Wave TV
Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
(Fox Sports)
i can officially die happy after watching this(FOX Sports)
Posted by Wave TV on Sunday, February 10, 2019
Read About The Tarbaby Story under the Category: About the Tarbaby Blog
(Fox Sports)
i can officially die happy after watching this(FOX Sports)
Posted by Wave TV on Sunday, February 10, 2019
Medicare for All is the only solution to our current wasteful, for-profit health care system.
This Doctor SHUTS DOWN Every Argument Fox News Has Against Medicare for All
Medicare for All is the only solution to our current wasteful, for-profit health care system.
Posted by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Saturday, March 16, 2019
March 15, 2019
Congratulations to all the young people participating in the Youth Climate Strike all over the world today. Their message is simple: We must come together to take bold and aggressive action to solve the existential crisis of climate change. We will fight the greed of Trump and the fossil fuel executives who are more worried about their short term profits than the well-being of the planet. We will fight to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. We will fight to create millions of new jobs in sustainable energy and make this country and world a habitable place for our kids and grandchildren to live.
The Yuge Republican Lie About the Deficit
I keep hearing Republicans in Congress blame Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the growing federal deficit. Rubbish. Our new video explains the truth about the deficit that Trump and Republicans don't want you to know.
Posted by Robert Reich on Monday, March 11, 2019
“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Donald Trump declared in 2015. “Every other Republican’s going to cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t know where the money is. I do. I do.”
It became a staple of his entire national candidacy: no matter what, Americans could count on him to champion these social-insurance programs.
Four years later, the president is, in fact, proposing deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. As the New York Times reported, Trump’s newly proposed budget completes the trifecta by targeting Social Security, too.
The administration also proposes spending $26 billion less on Social Security programs, including a $10 billion cut to the Social Security Disability Insurance program.
As we discussed earlier, the problem with a proposal like this one isn’t necessarily practical: with a Democratic-led U.S. House, there’s simply no way policymakers will endorse the White House’s budget blueprint or enact the cuts Trump supports.
Rather, what this represents is a political problem on a variety of fronts. It’s obviously, for example, a profound broken promise: as a Republican candidate, Trump swore up and down for months that he’d never try to cut Social Security, but here he is anyway, doing the opposite of what he said he’d do.
It’s also a policy failure: a whole lot of us predicted that the president and his allies would go after popular social-insurance programs – often referred to as “entitlements” – as a way to help pay for the Republican tax breaks for the wealthy. With his new budget plan, Trump is helping prove the point.
But of particular interest is a period of time known as “last fall.”
As regular readers probably recall, as the 2018 midterm elections drew closer, a variety of Republican leaders, cognizant of broad public support for programs like Medicare and Social Security, said it’s GOP officials who really support the programs – reality be damned.
Trump led the way, going so far as to argue just six months ago, “We’re saving Social Security; the Democrats will destroy Social Security. We’re saving Medicare; the Democrats want to destroy Medicare.” The president has pushed the same message at many of his campaign rallies.
Soon after, voters handed Democrats their biggest wins in U.S. House races since the Watergate era – which, for some reason, the president interpreted as a justification to betray his own assurances to voters.
When House Republicans are invited to vote up or down on the Trump budget, it’ll be an interesting test of just how far they’re willing to go to align themselves with an unpopular president’s unpopular agenda.
March 8, 2019
This International Women’s Day, don’t forget about the thousands of Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been murdered in Canada.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
This International Women’s Day, don’t forget about the thousands of Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been murdered in Canada.
Posted by Direct From on Friday, March 8, 2019
March 8, 2019
WASHINGTON – Within moments of Paul Manafort being sentenced to less than four years in federal prison, there was shock on cable news and online.
It was a far cry from the 12 to 25 years he could have been ordered to serve behind bars.
Many outlined cases in which defendants accused of lesser crimes were given much harsher punishments. Some used the case as a way to display the racial disparities within the criminal justice system.
Others targeted U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis, who had been critical of prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller’s office. During Manafort’s sentencing on Thursday, Ellis said had committed “serious, very serious crimes,” but he also said Manafort had “lived an otherwise blameless life and earned the admiration of many.”
The issue sparked debate on how much time President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman should spend behind bars and why the sentence was considerably below what sentencing guidelines called for and what prosecutors had noted in court filing.
But data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission for 2017 shows that Manafort is not alone in receiving a lesser sentence.
In the Eastern District of Virginia, where Manafort was sentenced, about a quarter of defendants were sentenced below federal guidelines. The data for the 2017 fiscal year shows that about two-thirds of defendants received sentences that fit within the guidelines.
For fraud cases, in particular, the Eastern District was harsher on defendants than the national average. Defendants were given 36 months in prison on average, compared to the national average of 24 months.
Data shows the Eastern District took up 126 fraud cases in 2017.
When it came to drug and gun crimes, the sentences varied but were higher in the Eastern District of Virginia than national averages.
Data shows the Eastern District handed down an average of a 66-month sentence for firearm charges, whereas the national average was 52 months. For drug trafficking, defendants in the District were sentenced to 84 months, higher than the national average of 60.
Of course, handing down a sentence is complex and judges consider an array of information, including who was harmed, any previous crimes and the sheer size of the crime.
A jury in Virginia convicted Manafort of eight charges, including bank and tax fraud, after a three-week trial last summer. The case, as well as a related one in Washington, stem from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine before he joined Trump’s campaign in 2016.
In explaining his sentencing decision, Ellis said “it is important to avoid unwarranted disparity” among comparable white-collar cases.
As an example, he cited a previous case that involved a more substantial loss to victims. In that case, over which Ellis also presided, he sentenced the defendant to seven months in prison.
Ellis also raised pointed questions about whether Manafort deserved credit for cooperation with prosecutors in the related criminal case in the District of Columbia where he agreed to plead guilty and assist the special counsel in the ongoing inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Prosecutor Greg Andres told Ellis that Manafort deserved no credit, describing how the cooperation agreement collapsed when Manafort repeatedly lied to prosecutors and to a federal grand jury.
In the 50 hours Manafort spent with prosecutors as part of the cooperation agreement, Andres said Manafort provided no useful information. The prosecutor said Manafort either provided information prosecutors already knew or lied.
Ellis also questioned whether Manafort intended to defraud bank authorities on a $5.5 million loan application by not disclosing the existence of a separate outstanding loan, suggesting that it might have been an oversight by a “very busy man.”
The notions did not sit well with others, including Democratic lawmakers.
“My view on Manafort sentence: Guidelines there for a reason. His crimes took place over years and he led far from a ‘blameless life.’ Crimes committed in an office building should be treated as seriously as crimes committed on a street corner,” Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a 2020 presidential candidate. “Can’t have two systems of justice!”
The difference in Manafort’s sentence from that of someone who commits a drug or gun violation was noted by many attorneys, public defenders and former federal prosecutors on social media Thursday.
Scott Hechinger, who serves as a public defender in New York for the Brooklyn Defender Services, outlined an array of cases he and his colleagues have worked, including a client that he said on Wednesday was offered a sentence by prosecutors of between 36 to 72 months for stealing $100 in quarters from a residential laundry room.
He said the offer was a result of the crime being considered a second-degree felony in New York, where the minimum sentence is listed as 3 1/2 years.
Hechinger said he was not advocating for harsher sentences or that Manafort should serve more time but wanted to showcase “the outrageous disparity” between Manafort’s case and that of poor people of color. He added he wished “my clients received [the] same treatment as the privileged few.”
Ken White, an attorney and former federal prosecutor, said on Twitter that Manafort’s sentence was one “defense lawyers dream of.”
“It’s the kind of departure that’s FAR more likely to be enjoyed by the sort of person who commits crimes with banks and wires than drugs or guns,” he tweeted.
In an interview with USA TODAY, White added that Ellis’ leniency wasn’t a sign of bias.
“I think that’s the simple explanation that lets this system off the hook,” White said. “The real issue isn’t Manafort getting 47 months, but that so many other people get much longer sentences.”
He noted Ellis’ track record of opposing mandatory minimum sentences for drug and gun crimes that constrain judges to hand down harsh sentences but allow “broad discretion for cases like Manafort’s, where the defendant has money.”
White noted that while this case may be a good example in the harsh realities of the criminal justice system, it’s just one of many similar cases.
“The problem isn’t too short of sentences,” White said. “The problem is who is getting the much larger sentences.”
In addition to 47 months in prison, Ellis ordered Manafort to pay a $50,000 fine and approximately $24 million in restitution, and to spend an additional three years on federal supervision. Ellis said the nine months Manafort has already spent in jail should count against his total sentence.
Ellis’ decision is not the end for Manafort.
He will be sentenced again next week in a related case in Washington where he faces an additional 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges for failing to report his lobbying work in Ukraine and tampering with witnesses.
Contributing: Kevin Johnson, Brad Heath and Kristine Phillips
The New York Congresswoman said Paul Manafort’s punishment – well below the 19 to 24 years sought by prosecutors – was an example of how rich people were treated differently in court.
“In our current broken system, “justice” isn’t blind,” she tweeted. ”It’s bought.”
The sentencing by federal judge TS Ellis, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, prompted lawyers and politicians to compare it to other cases involving longer prison terms, particularly those involving small amounts of drugs.
Last year the same judge sentenced Frederick Turner, 37, to a mandatory minimum of 40 years in prison for dealing methamphetamine. Judge Ellis expressed misgivings at the time, adding that the mandatory minimum was “wrong, but not immoral.”
Democrat 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren brought up the example of Fate Winslow, a homeless man who was jailed for life for helping to sell $20 (£15) worth of cannabis.
In other cases, a Texas woman, Crystal Mason, was sentenced to five years in prison for voting while on probation while a man was offered a prison sentence of between three and six years for stealing $100 from a laundry room.
Financial crimes attorney Louis Laverone said: “Manafort’s sentence is an example of a broader problem: white collar crimes (e.g. fraud, money laundering) just aren’t taken seriously.”
Following a jury trial in Virginia last year, Manafort was convicted of hiding millions of dollars earned through his work advising politicians in Ukraine, including the former pro-Russia president Viktor Yanukovych.
His lawyers argued that it amounted to a routine tax evasion, which often results in prison sentences of less than 12 months, and claimed that Manafort would never have been charged if it were not for the investigation by FBI special counsel Robert Mueller into links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
While the charges were not related to his work on Trump’s campaign, prosecutors argued for a significant jail term because the 69 year-old tampered with witnesses during his trial, tried to shift the blame to others and failed to accept responsibility for his crimes.
Manafort still faces up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced on two conspiracy charges in Washington DC next week. He had offered to cooperate with the Mueller probe after pleading guilty to those offences, but the deal was thrown out after a judge agreed he had lied to investigators.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
Norway Deals a Blow to an Oil Industry That’s Quickly Losing Friends