Washington Just Sued a Giant Private Prison Company for Paying Immigrant Workers $1 Per Day

Thousands of immigrant detainees were paid $1 per day or, in some cases, with extra food as compensation for keeping one of the country’s largest for-profit immigration detention centers running, according to a lawsuit filed today by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson. The lawsuit targets the GEO Group, one of the country’s two most profitable private prison companies, over the controversial work program, which Ferguson says has violated the state’s minimum wage policy since it was implemented in 2005.

This Is the Hurricane Season Scientists Tried to Warn Us About

After multiple intense hurricane landfalls this month, the scenes from the Caribbean have been horrific—trees stripped bare, houses flattened, million-dollar yachts strewn like toys.

Category 5 hurricanes, like Irma and Maria, are the pinnacle of nature’s fury. There is simply no weather event on Earth that can cause so much destruction so quickly. They are worst-case scenarios.

A handful of ultra-rich dynastic families are bleeding the country dry — and destroying American democracy

White House National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, former president of Goldman Sachs, said recently that “only morons pay the estate tax.”

I’m reminded of Donald Trump’s comment that he didn’t pay federal income taxes because he was “smart.” And billionaire Leona Helmsley’s “only the little people pay taxes.”

St. Louis Police Ripped for 'Alarming,' Unconstitutional Treatment of Demonstrators

Members of law enforcement and civil libertarians were strongly critical of the tactics and behavior of the St Louis police department amid protests over the acquittal of a white officer in the 2011 shooting death of a black man.

Some officers’ behavior was called unethical, alarming and even unconstitutional.

One of the primary catalysts for concern was a video that emerged on Monday of a group of officers loudly mocking the popular protest chant “Whose streets? Our streets” after making a series of arrests.

‘We left the window wide open’: EX-FEC member explains how agency missed Russian election meddling threat

The Federal Elections Commission is charged with protecting the integrity of democratic elections in the United States.

However, as ex-FEC member Ann Ravel writes in Politico, the agency completely dropped the ball when it came to Russia’s efforts to interfere in last year’s presidential election — and there’s little hope of things improving anytime soon.

How Venezuela went from a rich democracy to a dictatorship on the brink of collapse

Not far from the US, a desperate leader is steering a once-prosperous democracy toward dictatorship.

Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, is scrambling to cling to power as his country is battered by an unprecedented economic crisis. And in the process, he’s becoming an autocrat.

Maduro is tossing political opponents in prison. He is cracking down on growing street protests with lethal force, with government security forces killing at least 46 demonstrators in recent months. He has repeatedly postponed regional government elections in order to stave off threats to his party’s power. And in July he held a rigged election for a special legislative body that supplanted the country’s parliament — the one branch of government that was controlled by his political opposition. The new superbody has carte blanche to rewrite the country’s constitution and expand his executive powers.

Gone Baby Gone

When it was still standing, 1906 Boone Street was a classic example of a Baltimore row house: three stories tall and only 15 feet wide, with a curved bay window in front and a narrow garden out back. Built in 1920, it featured a red brick facade, five bedrooms, and a claw-foot tub in the second-floor bathroom. Karen Saunders, who now lives two doors down, remembers living in the house as a child in the 1960s. Lewis Mitchell, a Coast Guard welder, purchased the house next door 21 years ago. Together with his brother, who lives one house over, Mitchell spent more than a year cleaning, painting, and repairing his new home. “I build ships,” Mitchell says. “I figured I could do a house.”

The Ominous, Massive Military Exercises in Eastern Europe

On September 14, Russia and Belarus launched a massive military exercise along their western borders and in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. It’s meant to mimic war with three invented adversaries: Veishnoriya, the Western-backed aggressor in the scenario, is intent on driving a wedge between Russia and Belarus. Along with its two allies, Lubeniya and Vesbasriya, the imagined countries present a major threat to Russian security. More real, however, is the fear among Russia’s neighbors that such a situation could soon become a reality. 

Judge says businesses can discriminate so long as they write about it on Facebook

In what can charitably be described as an idiosyncratic reading of the First Amendment, a George W. Bush-appointed federal judge in western Michigan held that businesses can discriminate against LGBTQ customers so long as they explain why they did so on Facebook.

Prior to Judge Paul Maloney’s Friday opinion in Country Mill Farms v. City of East Lansing, it was well understood that the First Amendment does not protect business owners who post signs announcing “blacks need not apply” or “we don’t serve women here.” As the Supreme Court once explained in a related case, “discrimination in employment is not only commercial activity, it is illegal commercial activity,” and “we have no doubt that a newspaper constitutionally could be forbidden to publish a want ad proposing a sale of narcotics or soliciting prostitutes.”

The Wage Gap Between Black and White Workers Is Even Worse Today Than It Was After the Civil Rights Movement

Here's some good news and bad news about the economy. The good news is, the median American household income is up, the highest it’s been since pre-recession 2007. The bad news? Not surprisingly, not all American households are created equal. Despite the growing trend of prosperity among family groups and a (somewhat disputed) wave of general economic growth since the end of the recession, the gains have not been distributed fairly to black Americans. In fact, the wage gap is growing between black and white Americans, and today, the gap is the widest it's been in 40 years.

Police And Protesters Clash In St. Louis After Ex-Cop Is Acquitted Of Murdering A Black Man

ST. LOUIS, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets during clashes with protesters in St Louis early on Saturday after a white former policeman was acquitted of murdering a black suspect.

A peaceful rally over Friday’s not guilty verdict turned violent after police confronted a small group of demonstrators - three years after the shooting of another black suspect in the nearby suburb of Ferguson stirred nationwide anger and debate.

How JPMorgan Chase Is Cashing in on Private Prisons

JPMorgan Chase, like so many corporations, is trying to have its cake and eat it under the Trump administration. In the last few weeks, it has invested time, public relations' efforts and money in presenting itself as a defender of human rights. But the $2 million Chase pledged to fight racism is a drop in the ocean compared to the potential yield from its massive investment in the private prison system: one of the starkest manifestations of racial injustice in the U.S. today, profiting primarily from the detention of immigrants seeking a new life in the U.S. The DACA cancellation last week will only further boost the huge profit to be made from keeping yet more people under lock and key.

Former Hillary Clinton aide fights fake news in Germany

Ben Scott is on the hunt for fake news.

As an outside technology adviser to Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Scott has first-hand knowledge of how digital falsehoods can infiltrate — and, he would add, sway — an election.

Scott, who also served as a Clinton aide on technology when she was U.S. secretary of state, is part of a growing brigade of policymakers, national intelligence agencies and fact-checking agencies working to ensure the same thing does not happen in Germany as voters head to the ballot boxes.

In Moscow, Putin’s opponents chalk up a symbolic victory

MOSCOW — Russia’s liberal opposition is on a high after achieving a series of unprecedented victories in the Kremlin’s backyard at local council elections — including in the wealthy Moscow district where Vladimir Putin cast his own ballot.

The United Democrats coalition — spearheaded by Dmitry Gudkov, a former opposition lawmaker, and Yabloko, Russia’s oldest anti-Putin party — claimed 14 districts in the September 10 elections, in some cases winning with a landslide. Opposition candidates held just one district before Sunday’s vote.

Florida’s Poop Nightmare Has Come True

In the days and hours before Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida, its residents were treated to copious media speculation about nightmare scenarios. This monster storm, journalists said, could bring a 15-foot storm surge, blow roofs off of buildings, and cause tens of billions of dollars in damage. But perhaps no scenario seemed more dire than the one Quartz warned about the day before Irma made landfall: “Hurricane Irma will likely cover South Florida with a film of poop.”

Harvard rescinds Chelsea Manning's visiting fellowship after CIA chief protests

Harvard University has rescinded an offer to make Chelsea Manning a visiting fellow after the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, cancelled an appearance at the university.

Pompeo had been scheduled to appear at Harvard’s John F Kennedy school of government to give a speech on global security concerns, but withdrew on Thursday, calling the university’s invitation to Manning a “shameful stamp of approval”.

Defining the ‘all’ in ‘Medicare for All’

As progressives consider proposals to implement universal health care, it’s important to define the principle that’s driving them. What unites Democrats right now is the idea that health care is a right afforded to all. If that’s the self-imposed litmus test, it’s essential to define “all” when discussing universal health care.

Millions of people who live in the United States are currently uninsured. High costs remain a major barrier to coverage; 46 percent of uninsured adults said costs were a primary reason according to a 2015 Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Proposals by Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Brian Schatz (D-HI), who are advocating to expand public programs like Medicare and Medicaid, respectively, strive to make care affordable.

The Politics of Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” Bill

In her new book, “What Happened,” Hillary Clinton writes that Senator Bernie Sanders “isn’t a Democrat.” Technically, she’s right. Sanders’s own Web site describes him as “the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history.” But as Clinton sets out on her promotional tour, it is Sanders, the losing candidate in last year’s hotly contested Democratic primary, who is helping to set the Party’s policy agenda.

“This is where the country has got to go,” Sanders told the Washington Post’s David Weigel on Tuesday, a day before he unveiled a single-payer health-care-reform bill in the Senate. “Right now, if we want to move away from a dysfunctional, wasteful, bureaucratic system into a rational health-care system that guarantees coverage to everyone in a cost-effective way, the only way to do it is Medicare for All.”

A Medical Emergency, and the Growing Crisis at Immigration Detention Centers

Stewart Detention Center, in Lumpkin, Georgia, is a hundred and forty miles southwest of Atlanta. Past razor-wire fences and security checkpoints, there’s a small, hot room where visitors who’ve received permission can meet with detainees. A few weeks ago, I waited for two hours—the daily count of the facility’s approximately sixteen hundred detainees was under way—before sitting down in this room, with a translator, to speak with Nelson Francisco Perdomo-Vaidez, a thirty-four-year-old undocumented immigrant from Honduras, who had been held at the center since mid-April.

Site C Called First Test for NDP’s Commitment to Indigenous Rights

Recent experiences with the federal government have left Prophet River First Nation member Helen Knott wary of government promises.
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So while she and other Indigenous people are excited about NDP provincial government commitments to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, words are not enough. And the Site C dam in northeastern B.C., they say, will be the government’s first test of its commitment.

Enbridge’s plans to build tar sands pipeline through Minnesota just hit a snag

Enbridge’s proposed Line 3 project — an effort to replace and expand an oil sands pipeline through Minnesota — hit a roadblock Monday when the state’s Department of Commerce said that the project is environmentally and economically risky and that the company has failed to show that the pipeline is even needed at all.

“Enbridge has not established a need for the proposed project; the pipeline would primarily benefit areas outside Minnesota; and serious environmental and socioeconomic risks and effects outweigh limited benefits,” the Department of Commerce said in a statement announcing its filings to the Public Utility Commission (PUC). The PUC is evaluating the project in advance of issuing — or denying — a Certificate of Need and a Route Permit. Public hearings will be held between September 26 and October 26, followed by additional filings and hearings. The PUC is expected to make its final determination at the end of April 2018.

‘Textbook Example Of Ethnic Cleansing’ Taking Place Right Now In Myanmar, UN Warns

GENEVA (Reuters) - The top U.N. human rights official on Monday denounced Myanmar’s “brutal security operation” against Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine state which he said was “clearly disproportionate” to insurgent attacks carried out last month.

Communal tensions appeared to be rising across Myanmar on Monday after two weeks of violence in Rakhine state that have triggered an exodus of about 300,000 Rohingya Muslims, prompting the government to tighten security at Buddhist pagodas.

Hurricane Irma: British Mother Trapped Amid Violence And Destruction Accuses Boris Johnson Of 'Abandoning' Brits

A British mother-of-two trapped in the Caribbean after hurricane Irma has hit out at Boris Johnson, saying he has “abandoned” British citizens while trying to insist the rescue effort has been effective.

For several days Amy Brown, along with other Brits and EU nationals, has hoped for evacuation from St Martin, having become stuck as the hurricane tore through the region, killing four people on the French/Dutch island and destroying buildings and infrastructure.

Australia's energy policy is a world-class failure and Abbott wears the gold medal of blame

If you’ve watched the inglorious spectacle of the failure of Australian politics on climate and energy policy over the last 10 years, it’s a bit hard to look out on the wreckage without feeling sick to the stomach.

But look we must and, if we look now, we are able to chart the consequences of abject failure in highly specific ways.

What Australians are experiencing now – rising prices, rising emissions and a grid that creaks and sputters in extreme weather – is the logical consequence of a decade of unconscionable public policy failure.

Holy Freeloading! Here are 10 ways religious groups rob taxpayers

Have you ever thought about starting a new religion or perhaps a hometown franchise of an old one? Perhaps you’re just looking for a career ladder in a religious enterprise that already exists. No? Maybe you should.

Religion is big business. There are lots of options (over 30,000 variants of Christianity alone), and if the scale is right it can pay really, really well. Creflo Dollar, founder of World Changers Church, has an estimated net worth of $27 million. Benny Hinn comes in at 42. Squeaky clean tent revival pioneer Billy Graham bankrolled around 25. Even Eddie Long who has been plagued by accusations of sex with underage male members in his congregation counts his bankbook in seven digits.