By The Uptown People’s Law Center

A federal court has found that the State of Illinois continues to violate the constitutional rights of more than 12,000 prisoners with mental illness.
The finding comes even after the case had reached a settlement agreement in 2016; the plaintiffs had to return to court when the Illinois Department of Corrections failed to live up to its agreement and constitutional violations continued, according to the plaintiffs’ lead counsel, Harold Hirshman, senior counsel for Dentons.
The court issued a 50-page decision finding that IDOC has been deliberately indifferent to prisoners’ mental health, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

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Posted on October 31, 2018

By Jill Barshay/The Hechinger Report

In September 2018, I wrote about the so-called “Trump effect” on bullying in schools, citing a study that found higher bullying rates in GOP districts after the 2016 presidential election. But that piece raised an important question: What should schools do to address and prevent bullying?
The scientific evidence on what works is complicated.
There’s a whole cottage industry of consultants selling anti-bullying programs to schools but academic researchers say there is no proof they work. There are some small studies with positive results. But when reputable researchers study efforts to expand these strategies across schools among many students and compare bullying rates with those at schools that didn’t receive the intervention, there tends not to be a difference. For example, this 2007 review of anti-bullying programs found “little discernible effect on youth participants.”

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Posted on October 31, 2018

By Jake Johnson/Common Dreams

What’s one similarity between the economic policy agendas of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump? All three made the Walton family – the wealthiest family in the world – even richer.
According to a new analysis by the union-led campaign Making Change at Walmart, the combination of Bush’s 2003 tax cuts for the rich, Obama’s extension of those tax cuts, and Trump’s passage of a $1.5 trillion giveaway to the wealthy last year has netted the owners of Walmart $1.1 million per day in dividend income tax savings for the past 16 years.

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Posted on October 26, 2018

By Arise Chicago

A city council committee Tuesday approved an ordinance that would create an Office of Labor Standards to enforce laws governing workplace issues such as the minimum wage, sick time provisions and other worker protections. The proposal moves to the full council for a vote next Wednesday. If approved, Chicago would follow cities including New York, Seattle and San Francisco in creating such an office.
The pending ordinance is the result of a two-year campaign led by local workers’ rights organization Arise Chicago.
“From my experience I’ve learned that just passing laws is not enough. Many workers are suffering from wage theft, discrimination, harassment, and other abuse that causes both physical and moral pain, and damages workers’ dignity,” Arise’s Martina Sanchez told councilmembers at Tuesday’s committee hearing.
Sanchez was a leader of the Earned Sick Time campaign, spurred from her own experience of living without paid sick days. When her husband was hospitalized and she stayed with him, their household lost both incomes.

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Posted on October 24, 2018

By Jessie Eisinger and Paul Kiel/ProPublica

Tax evasion is at the center of the criminal cases against two associates of the president, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. The sheer scale of their efforts to avoid paying the government has given rise to a head-scratching question: How were they able to cheat the Internal Revenue Service for so many years?
The answer, researchers and former government auditors say, is simple. The IRS pursues fewer cases of tax evasion than it did less than 10 years ago. Provided you’re not a close associate of President Donald Trump, there may never be a better time to be a tax cheat.

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Posted on October 22, 2018

By Jake Johnson/Common Dreams

It has been nearly a full year since the Republican Party rammed through its transparent scam of a tax bill in the face of massive grassroots resistance, and the results have been almost precisely what nearly every analyst predicted: Record profits for the rich and massive corporations, little to nothing for American workers.
Among the greatest beneficiaries of the GOP’s bill have been America’s six largest banks, which this week reported soaring third quarter profits and – according to the Not One Penny coalition – have already raked in a over $9 billion in extra profits as a direct result of President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax law.
“These latest filings show that big banks have stopped at nothing to make more money – and that the GOP’s tax law gave them license to put profits over people,” Not One Penny spokesperson Ryan Thomas said in a statement on Thursday, highlighting the enthusiastic earnings reports of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.
“These six banks have constantly chosen to use these tax breaks to enrich their shareholders and executives while laying off employees and exploiting consumers,” Thomas noted, pointing to the explosion of stock buybacks since the GOP tax bill became law. “These shameful actions – and the Republican tax law that permitted them – indicate just how rigged the system is against working people and the middle class.”

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Posted on October 18, 2018

By Robert Weismann/Common Dreams

Note: On Wednesday, USA Today published an Op-Ed by President Donald Trump that included several falsehoods about single-payer health care.
Lies and deceptions from Trump are nothing new. Lies and deceptions from Trump about Medicare-for All are new, so it’s worth correcting his USA Today column attacking such a system.
One reason his attacks on Medicare-for-All are new is that he probably has supported it in the past. But whatever, there’s no reason to think Trump particularly believed what he said then, or what he says now. On to the major lies and deceits:

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Posted on October 11, 2018

By Public Citizen and Citizens For Responsibility And Ethics In Washington

President Donald Trump has exposed serious shortcomings in executive branch ethics laws that threaten our democracy and must be addressed, according to a report issued by Public Citizen and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
The report outlines specific policy reforms, ranging from requiring that presidents divest assets that pose a risk of conflict of interest and disclose tax returns and other detailed financial information to implementing a broader nepotism law and banning preferential treatment in security clearances for a president’s family member.
Trump differs starkly from all of his modern day predecessors – and likely all presidents in U.S. history – due to the breadth of his assets, his refusal to divest himself of those assets and his disregard for avoiding conflicts of interest as a check on government corruption, the groups said.

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Posted on October 9, 2018

By Steve Rhodes

“After about two hours of closing arguments, jurors [in the Jason Van Dyke trial] were instructed on the law by Judge Vincent Gaughan and sent back at about 12:30 p.m. to begin deliberating what will be one of the most closely watched verdicts in Cook County history. If no verdict is reached Thursday, it is believed the jurors will be sequestered at a nearby hotel before resuming discussions Friday,” the Tribune reported late Thursday.
No verdict was reached and, indeed, jurors were sequestered overnight. Deliberations are expected to continue today.
“Van Dyke, 40, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm and one count of official misconduct.
“Jurors, though, will have the option to instead find Van Dyke guilty of the lesser charge of second-degree murder. To do that, they would need to find that Van Dyke’s claim he feared for his safety when he fired 16 shots at McDonald was unreasonable.”
After reviewing coverage of the trial, I believe Van Dyke will be found guilty, one way or another. At least it’s obvious to me that he should be found guilty. But you never know what a jury will do.

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Posted on October 5, 2018

By Jon Queally/Common Dreams

Recognizing that his 10,000-word essay was potentially “a lot” for some consumers, Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine, has created a video version with the same title – “How We Know Kavanaugh Is Lying” – for those who might find it easier to digest.
Robinson first published his essay on Saturday, after the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but the video version was posted online Monday evening.
If you have 15 minutes and want to hear a good explanation of why Kavanaugh proved himself a liar whereas Ford came out of her testimony more credible than even before she went in, watch this:

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Posted on October 4, 2018