US announces early release plan for nonviolent, low-level drug offenders
RT USA
Jan 30, 2014
Andrew Burton / Getty Images / AFP
The Obama administration announced Thursday a new clemency effort that encourages defense lawyers to refer to the Department of Justice low-level, nonviolent drug offenders for early release from federal prisons.
Speaking before the New York State Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole unveiled the plan that seeks to determine possible clemency for inmates whose long-term incarceration “harms our criminal justice system.”
“You each can play a critical role in this process by providing a qualified petitioner – one who has a clean record in prison, does not present a threat to public safety, and who is facing a life or near-life sentence that is excessive under current law – with the opportunity to get a fresh start,” Cole said.
In addition, the US Bureau of Prisons will begin informing such low-level, nonviolent drug offenders of the opportunity to apply for early release, Cole said.
The announcement follows other initiatives and statements regarding prison reform made recently by top officials. Attorney General Eric Holder said in August that the same type of low-level drug offenders, with no ties to gangs or major drug trafficking organizations, would no longer be charged with certain offenses that instituted harsh mandatory sentences.
President Obama followed Holder in December with the commutation of sentences of eight inmates serving extensive terms in prison for crack cocaine convictions. All of the eight – recommended by the Justice Department – had served at least 15 years in jail and had been convicted before the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which was passed in effort to close large sentencing disparities between those convicted for crack and those for powder cocaine crimes.
Obama said at the time those eight inmates would have received shorter sentences had the law existed when they were convicted, adding some would have already served their time by then.
Cole said the Justice Department would like to send more of those kind of cases to the White House.
“The president’s grant of commutations for these eight individuals is only a first step,” he said. “There are more low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who remain in prison, and who would likely have received a substantially lower sentence if convicted of precisely the same offenses today.”
Cole did not specify how many candidates the White House will consider in the clemency program, though there are currently thousands of inmates serving time in federal prison for just crack cocaine crimes.
The Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney is in charge of advising the White House on the merits of specific cases.
Cost savings is a residual benefit of the commutations for such low-level offenders. Holder, testifying before a Senate committee Wednesday, said federal prison costs make up one-third of the Justice Department budget, amounting to “a growing and potentially very dangerous problem.”
The total cost for incarcerating federal prisoners in 2010 came to US$80 billion. The federal prison population has shot up by 800 percent since 1980, and prisons are operating at 40 percent over capacity, according to the Justice Department.
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee also advanced the Smarter Sentencing Act, which would reform mandatory minimum statutes. The new bill would shorten sentences and give judges more leeway to use their own discretion during sentencing. In addition, the legislation would allow inmates to return to court to seek sentences pursuant to the Fair Sentencing Act.
The Destruction Of Ontario Part 1: The Job Market
by Terry Wilson
Canadian Awareness Network
Jan 31, 2014
Ontario, the once “economic powerhouse” of the nation is facing some of the biggest economic woes that one could imagine!
Since the signing of NAFTA (North American Trade Agreement) in 1993, Ontario’s manufacturing base has been devastated! As seen in the below chart.
Now the current provincial government headed by Dalton McGuinty and Now Kathleen Wynne has been working extremely hard to change Ontario’s energy production under the long-term energy plan. Which includes a move towards “green energy”. That has sent hydro prices through the roof! Costing the province a loss of an estimated 300,000 manufacturing jobs since 2010.
Sadly this trend is just beginning. As highlighted in this article from Barrie Ont. for December 2013.
“Kevin McCaughen’s business pays an average of $325,000 per month for electricity and he’s preparing to see that number increase.
McCaughen, plant manager at Sigma Stretch Film, said news that Ontario’s hydro costs are going to continue to grow by an anticipated 42 per cent over the next five years could be seen as the death blow for manufacturers in the province.
The Ontario Liberals released their Long Term Energy Plan Tuesday with a projected outlook of hydro costs continuing to balloon in the coming years.
That balloon may pop and leave Ontario’s manufacturers deflated.
“I’ve looked at hydro rates and the actual cost of hydro hasn’t really gone up that much, it’s the new Liberal green initiatives,” said McCaughen. “We use about $60,000 worth of hydro and our bill can be as high as $325,000 a month. You get all those fees on there and the adjustments and it’s just going to kill industry.””
intelligencer.ca
The massive losses in the industrial sector will mean (and have already shown) a large demand increase for service sector employment. Lets take a look at what is happening in the service sector.
Since the vast majority of the service sector is made up of low paying minimum wage positions. Many people who previously held higher paying industrial jobs, are struggling to get by on minimum wage. The provincial government is not responding to this logically by creating a plan to save industrial jobs or heaven forbid create new industrial opportunities. Their solution is to raise the minimum wage levels to $11 an hour, and an minimum wage increase every year on Oct. 1st based on inflation rates.
The main problem with this plan is summed up pretty well by Karl Littler, a vice-president at the Retail Council of Canada.
“The Ontario decision could lead to some job losses and reduced hours of work as retailers struggle in a hyper-competitive climate, warned Karl Littler, a vice-president at the Retail Council of Canada. Already some retailers are feeling the squeeze: Best Buy Canada, with increasingly savvy online and discount rivals, announced on Thursday it is cutting 950 jobs at its namesake and Future Shop stores. The previous day, Sears Canada Inc. sliced 624 jobs on top of thousands last year.”
Source
The plan to increase minimum wage will result in job losses and reduction in hours for the employed. Not creation of new jobs to cover the losses in the industrial industry. Or for students getting out of school, unable to find employment in their fields and turning to the service sector just to get by.
A second new initiative from the Liberal government is the Ontario pension plan. It is being billed as a way to help correct the short comings of the Canadian pension plan.
“Premier Kathleen Wynne on Tuesday appointed a panel of academics, finance experts and pension advocates to recommend the specifics of the fund, which will be unveiled in the budget this spring and could become a top issue in a snap election.
And for the first time, she revealed some details on what the plan will look like. For instance, it will oblige both employees and companies to pay in.
“We need to set up a structure so that people can save their own money and they can make an investment, along with their employers, in their future,” she said. “There needs to be a mandatory aspect to this to have the number of people involved that makes this a viable plan.””
Source
On top of the wage increase, companies will be “obliged” to pay into their employees pension plans.
This is a recipe for disaster! But it is not by chance or by accident. It is planned. Stayed tuned for part 2 to see how.
Kansas Woman Left to Die In Jail Over Small Amount of Marijuana
by Amanda Warren
Activist Post
Jan 28, 2014
Brenda Sewell and her sister Joy Biggs had recently purchased a motor home from a Colorado couple. The couple delivered it to them in Kansas City and the sisters drove the couple back to Colorado.
It was on their way home, just after crossing the Colorado-Kansas border, when a Kansas Highway Patrol officer pulled the women over for suspected speeding in Sherman County.
Biggs never could have guessed that in less than 72 hours she’d be helping a jail mate try to revive her dying sister who was foaming at the mouth.
While suspected speeding last Monday was the reason the officer pulled their car over, the discovery of a small amount of marijuana is why they were taken to a Goodland jail where they were both denied a phone call.
Sewell, age 58, was on legal prescriptions to treat long-term problems with her thyroid, hepatitis C and fibromyalgia. She had purchased the marijuana from Colorado, where it was recently made legal, to manage nausea and lack of appetite.
Attention fliers: Canada’s electronic spy agency is following you
End the Lie – Independent News
Jan 31, 2014
A United Airlines plane takes off at the Calgary International Airport in Calgary. (Reuters / Todd Korol)
Documents released by US whistleblower Edward Snowden show the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) used airport Wi-Fi to track passengers from around the world.
Travelers passing through a major Canadian airport were potentially caught up in a vast electronic surveillance net, which allowed the nation’s electronic spy agency to track the wireless devices of thousands of airline passengers – even for days after they had departed the terminal, a document obtained by CBC News revealed.
The document shows the spy agency was then able to track travelers for a week or more as the unwitting passengers, together with their wireless devices, visited other Wi-Fi “hot spots” in locations across Canada – and even across the border at American airports.
The CBS report said any place that offered Wi-Fi internet access, including “airports, hotels, coffee shops and restaurants, libraries, ground transportation hubs” was vulnerable to the surveillance operation.
After reviewing details of the leaked information, one of Canada’s leading authorities on internet security says the secret operation was almost certainly illegal.
“I can’t see any circumstance in which this would not be unlawful, under current Canadian law, under our Charter, under CSEC’s mandates,” Professor Ronald Deibert, an internet security expert at the University of Toronto, told CBC News.
It remains unclear from the leaked data how CSEC was able to infiltrate so many wireless devices to see who was using them — both on Canadian territory and beyond.
VIDEO — CrossTalk: Syria – Talking The Talk?
RT
Jan 31, 2014
Where does the Geneva process stand? How did the disinvitation of Iran affect the talks? What are the interests of all the participants? And at what point will both sides realize that the bloodshed in Syria is unacceptable? CrossTalking with Dan Arbell and Joe Lauria.
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VIDEO — The True Cost of the Minimum Wage – Stefan Molyneux Hosts the Peter Schiff Radio Show
Stefan Molyneux
Jan 31, 2014
Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, takes the helm of the Peter Schiff radio show to talk about minimum wage, government spying, the dangers of smart phones – and why you should be afraid of birds!
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Google to Introduce Smart Contact Lenses: The Era Of Cyborgs Has Begun
Update on the merger of human and machine
by Nicholas West
Activist Post
Jan 17, 2014
Technology seems to be on a runaway course either to free humanity or to enslave us. On one end we see massive continued investment in replacing humans with robots, both economically and socially.
Parallel to this trend, we are seeing advancements in neuroscience being made from global projects like the BRAIN initiative in the U.S. and its counterpart in Europe, the Human Brain Project. These projects seek to decode the human brain and tailor it for “treatments,” as well as to enable the realization of full brain-computer-interface technology. The pace of these developments has increased toward the dizzying, such as a “living” transistor that uses DNA merged with graphene, the advent of quantum computing, the creation of avatars, DNA nanobots, and a range of neuro applications that are beginning to transform our fundamental relationship with the “real” world.
Recently, a respected scientific journal announced that the era of cyborgs has begun (read that story below) as an array of medical applications are joining us to machines and computer systems. This is also happening in tandem with augmented reality applications that have entered the consumer space. Google’s latest project offers a glimpse of this coming overlap.
PN 