NSFW 18+ Dumb America News Stories

[madjockmcferson]

Philly Neighborhood Freaks Out After Restaurant Changes Its Racist Name

BY REBECCA LEBER ON AUGUST 5, 2013 AT 11:55 AM

CREDIT: Joe’s Steaks

Philly residents apparently preferred a neighborhood restaurant when it was named after a racial slur. For 64 years, the sign “Chink’s Steaks” hung overhead the steak shop, but in March the owner Joe Groh decided it was finally time to drop it in favor of “Joe’s Steaks + Soda Shop.” The original name came from the founder of the steak shop, Sam Sherman, who was called “chink” as a kid because he had “almond eyes.”

The name-change has drawn particular fury from locals, who insisted the old name was never racist, but a term of endearment.

According to the Philadelphia Daily News, Groh has seen 10 percent and 15 percent drop in sales the past two months and repeated bouts of vandalism with “Chink’s” painted on the sidewalk and window. In March, an online petition to keep the old name drew 10,000 signatures.

Despite the outrage, Groh has defended the decision, although he has given some thought to moving locations.

“It’s 2013,” he said. “It was time to do it.”

 

[The Boofon]

Wildgoose Drive in Newmacher used to be called Wildgoose Chase until the mutants who lived on the street complained.

[Ke1t]

DETROIT!

 

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/video?clipId=9100097&autoStart=true

[Dandyesque]

Wildgoose Drive in Newmacher used to be called Wildgoose Chase until the mutants who lived on the street complained.

 

In fairness, it was probably pretty difficult to phone for a pizza delivery

[madjockmcferson]

Wildgoose Drive in Newmacher used to be called Wildgoose Chase until the mutants who lived on the street complained.

 

I think they changed that cos it kept getting stolen. Hasn't got anything to do with going nuts over a racist name being changed though.

[madjockmcferson]

 

Mostly-White Ohio Suburb Fighting To Prevent Mostly-Black Bus-Riders From Entering Community

BY SCOTT KEYES ON AUGUST 6, 2013 AT 2:21 PM

CREDIT: Dayton Daily News

A lily-white Ohio suburb is doing everything it can, including risking millions in federal highway funding, to keep mostly minority bus-riders from a nearby city from entering their community.

The showdown began in 2010 when the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority proposed adding three new bus stops in Beavercreek, a largely white suburb 15 minutes east of Dayton. These new stops would give Dayton bus-riders access to Beavercreek’s major shopping mall and nearby businesses, as well as a medical clinic and Wright State University.

Facing the prospect of buses coming in from Dayton, the Beavercreek City Council beganenacting as many hurdles as they could to stop the new bus stops. Among the dozen roadblocks included mandating that bus shelters included heated and air conditioning as well as high-tech surveillance cameras, features that would be hugely expensive and are not common at other stops. Unsurprisingly, these demands couldn’t be met and the council rejected the expansion. “We turned downed an application because they didn’t meet our (design) criteria,” Beavercreek City Councilman Scott Hadley explained to Eye On Ohio.

Many in the area argue that their opposition boils down to a simple reason: race. According to the 2010 census, 9 in 10 Beavercreek residents are white, but 73 percent of those who ride the Dayton RTA buses are minorities. “I can’t see anything else but it being a racial thing,” Sam Gresham, state chair of Common Cause Ohio, a public interest advocacy group, told ThinkProgress. “They don’t want African Americans going on a consistent basis to Beavercreek.”

A civil rights group in the area, Leaders for Equality in Action in Dayton (LEAD), soon filed a discrimination lawsuit against Beavercreek under the Federal Highway Act. In June, the Federal Highway Administration ruled that Beavercreek’s actions were indeed discriminatory and ordered them to work with the Dayton Regional Transit Authority to get the bus stops approved without delay.

Beavercreek, though, isn’t particularly keen to do that. The city council voted most recently on Friday to put off consideration of the matter until later this month. They are weighing whether to appeal the federal ruling, or perhaps whether to just defy it altogether. Appealing the ruling could cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, according to a Washington D.C. lawyer the council hired. However, non-compliance with the ruling could cost Beavercreektens of millions of dollars in federal highway funds.

The city council has until September 11, 2013 to begin complying with the Federal Highway Administration order. They will meet again on August 12 to decide how to proceed.

Gresham, for one, is flabbergasted that the council would even consider risking millions of dollars in federal highway funds. “Their worldview and logic are two entirely separate things,” he said.

[madjockmcferson]

Politics and Culture with Melinda Henneberger

 

 

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Guns at a Starbucks in … Newtown, Conn.

By Sheila Weller, Published: August 12 at 4:35 pm

 

 

“Doesn’t anyone have any shame any more?” is a comment heard quite a bit these days. Except it’s usually reserved for politicians with unseemly sexual pasts (or presents) hubristically seeking — or insisting on holding onto — office: Weiner, Spitzer, Filner. Or spoiled entertainers gone wild – Charlie Sheen, Chris Brown, Lindsay Lohan — who treat Malibu rehab, court appearances (while looking somber in chic duds), and endearing turns hosting TV talk shows as a revolving door of opportunity to just go out and do it again.

 

But real shame-worthy behavior that has become fatalistically accepted is this: Acts of aggressive sadism toward parents of murdered children, trotted out as legitimate protests for constitutional rights.

 

Sorry to narrow-cast here, but the prime repeat defender is the NRA and its splinter groups. Some examples: After Columbine, Tom Mauser, the father of murdered teen Daniel Mauser, walked, wearing Daniel’s shoes, to an NRA meeting to peacefully offer his and his son’s suggestions to close the loopholes in the Brady Bill so that guns wouldn’t fall in the wrong hands. (Sadly, and eerily, Mauser and his son had discussed doing this just before the mass shooting that claimed Daniel’s young life.) At that meeting,Tom Hauser was vehemently shouted at and threatened by NRA members.

 

NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre’s horrible, tasteless statements after the unspeakable horror at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (six- and seven-year-olds murdered; in our darkest moments, did any of us imagine that?) were typical blame-the-gun-control people. But it was the Internet targeting of a Sandy Hook victim’s father – his private financial records hacked and thrust online, his debt gleefully paraded – by the NRA that was especially sickening. More, the gesture seemed to borrow from the Saxby Chambliss-vs.-Max Cleland playbook: Turn things on their head. Go out of your way to find someone who has really suffered and – shamelessly — make that person the devil. (In 2002, when Republican Chambliss was running for his Georgia Senate seat against Democrat Cleland, who lost three limbs fighting in Vietnam, Chambliss equated Cleland with Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and proudly defended the comparison, with Ann Coulter joining in to heap mockery on Cleland.

Make those who suffered the most the bad guys and then go an extra mile to rub it in their faces. That’s the game.

This happened last Friday in Newtown, but it happened so fast, it’s already out of the news.

 

National gun rights people named Friday, Aug. 9, “Starbucks Appreciation Day.” They did so not because they are latte-with-soy-milk aficionados or avid collectors of the vintage confessional soft rock music and the questing-internationalist and healing-oriented books the coffee chain used to feature at its point of purchase. Rather, they did so because Starbucks – unlike, for example, Peet’s Coffee, Ikea, and California Pizza Kitchen — refuses to ban guns in its venues, preferring to hew to local policy. If a state or jurisdiction allows weapons, concealed or otherwise, to be carried into retail stores, the Starbucks franchises in that state will allow that, too.

Even those of you who didn’t get wind of this fleetingly covered news story can guess the “Grandma, what sharp teeth you have …” hidden agenda – or, at the very least, sneaky opportunity — that “Starbucks Appreciation Day” was about. It was a chance for gun activists to come not just to any Starbucks but to the Newtown Starbucks, a mile and a half from Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 26 people – the large majority very young children – were gunned to death eight months earlier.

They came on Friday packing heat. Why? Why come brandishing guns to a pleasant little coffee-and-snack place where parents take their children after school? Was that so necessary? The act was – there is no other word for it – sadistic.

“How can they even think of being here? It’s so disgusting and heartless! It’s so in-your-face!” said a local woman, Barbara Kraushaar, who was part of a counter-group of Newtown residents who came to meet the gun-toters in the parking lot told the New York Times. “Our community is still healing, and we find it reprehensible that they are picking Newtown to rally,” was the response from the Newtown Action Alliance, which is devoted to making sure that what happened there on Dec. 14 never happens again.

To its credit, the Newtown Starbucks closed four hours early on Friday, so the gun activists couldn’t enter and make a scene. (The gun activists pronounced themselves angry at Starbucks for doing so.)

 

Those in the community who have worked for healing were also appalled. With his wife and musical partner, Tina Weymouth, longtime Connecticut resident Chris Frantz, singer and musician of the fabled Talking Heads and the Tom Tom Club, last winter recorded a group of Newtown children singing “Over The Rainbow,” with all proceeds going to Sandy Hook victims. Frantz says, “It’s hard to imagine that Starbucks would permit gun toting in their stores,” Frantz told me via e-mail. “What come next? Starbucks Ammunition?”

 

And Rabbi Herbert N. Brockman, of New Haven’s Congregation Mishkan Israel, who also teaches at Yale Divinity School, in an e-mail response says that the gun-toters who came to the Starbucks “should remember the Biblical-prophetic call to `beat your swords into plowshares and your spears into pruning hooks….’ It seems that for reasons unfathomable, perhaps nefarious, some choose to do the opposite: beat their plowshares into swords. It is a terrible human tragedy, for we have the moral compass to know what is right. When the NRA called to put more guns in schools, I suggested we put more teachers in gun stores. This madness has to stop.”

Included is the “madness” of gun activists intentionally targeting the already victimized, and the most victimized of those victims — grieving families of gunned-down children.

 

If we don’t call stunts like parading around Newtown’s Starbucks with pistols “shameless,” then what is shamefulness? And, whatever our views about Starbucks or responsible gun ownership, if we don’t call sadism sadism, then the behavior the Newtown Alliance calls “reprehensible” will just keep happening.

 

[looksgoodinred]

 

 

 

the bride's counter argument to being called redneck and white trash:

who made the rule on how my wedding should be and just so you know it was my wedding at my house and they were my guests if and when you ever find anyone to marry your narrow minded self you can have your wedding at your location with your guests in your way and guess what I will respect your choice because I live in the USA and that is what we do here. And thank you to all my friends and family (including my son) who fight or have fought for my freedom to do this

Wow I can promise I am not pregnant and I will bet my IQ is higher then yours and guess what I am employed with a great job and in my job I care for all different people with no judgment. WE had a wedding for us the craziness that is in our heads and all our friends and family get it. Have been told it was greatest wedding people have been too. You all just upset that you don’t have creativity or the balls to live your life freely like we do. Thank GOD I live in the USA

See everyone loved it I have total self respect and proud of everything I do with no regrets and thank GOD I can defend this. All those people are my family they grew up with me and raised me. I stand by this and so does my husband friends and family. All I wish is that I can find a wider shot so you all can see all the guests dancing and rocking out like we always do. I am a 43 year old grandma who rocks out and enjoys life. Proud of me and my family so all that are out there ROCK ON

[chief_wiggum]

A few embarrassed parents there Stupid fat cow cant even sing

[madjockmcferson]

http://youtu.be/UVYphEB8GxI

[madjockmcferson]

.

[NorthernLights24]

From a few months ago but saw it on cracked.com today...

 

8 Arrested After Fight Breaks Out At Kindergarten Graduation

[looksgoodinred]

spunky old fart

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/09/08/107-year-old-man-killed-by-swat-team-in-arkansas/

[NorthernLights24]

"Dead man" turns up alive, court says he is still dead

[madjockmcferson]

Men topple 150m yro boulder. Utter wankers.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/21/us/utah-boulder-boy-scouts/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

(CNN) -- Three men who toppled an ancient boulder in Utah's Goblin Valley State Park have been booted from their Boy Scout leadership roles.

Video of Glenn Taylor shoving the huge rock off a slender pedestal where its rested for millions of years went viral online and prompted media scrutiny. Taylor sang the rock song "Wiggle It, Just a Little Bit" as he pushed the delicate sculpture over, which was followed by laughter and high fives with his son.

David Hall, who shot the video and posted it on Facebook, and the two Taylors were leading a Boy Scout group on a visit to the park when the incident happened.

The National Boy Scouts of America and the organization's Utah National Parks Council issued almost simultaneous and similar statements Monday addressing the men's actions.

Men topple rock, could face charges

"After reviewing this matter with the local chartered organization, these men have been removed from their leadership positions and are no longer members of the BSA," the national statement said.

The local council statement said the former leaders violated the Scouts' principle of "Leave no trace," which it said "teaches the value of natural areas and the methods we can use to help protect and conserve these areas for future generations."

The three men, all from Utah, defended their actions in interviews last week, saying the delicate structure posed a threat to visitors. But park officials suggested they broke the law by defacing a state park.

The attention has led to revelations that Taylor filed a personal-injury lawsuit in September, claiming he had suffered "serious, permanent and debilitating injuries" from a 4-year-old car crash.

"Someone with a bad back who's disabled, who can't enjoy life, to me, doesn't step up and push a rock that big off the base," the defendant in Taylor's lawsuit, Alan MacDonald, told Salt Lake City television station KTVX.

Taylor's lawyer did not return calls for comment. But when CNN affiliate KUTV noted that Taylor didn't look particularly debilitated in the video, he replied, "You didn't see how hard I pushed."

CNN Legal Analyst Danny Cevallos said when someone has a pending disability lawsuit, "You'd think they'd avoid the camera like the plague.

"But instead, they think no one will ever see it or repercussions will ever come of it," Cevallos said.

Goblin Valley, in southern Utah, is home to thousands of the mushroom-shaped rocks -- known to locals as goblins -- that developed as millions of years of winds and water eroded sandstone cliffs.

"We have now modified Goblin Valley, a new Goblin Valley exists," Hall is heard saying at the end of his video. "That's crazy that it was held up just by that little bit of dirt. Some little kid was about ready to walk down here and die and Glenn saved his life by getting the boulder out of the way. So it's all about saving lives here at Goblin Valley. Saving lives. That's what we're all about."

Hall told Utah television station KUTV that the boulder seemed unstable. "That wasn't going to last very long at all," he told the CNN affiliate. "One gust of wind and a family's dead."

Asked if he would do it again, he said, "Absolutely, absolutely."

But Jeff Rasmussen, the deputy director of Utah State Parks and Recreation, said, "It didn't look like a stiff wind to me."

"Obviously, we're very concerned and upset that somebody would come and destroy this natural wonder that took millions of years to be formed," he told KUTV.

In his 22 years on the job, he said he had not heard of any goblins rolling off their pedestals.

Taylor has expressed regrets. "I wish we would have been smart enough to go get a ranger 'cause it was wrong of us to be vigilantes, and I'm sorry I did that," he told CNN affiliate KSTU.

"We thought we were doing a good deed," Taylor told the affiliate.

But the Emery County attorney or the Utah Attorney General may not agree, said Eugene Swalberg of Utah State Parks.

The men "are currently under criminal investigation," he said ont Friday. "It gives you a pit in your stomach. There seems to be a lot of happiness and joy with the individuals doing this, and it's not right. This is not what you do at a natural scenic area."

[Ke1t]

Odd that Americans would be all dewy-eyed about some fat, ignorant, drunk, redneck fuckwit rolling one rock off another rock... but drop a bomb on a wedding party in Afghanistan, fuck it, 'Them's Ayrebs were askin' fer it!"

 

No consideration for human life, but you roll a rock and Murica is outraged.

 

Yeah, this is just fine.

 

[madjockmcferson]

Now, now keep it civil. We all know 'Merica answers to no-one. The perfect society has been created, no need to answer to anyone.

[looksgoodinred]

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/the-pepper-spraying-cop-got-a-bigger-payout-than-his-victims/280822/

 

 

Former UC Davis officer John Pike, famous for casually pepper spraying a group of students in the face during a 2011 protest, was awarded a $38,000 settlement for psychiatric injuries for the way he was treated afterwards. Pike, who was eventually fired,

filed a workers compensation claim

this summer. That means that Pike, who walked up to a group of sitting, passive students and pepper sprayed their faces, will get a comparable compensation from the university to that awarded to the students he targeted. UC Davis has also settled with the students actually targeted by Pike's pepper spray, agreeing to pay out $1 million total to 21 plaintiffs.

That breaks down to a bit less per student than Pike himself

will get: $30,000 per plaintiff, plus a $250,000 sum for their lawyers to split and a handful of other delegated portions of the award. The university

also formally apologized

... Pike's settlement includes $5,700 in legal fees for his lawyer in the case.

Pike was eligible for worker's comp from the incident after a psychiatrist found that the former officer has a "moderate" disability,

ABC affiliate KXTV explains.

He claimed to have "suffered depression and anxiety over the way he was treated in the wake of the incident," they note.

This is the outcome of the rules California has established for dealing with public safety employees and worker's compensation. Does anyone else think it's time for reforms?

[Henry]

A 13-year-old boy carrying a replica assault rifle has been shot dead by police in the US state of California.

Officers in the city of Santa Rosa say they opened fire after the boy refused orders to drop the rifle, which they believed to be real.

The shooting on Tuesday is now being investigated.

It comes a day after a 12-year-old boy in Nevada shot dead a maths teacher at his school and wounded two fellow pupils before taking his own life.

In the latest incident, two sheriff's deputies saw the teenager "with what appeared to be some type of rifle", a news release from the Sonoma County Sheriff's office said.

The deputies called for backup and repeatedly ordered the boy to drop the gun before firing several rounds from their handguns, police said.

The boy, who was pronounced dead at the scene, was later identified by his family as Andy Lopez.

"He was holding the weapon in his left hand. He began to turn toward his right in the direction of the deputy, and in so doing he moved the gun toward the deputy, and the deputy's mindset was that he was fearful he would be shot," Lt Paul Henry of Santa Rosa police said.

But the boy's father, Rodrigo Lopez said the shooting made no sense. "My son lost his life. He's not alive any more just because of the mistake of somebody."

The replica gun had belonged to a friend, he said.

The sheriff's office said a plastic handgun had also been found in the boy's waistband.

[Henry]

There are many reasons to feel disgust over a judge in a juvenile court in Fort Worth, Texas, sentencing 16-year-old Ethan Couch to 10 years of probation for killing four pedestrians and paralyzing his friend while driving drunk this summer.

Leading up to the tragedy that killed Breanna Mitchell (aged 24), Hollie Boyles (42) and Shelby Boyles (21) and Brian Jennings (43), Couch and a group of friends stole alcohol from a Walmart nearby. At the time of the crash, he was driving a pickup owned by Cleburne Sheet Metal, his father's company. Couch had seven passengers in his truck and a blood-alcohol content of 0.24, three times the legal limit in Texas. He also had valium in his system. Two of his passengers were severely injured, including Sergio Molina, who suffered brain damage that has left him with blinking as his only form of communication.

Couch has never denied that he was driving drunk that night, nor that he killed those people. Instead, the defense argued that Couch grew up in a family that was dysfunctional, in part because of its wealth, and that he deserved therapy, not incarceration.

During the court trial, the defense called psychologist G Dick Miller as main witness. He gave now-infamous testimony. Miller diagnosed Couch as suffering from "affluenza" where his parents' wealth fixed problems in their lives. Miller explained it this way:

"The teen never learned to say that you're sorry if you hurt someone. If you hurt someone, you sent him money."

He said that Couch had an emotional age of 12 and that both of Couch's parents failed him. Miller continued:

"He never learned that sometimes you don't get your way. He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle."

According to Miller, Couch was left to raise himself in a consequence-free environment. Miller advocated for Couch to receive therapy and cease contact with his parents.

The prosecutors had asked for Couch to receive 20 years in prison. Instead and as a result of the defense's argument, Judge Jean Boyd ordered Couch to a long-term, in-patient facility for therapy, no contact with his parents, and 10-years probation. His attorneys have stated that his parents have offered to pay for him to do his in-patient therapy at a center in Southern California that costs $450,000 a year. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Judge Boyd said that "she is familiar with programs available in the Texas juvenile justice system and is aware that he might not get the kind of intensive therapy in a state-run program that he could receive at the California facility suggested by his attorneys. Boyd said she had sentenced other teens to state programs but they never actually got into those programs."

Ethan Couch, therefore, will spend no time behind bars for killing four people and paralyzing another despite admitting guilt and despite the fact that the diagnosis the defense centered their case around – that of "affluenza" – is not even recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as an actual mental illness. On top of it, it appears that the judge found therapy and probation to be valid because his parents could pay for an expensive center and that he would not have to rely on the state programs. In summary, Couch got off because he comes from a wealthy family.

But there is something else going on here. It matters that Judge Boyd saw Couch as someone that not only could be rehabilitated but whom it was worth it to rehabilitate. The vast majority of kids in the juvenile justice facilities are youth of color, with only 18% of the population described as "anglo" (compare that to the fact that 44% of Texas' population of 26 million is "white" according to the latest census; Couch is white). Only 14% have parents who are still married, 52% need treatment for a capital or seriously violent crime, 48% for mental illness, and 78% for drug and/or alcohol abuse. Other than being wealthy and white, Couch and his crime match the majority of offenders in juvenile justice facilities in Texas.

There is also the point that Judge Boyd believed that Couch's chance of good rehabilitation would be at a wealthy, private, out-of-state facility.This is especially striking in Texas, a state known much more for its ever-growing privatized prison-industrial complex than its compassion for prisoners. Just this year, the Texas legislature slashed the budget of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department by $23m (despite the state having a surplus of funds). There is also an on-going battle over the possible closure of one of its health facilities for mentally ill juvenile offenders, both because of years of violence and abuse as well as being far from treatment providers. The juvenile criminal system is bad enough that one writer at the Dallas Observer asked in response to this case, "Because we condemn everybody else's kid to violent prisons, does that mean it's unjust to let any one kid go?"

Many of these problems in treating the mental health of criminals are mirrored in the adult criminal population in Texas. A 2009 report from the University of Texas showed that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) had a total of 112 facilities, only four of which were for the psychiatric care of the prisoners. According to the TDCJ's 2012 statistical report, of the 152,000 prisoners "on hand", only 3,400 were in SAFPF, or a Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facility which has an "intensive six-month therapeutic community program (nine-month program for offenders with special needs)". Of the 2,600 men in those facilities, 42% are white (pdf) despite accounting for just 30% (pdf) of the overall prison population.

And Texas is just a microcosm of a larger problem throughout the US. Private prisons are growing, earning more and more money, and lobbying politicians to call for even more private prisons. Mass incarceration, of which the US is the global leader (pdf), is leading to more and more mentally ill people entering prison. It appears that only criminals like Couch – those who can afford to pay their way through expensive, private rehabilitation and therapy programs – have access to a system that has a chance of working in their favor. If judges know how poor the system is for the mentally ill, as Judge Boyd implies in her remarks regarding Texas, does that mean that they see the wealthy as more likely to be worthy of attempting true rehabilitation? Worse, does that mean even more lenient sentences for the rich?

Judge Boyd has now participated in the very cycle that she wants to break: instead of Couch having to face the tough consequences of the horrific crime he committed, his wealth has once again padded his way. She has reinforced the fact that being very wealthy and throwing money at a problem will allow you to avoid the punishments that your peers who do not have the same resources as you cannot.

Wealth literally bought this kid's way out of prison and into a facility that can help him. The tragedy this case highlights is all the children who cannot do that and will instead enter an ever-growing, ever-problematic US criminal system that will most likely fail them – and us.

[BrianFaePerth]

 

There are many reasons to feel disgust over a judge in a juvenile court in Fort Worth, Texas, sentencing 16-year-old Ethan Couch to 10 years of probation for killing four pedestrians and paralyzing his friend while driving drunk this summer.

Leading up to the tragedy that killed Breanna Mitchell (aged 24), Hollie Boyles (42) and Shelby Boyles (21) and Brian Jennings (43), Couch and a group of friends stole alcohol from a Walmart nearby. At the time of the crash, he was driving a pickup owned by Cleburne Sheet Metal, his father's company. Couch had seven passengers in his truck and a blood-alcohol content of 0.24, three times the legal limit in Texas. He also had valium in his system. Two of his passengers were severely injured, including Sergio Molina, who suffered brain damage that has left him with blinking as his only form of communication.

Couch has never denied that he was driving drunk that night, nor that he killed those people. Instead, the defense argued that Couch grew up in a family that was dysfunctional, in part because of its wealth, and that he deserved therapy, not incarceration.

During the court trial, the defense called psychologist G Dick Miller as main witness. He gave now-infamous testimony. Miller diagnosed Couch as suffering from "affluenza" where his parents' wealth fixed problems in their lives. Miller explained it this way:

"The teen never learned to say that you're sorry if you hurt someone. If you hurt someone, you sent him money."

He said that Couch had an emotional age of 12 and that both of Couch's parents failed him. Miller continued:

"He never learned that sometimes you don't get your way. He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle."

According to Miller, Couch was left to raise himself in a consequence-free environment. Miller advocated for Couch to receive therapy and cease contact with his parents.

The prosecutors had asked for Couch to receive 20 years in prison. Instead and as a result of the defense's argument, Judge Jean Boyd ordered Couch to a long-term, in-patient facility for therapy, no contact with his parents, and 10-years probation. His attorneys have stated that his parents have offered to pay for him to do his in-patient therapy at a center in Southern California that costs $450,000 a year. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Judge Boyd said that "she is familiar with programs available in the Texas juvenile justice system and is aware that he might not get the kind of intensive therapy in a state-run program that he could receive at the California facility suggested by his attorneys. Boyd said she had sentenced other teens to state programs but they never actually got into those programs."

Ethan Couch, therefore, will spend no time behind bars for killing four people and paralyzing another despite admitting guilt and despite the fact that the diagnosis the defense centered their case around – that of "affluenza" – is not even recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as an actual mental illness. On top of it, it appears that the judge found therapy and probation to be valid because his parents could pay for an expensive center and that he would not have to rely on the state programs. In summary, Couch got off because he comes from a wealthy family.

But there is something else going on here. It matters that Judge Boyd saw Couch as someone that not only could be rehabilitated but whom it was worth it to rehabilitate. The vast majority of kids in the juvenile justice facilities are youth of color, with only 18% of the population described as "anglo" (compare that to the fact that 44% of Texas' population of 26 million is "white" according to the latest census; Couch is white). Only 14% have parents who are still married, 52% need treatment for a capital or seriously violent crime, 48% for mental illness, and 78% for drug and/or alcohol abuse. Other than being wealthy and white, Couch and his crime match the majority of offenders in juvenile justice facilities in Texas.

There is also the point that Judge Boyd believed that Couch's chance of good rehabilitation would be at a wealthy, private, out-of-state facility.This is especially striking in Texas, a state known much more for its ever-growing privatized prison-industrial complex than its compassion for prisoners. Just this year, the Texas legislature slashed the budget of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department by $23m (despite the state having a surplus of funds). There is also an on-going battle over the possible closure of one of its health facilities for mentally ill juvenile offenders, both because of years of violence and abuse as well as being far from treatment providers. The juvenile criminal system is bad enough that one writer at the Dallas Observer asked in response to this case, "Because we condemn everybody else's kid to violent prisons, does that mean it's unjust to let any one kid go?"

Many of these problems in treating the mental health of criminals are mirrored in the adult criminal population in Texas. A 2009 report from the University of Texas showed that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) had a total of 112 facilities, only four of which were for the psychiatric care of the prisoners. According to the TDCJ's 2012 statistical report, of the 152,000 prisoners "on hand", only 3,400 were in SAFPF, or a Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facility which has an "intensive six-month therapeutic community program (nine-month program for offenders with special needs)". Of the 2,600 men in those facilities, 42% are white (pdf) despite accounting for just 30% (pdf) of the overall prison population.

And Texas is just a microcosm of a larger problem throughout the US. Private prisons are growing, earning more and more money, and lobbying politicians to call for even more private prisons. Mass incarceration, of which the US is the global leader (pdf), is leading to more and more mentally ill people entering prison. It appears that only criminals like Couch – those who can afford to pay their way through expensive, private rehabilitation and therapy programs – have access to a system that has a chance of working in their favor. If judges know how poor the system is for the mentally ill, as Judge Boyd implies in her remarks regarding Texas, does that mean that they see the wealthy as more likely to be worthy of attempting true rehabilitation? Worse, does that mean even more lenient sentences for the rich?

Judge Boyd has now participated in the very cycle that she wants to break: instead of Couch having to face the tough consequences of the horrific crime he committed, his wealth has once again padded his way. She has reinforced the fact that being very wealthy and throwing money at a problem will allow you to avoid the punishments that your peers who do not have the same resources as you cannot.

Wealth literally bought this kid's way out of prison and into a facility that can help him. The tragedy this case highlights is all the children who cannot do that and will instead enter an ever-growing, ever-problematic US criminal system that will most likely fail them – and us.

 

 

 

Saw thon, wish eh could have affluenza

[Henry]

Should Jesus be portrayed as a white man despite hailing from the Middle East? Should Santa always be depicted as white, despite being a fictional character based on a fourth century Greek Christian bishop?

Well, a commentator on US network Fox News has something to say on the matter.

The row was prompted by an article published on the US website the Slate, entitled: 'Santa Claus Should Not Be A White Man Anymore'. The piece argues that from now on Santa should be depicted as - wait for it - a penguin.

It explains how the confusion caused by assigning an arbitrary race to a fictitious person could be overcome by making Santa into a cuddly bird.

Its author Aisha Harris states: "It’s time to hand over the reins to those deer and let the universally beloved waddling bird warm the hearts of children everywhere, regardless of the color of their skin."

Responding to the story Megyn Kelly, a presenter on the right-wing Fox News network, set out to put children straight on the matter.

"When I saw this headline I kinda laughed and I said, "Oh, this is ridiculous. Yet another person claiming it's racist to have a white Santa," Kelly begins.

"And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white. But this person is maybe just arguing that we should also have a black Santa. But, you know, Santa is what he is, and just so you know, we're just debating this because someone wrote about it, kids," she adds.

A fellow contributor to the show Jedediah Bila defended Harris' article, prompting another outburst from Kelly. "Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change," she said.

"You know, I mean, Jesus was a white man too. He was a historical figure; that's a verifiable fact as is Santa, I want you kids watching to know that - but my point is: how do you revise it, in the middle of the legacy of the story, and change Santa from white to black?"

So, there you go. A 'verifiable fact', no less.

 

[Henry]

A retired police officer shot dead a fellow cinemagoer in Florida in an argument over texting, police say.

Ex-officer Curtis Reeves, 71, opened fire after asking a man sitting directly in front of him to stop texting several times, a Pasco County Sheriff spokesman said.

Chad Oulson, 43, died in hospital.

The two men, accompanied by their wives, had been watching the previews for a matinee screening in Wesley Chapel, north of Tampa, on Monday.

The victim had explained that he was texting his three-year-old daughter, witness Charles Cummings told FOX 13 television.

Mr Reeves has been charged with second-degree murder.

The two couples had been waiting to watch the new war film Lone Survivor at the Cobb Grove 16 cinema in Wesley Chapel when the row broke out.

Mr Reeves apparently stormed out of the auditorium to get a manager, but returned without one.

"Three seconds, four seconds later, the argument starts again," Mr Cummings said.

"Their voices start going up; there seems to be almost a confrontation. Somebody throws popcorn, I'm not sure who threw the popcorn, and, bang, he was shot."

Mr Oulson's wife, Nicole, was wounded as she had placed her hand over her husband just as he was shot, sheriff's spokesman Doug Tobin said.

A nurse in the audience tried performing emergency resuscitation on the victim while an off-duty sheriff's deputy detained the gunman, according to reports.

"The male victim is deceased. The female victim was injured with non-life-threatening injuries," Mr Tobin said.

Tampa Police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said Mr Reeves was a captain when he retired from the department in 1993, according to the Associated Press. After he retired, he was on the board of a neighbouring county's Crime Stoppers organisation.

The cinema, part of the Cobb Theatres chain, was reportedly evacuated and closed.

''It's crazy. I never thought something like this would happen at our theatre," ABC News quoted cinema employee Leny Vega as saying.

Lone Survivor, based on a New York Times best-seller, stars Mark Wahlberg and tells the story of four navy Seals on an ill-fated covert mission against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

 

Why would a three year old have a phone?

[BrianFaePerth]

Eh ken Wesley Chapel and Pasco County very well, even been to thon movie theatre. Weird shit.

[BrianFaePerth]

 

Why would a three year old have a phone?

 

Why would a 71 year old have a gun while watching a movie?

[Henry]

 

Aye, fair enough.

[Ke1t]

 

Why would a 71 year old have a gun while watching a movie?

 

Are you telling me you've NEVER gone to the movies and, half way through, needed to shoot someone?

 

Please.

[caledonia]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/14/report-government-spent-millions-on-penis-pumps-paid-double-retail-price/?intcmp=latestnews

 

Taxpayers paid nearly $175 million for vacuum erection systems (VES), commonly known as “penis pumps,” from 2006 to 2011, according to an inspector general report released on Monday.

 

[actonsheep]

Sued for taking a pic of someone with their tits out..

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25734917

 

 

The owners of New York's Empire State Building have sued a photographer who shot images of a topless woman on the skyscraper's observation deck.

They say Allen Henson's actions in August were "inappropriate" at a family tourist attraction and that he lacked permission to hold a photo shoot there.

 

The owners seek $1.1m (£668,455) in damages.

 

Henson says the photos were taken of a friend on his personal cell phone and have "zero commercial value".

[Ke1t]

http://youtu.be/6hb4ofSj38I