Chicago -
By The Uptown People’s Law Center
Illinois Department of Corrections officials ended Stateville prison’s debate program because officials did not like the prisoners being in close contact with, and thus having an influence on, state legislators. On Tuesday, lawyers with Uptown People’s Law Center will file a lawsuit on behalf of Katrina Burlet, who headed this successful program, to get the program reinstated.
Posted on August 27, 2018
By Jesse Sharkey/CTU Vice President
It’s not every day that I read American Banker, but then again, not every day does a story involving Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the trial of President Donald Trump confidant Paul Manafort and a Chicago bank CEO pop up.
And, to be honest, I don’t even care about the Manafort part. The real bombshell are the shamefully creative ways that Chicago’s mayor shovels cash to the connected at the same time he cuts funding for schools, mental health facilities and city services for the rest of us.
This particular Chicago bank CEO, Stephen Calk, received $3.6 million in tax increment financing (TIF) funds from Emanuel for creating “new” jobs. In effect, Calk received the money for laying off people from a bank he was closing and hiring them at a new bank he was building. Naturally, the mayor took this opportunity to crow at a press conference – as is his style – about all the new jobs he and the bank were creating.
Posted on August 18, 2018
By Jake Johnson/Common Dreams
Anyone who was expecting Democrats to aggressively and intelligently grill FCC chair Ajit Pai over his egregious lies about his agency’s fabricated “cyberattack” story or his deeply unpopular net neutrality repeal was disappointed after the Senate Commerce Committee’s much-anticipated oversight hearing on Thursday, which ultimately ended up being a “complete joke” that produced little of substance and few answers to important questions.
“You’d hardly even know three FCC staffers were just proven to have repeatedly lied to the press, public, and Congress about a DDoS attack that never happened,” freelance technology writer Karl Bode noted in a series of tweets during the hearing, as senator after senator passed up opportunities to press Pai on his false claims that a cyberattack – and not a flood of pro-net neutrality traffic – brought down the FCC’s public comment system last year.
“Democrats at the FCC ‘oversight’ hearing could have easily pressed Pai on his bullshit ‘I knew nothing’ DDoS claim by pointing out his press shop actively maligned and misled reporters, and at least three staffers gave false statements Congress and FBI investigators. But nah.” Bode added. “That the FCC lied repeatedly to the press, public, and Congress about a bogus DDoS attack is a complete afterthought at this ‘oversight’ hearing. Even in this corrupt mess of a country, that’s fucking incredible.”
Posted on August 17, 2018
By Jake Johnson/Common Dreams
The mainstream media seems to have decided that the worst part about President Donald Trump signing this 2019 National Defense Authorization Act was his failure to acknowledge that it is named after Sen. John McCain.
“Trump snubs John McCain during bill signing intended to honor him,” NBC News complained in a headline that was repeated almost verbatim in Business Insider, the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The New Republic, Bloomberg and many other major news outlets.
Posted on August 16, 2018
By Helen Marie Berg, Abigail DeHart, Leah Litman and Lark Turner/Take Care
It’s been just under a month since President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Before Trump announced the nomination, he created something of a pageant between the possible nominees. As Trump feigned uncertainty about whom he would ultimately select, supporters of the various nominees took the opportunity to make their case to the president (usually via Fox News), or to fellow members of the president’s caucus (usually via other conservative media outlets).
It’s useful to look back at these statements, chiefly because – as Lawrence Hurley and others have suggested – the case made for Kavanaugh before the president officially announced the nomination differs markedly from the case made for Kavanaugh after the president officially announced the nomination.
Posted on August 13, 2018
By Aaron Tang/TakeCare
Shortly after I posted my initial take on the headline-grabbing set of class action lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in refunds from public sector unions after Janus, two interesting things happened.
First, Will Baude posted a thoughtful account on the Volokh Conspiracy explaining why he and Eugene Volokh believe “unions are likely to be liable for their pre-Janus conduct, for better or worse.” Then, a high-level DOJ attorney e-mailed me raising similar counter-arguments to the ones advanced by Baude. (Whether the DOJ attorney did so out of intellectual curiosity or because the administration is planning to stake out a position on these suits in amicus filings, I cannot say).
In light of these developments, I thought I would post a lengthier discussion (trigger warning for all those who are not fans of ยง 1983 arcana!) of the relevant legal questions.
Posted on August 8, 2018
By Jake Johnson/Common Dreams
Infuriated by a scathing United Nations report estimating that more than 18 million Americans are living in “extreme poverty” and accusing the Trump administration of “deliberately” making such destitution worse with its tax cuts for the rich, the White House insisted in its June response to the UN analysis that the United States is overflowing with “prosperity” and that claims of widespread poverty are “exaggerated.”
But internal State Department e-mails and documents obtained by Foreign Policy and the non-profit journalism website Coda Story show that the Trump administration ignored advice of White House economic analysts and knowingly lied to the public about the severity of American poverty, which the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Philip Alston described as “shocking.”
Posted on August 7, 2018
‘Let Me Introduce You To Some Of The Fine Citizens That This Amendment Would Admit’
1. Chicago Republican Party press release, Tuesday, July 24th:
On Wednesday evening, the Cook County Republican Central Committee is scheduled to vote on a proposal by Chairman Sean Morrison to admit Democrats into leadership positions in several Republican ward organizations. The proposal would eliminate the provision in the bylaws that say that individuals may not have voted Democrat in the last three cycles to hold the office of Republican ward committeeman.
In 2016, several life-long Democrats, some affiliated with the local alderman, ran for office as Republican ward committeemen and were disqualified by the bylaws. Chairman Morrison has stated that he intends to seat them anyway.
Posted on August 6, 2018
By Jeff Johnson/Common Dreams
In a move human rights groups are warning could have grave implications for internet freedom across the globe, Google is reportedly preparing to launch a “censored version” of its search engine in China that will automatically blacklist terms and websites related to peaceful dissent, free expression, and democracy.
According to The Intercept’s Ryan Gallagher, who first reported on the tech giant’s plans on Wednesday, “The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official.”
Posted on August 2, 2018
By Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet
We stand at the crossroads of liberty or despotism. Each day the news brings examples of assaults on life and liberty. These include:
Posted on August 1, 2018
