Wednesday Reads: Old Negatives, Ancient Water and Debtors’ Prisons
Posted: April 25, 2012 Filed under: Africa, court rulings, Foreign Affairs, legislation, morning reads, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, religion, religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Republican politics, science, the GOP, Violence against women, War on Women, Water, Women's Healthcare | Tags: Rape Crisis Centers, Rick Scott, white killer whale 32 Comments
Good Morning!
Can you spot a trend in the title of this morning’s post?
Today I will bring you links that are about old things, or about how we as a nation are going backwards in time…either way, I hope you find them interesting, so…here we go.
I will start with that whole ass-backward direction we are heading here in the USA.
Of course, we need to look no further than Florida. Governor Rick Scott Vetoes Funds For Rape Crisis Centers During Sexual Assault Awareness Month
Awww, what a guy!
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) shocked the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence this week when he vetoed $1.5 million in funding for 30 rape crisis centers in the middle of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. State lawmakers allotted the money to offset an increase in need and a lack of sufficient funding for victim services.
A spokesperson for Scott said he vetoed that particular line item in the state budget because the state already funds sexual violence programs, and nobody was able to make it clear to him why rape crisis centers needed the new funding.
What an ass, my guess is that he just wasn’t listening attentively.
“Governor Scott approved funding for many projects that have statewide impact and do not duplicate programs already funded by the state,” Lane Wright, Scott’s press secretary, told HuffPost. “This new funding of $1.5 million would have been duplicative, since, as a state, we already fund sexual violence programs. There was no information suggesting any needs in this area weren’t already being met. The state already provides about $6.5 million for rape prevention and sexual assault services. That is in addition to the funds available for domestic violence programs — $29 million to be specific. Many victims of sexual violence seek refuge at domestic violence shelters.”
Jennifer Dritt, the executive director of the Florida Council, said she was “stunned” and “confused” by Scott’s move and that she questions his reasoning for slashing the funds.
“We say ‘here’s the need, here’s the need, here’s the need,’ and frankly, nobody’s paying any attention,” she told HuffPost. “We gave them information about the number of new survivors we have and we showed them that these rape crisis centers have waiting lists. Survivors are having to wait weeks, sometimes six weeks, in some programs three months to be seen. We included quotes from the programs about the waiting lists and what services they weren’t able to offer because of a lack of money. There is clearly an unmet need.”
As for the $6.5 million that Scott said the government provides for rape prevention and sexual assault services, a large percentage of that money is distributed to education programs, not actual crisis centers serving the victims.
No, I am wrong about that not listening thing…Voldermort Rick Scott is really just an asshole!
From a political standpoint, Scott’s cuts to sexual violence funding could not have come at a worse time, as Republicans in Congress are taking heat for opposing the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. But Scott’s spokesman said the governor’s decision had nothing to do with the oft-cited GOP “war on women.”
“Anyone who’s trying to say this veto is evidence of a war on women, is deliberately trying to mislead the public for political ends,” Wright said.
I call that last line BS.
Oh wait, this was supposed to be about moving backwards, that link up top is about the continuing GOP’s War on Women. I mean, the discrimination against women is certainly moving us backwards, but this next link is more literal in terms of moving back in time. Jailed for $280: The Return of Debtors’ Prisons
How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn’t pay a medical bill — one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn’t owe. “She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn’t have to pay it,” The Associated Press reports. “But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs.”
Although the U.S. abolished debtors’ prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don’t pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff’s deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.
How is this happening?
Under the law, debtors aren’t arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing “contempt of court” in connection with a creditor lawsuit. That loophole has lawmakers in the Illinois House of Representatives concerned enough to pass a bill in March that would make it illegal to send residents of the state to jail if they can’t pay a debt. The measure awaits action in the senate.
And you know who has been working overtime on getting laws passed in the creditors favor…
“Creditors have been manipulating the court system to extract money from the unemployed, veterans, even seniors who rely solely on their benefits to get by each month,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said last month in a statement voicing support for the legislation. “Too many people have been thrown in jail simply because they’re too poor to pay their debts. We cannot allow these illegal abuses to continue.”
Well, Illinois isn’t the only state that will lock you up for unpaid debt.
A 2010 report by the American Civil Liberties Union that focused on only five states — Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Washington — found that people were being jailed at “increasingly alarming rates” over legal debts. Cases ranged from a woman who was arrested four separate times for failing to pay $251 in fines and court costs related to a fourth-degree misdemeanor conviction, to a mentally ill juvenile jailed by a judge over a previous conviction for stealing school supplies.
According to the ACLU: “The sad truth is that debtors’ prisons are flourishing today, more than two decades after the Supreme Court prohibited imprisoning those who are too poor to pay their legal debts. In this era of shrinking budgets, state and local governments have turned aggressively to using the threat and reality of imprisonment to squeeze revenue out of the poorest defendants who appear in their courts.”
Ugh, I can’t quote anymore, you can go to the link and read the rest of the story…it is just making me so mad.
Here is another article discussing our country’s move backward, this time to appease the right-wing christian establishment.5 Supreme Court Decisions Pandering to Christianity
In theory, the Supreme Court is where Americans turn to protect their rights when all else fails. The high court is supposed to be beyond the reach of politics, and more importantly, beyond the reach of popular will. After all, just because many Americans want something doesn’t mean it’s constitutional.
This is true especially in matters of religion. Despite what many Americans believe, the majority does not rule when it comes to religion. Core freedoms depend on no vote. Most people in your town may sincerely believe that compelling students to say Christian prayers or learn creationism in public schools is a desirable – but that doesn’t make it legal.
In the main, the Supreme Court has done a pretty good job of upholding the separation of church and state. The high court has put the brakes on mandatory religious worship in public schools and barred direct tax support of sectarian enterprises.
But the court has made a few missteps along the way. That’s inevitable because as much as we’d like to think that the court is not a political institution, presidents do use the power of appointment to shape the bench, beyond their own terms in office.
Here are five cases where the Supreme Court dropped the ball on separation of church and state.
Go to the link to read about the five cases.
And now a story about an ancient rock falling to earth:
Minivan-sized Asteroid Exploded Over California
The source of loud “booms” accompanied by a bright object traveling through the skies of Nevada and California on Sunday morning has been confirmed: It was a meteor. A big one.
It is thought to have been a small asteroid that slammed into the atmosphere at a speed of 15 kilometers per second (33,500 mph), turning into a fireball, and delivering an energy of 3.8 kilotons of TNT as it broke up over California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, classified it as a “big event.”
Wow, it actually broke the sound barrier as it fell through the Earth’s atmosphere.
“I am not saying there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California,” Cooke told Spaceweather.com. “I am saying that the meteor possessed this amount of energy before it broke apart in the atmosphere. (The map) shows the location of the atmospheric breakup, not impact with the ground.”
Cooke went on to say that the meteor likely penetrated very deep into the atmosphere, producing the powerful sonic booms that rattled homes across the region. According to Reuters, car alarms in Carson City, Nev., were even triggered.
In other “science” news, scientist have found large sources of water in Africa: Map Shows Huge Water Source Available Underground in Africa
Helen Bonsor, a hydrologist for the British Geological Survey, said her research shows that groundwater – underground water sources – is available across the continent in huge quantities: “over 100 times the annual renewable freshwater resource available in Africa, and 20 times that stored in Africa’s freshwater lakes.”
Bonsor led a team from the BGS and the University College London in crafting a comprehensive map of the groundwater sources across Africa, complete with details about exactly how much water can be found.
[…]
Her team took data from small-scale local studies and compiled them on a continent-wide scale to produce the map. So now, instead of generalities, Bonsor said, “we’re talking about, well in this area, with careful exploration and siting of boreholes, you are likely to get a yield of one to five liters per second.”
Because that quantitative data had been missing, Bonsor said, groundwater had “often been left out of discussions on water scarcity and water security.”
She hopes her new map will help change that, and prompt governments to focus on developing groundwater sources.
Which brings me to this Falco cartoon…
This next item is from The New York Times Lens: Pablo Delano Unravels a Mystery in Barcelona
For the past dozen years, Pablo Delano has been consumed by the mystery of a Barcelona Biscuit Tin: who shot the hundreds of decaying negatives that were packed into the beat-up box he bought for $60 at a Barcelona flea market? Who were the people in the pictures? Where were the photos taken?
Granted, the images he discovered were not on the same level of, say, those by Robert Capa in the famed Mexican Suitcase. But the Barcelona Biscuit Tin had its own mysterious charms — weather-beaten, moldy and fuzzy images of Barcelona between the world wars. Children on bikes and in trees. Cars rambling through the streets. Bullfighters in the ring. Factory workers making huge tubes.
“He seemed to be obsessed with photographing everything in his life,” said Mr. Delano, who teaches photography at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. “At the same time, he was technically quite inept. The percentage of pictures that are underexposed, overexposed or blurry is quite high. Despite the fact he had real technical problems, he kept doing it.”
There are some interesting photographs, be sure to take a look at them. And…be sure to read the rest of the story, about the “biscuit tin of memories.”
Now, one last link… White killer whale adult spotted for first time in wild This is fantastic, off the shores of Russia…
“Iceberg” is believed to be the first mature white orca observedThe adult male, which they have nicknamed Iceberg, was spotted off the coast of Kamchatka in eastern Russia.
[…]
“It has the full two-metre-high dorsal fin of a mature male, which means it’s at least 16 years old – in fact the fin is somewhat ragged, so it might be a bit older.”
Orcas mature around the age of 15, and males can live to 50 or 60 years old, though 30 is more commonplace.
“Iceberg seems to be fully socialised; we know that these fish-eating orcas stay with their mothers for life, and as far as we can see he’s right behind his mother with presumably his brothers next to him,” said Dr Hoyt
There is some video at the link. Magnificent, innit?
What a world…it could be so wonderful if it wasn’t for certain people…
So, what are you reading about today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Good Morning, a few links for you:
Debt Collectors Take Places Alongside Hospital Staffs – NYTimes.com
South Korea grocers react to mad cow disease discovery by suspending U.S. beef sales – CBS News
Return of the Rottweiler – The Daily Beast
The treatment of LCWR has been absolutely outrageous. In addition to the indignity of being investigated at all (and by the Vatican no less, couldn’t leave a scourge like uppity merely to the Council of Bishops), plus the indignity of being in essence deprived of substantial control of their own organization and of course, being subjected to words like “patient” and “help them to understand”–as if LCWR and NETWORK aren’t explicitly careful about canon and Scripture, the Vatican completely burned them a second time by promising to keep the “assessment” private until they had a chance to communicate the findings with their members. Instead, the story was being beamed to the US for immediate public release practically while they were still in the meeting.
I understand how deep the ties run, how hard it is to turn your back on your life’s work and how deeply committed the Sisters are, but considering the divine irony of the Church trying to claim that a main interest in opening this inquiry was concern over the dwindling numbers and interest of women in the Church while simultaneously questioning LCWR’s commitment to Ordinatio sacerdotalis (men and only men in charge), it would be so inspiring to see even a handful of Sisters get fed up and leave and become actual Episcopal priests.
Lovely roundup!
Seriously,
Have you been following Willard Romney’s campaign? What do you think?
Oy. It’s depressing, isn’t it? Willard and Obama are mirror images of other and as they try to run against each other we’re going to be treated to new depths of distraction and ugliness. I SO wish we could bypass this entire exercise in frustration and futility.
It’s obviously a small thing, but I keep remembering how Mitt was refusing to walk out the front door of the State House on Inauguration Day. He basically wanted to sneak out when no one was looking. Granted, I understand that there would have been many more people there than usual because Patrick held his ceremony outside. However, Patrick doesn’t play that way. He wouldn’t have allowed the crowd to boo or anything. And he’d already run away from the race like a weasel, he’d already let his supporters down by using them and us as mere props for his ambition, the least he could do is just walk through the damn door in the daylight and face the public and if you take some lumps for showering contempt on a place you claim to represent, then deal with it like a grown-up. Who is such an empty suit that they can’t even perform a ceremonial action without worrying about how the pictures will play in 2 or 6 years? Seriously?
This is brilliant:
LOL!!!!
To illustrate how much this stuff is effecting me, I am beginning to think we are back in the 1930s where the evil ideology of fascism was on the rise and too few people could actually see the inherent danger from within.
Where nationalism was the overriding theme of that era, ours seems to be cloaked in religious beliefs and corporate power. Somehow the Right has managed to link this with women’s rights because presently there are enough “lawmakers” sitting in legislative seats across the nation willing to make this happen.
While the nazis stripped the Jews of their legal standing, the same is being done to women and that is no accident. How many elected since 2010 have made women’s issues their topic de jour? There appears to be a concerted effort by the Radical Right nationwide to inflict these drastic measures against women and this suggests “design”.
We always ask: Can it happen here? And though many deride that suggestion owing to the size of this nation, I disagree. It can happen, It is happening. And if the GOP has its way, it will surely blossom into law since the courts seem to be accommodating much of what is being passed.
I’m either suffering from a form of paranoia, or I am a student of history that has shown the capability of evil transcending commonsense.
All one needs to succeed is to focus on a singular topic to make inroads into the fabric and sensibilities of its citizenry and the rest is sure to follow. The “rest” being whatever else resides on the agenda to deny human rights as a way of “protection” against unseen forces created to please the few against the masses.
Depriving the worker of his/her rights for collective bargainig is the first step on the ladder to enslavement.
Or am I just getting a little nuts with all this battering?
No. You are not nuts. People are being stripped of their rights. Can you imagine now there is a state where a policeman can be fined $5000 if he thinks some one might possibly be in the country and doesn’t stop and demand their papers? Or the same state defines life as beginning about two weeks before conception and will be monitoring women’s menstrual cycles if they try to exercise their constitutional right to privacy and abortion? AND the candidate for president of that party thinks these laws are great examples for the entire country?
What about “stop and frisk” in NYC? It’s not just the red states.
Yes, exactly, the crap is coming from both the red and blue states…
It is frightening to me watch all this happening, and feel that I can’t stop the craziness, because it is coming from all sides.
President Obama goes after the youth vote. From Paul Constant:
President Obama Slow Jams the News on Jimmy Fallon
No one is ever going to top the Big Dawg and his late-night sax playin’. I mean no one.
That is a fact!
That article about creepy people sounds just like Mitt Romney!
Doesn’t it?
Dak, have you seen this: Fox & Friends Marvels At Dalai Lama’s Revelation To CNN, ‘Channel No One Watches’: ‘I Love President Bush’ | Mediaite
No. How interesting.
It’s a good thing that meteor didn’t get any closer or it could have been like Tunguska.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
It feels like I am watching a real life version of the movie 2012, only instead of mega natural disasters, the politicians are the ones causing the downfall.
Newt is out, I bet the secret service withdrew it’s protection. msnbc video: Gingrich to suspend campaign after Romney’s five-state sweep
And then there is this: High court appears to lean toward Arizona in immigration law dispute – CNN.com
Paul Ryan meets the Jesuits. Charlie Pierce has his usual marvelous take on it.
The Society Strikes Back
His other post on Douthat’s book was marvelous.
Douthat is such a hack. He has nothing to write about.
Pierce just keeps churning them out at an amazing rate. And they’re all good! 😉
At this rate, it’s going to be really expensive for Willard to buy office.
Romney Campaign Spent $126,000 Per Delegate
Ralph, check out this tweet:
https://twitter.com/BorowitzReport/status/195215397434302464
That’s just perfect!
Minx, nice round-up — the Iceburg photo and water under Africa articles were an especially nice contrast to the Rs out-Dark-Aging each other.
Going kind of OT here, but had to share. Our man Chuck Pierce:
like a duck trying to push a truck up a hill
Bwahahahaha hoohoohoo harharhar!
I love it. And so true!
roflmao
(Forgot the link. The C Pierce’s gem is here.)