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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Another despicable policy finally being challenged. Where have all those fraudulent Jesus people been all these years while this was happening? If you were a fascist regime somewhere in the world, this would be counter-PR gold. Honestly, from guns and health care to two-tier justice and a horror wealth gap, this is a nation that needs a bloody good hard look in the mirror.
| Quote: | When Lavette Mayes was waiting for her trial, the judge at her bond hearing told her that she could go home to wait for her court date – if she paid 10% of her $250,000 bond as a deposit to the court – or remain in jail.
Mayes, a mother from Chicago’s South Side, couldn’t afford $25,000, so she was incarcerated for 571 days while legally innocent. While in jail, she lost her housing, her job and business, and thousands of dollars in fees and payments to the jail. She also almost lost custody of her two children. “It was like a domino effect, it wasn’t just me – it was everyone who was dependent on me,” Mayes told the Guardian.
“I never did think that I couldn’t win my case,” she continued. “But my kids were hurting, they were crying every time I went to court. I couldn’t do that to them.” Her experience trapped in the bond system led Mayes to take a plea deal, forgoing her right to a fair trial in Illinois.
In courtrooms across the US, pre-trial release payments, called bond or bail, create dual systems of justice – one for the wealthy who can pay their way out of pre-trial incarceration and another for those who can’t afford it. Studies have also shown that hundreds of thousands of Americans like Mayes end up pleading guilty or receiving harsher sentences because of unaffordable bonds, whether or not they are guilty.
Wealth-based detention is at its core, a racial justice issue. Across the country, Black, Latino and indigenous people are detained pre-trial at far higher rates than people of other ethnicities. If given a money bail, Black people receive significantly higher bail than all other ethnic and racial groups and are less likely to be able to post the bail amount. Bail is usually set by judges in less than a minute and people with almost identical charges are often assigned bails that differ by tens of thousands of dollars.
Now, with a historic vote in the Illinois general assembly on 13 January, Illinois is poised to become the first state in the country to end the use of wealth-based pre-trial detention. The change has been a long time in the making – so long that one of the first organizers working to change the Illinois bail system six years ago got elected to the state senate and became a co-sponsor of the Pre-trial Fairness Act. |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/21/illinois-pre-trial-fairness-act-wealth-based-detention
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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stui magpie 
Oh, the Premiership's a cakewalk
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: Escaping Danistan
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| Tannin wrote: | Stui, you are saying that the Australian healthcare system is NOT
* expensive?
* bureaucratic?
* inaccessible?
* nightmare?
You have fair-dinkum rocks in your head. The American system is worse, of course, any fool knows that, but pretending that the Australian health system is in good shape is laughably naive. |
I can only go from my experience of 10 years working in Public Health and as a lifetime as a consumer.
It is bureaucratic, it's owned and run by the government, it's always going to be but it is getting better.
It's not expensive, inaccessible or a nightmare.
My most recent personal example was fixing some umbilical hernias. GP identified the problem during a check up, sent me for an abdominal ultrasound which was covered by medicare. referred to a specialist, I had the option of going public and wait for around 12 months and get it done for nothing or go private and get it done immediately, I chose the latter and between medicare and private health cover I ended up around $500 out of pocket.
When my mother broke her hip a few years ago, she wasn't out of pocket 1 cent. That includes surgery, hospital stay, ambulance transfers, rehab, OT visiting her house to write up list of required adjustments. All the services combined seamlessly.
You may have had a shit experience, that doesn't mean the system is shit.
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In my defence, I was left unsupervised |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Ballarat
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Yep. Typical bureaucrat's answer: "The pox-ridden system is fine. Really. Just because millions of Australians have experienced bad healthcare, or shockingly high bills, or horrendous wait times, or sat in emergency with serious issues for hour after hour, or been infected with Golden Staph during routine minor surgery, or dropped out of private health insurance because the fees are insane, or stayed in private health insurance and somehow paid those insane premiums only to discover that they have to pay multiple thousands of dollars out of pocket anyway, or gone for a routine test, been billed $200 cash and received a piddling $68 refund because Medicare rebates are hopelessly out of touch with reality ... really, just because of those isolated minor things only experienced by the majority of Australians, the system is fine".
You should stand for parliament Stui. You are probably marginally too close to sane for Pauline's lot, and Clive's rabble has done its dash, but I reckon the Nationals would welcome a man like you.
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Let's eat Grandma. Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Oh, the Premiership's a cakewalk
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: Escaping Danistan
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I could probably do that, and with your flair exaggeration if sure you could pick up a staff writers job at The Guardian quite easily. 
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In my defence, I was left unsupervised |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Ballarat
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A well expressed observation: Arwa Mahdawi on extremist nut-job Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.
| Arwa Mahdawi wrote: | Ah, the American dream! In some countries being a gun-obsessed racist who has spread gruesome conspiracy theories about a Satan-worshipping cult, mocked the deaths of schoolchildren and suggested Democratic lawmakers should be executed might get you put on a watch list.
In America it gets you a job in Congress. |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/30/marjorie-taylor-greene-republican-party
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Let's eat Grandma. Commas save lives! |
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PyreneesPie 
Joined: 22 Aug 2014
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^ It's downright frightening that the Republicans are doing nothing to repudiate her.
It's also rather disturbing that the majority of Republicans are still wanting to hitch their wagons to Trump, at least until the mid-term elections.
I watched "Trump's American Carnage" on SBS last night and I was deeply horrified all over again!
SBS has also broadcast another program in recent weeks "The Rise of the Nazis" and the parallels with present-day America are very disturbing. |
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roar
Joined: 01 Sep 2004
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^^ The Republican politicians that aren't white supremacists will alienate a lot of their base if they move to rid the party of that cancer.
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kill for collingwood! |
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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4 Corners tonight will be worth watching. The formidable Sarah Ferguson on Trump and the insurrection of Capitol Hill by the racists, white supremacists and their fellow travellers. A lot to see here.
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“It was never about the money” Israel Folau |
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PyreneesPie
Joined: 22 Aug 2014
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| watt price tully wrote: | | 4 Corners tonight will be worth watching. The formidable Sarah Ferguson on Trump and the insurrection of Capitol Hill by the racists, white supremacists and their fellow travellers. A lot to see here. |
I greatly appreciate Sarah Ferguson's " straight to the point" interviewing. The leader of the Proud Boys was a stone wall however and connivingly smart eg his convenient explanation of "Stand back and stand by". He interpreted it as a call from Trump to stand by him, not to be ready for insurgence! So many others must have just got it wrong!!!!
It was intriguing how the program gathered evidence to suggest that from some quarters, the invasion of the Capitol was a thoroughly planned advance. Also the belief by some office holders that had the mob got hold of Pelosi, they would 've killed her  Very alarming stuff.  |
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Pies4shaw 
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| ^ There is (at least) one present Republican member of Congress who has stated openly that Pelosi should be executed, so it's as "normalised" for them as it is shocking to actual humans. Meanwhile, AOC has said that she actually feared for her life during the raid - not just in the general sense of being fearful of the chaos and violence but in the specific sense that she'd had so many death threats she expected that she was an actual target. |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| PyreneesPie wrote: | | watt price tully wrote: | | 4 Corners tonight will be worth watching. The formidable Sarah Ferguson on Trump and the insurrection of Capitol Hill by the racists, white supremacists and their fellow travellers. A lot to see here. |
I greatly appreciate Sarah Ferguson's " straight to the point" interviewing. The leader of the Proud Boys was a stone wall however and connivingly smart eg his convenient explanation of "Stand back and stand by". He interpreted it as a call from Trump to stand by him, not to be ready for insurgence! So many others must have just got it wrong!!!!
It was intriguing how the program gathered evidence to suggest that from some quarters, the invasion of the Capitol was a thoroughly planned advance. Also the belief by some office holders that had the mob got hold of Pelosi, they would 've killed her Very alarming stuff. |
That footage of inside Trump’s area before he went to speak while his throngs of supporters had gathered was gobsmacking and remarkable. It seemed like Nazi party of the 1930’s with their Nuremberg rallies.
The warm up by the Representative from Alabama was unadulterated incitement to violence as was Trump.
I suppose the brilliant title of the 4 corners programme “Downfall” was no coincidence.
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“It was never about the money” Israel Folau |
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