GOP into decency, but it’s worth a review nonetheless.
Here are five places hypocritical Republicans ban guns in order to ensure their own personal safety.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/5-places-gop-hypocrites-ban-guns/
A Stanford professor drops his ridiculous defamation lawsuit against his scientific critics
Stanford environmental professor Mark Z. Jacobson made a big splash in 2015 with a paper predicting that renewable sources could provide 100% of the energy needed in the 48 contiguous states by 2050.
But he made an even bigger splash last September, when he responded to a critique of his claim published in a leading scientific journal by filing a $10-million defamation lawsuit.
After taking months of flak for what seemed to be an effort to stifle legitimate scientific debate by bringing it into the courtroom, Jacobson withdrew the lawsuit Thursday.
A quick primer on the case: After Jacobson's paper appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and got taken up as a rallying cry by climate activists such as Bernie Sanders, the journal published a lengthy critique by environmental scientist Christopher Clack and 20 co-authors. Their paper, which questioned Jacobson's assumptions and methodology, appeared Feb. 24, 2017. PNAS gave Jacobson and his own co-authors space in the very same issue to rebut the criticism.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-jacobson-lawsuit-20180223-story.html
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