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| Tutwiler Prison for Women |
I'm not accusing you of lying (0.00 / 0)Old Prosecutor either intentionally omitted some information, or, posted factually incorrect information on the front page of Left in Alabama. regarding Alabama's prison population.
But I do say that too often you don't check your facts before you post, with the result that inaccurate information sometimes ends up on our front page under your byline. That is A Problem. When the inaccuracy is noted, you don't always correct it. Another Problem. This goes directly to your credibility and that of this blog, which is my Problem. Kathy is trying to do you the favor of pointing out that you aren't the least bit consistent in your statements. My read is that you're about a hairsbreadth from calling her a racist which would be not only inaccurate, but a damned lie.You are absolutely entitled to your opinion and to include your opinion in any diary. But front page privileges come with a somewhat higher responsibility -- to make an attempt to check information before you report it, because you are reporting to a rather wide audience here. Expressing opinion is fair game, and so is passing on interesting information from other sources, but I remind you that you do have a responsibility to our readers to make a good faith attempt to insure information is accurate before you pass it on. We aren't a gossip sheet, nor do we want to be one. I say this publicly because all our readers need to know that the facts matter to us here. Our readers may prefer to fact check for themselves -- good for them -- but I hope they don't catch us in errors very often. Facts matter, that's job one for me, and an important guideline for our front pagers.
The basic problem is that Alabama prisons are at appx 180% capacity and the Stae, especially the Legislature, is afraid that a lawsuit may result either (1) a Federal Court ordering mass releases (see California) or (2) a Federal takeover with huge financial mandates.Alabama prisons are at maximum capacity, but the fear of mass releases or a federal takeover with huge financial mandates is speculation at worst, and opinion at best.
Many suggest that the problem is that Alabama is imprisoning huge numbers of non violent criminals, Yet the numbers show 75% of all inmates are there for violent crimes.According to the Montgomery Advertiser a survey response from the state of Alabama for a 2012 report by the Southern Legislative Conference show 75% of all inmates are there for violent crimes, and according to Old Prosecutor it just ain't so large numbers of people are in prison for marijuana possession, but these figures tell a different story.
After years of representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality, and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement, and trying to help people who were released from prison face one barrier, one legal roadblock after another to get a job, getting access to housing, getting even food stamps–you know, I had an awakening that our criminal justice system now functions more like a system of racial and social control, than a system of crime prevention or control,” Alexander said on PoliticsNation Monday.Now I'm not saying there is a double standard when it comes to posting factually incorrect information on the front page of Left in Alabama, but there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy at best, which goes to the creditability of Left in Alabama.
“Our nation’s prison population has more than quintupled,” she said. “And this is due largely to the war on drugs and the ‘get tough’ movement. The drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color even though studies have consistently shown now for decades that contrary to popular belief, people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but by waging this drug war almost exclusively in poor communities of color, we’ve now created a vast new racial under-caste.”
Since 1971, when President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs, there has been a 700% increase in the U.S. prison population. Today, African-Americans are also more likely to spend time in prison for drug related offenses than their white counterparts. According to the Sentencing Project, African-Americans make up 12% of the nation’s drug users, but represent 34% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 45% of those in state prison for such offense as of 2005.
Change the name so the school and area can move forward.Johnson is one of the worst schools in the state for education and violence. A new name may not help because most could care less about getting an education but it's a start toward a new direction.
Say you had a bagel business by the name Johnson's Bagels. It becomes known for failure, and needs to close. Any worthy consultant would immediately tell you the brand is dead; if you want to move forward, you HAVE to rebrand. Same with a school. It fails, rebrand, refresh, and try it again-- the right way.
Grissom does not have a history of failure and crime!!!!! Most of those kids care about being educated and it shows because Grissom is always at the top in the state!!!!! Johnson has shown it does not care about education. The majority of those students do not care. We could take all the ones who do care and put them at other schools and take the students that don't care from all schools and put them under one roof!
The new school needs a name change so that it won't be associated with the reputation of violence and educational failure at Johnson.
So now we know, it doesn't matter how many town hall meetings are held, or how many names are on a petition, the anonymous community group will win because the committee is stacked with people chosen by Wardynski (see photo above)
Both Showers and Harrison complained that none of the school board members, nor Wardynski, attended the meeting. Board president Laurie McCaulley, who represents Johnson High, told Alabama Media Group earlier Monday that she had not been invited.New Rules, hand pick a committee giving the appearance of diverse viewpoints, while stacking the deck with people in favor of your point of view and hope the people won't notice because after all, they are Johnson grads nod nod wink wink. Wardynski isn't going to make the same mistake twice.
Harrison said everyone was welcome at the meeting and pointed out Carlos Mathews in the crowd. Mathews is the chairman of the committee tasked with suggesting names for the new high school and junior high.
Harrison pointed out, however, that Mathews doesn't live in District 1, where Johnson is located.
"He didn't go to school in this district, either," one man yelled out from the audience.
"There's been any number of councilman and officials call to inform me that I've made a gargantuan mistake," Wardynski said, to applause from the crowd that made him smile. "Thank you for acknowledging my mistake."Does Wardynski honestly believe if he changes the location and name of a school he will get different results? Maybe it's the fact Wardynksi is not a certified educator, or an experienced superintendent, that prevents him keeps him from realizing it's not what name is on the outside of the building, it's about what's happening inside the school building, inside school board meetings, and inside the state legislature.
Alabama, by law, must now rank all public schools based on reading and math skills. It's the only way to determine which schools are "failing."Perhaps the community should change the identities of the Superintendent, the school board, and the state legislature in order to increase student achievement and give students a bright future.
There was no such ranking system before the Alabama Accountability Act of 2013. No existing test provides a school-wide score to allow for ranking, especially between different grade levels.
As a Democrat or a Progressive, with any interest in politics in general, and how your state's party operates and governs itself, in particular, you need to come to this meeting and see for yourself how party politics works at the Executive Committee level.Hope to see y'all there!
Reed had almost all of his troops present Saturday, and still only produced 90-95 votes on the typical issue. There is every chance that he can be outvoted if 200 or more members (including the Reed group) grace us with their presence, and engage in the slightest degree of organization and planning. Futility is no more valid an excuse for your absence than one of a dozen soccer games in your child’s season.OK, so you stage a coup d'état and get rid of Joe Reed and his Bunch and then what?
Has Joe Reed, like a certain British monarch, tragically stayed too long in his post, to the detriment of the realm? That is a topic far beyond the scope of this blog post. I will tell both sides of that fight, that we cannot beat the Republicans without the votes Joe Reed and his supporters represent. Neither can we beat them if we cannot reach beyond those voters.What part of you the voters you want to reach beyond are not democrats today, will not be democrats tomorrow, and will not ever be democrats, don't you understand?
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The Republican Party is engaged in class warfare against poor and middle-class white Americans. It is a little-discussed fact but an ironic one worth noting, since those are the very same people who elect them.
Speaking at the annual Congressional Black Caucus dinner, President Obama excoriated congressional Republicans Saturday night for risking a government shutdown, and vowed to stop their efforts to defund his health-care plan.The New Left is Coming!!! The New Left is Coming!! Yippee Kayay!
“It is time for these folks to stop governing by crisis,” Mr. Obama said at the Washington Convention Center. “Some want to shut down the government rather than provide people with health care!”
Referring to Republicans’ strategy to defund Obamacare, the president said he wanted to speak “as clearly as I can.”
“It’s not going to happen,” he said.
Maybe Bill de Blasio got lucky. Maybe he only won because he cut a sweet ad featuring his biracial son. Or because his rivals were either spectacularly boring, spectacularly pathological, or running for Michael Bloomberg’s fourth term. But I don’t think so. The deeper you look, the stronger the evidence that de Blasio’s victory is an omen of what may become the defining story of America’s next political era: the challenge, to both parties, from the left. It’s a challenge Hillary Clinton should start worrying about now.Why do republican hate America?
I've never understood the logic of putting in government positions people who really hate the very idea of government. There's something profoundly hypocritical about guys like Ted Cruz, whose raison d'etre is to hate government, and yet they cash their government paycheck just like the teachers and firemen and federal workers they excoriate even as they check their bank balances on their government-issued hand-helds. But if there's one thing they hate more than the idea of government, it's Democratic presidents in general, and Barack Obama in particular. And they hate Americans. They really, really, really hate every American that isn't funnelling large sums of soft-money into their campaign coffers.Trust us, there's nothing to see here. Apples and oranges. Now, please move on.
Now, there may be some among you who would seek to find some link between these stories, to see an underlying commonality in a story about members of a white North Carolina school board who see no literary value in the great American Classic Novel of African American alienation and residents and police officers of a North Carolina city who react to the pleas of a wounded African American man with fear and deadly violence.InJustice American style
