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  1. #976
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    Biggest Kock Bros In Congress Is New US Secretary Of State

    Of all the congressional representatives who have suckled themselves at the breast of the Koch brothers and their friends,

    Mike Pompeo is the champion.

    Before becoming director of the CIA under Donald Judas Trump, Pompeo served three terms in the House of Representatives as a congressman from Kansas. During that time,

    he accepted more money from the Koch brothers and their evil empire than any other person serving in the House or the Senate — just shy of $1,000,000

    Pompeo was dismissive of his Clean Power Plan and support for the Paris climate accords. He described both as a “perverse fixation on achieving [Obama’s] economically harmful environmental agenda” and as “worshiping a radical environmental agenda” — words taken directly from the Koch Brothers playbook.

    Pompeo is expected to ratchet up pressure on North Korea, virtually guaranteeing the talks scheduled for May go nowhere.

    He is also an advocate for scrapping the Iran deal, a move that would plunge the Middle East into even more chaos.

    As Secretary of State, he will have tremendous influence over how the US supports renewable energy development in countries around the world. The expectation is that he will hinder rather than help that process.

    Pompeo has no diplomatic experience and is woefully incapable of running the State Department effectively.

    Which makes him

    just another member of the gang of incompetent deplorables Trump has surrounded himself with since taking office.


    https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/14...eanTechnica%29


  2. #977
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    Trump White House is tossing aside a key ethics law

    The White House is taking the same casual approach to the Hatch Act—which forbids government officials from using their public positions for the benefit of partisan politics—as it takes to every other ethics question.

    Why, also, wouldn’t the Trump staff discard the Hatch Act when violations that are verified by the Office of Special Counsel get referred for discipline to … Donald Trump.

    Kellyanne Conway is the aide who was referred for discipline she’ll never receive, after she repeatedly used her official position to promote Roy Moore’s Senate run in Alabama.

    not only is Conway unlikely to be disciplined, but the White House has taken the position that her clear-cut Hatch Act violations aren’t violations at all:

    that Ms. Conway’s interviews — in which she clearly expressed support for Mr. Moore and opposition to Mr. Jones — did not violate the Hatch Act because she was expressing the president’s policy position.

    Office of Special Counsel, which rejected the argument in itsreport reprimanding Ms. Conway.

    The office said the position “lacks merit,” and

    “would render meaningless the Hatch Act’s prohibition against using one’s official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”


    Rendering any and all ethics rules meaningless is what the Trump White House is all about.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1748639

    Evangelical frauds LOVE Trash's ethics.

    I suppose we can expect WH staff to be violating the Hatch Act in the upcoming campaign season.

  3. #978
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    Trash's racism, xenophobia has degraded America, encouraging easily duped, influenced, hate-filled Americans to follow suit

    Horrifying Videos Show Racist Moms Teaching Kids To Be Patriots By Vandalizing A Mosque

    The disturbing Facebook live video captures a troubling excursion in which two women and three children trespass and vandalize a mosque.

    two women take a group of children to vandalize and steal materials at a mosque in Tempe, Arizona, in an attempt to “expose the evil that is happening in our backyards.”

    Tahnee Gonzales, she and another woman take three unidentified children on a trip to the mosque in order to “collect as much information” and

    “expose mosques” in order to teach the children how to be “American patriots.”

    “They smell like goat,”

    exclaims a girl in the background once the group enters through the gated fence

    The little girl instructs one of the boys to put his “thumbs down” and pouts as the group poses for a photo.

    “Be careful, because Muslims are waiting to rape you,”

    the young girl is heard telling the boy.


    The children are then seen climbing upon the mosque’s funeral van while

    one of the women warns one of the boys about the “dead Muslims” and “sex goats” that she says were once stored in the truck.

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...gEmail__031518

    Thanks, all you bubbas, kickers, GED or less assholes.



  4. #979
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    The extravagant spending of Trump’s champagne cabinet
    All while their agencies suffer
    .


    The EPA administrator’s $43,000 phone booth


    The Interior secretary’s $139,000 door


    The $31,000 dining set at the Department of Housing and Urban Development


    The jet-setting Treasury Secretary’s $800,000 flights

    https://thinkprogress.org/extravagan...-4827459800c2/



  5. #980
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    While Trash crashes the solar market ...

    DOE Official: Clean Energy Funding Should Be Cut for ‘Exceeding Goals’

    The Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is so successful that its funding should be diverted elsewhere, said the agency’s Under Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes.

    “In the area of EERE…we have been meeting or exceeding our goals” over the last five years, said Menezes, who spoke at The American Council on Renewable Energy’s Renewable Energy Policy Forum in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. He praised the office for helping reduce the cost of electric-vehicle batteries, wind and solar technologies.

    “Our job is to have early-stage research and move it along the technological readiness levels, eventually getting it to where it’s commercially deployable. But once it’s commercially deployable, then the question becomes: What role does the department need to spend?” he said.

    “To be sure, you could continue spending money there, but then where would be the opportunities for new energy breakthroughs?”

    https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/official-clean-energy-funding-should-be-cut-for-exceeding-goals?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_ca mpaign=Feed%3A+GTM_Solar+%28GTM+Solar%29#gs.W8FlmB 8

    "new energy breakthroughs"? no doubt that DoE will cut funding of research for that also.

    Oligarchy philosophy: the govt can not promote the general welfare, and must not even try.

  6. #981
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    Forget All the Cocaine, Trump’s New Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow is One of TV’s Worst Financial Pundits

    But aside from the longtime TV gig and the Wolf of Wall Street steeze, there’s another thing Larry Kudlow is known for: being really ing wrong. (Also, all the cocaine, but we’ll get to that.)

    here’s a handy collection of the times Larry Kudlow absolutely nailedit.

    1. Larry Kudlow, 2007: “There is no recession.”

    There is no recession. Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S economy continues moving ahead quarter after quarter, year after year defying dire forecasts and delivering positive growth. In fact, we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.

    2. Larry Kudlow, 2008: Oil prices will help the stock market rally and Sarah Palin will strengthen John McCain’s presidential bid.


    3. Larry Kudlow, 2002: We should invade Iraq because it would “revive the American spirit.”

    “Taking Back The Market — by Force,” is the name of Kudlow’s 2002 piece for the National Review, which

    makes the case for invading Iraq on the basis that the “stock market is slumping”

    because “only one in three Americans believe the U.S. is now winning the war on terrorism.”

    4. Larry Kudlow, 2011: “We should be grateful” that human toll of Japan earthquake and tsunami is worse than the economic toll.

    5. Larry Kudlow, 2015: Bush tax cuts led to five-year boom!

    Kudlow, in a spasm of his famed supply-side zealotry, lauded the Bush tax cuts of 2003 as having spurred a five-year “boom” in the U.S. economy.

    6. All the cocaine.

    In 1994, after serving for years as the chief economist at Bear Stearns, Kudlow was fired when he confessed to an insane $100,000 per month cocaine habit.

    some 15 months after he was ousted from Bear Stearns, his wife filed for divorce and,
    per the New York Times, “an order to

    prevent Mr. Kudlow from tapping their Bear Stearns retirement account to pay for a weeks-long cocaine binge.”

    Kudlow ended up in and out of rehab a number of times, including a stint at the celeb favorite Hazelden in Minnesota.

    https://www.mediaite.com/tv/forget-a...ncial-pundits/


    but he's a teevee celeb on the ty CNBC, so that's enough qualification for Trash.



  7. #982
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    Trash's racism, xenophobia has degraded America, encouraging easily duped, influenced, hate-filled Americans to follow suit

    Horrifying Videos Show Racist Moms Teaching Kids To Be Patriots By Vandalizing A Mosque
    2 Women Who Took Children To Vandalize An Arizona Mosque Are Arrested

    Two Arizona women, Tahnee Gonzales and Elizabeth Dauenhauer, were
    arrested on su ion of felony third-degree burglary after an investigation into theft and vandalism at a Tempe mosque revealed that the two women, along with three unidentified children, trespassed on the property of the Islamic Community Center earlier this month,

    Based on details of the incident shown in the videos, an enhanced charge involving hate crime may be considered for sentencing, Duran said.

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...gEmail__031618



  8. #983
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    Trash wildlife protection board stuffed with trophy hunters

    A new U.S. advisory board created to help rewrite federal rules for importing the heads and hides of African elephants, lions and rhinos is stacked with trophy hunters, including

    some members with direct ties to President Donald Trump and his family.

    A review by The Associated Press of the backgrounds and social media posts of the 16 board members appointed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke indicates they will agree with his position that

    the best way to protect critically threatened or endangered species is by encouraging wealthy Americans to shoot some of them.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.85427a011e97

  9. #984
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    Education Secretary Betsy DeVos accused of union-busting

    The union alleges that the Department of Education failed to negotiate “in good faith” with them

    the American Federation of Government Employee is seeking to hit Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s department with an unfair labor practice charge.

    “The Education Department has imposed on its workers an illegal do ent that we had absolutely no bargaining over,” AFGE Council 252 President Claudette Young said in a statement.

    “Secretary Betsy DeVos and her management team are attempting to strip employees of their collective bargaining rights and kill the union.”

    https://www.salon.com/2018/03/16/edu...union-busting/



  10. #985
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    well of course, Trash/oligarchy BLM will this up for profit, and vindictively reverse Obama's progress

    By ordering new land-use plan, Trump could spark a fight in California deserts

    Conservationists see its acres of creosote bush and cholla cactus as a rare habitat for tortoises, pronghorn antelope and an elusive variety of mule deer.

    Energy companies view its sunbaked plains and windswept ridgelines as prime perches for solar panels and wind turbines.

    Dirt tracks that wiggle across its sandy washes are testament to its popularity among off-road motorsports enthusiasts.


    Until last year, all parties had reached something of an accord.

    Obama-era rules ensured that portions of California's sunniest public lands would be reserved for conservation;

    other parts set aside for large-scale solar, wind and geothermal development and mining;

    and other sections designated for recreation.

    In a stunning reversal, President Trump one year ago ordered the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to reopen study of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan and consider

    shrinking the areas it protects

    and expanding lands available for solar, wind, broadband infrastructure, mining, off-road vehicles and grazing.

    http://www.latimes.com/local/califor...s=mcnewsletter



  11. #986
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    Been going on for years now, nothing done (that's been effective).

    and

    Teen Suicide Rates Are Rising

    The stats are most troubling in Utah and among boys, whose suicide rate had been on the decline for almost two decades.

    the number of girls age 15 to 19 committing

    suicide doubled from 2007 to 2015,

    to a 40-year high of 5.1 per 100,000.

    The most recent statistics for boys, whose suicide rates have always been higher, are also grim.

    After peaking in the 1990s and declining for a decade and a half, their

    suicide rate climbed by more than 30 percent between 2007 and 2015,

    to 14.2 per 100,000.


    http://www.governing.com/gov-teen-su...28GOVERNING%29


  12. #987
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    Trump to call for the death penalty for some opioid dealers, but White House won't say how it would be applied

    a senior administration official declined to provide any examples of cir stances under which convicted drug traffickers would face capital punishment,

    The death-penalty element of Trump's drug plan has been criticized by public health experts and others who point out that many of the people addicted to opioids were hooked initially by legally prescribed drugs.

    The president has been criticized for touting penal solutions to the opioid crisis rather than emphasizing the public-health component.

    a nationwide goal of reducing opioid prescriptions being filled by one-third within three years.

    http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-n...s=mcnewsletter



  13. #988
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    Even Republicans Are Horrified by This Kentucky Governor's Attack on Protesting Teachers


    One prominent GOP official calls Matt Bevin's remarks "indefensible."

    Kentucky’s Republican Gov. Matt Bevin sparked outrage Wednesday after he called teachers who oppose efforts to cut pension benefits “selfish” and “ignorant.”

    Bevin told WVLC Tuesday that the teachers protesting Senate Bill 1—which would cut billions of dollars in benefits for teachers

    are disloyal Americans,

    like ration hoarders during World War II.

    “This would be like people having mass demonstrations about, ‘No I want my butter, I want my sugar, I’m going to keep all my steel and my rubber and my copper, and

    to heck with the rest of you people, you better keep giving me mine,’”

    Bevin said of protesting teachers.


    “That’s what it is, it’s the most remarkable commentary about who we are in modern times,” Bevin said.

    “It’s just straight up about wanting more than your fair share.”

    https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-po...sting-teachers


    Ditzy Devos and much of the oligarchy and Repugs agree completely.

    Their strategy is to destroy all govt that benefits the common good that they hate.




  14. #989
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    Trump threatens to shut down government rather than fund Gateway tunnel

    Trump said he would veto legislation funding the government through Sept. 30 if it included money for a new tunnel linking New Jersey and Manhattan,

    Trump's threat accelerated his efforts to kill the project, which he initially appeared to endorse at a White House meeting with New Jersey and New York officials last September.

    Trump, a Republican, earlier pressured U.S. House Republicans to drop a $900 million allocation for Gateway, which involves building a new tunnel under the Hudson River for Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains and replacing the Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River.

    http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/03/will_trump_shut_down_the_government_over_gateway_f .html

    This is the same tunnel and bridge the Chris Christie vetoed so he could use the money as a slush fund for his magnificient political career



  15. #990
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    Trump's new economic adviser says the rich can't be corrupt. Let's look at the Trump administration.

    Larry Kudlow, Donald Trump’s new top economic adviser, is famous for being wrong about everything, in some very dramatic ways.

    “Why shouldn’t the president surround himself with successful people?”

    he wrote, referring to the rich conservatives Trump has added to his incoming team.

    “Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption.”

    About that.

    Members of Trump’s cabinet had an
    estimated combined net worth of $4.5 billion (though it seems that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross may have seriously inflated his wealth).




    But most of all, there’s Trump himself and his family of grifters.

    From the galas and fundraisers being held at Trump’s properties—for a hefty fee—by groups looking to suck up to him,

    to the
    s companies and foreign governments renting real estate from him

    to the
    overseas deals being smoothed by governments looking to curry favor,

    Trump is corrupt right up to his questionable hairline.

    Meanwhile son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner—himself from a family of wealthy real estate developers—has gotten
    a series of su ious loans.

    And that’s not even getting into the little stuff like

    Don Jr.'s trip to India to give a foreign policy speech and sell some condos, or the

    $1.5 million a year Ivanka is getting from Trump companies while working in the White House.


    Yeah, that whole “rich people don’t need to be corrupt because they’re rich” thing holds up about as well as Kudlow’s 2007 insistence that there wasn’t going to be a recession.


    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/16/1749482/-Trump-s-new-economic-adviser-says-the-rich-can-t-be-corrupt-Let-s-look-at-the-Trump-administration



    White House unreality show to get new character: Larry Kudlow as economic adviser

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...onomic-adviser



    The genius Larry Kudlow during the 2007 financial catastrophe: 'There's no recession coming.'

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...cession-coming

    The Best People



  16. #991
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    asshole stinky Zinke ting on America for BigOil profit

    US Interior Department offers oil leases near Utah’s wilderness monuments

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/us-...e+Raw+Story%29

  17. #992
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    The EPA’s New Environmental Justice Adviser Has a Plutonium Problem

    More than 40 people inhaled radioactive dust while working for a company whose vice president is now advising Scott Pruitt

    National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, which provides advice to the EPA administrator on how best to protect those vulnerable communities.

    One of the members is Michael Tilchin, a white gentleman from Washington, D.C., and the vice president of CH2M Hill,

    a global engineering company that’s caught up in a major contamination scandal:

    Dozens of its workers inhaled cancer-causing plutonium—not once, but on multiple occasions.

    https://newrepublic.com/article/1473...tonium-problem

    criminal polluters employed by Pruitt / EPA



  18. #993
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    Did they get superpowers?

  19. #994
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    Kockistan destroying "liberal" education in favor of trade school

    A University of Wisconsin campus pushes plan to drop 13 majors — including English, history and philosophy

    The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point has proposed dropping 13 majors in the humanities and social sciences — including English, philosophy, history, sociology and Spanish — while

    adding programs with “clear career pathways”

    as a way to address declining enrollment and a multimillion-dollar deficit.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.e26864da958e

    Kock Bros and their hired puppet Walker want uneducated, narrrow- / close-minded employees, not broadly educated grads who can think.



  20. #995
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    Hispanic Caucus rips Gohmert for trying to co-opt César Chávez's birthday



    Louie Gohmert
    ✔@replouiegohmert


    Today I filed a resolution that would declare Cesar Chavez's Birthday: "National Border Control Day."

    Read more about the resolution, here:
    https://gohmert.house.gov/news/do entsingle.aspx?Do entID=398628 …


    2:37 PM - Mar 20, 2018


    ===========

    Gohmert’s “reasoning” is that “
    in the 1960s and ’70s, Chaveztook a hard line against unauthorized immigration,”

    but of course he doesn’t mention that “by the 1980s, Chávez’s stance on the issue had shifted considerably,”

    supporting Ronald Reagan’s 1986 immigration package.

    Gohmert is stupid, but even he knows this, because he left it out of his research.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1750883

    Nothing surprising from a Deep South racist / xenophobe



  21. #996
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    Mick Mulvaney’s Latest Scandal Makes Him Look Like a Craven Hypocrite

    For many months, the Trump administration has been attempting to push through a regulatory change that would

    make it easier for restaurant owners to skim tips from their employees.

    As if that weren’t rotten enough, it now appears that high level officials, including

    White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney,

    attempted to bury a government analysis showing how badly the move would hurt workers who rely on gratuities to make a living.

    the regulation could also become a license for your local Buffalo Wild Wings proprietor to simply commit tip theft.

    Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as tipped workers earn minimum wage,

    employers could legally pocket those tips.”

    Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta claims his department doesn’t have the legal authority to ban tip theft;

    The Economic Policy Ins ute, for instance, thinks that restaurant workers could lose $5.8 billion annually in the bargain.

    Trump appointees in the

    Department of Labor had actually flushed multiple in-house estimates of how the rule would effect restaurant workers, including one that showed they would lose billions in tips:

    the administration is willing to go to downplay unflattering data and push through a regulation that will likely hurt working class Americans.

    “make it 100 percent clear that there was a deliberately withheld economic analysis. That’s a big problem in defending this rule legally.

    Mick Mulvaney:

    A stickler for math when it comes to regulating payday lenders, but not so much when it comes to stealing tips from waitresses.

    https://slate.com/business/2018/03/mick-mulvaney.html



  22. #997
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    Any restaurant that tried that would lose in the end because they could only keep servers. , a good server in a decent restaurant has got to be clearing over $50 an hour.

  23. #998
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    Any restaurant that tried that would lose in the end because they could only keep servers. , a good server in a decent restaurant has got to be clearing over $50 an hour.

  24. #999
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    Buried, altered, silenced: 4 ways government climate information has changed since Trump took office

    Federal data sets related to environmental and climate science are still accessible in the same ways they were before Trump took office.

    However, in many other instances, federal agencies have tampered with information about climate change.

    Across agency websites, do ents have disappeared, web pages have vanished and language has shifted in ways that appear to reflect the policies of the new administration.

    Two groups have been keeping a watchful eye on developments.

    These groups have do ented four ways that climate-related information has become less accessible since Trump took office.

    1. Do ents are difficult to find


    Do ents on existing international environmental treaties and national climate policy have been buried or removed from departments’ current websites.

    2. Web pages are buried

    Some administrative pages have disappeared from agency sites and can be accessed only from the Obama-era web archive.

    3. Language has been altered

    Departments have scrubbed websites of environmental terms. The term “climate change,” for instance, no longer exists across certain web pages of several agencies, such as the White House, the Department of Transportation and the Department of the Interior.

    4. Science has been silenced


    But website changes and deletions are just the tip of the iceberg.

    Columbia’s
    Silencing Science Tracker records 116 instances when scientists have been obstructed.

    The list includes budget cuts, staff cuts, unfilled positions and suspended funds.

    Climate-related research projects have been canceled and climate fellowships rescinded.

    In some cases, advisory boards and research centers have been dismantled entirely.

    as of Dec. 31, 2017, the administration had filled only 20 science-related positions out of the 83 total.

    That pace falls short of both the Obama administration, who had appointed 63, and

    the Bush administration, who had filled 51, at the same point in time.


    The silencing suggests that the administration values “pro-growth” policies over environmental goals and stands with industry, no matter the cost.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/bur...e+Raw+Story%29



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    Trump nominates racist hardliner to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, jeopardizing sentencing reform

    President Trump has nominated an extremist to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, one Professor William G. Otis of Georgetown Law,

    whose other credits include a stint at DEA under George H. W. Bush and a federal prosecutor gig in Virginia.

    If confirmed, Otis would have a lot—a lot—of potential to thwart sentencing reform and even sabotage the Sentencing Commission, which is integral to reform.

    The glaring issue with Otis’s nomination: He opposes the Commission’s existence and mission.

    Before a House subcommittee in 2011,

    [Otis] called for abolishing the Sentencing Commission altogether,

    declaring that its guidelines “favor the criminal” and

    labeling it “an overfed lemur” that costs too much and no longer has the respect of the judiciary.

    Expect him, if confirmed, to
    block every sentencing reform he can.

    Sentencing reform, he said, is

    “part of our country’s recent pattern of decline and retreat, of settling for lower standards in the name of a toxic brand of equality.”


    Beyond his facially faulty positions on the commission and reform, Otis seems immune to reasoned analysis and devoid of concern for the social effects of higher rates of incarceration.

    In blog posts, he has written that he believes the harsh crime policies and War on Drugs prosecutions of the 1980s and 1990s contributed to the precipitous crime rate drop in subsequent decades.

    “Our whole sentencing system that started in the Reagan-Bush era, the system of guidelines and mandatory minimums has been a big success,” he said.

    “If one judges the success of the criminal justice system by the crime rate rather than the incarceration rate, under the system we’ve had and that Jeff Sessions is now restoring, there has been a tremendous fall-off in crime.”


    Most researchers who have studied the drop in crime that began in 1991 agree that locking up more people played some role — but at a high cost in dollars, damaged communities and racial inequity. People of color are disproportionately represented in the nation’s jails and prisons.

    Otis has
    adopted a particularly hideous (read: racist) explanation for why African American and Latinx people are overrepresented in prison. And it doesn’t have to do with faulty sentencing laws.

    [O]n his Crime and Consequences blog, Otis wrote:

    "When Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones said at a University of Pennsylvania Law School talk that blacks and Hispanics are more violent than whites,

    a consortium of civil rights organizations filed a complaint.

    The complaint calls for stern discipline, on the grounds that the remarks were 'discriminatory and biased.' "


    He added: "So far as I have been able to discover, it makes no mention of the fact that they're true."

    BONUS:

    Otis also has
    thoughts on “Orientals” and incarceration.

    Thoughts that he seems to think prove he’s not racist:

    It’s just about values, folks.

    “Orientals have less incidence of crime than whites. …

    The reason Orientals stay out of jail more than either whites or blacks is that family, life, work, education and tradition are honored more in Oriental culture than in others.

    Values, not race or skin color, influence choices.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1750923

    Repugs nominated the BEST POSSIBLE asshole to crush blacks, browns and

    keep the for-profit prison system filling up and sucking down $Bs from taxpayers


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