Role of Government
Opinion | How Can You Destroy a Person’s Life and Only Get a Slap on the Wrist? – The New York Times
Opinion | How Can You Destroy a Person’s Life and Only Get a Slap on the Wrist? – The New York Times
Prosecutors are among the most powerful players in the criminal justice system. They can send a defendant off to years in prison, or even to death row. Most wield this power honorably. Yet, when prosecutors don’t, they rarely pay a price, even for repeated and egregious misconduct that puts innocent people behind bars.
Why? Because they are protected by layers of silence and secrecy that are written into local, state and federal policy, shielding them from any real accountability for wrongdoing.
New York City offers a prime example of a problem endemic to the nation. Consider the city’s official reaction to the barrelful of misconduct in Queens that a group of law professors recently brought to light. As The Times reported last month, the professors filed grievances against 21 prosecutors in the borough — for everything from lying in open court to withholding key evidence from the defense — and then posted those grievances to a public website.
Spooky Week #3
Area 51 and the Surveillance Industrial Complex: Spooky Week #3
10/27/21 by iHeartRadio
Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/130410600
Episode: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/chtbl.com/track/5899E/traffic.megaphone.fm/HSW9588420214.mp3
What’s more dangerous that UFOs? What REALLY goes on at Area 51? Join us as we watch the CIA and Air Force repeatedly bring us to the brink of nuclear war
NYS “Independent” Redistricting Commission Maps are Anything But – The BenCen Blog
At this point, it is plain as day that partisanship trumped consensus and that the commission is willing, in the form of these first released set of maps, to demonstrate the party actors are very much viewing and operating with a partisan lens, despite the commission’s charge to be independent (it is in the body’s name, afterall). So, two sets of plans were released – one Democrat and one Republican – each for redistricting the State Assembly, State Senate, and our Congressional districts. At best, this reflects the bipartisan nature of the commission, but bipartisanship is not independence from the political process, and a bipartisan commission is only advantageous when compromises are struck and a consensus is built. Since the Democrat supermajority in the Assembly and the Senate will have the final say on how the lines are drawn, it is troubling then that partisans on the commission released separate maps in opposition to each other. It demonstrates the challenge of having this redistricting task completed by vested interests; that is, incumbents and a party that would like to stay in power.
Minority Rights
America is the one of the few countries that protects minority rights through our political system. Most democracies do not have a mechanism that protects the rights of minorities through the power of the filibuster, federalism, and the ability of different political parties to control different branches of government.
We also have a Constitution which protects additional rights, that can not be questioned by Congress or the President. Congress has two branches, the House and Senate, drawn from distinctively different constituencies. It also have a separate executive, the President, who is drawn from a national constituency. Unless all these diverse groups agree, no policy can be implemented.
Most countries allow their governments to engage in rash decisions, allow a simple majority to act in a tyrannical fashion. Fortunately, America is globally unique, and and we restrict the power of the majority by empowering minorities. This is one of the reasons why America’s democracy has outlived most other countries, and has proven to be a stable, long-lasting form of government.
The Nation; The Last Refuge of Scoundrels and a Noble Virtue – The New York Times
Geo Maher’s ‘A World Without Police’ On Abolishing The Police : NPR
Details that have come into focus after the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6 have made clear, Maher writes, just how the police and the violent far-right of this country blur together. Neither Ahmaud Arbery nor Trayvon Martin, among countless others, were killed by active police officers, but they were nonetheless killed by what Maher calls the "pig majority" — which includes not just police but their "volunteer deputies...the judges, the courts, the juries, and the grand juries... the mayors and the district attorneys who demand 'law and order'... the racist media apparatus that bends over backwards to turn victims into aggressors." As Tupac Shakur famously put it, the police is "the biggest gang in America," Maher contends.