Share ‚Protests over prison abuse rocks Georgia‘ – Black Talk Radio Network™.
A turbulent week in Georgian politics…Thousands of protesters, mostly students, spent three days in a row in the streets of the capital Tbilisi demanding resignation of the most powerful ministers of the country. A demand, which followed release of the shocking video footage depicting prisoners‘ abuse, was fulfilled late at night on Thursday.
UPDATE: Convicted murderer’s mom comments on re-trial | KTVQ.com | Q2 | Billings, Montana.
Posted: Nov 23, 2011 2:50 PM by Brittany Wooley- KTVQ News
Updated: Nov 23, 2011 3:43 PM
BILLINGS- Q2’s Brittany Wooley sat down with Barry Beach’s mother, Bobbi Clincher, Wednesday morning before she set out for Deer Lodge to visit her son.
Clincher says it has been a long journey to get to this point but that she and Beach both have a strong faith in God and believe the journey has served a purpose.
During Beach’s 28 years in prison, legislation has been passed through the Montana Legislature because of his case, and Clincher says Beach has had many experiences, both good and bad, in prison that he needed to have.
But, she says, Beach is almost 50-years-old, and it is time for him to be given the rest of his life back and for appropriate justice to be served.
„This is not just about Barry. It is about justice for Kim also, Kim Nees, and I’m sure Kim is happy about this decision too because whatever the outcome will be, eventually, at least she will have this justice, knowing that someone innocent of the crime is not going to be behind bars, hopefully,“ Clincher says.
She says she holds no animosity towards anyone for waiting so long to come forward as witnesses or for not speaking out at all.
BILLINGS- After 28 years in prison for a murder of a Poplar teen, a man who has maintained his innocence is getting the chance to make his case before a new jury.
District judge Wayne Phillips of Lewistown has ordered a re-trial in the conviction of Barry Beach for the 1979 bludgeoning death of 17-year-old Kimberly Nees.
New witnesses came forward during an August evidentiary hearing testifying that over the years several girls have admitted to the murder.
According to information from a 1985 Montana State Supreme Court opinion, Beach’s conviction was based almost entirely upon his 1983 confession to police in Louisiana, a conviction Beach maintains was coerced by police.
The five year statute of limitations has long expired. However, the Montana State Supreme Court allowed for an evidentiary hearing, and Phillips decided the new evidence warrants a re-trial.
Beach is currently serving a 100-year sentence without the possibility of parole.
Phillips ordered the trial in Roosevelt County, but the state can appeal the decision.
37 Giant Corporations Paid 0 in Taxes Last Year — Who Are the Cheats? | | AlterNet.
In 2010, Verizon reported an annual profit of nearly $12 billion. The statutory federal corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, so theoretically, Verizon should have owed the IRS around $4.2 billlion. Instead, according to figures compiled by the Center for Tax Justice, the company actually boasted a negative tax liability of $703 million. Verizon ended up making even more money after it calculated its taxes.
Verizon is hardly alone, and isn’t even close to being the worst offender. Perhaps most famously, General Electric raked in $10.5 billion in profit in 2010, yet ended up reporting $4.7 billion worth of negative taxes. The worst offender in 2010, as measured by its overall negative tax rate, was Pepco, the electricity utility that serves Washington, D.C. Pepco reported profits of $882 million in 2010, and negative taxes of $508 million — a negative tax rate of 57.6 percent.
Altogether, according to “Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers 2008-10,” a blockbuster new report put together by the Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that will have you reaching for your hypertension medicine before you finish reading the third page, 37 of the United States’ biggest corporations paid zero taxes in 2010. The list is a blue-chip roll-call.
Please, read more here:
Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. © 2011 Salon All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152958/
The War Against the Poor
Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Financial Morality
By Frances Fox Piven November 07, 2011 „Tom Dispatch“ – –
We’ve been at war for decades now — not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed — until now. The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country. By making Wall Street its symbolic target, and branding itself as a movement of the 99%, OWS has redirected public attention to the issue of extreme inequality, which it has recast as, essentially, a moral problem. Only a short time ago, the “morals” issue in politics meant the propriety of sexual preferences, reproductive behavior, or the personal behavior of presidents. Economic policy, including tax cuts for the rich, subsidies and government protection for insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and financial deregulation, was shrouded in clouds of propaganda or simply considered too complex for ordinary Americans to grasp… please, read more there: Tom Dispatch & Information Clearing House
PR: Frances Fox Piven
Photograph shows Charles Dow who co-founded Dow-Jones & Company with Edward Jones & Charles Bergstresser (Public Domain, Wikipedia)
Wrongly jailed Harvey man released after almost 20 years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kirk-bloodsworth/hank-skinner-execution_b_1063609.html
Kirk Bloodsworth was exonerated by DNA testing in 1993 after spending eight years in Maryland prison, two on death row, for a crime he did not commit. Mr. Bloodsworth was the first exoneree in a capital conviction in the United States.
He wrote that article in the HuffingtonPost. Please, read more there:
„Test the DNA. That is the simple request of Hank Skinner to Texas officials before they carry out his execution, which is scheduled for November 9. I do not know if Mr. Skinner is innocent or guilty — but I do know firsthand the critical importance of DNA testing. Nearly twenty years ago, I became the first person in the United States exonerated from death row when post-conviction DNA testing proved my innocence.
In 1985, I was convicted and sentenced to death in Maryland for a crime I did not commit. I spent eight years in prison, two of those on death row, before I obtained the testing that led to my exoneration.
DNA testing not only proved my innocence. Ten years after I was released from prison, DNA helped identify the true person who committed the tragic murder of a young girl for which I had faced execution. That person confessed and is serving life in prison.“ …..
Invisible Tears
Haunted by the secrets of her unspeakable past. Will anyone ever see her invisible tears. This is the story of Abbie\’s struggle to survive, the grim details of child abuse of the worst kind all told from the perspective of a little girl.
via Invisible Tears – Facebook.
Published on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 by The Boston Globe/Common Dreams
The theme of Occupy Boston, the tent-city protest in Dewey Square, is hard to pin down. It is like a rolling snowball that collects victims of the Great Recession and those who otherwise feel ignored or disenfranchised.
Joe Gallivan, who is homeless and unemployed, walked past the tents in Dewey Square set up for the Occupy Boston protest. (Bill Greene/Globe Staff) Some of the protesters want to abolish the Federal Reserve. Others demand more housing for veterans. A few admit to being there because it is fun to be part of something big.
The unifying theme, if there is one, is the sense that the voice of the little guy has gone unheard for too long“
„It’s not just a bunch of pot-smoking hippies here,’’ said Hilary Richard, 21, a café barista from Beverly. “These are people who want to make a difference.’’
To be sure, the pot-smoking hippie contingent is represented. Yet so are middle-aged, Izod-wearing Republicans who long for political conciliation in Washington.
Please, read more there….
Our Sputtering Economy by the Numbers: Poverty Edition : Information Clearing House News.
Our Sputtering Economy by the Numbers: Poverty Edition
By Braden GoyetteSeptember 20, 2011 “ ProPublica“ — Last month, we detailed the dismal state of the nation’s economy. Now that the Census Bureau has released new poverty figures, we wanted to give you another snapshot of how Americans are faring more than two years after the recession.Americans below the poverty line in 2010: 46.2 million Official U.S. poverty rate in 2007, before the recession: 12.5 percentPoverty rate in 2009: 14.3 percentPoverty rate in 2010: 15.1 percent
Last time the poverty level was this high: 1993 Poverty line in 2010: $22,314 for a family of four, or $11,139 for an individual Rough amount the poor are living on per week: $200 or less Poverty rate in American suburbs: 11.8 percent, the highest since 1967 Percentage of the population making less than half the poverty line in 2010: 6.7 percent Percentage of the population making less than half the poverty line in 2007, before the recession: 5.2 percent Poverty rate for white Americans in 2010: 13 percent Poverty rate for African-Americans in 2010: 27.4 percent Real median household income in 2010: $49,445 Decline in median household income since 2009: 2.3 percent Decline in median household income since before the recession: 6.4 percent The last time median household incomes have been this low: 1996 Real median household income in 1999, in 2010 dollars: $53,252 Median income for full-time male workers in 2010: $47,715 Median income for full-time male workers in 1973, in 2010 dollars: $49,065 Official unemployment rate in August 2011: 9.1 percent Total unemployed people in August: 14 million People who were employed part time for economic reasons in August 2011: 8.8 million People not counted in the labor force who wanted work: 2.6 million Net jobs created in August 2011: 0 Long-term unemployed people as of August 2011: 6 million Unemployed workers per job opening as of July 2011: 4.34 (3.2 million openings and 13.9 million unemployed people) Uninsured Americans in 2010: 49.9 million Percentage of Americans without health insurance in 2010: 16.3 percent Percentage of Americans without health insurance in 2007, before the recession: 15.3 percent Percentage of children who were uninsured in 2010: 9.8 percent Percentage of children in poverty who were uninsured in 2010: 15.4 percent Percentage of American households that had enough to eat throughout the year in 2007: 88.9 percent Percentage of American households that had enough to eat throughout the year in 2010: 85.5 percent |
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