This is absurd

That the police in the US often use unnecessary force is well known. What is shocking is how much this abuse is costing the cities. Take the case of New York City that paid out nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to settle thousands of lawsuits against them just in the last year alone. The previous year it was even more. Assuming a city population of ten million, this amounts to an annual tax of about $25 paid by every individual in the city just to settle police abuse cases.

New York City taxpayers spent a whopping $230 million to pay off 6,472 lawsuits settled against the NYPD in the last fiscal year, according to an annual report released Monday by Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office.

The amount reflects settlements made from July 2017 through June 2018, and marks a 32% decrease from the prior year, when the city paid out $335 million for lawsuits against the police department.
…

Critics say the numbers in the report are not indicative of a reformed police department.

“This is just another spin effort by the comptroller and the Law Department,” said civil rights lawyer Joel Berger. “The trend over the past 10 years tells you there’s a lot of dissatisfaction out there, and not everyone harmed by the police files a lawsuit. Plenty of people decide they don’t want to go through the hassle.”

Berger pointed out that 44% of the claims against the city resolved by settlements of judgement in 2018 were against the NYPD, and took issue with the police department and unions claiming that many of the cases against the NYPD were frivolous.

The size of these signs is a sign of how poorly trained the city’s police department is but the city seems to think that these payouts are just the cost of doing business and not a big flashing signal that the police force needs serious reform. That attitude is similar to the way that big banks treat fines levied against them for illegal activities.

It’s grifters all the way down

When you run a corrupt and inefficient organization in which the people at the top are utterly corrupt and anyone with integrity and competence is shunted aside in favor of cronies and grifters (in case no one realizes it, I am of course referring to the Trump administration), con artists quickly realize that they can find a lucrative niche there because no one really cares about honesty.

So it should be no surprise that Mina Chang landed a six-figure salary job as deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations by, as this article states, inflating her educational achievements and exaggerating the scope of her previous work with a nonprofit. Her biggest talent seems to be self-promotion and schmoozing with political figures and taking selfies with celebrities like former President Bill Clinton, retired Gen. David Petraeus, former Defense Secretary Bob Gates, Karl Rove, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Buzz Aldrin.
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Mud fight on the right!

For those of you who, like me, may have been wondering about what is going on in the cesspools of the far right in the US that led to Donald Trump Jr., of all people, being heckled off the stage at UCLA by right wing groups, Will Sommer has an explainer giving the background.

Whether he knew it or not, Trump Jr. had walked straight into a right-wing civil war that pits [Nick] Fuentes and his allies against more mainstream conservative stars, including [Turning Point USA head Charlie] Kirk, podcaster Ben Shapiro, and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX).
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This is what ‘bipartisanship’ really means: Praising bigots because they are your friends

Republican congressman from New York Peter King has announced that he is retiring from Congress and the media and Democratic leaders have fallen over themselves praising him as a ‘moderate’ voice. But Mehdi Hasan writes that King is an unrepentant bigot and Islamophobe and this reaction tells us a lot about politics and the media.

Hurrah! One of the leading bigots on Capitol Hill is retiring. Right-wing Republican Peter King announced Monday that he will not be standing for reelection to the House of Representatives in 2020.

Yet media organizations, from the New York Times to the Washington Post to Vice News, lined up to describe the New York congressman as a “moderate” and insisted on framing his departure as a blow to Donald Trump and the Republican Party (King is the 20th Republican in the House to announce he’s standing down).

Even worse, the top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, described King as standing “head & shoulders above everyone else” and “principled.” “I will miss him in Congress & value his friendship,” the Senate Minority Leader tweeted.
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A new offense to add to the list of doing while black: Eating

A man was arrested for eating a sandwich while standing on a station platform waiting fo a commuter train in San Francisco. You can watch the video and then read what happened here.


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I bet they did not see that coming

It is a standard for right-wingers to constantly whine about being victims because liberal students on college campuses silence conservative voices. So when Donald Trump Jr. went to the University of California, Berkeley to promote his book that makes this point at an event hosted by two rightwing groups Turning Point USA and America First, he must have been expecting a warm welcome from a sympathetic audience. He may have even hoped to be heckled by left-wing student groups so that he could show how intolerant they were. So he must have been surprised when it was right wing groups who heckled him so much that he had to leave without giving his talk, getting booed off the stage as he left.
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John Oliver on the evil of SLAPP lawsuits

It is a terrific show with a rousing finale. You should really check it out.

As I have said many times before when Jon Stewart was host of The Daily Show, while you may be able to win a public spat against ordinary people, it is a big mistake to get into one with a professional comedian who has his own show with a stable of writers and a network that has deep pockets and backs them up. You will always end up looking ridiculous.

But as Oliver says, SLAPP lawsuits can have a chilling effect on pretty much everyone else which is why we need all fifty states, not just the current thirty, to pass anti-SLAPP legislation.

What happened in Bolivia

Evo Morales has stepped down as president in Bolivia following the recent election that he won. He claims that what happened is effectively a coup. In this Twitter thread, Kevin Cashman provides a detailed breakdown of what happened. It looks like a situation similar to what happened in Brazil with Lula, where an entrenched and determined opposition, supported by the media and the Trump administration, have ousted a popular leftist leader who had improved conditions considerably for the poor

Nigel Farage executes a ‘reverse ferret’

After repeatedly threatening to contest every seat that is up for election because he was deeply unsatisfied with Brexit plan proposed by Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson, the leader of the Brexit party Nigel Farage suddenly announced that his party would not contest any of the 317 seats currently held by the Conservatives for fear of splitting the Brexit vote and opening a window for the Remain supporting Liberal Democrats to win the seat. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says that Farage is merely following the orders of his US patron Donald Trump.
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