rule of law: speaking of filthy (and thirsty) unprofitable little peasants...,

csmonitor |  The judge presiding over Detroit's bankruptcy said Monday he could not block the city of Detroit from cutting off water access to residents with delinquent bills. 

With this order, Judge Steven Rhodes rejected the pleas from thousands of protesters who argued over the summer that water is a basic human right. Those protests briefly grabbed headlines during the historic bankruptcy proceedings that have consumed the city since last year. Even the United Nations criticized Detroit for human rights violations, after the city's mass water shutoffs. 

But in response to a lawsuit filed to mandate a six-month moratorium on shutoffs, Judge Rhodes said there is no legal basis for citizens to claim water rights. 

"Chapter 9 strictly limits the courts' power in a bankruptcy case," he said, according to the Detroit Free Press. Detroit represents the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.

He also said banning water shutoffs would be a blow to Detroit's finances that the city cannot afford. 

"The last thing (Detroit) needs is this hit to its revenues," he said, according to The Detroit News. 

Rhodes agreed in part with the plaintiffs – which include water customers, attorneys, and welfare rights groups – that long-term damage can occur when people do not have access to water. Still, he said "significant harm" could happen in the case of a six-month moratorium, reports Michigan Radio. 

In a city that can often be painted as a symbol of American manufacturing decline and urban decay, the water shutoffs offer a window onto the basic steps the city must take in order to make the long journey of recovery, says Aaron Renn, an analyst with the urban policy website, The Urbanophile.

rule of law: applies only to you filthy and unprofitable little peasants...,

valuewalk |   “When regulators care more about protecting big banks from accountability than they do about protecting the American people from risky and illegal behavior on Wall Street, it threatens our whole economy,” Warren said in a statement calling for action. “We learned this the hard way in 2008. Congress must hold oversight hearings on the disturbing issues raised by today’s whistleblower report when it returns in November – because it’s our job to make sure our financial regulators are doing their jobs.”

Its important to note that with nearly $700 trillion in worldwide derivatives exposure, the big banks could wipe out the world economy several times over if these derivatives contracts were to implode simultaneously.  The New York Federal Reserve is significantly responsible for this key regulatory responsibility which might require a tough stance with the banks in order to protect the economy, say observers.

Doyle wonders where Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfien stands on the issue?  As previously reported in ValueWalk, in an interview, Michael Bloomberg and Blankfein engaged in talk of ethics at the bank and in society. “You have a career because you have an ethic behind it,” Blankfien said in that interview less than two weeks ago.

“What does Lloyd Blankfien have to say regarding the fact that his colleagues have been fully and outrageously exposed as playing by a separate set of rules written and practiced by the Wall Street elite?” Doyle questioned.

It’s unclear at this point if the real issues on several levels will be addressed.

A bright note, however, comes from listening to the tape.  When the senior supervisor in charge of supervising Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) discusses confronting the bank when they violate regulations, the Fed staff gets excited, proving there are regulators who really want to regulate. The problem is higher level authorities are getting in their way.

vampire squid: the law IS only people....,

HuffPo |  Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are both calling for Congress to investigate the New York Federal Reserve Bank after recently released secret recordings show the central bank allegedly going light on firms it was supposed to regulate. 

Warren and Brown, both members of the Senate Banking Committee, called for an investigation of the New York Fed after Carmen Segarra, a former examiner at the bank, released secretly recorded tapes that she claims show her superiors telling her to go easy on private banks. Segarra says that she was fired from her job in 2012 for refusing to overlook Goldman’s lack of a conflict of interest policy and other questionable practices that should have brought tougher regulatory scrutiny.

After Segarra made the tapes public in a joint report with ProPublica and This American Life on Friday, Warren was quick to call on Congress to take action.

“Congress must hold oversight hearings on the disturbing issues raised by today’s whistleblower report when it returns in November, because it’s our job to make sure our financial regulators are doing their jobs,” Warren said in a statement on Friday. “When regulators care more about protecting big banks from accountability than they do about protecting the American people from risky and illegal behavior on Wall Street, it threatens our whole economy. We learned this the hard way in 2008.”

In an interview with This American Life and ProPublica, Segarra described numerous instances in which she said she alerted her bosses to questionable practices at Goldman. In one instance, she said she alerted a colleague that a senior compliance officer at Goldman had said that the bank's view was that “once clients became wealthy enough, certain consumer laws didn’t apply to them.” Segarra claims that her New York Fed colleagues asked her to ignore the remark and change meeting minutes she had taken, which contained evidence of what the Goldman executive said.

"These allegations deserve a full and thorough investigation, and American taxpayers deserve regulators who will fight each day on their behalf,” Brown said in a statement

This American Life and ProPublica also unearthed an internal study by the New York Fed in 2009, which found that the institution had a culture where regulators had gotten too cozy to the banks they were supposed to scrutinize and were discouraged from voicing their honest opinions.

rule of law: the secret recordings of carmen segarra

thisamericanlife |  An unprecedented look inside one of the most powerful, secretive institutions in the country. The NY Federal Reserve is supposed to monitor big banks. But when Carmen Segarra was hired, what she witnessed inside the Fed was so alarming that she got a tiny recorder and started secretly taping. ProPublica's print version.

Ira introduces Carmen Segarra, a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve in New York who, in 2012, started secretly recording as she and her colleagues went about regulating one of the most powerful financial institutions in the country. This was during a time when the New York Fed was trying to become a stronger regulator, so that it wouldn't fail to miss another financial crisis like it did with the meltdown in 2008. As part of that effort to reform, the Fed had commissioned a highly confidential report, written by Columbia professor David Beim, that identified why the regulator failed in the years leading up to the crisis. Beim laid out specific recommendations for how the Fed could fix its problems. Carmen's recordings allow us to see if the Fed successfully heeded those recommendations more than two years later. What we hear is not reassuring. Business

ProPublica's Jake Bernstein tells the story of Carmen's first months at the New York Fed, and how she came to start recording. And we hear the story of how the Fed examiners respond to an unusual, questionable deal that Goldman Sachs did — a deal that the top Fed guy stationed inside Goldman calls "legal but shady."Business

We hear what the New York Fed and Goldman Sachs say about all this. We hear a New York Fed supervisor tell Carmen Segarra how an examiner should talk and act to be successful at the Fed. And we hear what happens to Carmen when she does exactly what David Beim's confidential report told the Fed it needed to encourage its examiners to do in order to spot the next financial crisis.

In the course of reporting our story with ProPublica, we sent lots of questions to the New York Fed and Goldman Sachs. We wanted to share those with you, along with the institutions' responses.

Our questions to the New York Fed are here.

The New York Fed responded with a statement and later this email.

Our questions to Goldman Sachs are here.

Goldman Sachs' response is here.

And one last document that plays an important role in our story: the confidential report Columbia professor David Beim wrote for the New York Fed in 2009, as it was trying to figure out why it failed to anticipate the financial crisis and what it should do to make sure it wouldn't fail to catch the next one. 

Here is a transcript of the full episode.Business

does jewish behavior provoke anti-semitism?

theatlantic |  A few days ago, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, tweeted the following statement: “Germans rally against anti-Semitism that flared in Europe in response to Israel’s conduct in Gaza war. Merkel joins.” Roth provided a link to a New York Times article about the rally, which took place in Berlin.

Roth’s framing of this issue is very odd and obtuse. Anti-Semitism in Europe did not flare “in response to Israel’s conduct in Gaza,” or anywhere else. Anti-Semitic violence and invective are not responses to events in the Middle East, just as anti-Semitism does not erupt  “in response” to the policies of banks owned by Jews, or in response to editorial positions taken by The New York Times. This is for the simple reason that Jews do not cause anti-Semitism.

It is a universal and immutable rule that the targets of prejudice are not the cause of prejudice. Just as Jews (or Jewish organizations, or the Jewish state) do not cause anti-Semitism to flare, or intensify, or even to exist, neither do black people cause racism, nor gay people homophobia, nor Muslims Islamophobia. Like all prejudices, anti-Semitism is not a rational response to observable events; it is a manifestation of irrational hatred. Its proponents justify their anti-Semitism by pointing to the (putatively offensive or repulsive) behavior of their targets, but this does not mean that major figures in the world of human-rights advocacy should accept these pathetic excuses as legitimate.

A question: If a mosque in Europe or in the U.S. were to be attacked (God forbid) by Islamophobic arsonists, would Ken Roth describe such an attack as a manifestation of “anti-Muslim hatred that flared in response to the conduct of Muslim groups in the Middle East?”

what to do when the fbi comes knocking on your door to question you about israel...,

addictinginfo |  A peace activist from Austin, TX has put a video up on YouTube that shows her interactions with two FBI agents.

In the beginning of the video you can hear a digitized female voice read,

The Joint terrorism task force division of the FBI sent two agents out to my house to visit me. I’m a part-time peace activist, a full-time mom of five kids and a part-time registered nurse. These two agents knocked on my door, they verified their identities with me and they also verified my identity. At that point I shut down my door, went inside and grabbed my video camera, this is what followed when I opened my door.

The peace activist in the video describes her number one cause as being “Promoting the “One-State” Solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict, instead of the apartheid-like “Two-State” scenario.”

The FBI have targeted peace and environmental organizations for decades now. Will Potter gives an amazing TED talk about the topic and his fabulous book “Green is the New Red,” which was released this year. After 9/11 and the creation of the Patriot Act people who take part in protests and non violent civil disobedience are being labeled as terrorists in a new era reminiscent of the anti-communist red scare.

conservative canadian mp attempts to redirect question about iraq into flim-flam about israel...,

israeli apartheid a divisive topic within world jewry...,

NYTimes |  Forty-seven years after Israel’s victory in the 1967 Middle East war — celebrated by Jews worldwide — Israel’s occupation of Arab lands won in battle and its standoff with the Palestinians have become so divisive that many rabbis say it is impossible to have a civil conversation about Israel in their synagogues. Debate among Jews about Israel is nothing new, but some say the friction is now fire. Rabbis said in interviews that it may be too hot to touch, and many are anguishing over what to say about Israel in their sermons during the High Holy Days, which begin Wednesday evening.

Particularly in the large cohort of rabbis who consider themselves liberals and believers in a “two-state solution,” some said they are now hesitant to speak much about Israel at all. If they defend Israel, they risk alienating younger Jews who, rabbis say they have observed, are more detached from the Jewish state and organized Judaism. If they say anything critical of Israel, they risk angering the older, more conservative members who often are the larger donors and active volunteers.

The recent bloody outbreak of fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip may have done little to change the military or political status quo there, but rabbis in the North American diaspora say the summertime war brought into focus how the ground under them has shifted.

“It used to be that Israel was always the uniting factor in the Jewish world,” said Rabbi Aigen, who has served Congregation Dorshei Emet in Montreal for 39 years. “But it’s become contentious and sadly, I think it is driving people away from the organized Jewish community. Even trying to be centrist and balanced and present two sides of the issue, it is fraught with danger.”

Israel is still, without a doubt, the spiritual center and the fondest cause of global Jewry. Many rabbis said that Hamas’s summer assaults on Israel, by rocket fire and underground tunnels, the anti-Semitism that erupted around the world and the rise of the terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State in neighboring Syria left them feeling more aware of Israel’s vulnerability and more protective of it than ever.

“There’s just been a tremendous outpouring of support, a sense of real connection and identification with our brothers and sisters in Israel,” said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, which represents the Conservative movement, summing up what she heard during a recent “webinar” for rabbis preparing for the High Holy Days.

rule of law: AG Eat's departure has the Hon.Bro.Preznit Sleep pretending to awake for half a hot second....,

detroitnews |  President Barack Obama says the widespread mistrust of law enforcement that was exposed after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri, is corroding America, not just its black communities, and that the wariness flows from significant racial disparities in the administration of justice.

Speaking Saturday night at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual awards dinner, Obama said these suspicions only harm communities that need law enforcement the most.

"It makes folks who are victimized by crime and need strong policing reluctant to go to the police because they may not trust them," he said. "And the worst part of it is it scars the hearts of our children," leading some youngsters to unnecessarily fear people who do not look like them while leading others to constantly feel under suspicion no matter what they do.

"That is not the society we want," Obama said. "That is not the society that our children deserve."

The fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in August sparked days of violent protests and racial unrest in predominantly black Ferguson. The police officer who shot Brown was white.

Obama addressed the matter carefully but firmly, saying the young man's death and the raw emotion that sprang from it had reawakened the country to the fact that "a gulf of mistrust" exists between local residents and law enforcement in too many communities.

"Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement — guilty of walking while black, driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness," he said.

"legitimate" penological interest decided by a mailroom clerk...,

guardian |  There is “widespread censorship” of books in US prisons, according to a report submitted to a UN human rights review, which details the banning of works about artists from Botticelli to Van Gogh from Texan state prisons for containing “sexually explicit images”.

The report from two free-speech organisations, the New York-based National Coalition Against Censorship and the Copenhagen-based Freemuse, to the United Nation’s (UN) Universal Periodic Review states that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) lists 11,851 titles banned from its facilities. These range from the “ostensibly reasonable”, such as How to Create a New Identity, Essential Throwing and Grappling Techniques, and Art & Design of Custom Fixed Blades, to what it describes as “the telling”, including Write it in Arabic, and the “bizarre” (Arrival of the Gods: Revealing the Alien Landing Sites at Nazca was banned for reasons of “homosexuality”).

Prisoners in Texas are entitled to be mailed books and magazines, but the titles are checked on arrival against a “master list” of acceptable works. If they do not appear on the list, then it is the decision of the post-room officer as to whether they are objectionable.

“Of the 11,851 total blocked titles, 7,061 were blocked for ‘deviant sexual behaviour’ and 543 for sexually explicit images,” says the report, naming artists including Caravaggio, Cézanne, Dallí, Picasso, Raphael, Rembrandt and Renoir among those whose works have been kept out of Texas state prisons.

“Anthologies on Greco-Roman art, the pre-Raphaelites, impressionism, Mexican muralists, pop surrealism, graffiti art, art deco, art nouveau and the National Museum of Women in the Arts are banned for the same reason, as are numerous textbooks on pencil drawing, watercolour, oil painting, photography, graphic design, architecture and anatomy for artists,” states the submission, with prohibited literary works by Gustav Flaubert, Langston Hughes, Flannery O’Connor, George Orwell, Ovid, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Shakespeare and Alice Walker also on the banned list.

“To survey the list of works banned by the TDCJ is to appreciate the dangers of the broad discretionary powers granted to prison officials under the concept of legitimate penological interest,” says the report.

exceptionally obnoxious wattles out of pocket an ackin a fool...,

freethinker |  The problem began when a group of Haredi men bound for Israel last Wednesday to celebrate the Jewish New Year refused to sit next to female passengers on the plane. Why they were on the plane to begin with is a bit of a mystery, because Orthodox Jews were specifically told in 2009 to boycott El Al. Rabbi Yitzhak Goldknopf said they should fly with airlines that only screen:

Movies showing water and scenery, and not dirty movies.

But back to last week’s flight, described by one passenger as:

An 11-hour nightmare.

First the flight was delayed because The Men in Black refused to be seated next to females. Regular passengers claimed that hundreds of the ultra-Orthodox men demanded that they trade places with them before takeoff, saying they could not possibly sit next to women.

Their behaviour not only delayed the flight, but caused actual chaos. Said one passenger, Amit Ben-Natan, who snapped the picture (inset) above:

People stood in the aisles and refused to go forward. Although everyone had tickets with seat numbers that they purchased in advance, they asked us to trade seats with them, and even offered to pay money, since they cannot sit next to a woman. It was obvious that the plane wouldn’t take off as long as they kept standing in the aisles.

Passengers claimed that though the El Al flight crew informed them they did not have to agree to a switch, the flight’s captain said over the PA system that the flight would not take off as long as people were standing.

does atheism make believers uncomfortable?

salon |  Why do so many religious believers want atheists to lie about our atheism?

It seems backward. Believers are always telling atheists that we need religion for morality; that we have to believe because without religion, people would have no reason not to murder and steal and lie. And yet, all too often, they ask us to lie. When atheists come out of the closet and tell the people in our lives that we don’t believe in God, all too often the reaction is to try to shove us back in.

In some cases, they simply want us to keep our mouths shut: when the topic of religion comes up, they want us to tell the lie of omission. But much of the time, they actually ask us to lie outright. They ask us to lie to other family members. They ask us to attend church or other religious services. They sometimes even ask us to perform important religious rituals, like funerals or confirmations, where we’re not just lying to the people around us, but to the god they supposedly believe in.

Why would they do this?

When I was doing research for my new guidebook, “ Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why,” I was shocked at how often this happens. I read over 400 “coming out atheist” stories to write this book, and in the stories I read, this theme came up again and again and again.

You see it a lot with parents and children. When kids and teenagers tell their parents that they’re atheists, parents often respond by insisting that their kids keep up a religious charade. Alexander came out as atheist to his family in fourth grade, and was met with hostility and confusion — and quickly went back into the closet. “True to form,” he says on his Scribbles and Rants blog, “my parents dropped the matter as long as I went through the motions and didn’t bring it up myself.”

rule of law: simply comply=no beating

A truck driver was beaten within an inch of his life by California Highway Patrol for not signing a traffic ticket that he could not read. The driver, who broke no laws, was beaten so badly that he woke up in a trauma hospital.

Olegs Kozacenko, a local resident originally from Russia, was pulled over and cited by police for allegedly driving too many hours in one day. Kozacenko refused to sign the ticket because he had not or could not read it.

CHP Officers didn't take kindly to the driver's refusal to sign. Two officers, one of them a trained fist-boxer, beat Kozacenko on the side of the highway nearly to death. He suffered a crushed left orbital eye socket, multiple facial fractures, a broken left arm, broken ribs, a concussion, loss of consciousness, and possible neurological damage. His injuries caused a deprivation of oxygen for a prolonged period of time.

Photographs taken of Kozacenko's unconscious body showed that he was in handcuff restraints. A toxicology report showed a 0.00% blood-alcohol content of the driver; perfectly clean.

"The public if they get stopped and simply comply with what they are asked to do, they have nothing to fear, nothing to fear at all," said Acting Chief Ken Hill.

Officers Andrew P. Murrill and Jim Sherman maintained that the force was not excessive. Both are still on the job a full 2 years after the incident. Olegs Kozacenko suffers long-term physical and emotional injuries and is no longer able to work.

rule of law: trust us, we're the u.s. government and we're here to help..,

WaPo |  Last week, President Obama announced an ambitious — and expensive — plan that effectively placed the U.S. military at the forefront of the global fight against the worst Ebola outbreak in history. In an effort that could cost as much as $750 million in the next six months, he assigned up to 3,000 military personnel to West Africa to “combat and contain” what officials call “an extraordinarily serious epidemic.”

As those military doctors and officials begin what will be a difficult task, among the challenges they face are rumors that spread fear — fear of Ebola, fear of quarantine measures and fear of doctors. Already, several medical workers have been murdered in Guinea — throats slit, bodies dumped in a latrine. Then six Red Cross volunteers were attacked earlier this week while they tried to collect the body of an Ebola victim.

And now, in what may plant further seeds of mistrust and suspicion, a major Liberian newspaper, the Daily Observer, has published an article by a Liberian-born faculty member of a U.S. university implying the epidemic is the result of bioterrorism experiments conducted by the United States Department of Defense, among others.

And while some commenting on the article were critical, the number who praised it was telling. “They are using” Ebola, wrote one, “for culling the world population mainly Africa for the…purpose of gaining control of the Africans resources criminally.”

rule of law: local elites try'na put a dab of lipstick on rampant pigs...,

kcstar |  For more than 40 years, New York City’s police foundation has raised private dollars to buy everything from horses to bulletproof vests to crime analysis technology.

Atlanta’s police foundation, created in 2003, raises several million dollars annually to assist police, especially with a camera surveillance network.

And the St. Louis police foundation, begun in 2007, now provides more than a half-million dollars per year for such things as ATVs and even dogs.

In fact, most big cities view police foundations as vital to providing money for the wish lists that so ...,many departments can’t fund with strapped city budgets.

Finally, after years of research and organizing, Kansas City is joining the trend.

“We’re starting to roll,” said Cy Ritter, who was hired in March as the Kansas City police foundation’s executive director, a few years after retiring as a Kansas City deputy police chief. 

Ritter has just launched the foundation’s first two major initiatives: a program to track and find missing people with autism or dementia, and another to start a major surveillance camera program.

“The city is very good to Police and Fire, but there’s just not enough dollars,” Ritter said, adding that the foundation was formed to supplement public tax money that pays for police salaries, cars, uniforms and other essentials. The foundation’s focus, like that in many cities, will be training and new technologies.

Betsey Solberg, chairwoman of the foundation’s 14-member board, acknowledges that it’s taken several years for the organization to get up and running — and that Kansas City trails other cities that did this years ago.

“We are behind, but we are getting caught up,” said Solberg, adding that the foundation is critically needed. Kansas City’s violent crime rate, while improving in recent months, still ranks as one of the worst in the country.

“If you look at how serious our crime is,” she said, “we’ve got to do something.”

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article2251341.html#storylink=cpy

rule of law: eat, of the famed minstrel duo "sleep and eat" can't fake the funk anymore...,

reuters |  Eric Holder said on Thursday he would step down as U.S. attorney general, setting up a potentially bruising Senate fight to confirm a successor who can tackle a long list of pending challenges at the Justice Department.

Holder, an unapologetic liberal voice and one of President Barack Obama's closest allies, will remain in office until a successor is nominated and confirmed. His nearly six-year term, marked by civil rights advances and frequent fights with Congress, made him one of the nation's longest serving attorneys generals.

"I will never leave the work. I will continue to serve," Holder, with Obama at his side, said during a brief White House announcement of his departure.

The next attorney general will face many challenges, including managing counter-terror initiatives aimed at Islamic State militants, balancing privacy rights against government surveillance efforts, and deciding whether to continue attempts to prosecute former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, now living in Russia, for revealing surveillance secrets.

Holder's successor also will oversee a series of cases against banks and individuals over the manipulation of foreign exchange rates, and must decide whether to continue Holder's effort to scale back the prosecution of nonviolent drug offenders.

rule of law: chief struggley's forced and fake apology

msnbc |  A “scuffle” near Ferguson, Missouri police chief Thomas Jackson resulted in the arrests of several individuals and a subsequent hours-long “uneasy standoff” between police and protesters outside the city’s police department, CNN reported early Friday.

Jackson delivered a lengthy, public apology Thursday to the family of Michael Brown, an unarmed, black teenager shot and killed last month by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. According to CNN, commotion arose when, following Jackson’s apology, the chief entered the crowd peacefully, causing a nearby brawl that ended in the arrests of those allegedly involved.

“No one who has not experienced the loss of a child can understand what you’re feeling. I am truly sorry for the loss of your son. I’m also sorry that it took so long to remove Michael from the street,” Jackson said in a video statement earlier Thursday, wearing a polo shirt, not his uniform.

Brown’s body was left in the street for hours outside the housing complex where he lived. Jackson said it took time for investigators to work, but conceded that it “was just too long, and I am truly sorry for that.”

Ferguson became ground zero in a national conversation about race and policing, and Jackson now says he wants to be a part of that conversation. But Jackson added that he wanted to apologize first to the Brown family. As protesters moved into Ferguson, the town’s police force was sidelined by county and state officers, in recognition of the deep distrust for the local police.

baddest bish on the planet claps back at the naked hypocrisy of fraudulent-poodle haters!

HuffPo |  Charlo Greene certainly knows how to make incredible live TV.

After announcing she was leaving her job at the KTVA station in Anchorage, Alaska, by telling viewers, "Fuck it, I quit," she joined HuffPost Live on Thursday and smoked a joint live on the air.

"I'll spark up right now. It is what it is. I'm in the privacy of my own home. I can spark up," she told host Alyona Minkovski as she gleefully lit up.

Greene responded to the apology from KTVA's news director, who said she "betrayed the basic bedrock of responsible journalism" by reporting on a business she herself owned, the Alaska Cannabis Club.

"It's true," she said of accusations that she acted unethically. "I have a journalism degree. I know in journalism there's a line that you're not supposed to cross, and the minute I bought my business license on 4/20 of this year, I shouldn't have reported on any marijuana stories. But if I had gone to my boss and said, 'Hey, I bought this company,' I would have been fired, period. I wasn't ready for that to happen."

Greene said she felt a "responsibility to the community" to offer a dissenting voice from Alaska's "Vote No On 2" campaign, which seeks to defeat a ballot measure to legalize marijuana, and ensure "their fear-mongering wasn't going to be broadcast as fact." She explained:

If everyone is upset about my 'breach of trust,' and me crossing that line, then how about you get upset about the fact that journalists in 2014 just go off and say, 'Alright, well you say whatever it is that you have to say,' [and they hear] 'Oh, the kids. The kids are going to start using if we legalize marijuana.' You put that on air without even vetting that? The state of Colorado says teenage usage rates are falling, but the No On 2 people aren't going to say that. Yet every other journalist in this market is going to put their comments on air without vetting them.

Greene also shared her side of what she called a "patently false" TMZ report in which her neighbor Tyler Gilbrech claimed Greene smoked so much pot in her apartment that it seeped through the walls and made his 4-year-old "violently sick." Gilbrech got a restraining order against Greene after she allegedly threatened him to "watch his back."

overseer actually fired and charged for attempted extrajudicial murder..., (thank gawd for dashcam!)

ibtimes |  Footage has emerged of the "disturbing" moment a US patrol officer shot an unarmed man after requesting to see his driving license during a routine check.

South Carolina State Trooper Sean Groubert has been charged with assault and battery after shooting Levar Edward Jones at a petrol station in Columbia on 4 September, 2014.

Police released footage of the incident taken from the dashboard camera of Groubert's patrol car following his arrest.

The video shows Groubert pulling Jones over for allegedly not wearing his seatbelt while driving. After asking Jones to get out of the car, Groubert told Jones to hand over his license.

As Jones turns to retrieve his license, Groubert shouts "get out the car" before firing four times.

Jones can be heard apologising to the officer before asking "Why was I shot? All I did was reach for my license. I'm coming from work."

Jones was hit once in the hip and taken to hospital, but his injuries were not life-threatening.

Following the incident, Groubert was arrested and charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, a felony offence which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. He has also been fired as a South Carolina state trooper.

South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said Groubert shot at Jones unlawfully. A spokesperson added: "Audio and visual recordings, as well as written statements obtained, are further evidence to indicate the shooting incident was without justification."

america: club life - may the best intentional communities win

Time | We're used to choosing to join together for a goal—or not—whenever we want to 

Over the course of the last 15 years or so, there’s been an explosion in the number of charter schools around the country. According to the latest figures (from 2012), some 2.1 million students are enrolled in schools run by private groups awarded public money. The schools bear optimistic names like “YES Prep North Central” (in Houston) and “Animo Leadership High” (in Inglewood, California). Beyond the specific concerns about education, the charter school movement is powered by a particularly American world-view, one rooted in the ethos of the dissident Protestant churches that were the foundation of early American culture: Citizens opting out of a hierarchical system to pursue personal goals by joining together in a local, voluntary society.

This ideological impulse – which I and others call “voluntarism” – is a cultural trait that helps explain why the United States remains different from comparable wealthy, western nations. Broadly speaking, voluntarism is not another term for American individualism, although it entails individualism. Voluntarism is the way Americans reconcile individualism and community. And we can feel the weight of American voluntarism in our approaches to public issues, not only in charter schools, but in debates about issues like Obamacare and gay marriage as well.

Other western nations, by contrast, consider health care a civil right of citizens and a moral obligation of government. American tradition, however, treats health care as an individual’s personal responsibility, or at least as a personal responsibility exercised through voluntary association, as in workplace health insurance. When the debate around gay marriage shifted from a discussion of God, gender, sex, and propriety to a debate over individual rights, tolerance, and the personal freedom of Americans to choose their partners, the struggle for marriage equality became easier.

American voluntarism makes it hard for social-democratic reformers to persuade their fellow citizens to accept the types of ambitious state-run initiatives common in most western democracies, such as universal healthcare, free pre-schools and guaranteed labor rights. Conversely, the spirit of American voluntarism makes it harder for non-Americans to understand our public policies, which are often caricatured as being nakedly Darwinian.

 That American society was notably different — exceptional was the term — from other western societies was a staple for much of twentieth-century social science. Researchers have offered up lists of hows and whys, trying to distill the difference. I joined the enterprise when I started researching my 2010 book, Made in America, and the evidence spoke to the centrality of voluntarism in understanding American culture and its so-called exceptionalism.