Private Probation Companies Rack Up Huge Profits As The Poor Are Jailed

CHILDERSBURG, Ala. — Three years ago, Gina Ray, who is now 31 and unemployed, was fined $179 for speeding. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked.

When she was next pulled over, she was, of course, driving without a license. By then her fees added up to more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was handed over to a private probation company and jailed — charged an additional fee for each day behind bars.

For that driving offense, Ms. Ray has been locked up three times for a total of 40 days and owes $3,170, much of it to the probation company. Her story, in hardscrabble, rural Alabama, where Krispy Kreme promises that “two can dine for $5.99,” is not about innocence.

It is, rather, about the mushrooming of fines and fees levied by money-starved towns across the country and the for-profit businesses that administer the system. The result is that growing numbers of poor people, like Ms. Ray, are ending up jailed and in debt for minor infractions.

Read the rest here.

Ron Paul Chairs Hearings On Fractional Reserve Banking

Memory Eternal

The well known priest Fr. Peter Gillquist has reposed.

150 Years Ago: The battle of Malvern Hill

Private Edwin Francis Jennison of Louisiana killed at Malvern Hill, aged 17

The end of June 1862 found the Union general George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac at the end of a week-long retreat during the Seven Days battles, having finally taken up a strong position on Malvern Hill near the James River. Several lines of infantry were arranged along the hill’s slope, with numerous batteries of artillery positioned behind them with a clear view of any approaching Rebels. McClellan’s position seemed nearly impregnable, but Gen. Robert E. Lee believed one more attack on July 1 would destroy the exhausted Union Army.

Col. Eugene Waggaman’s 10th Louisiana was one regiment that participated in the dramatic charge. Waggaman was a deeply religious and popular officer who commanded a motley crew of soldiers. Most of his men were from New Orleans, and they reflected that city’s cosmopolitan makeup: one company had recruits from 15 foreign countries and another was made up almost entirely of Greeks and Italians. Because many of Waggaman’s men could not speak English, the regiment used French drill commands exclusively. It was motley in other ways as well: the men of the 10th Louisiana were constant camp discipline problems and helped create the notorious reputation of the famed and feared Louisiana Tigers. It would also see its share of hard service: of the regiment’s 845 members, 205 would not survive the Civil War.

Read the rest here.

I found the post script about the events of 2004-05 both sad and moving.

Feast of St. John of San Francisco and Shanghai

Patron of this blog and my name day.

My kind of doctor

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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day

Rupert Murdoch apparently tweeted that Scientology is a "creepy weird cult."

The Episcopal Organization is at it again

The Episcopal Organization (it has long since ceased to be a "church" in any meaningful way) is launching an inquisition style prosecution of nine bishops for offering support to persecuted Anglicans in court filings.  Every time I think I've posted about them for the last time, they go off and do something even more outrageous. But yea, if you needed further evidence that liberals are often the most illiberal people around look no further than here.

Europe’s bad debts are a ticking bomb

Bad debts in the eurozone are a “ticking time bomb” for the continent’s economy, with the worst effects expected to be felt next year, a report has warned.

Banks’ balance sheets will contract by a record margin in 2012, further constraining the supply of credit to businesses and consumers, according to Ernst & Young, but the “real impact” of Europe’s debt crisis will not arrive until 2013.

The accountancy firm said banks will shrink their balance sheets by €1.6 trillion (£1.3 trillion) this year as the result of asset disposals and a contraction in their lending activity – a sharper decline than during the financial ­crisis.

As a result, it predicted that corporate lending will contract by 4.8pc in 2012, while consumer loans will fall by 6.6pc, which would represent the fastest pace of lending contraction on record for the eurozone.

However, next year looks even more “bleak” as the fallout from bad debts is felt across Europe, Ernst & Young’s Eurozone Financial Services Forecast said.

Read the rest here.

Pelosi: GOP being 'mouthpiece' for health insurance industry

See or read the interview here.

She is of course right. But the fact that the GOP is owned by the insurance cartel has no bearing on the constitutionality of the law. I respect why Roberts voted the way he did. But he was wrong.

Florida's Governor Vows Defiance of Health Care Law

Florida Gov. Rick Scott now says Florida will do nothing to comply with President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and will not expand its Medicaid program. The announcement is a marked changed after the governor recently said he would follow the law if it were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Florida is not going to implement Obamacare. We are not going to expand Medicaid and we're not going to implement exchanges,'' Scott's spokesman Lane Wright told The Associated Press on Saturday. Wright stressed that the governor would work to make sure the law is repealed.

Scott told Fox News the Medicaid expansion would cost Florida taxpayers $1.9 billion a year, but it's unclear how he arrived at that figure.

Read the rest here.

Monarchist sentiment is on the rise in parts of Europe

 Meanwhile, Simeon’s brother sovereigns in the Balkans are doing a sterling job carrying on as shadow heads of state. Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia and his family live in the White Palace in Belgrade. (The president inhabits the Royal Palace.) Sixty-four percent of Serbs support Alexander’s restoration to the throne. After a tumultuous life filled with coups and exile, King Michael I of Romania—the only World War II-era ruler still around—now splits his time between Switzerland (the country that hosted him under communism) and Romania. His oldest daughter, Crown Princess Margarita, and her husband Prince Radu, live full-time in the country on returned property and play a large role in national life. Among other things the prince has become a sort of roving ambassador for Romanian business. Young Crown Prince Leka II of Albania has also found government employment. He acts as special advisor to his country’s ministries of interior and foreign affairs. This sort of “creeping restoration” has gone furthest in Montenegro, where Crown Prince Nicholas II and his family have had an official position alongside (and paid at the same rate as) the president.

Read the rest here.

Banks are the enemy

...Nobody ever seems to have to give up anything, and nobody ever seems to lose a job, and nobody ever seems to even get prosecuted, provided they are bankers. It's like the job gives them immunity for all but insider trading, and they would probably have immunity from that, too, if we didn't have a tough and fair U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

This immunity is just one more injustice, not unlike the immunity that all of the bankers at Lehman or Bear Stearns or AIG or Countrywide received. It's not unlike the immunity the bankers received from the robo-signings. These bankers were the proximate cause of so many of our ills, yet somehow they evaded the law.

That's because banking is a lawless profession. To me these people are embezzlers, fraudsters and perhaps even gangsters in pinstripes. Their immunity makes a mockery of justice, and it explains why so many simply calculate that it's worth it, because even if they get caught, all that happens is shareholders pay. What a sweet deal they have on the rest of us.

-Jim Cramer from here.

A blessed Feast to all

Why Roberts Did It

It’s the judiciary’s Nixon-to-China: Chief Justice John Roberts joins the liberal wing of the Supreme Court and upholds the constitutionality of Obamacare. How? By pulling off one of the great constitutional finesses of all time. He managed to uphold the central conservative argument against Obamacare, while at the same time finding a narrow definitional dodge to uphold the law — and thus prevented the court from being seen as having overturned, presumably on political grounds, the signature legislation of this administration.

Why did he do it? Because he carries two identities. Jurisprudentially, he is a constitutional conservative. Institutionally, he is chief justice and sees himself as uniquely entrusted with the custodianship of the court’s legitimacy, reputation and stature.

As a conservative, he is as appalled as his conservative colleagues by the administration’s central argument that Obamacare’s individual mandate is a proper exercise of its authority to regulate commerce.

Read the rest here.

Stockton files for bankruptcy

Stockton, California, became the largest city to file for bankruptcy in U.S. history on Thursday, after years of fiscal mismanagement and a housing market crash left it unable to pay its workers, pensioners and bondholders.

The filing by the city of 300,000 people followed three months of confidential talks with its creditors aimed at averting bankruptcy.

"We are now a Chapter 9 debtor," Marc Levinson, the lawyer who filed the city's voluntary petition in the Eastern District of California, in Sacramento (Case 12-32118) told Reuters.

Pleadings in support of Stockton's eligibility for Chapter 9 bankruptcy will be filed on Friday, Levinson said.

Read the rest here.

Quote of the day...

The real story of the Greece, NY bus outrage is not the old news that 13-year-olds are often monsters but, as I wrote earlier, that the victim and bus driver, both adults, did nothing to stop it. Well-meant crap like No Place for Hate™ is worthless. (Again, if anything it would cause a backlash from the kids.) Those little brats need the ‘board of education’ or a British rattan cane (the discipline that honed natural talent, which built an empire). One to three strapping men are the only ‘Bullying and Violence Response Team’ you need. (The whiny psychologizing is Christian ethics without Christ so it’s emasculated.)

-The Young Fogey

Some things are just wrong

And I agree with Dave B that this is one of them. I have heard of incidents of violence by ultra-Orthodox against leftists and secularists in Russia and a Bulgarian Orthodox priest made the news recently by encouraging people to throw rocks at gays marching in Sophia. Seriously, this sort of crap is not Orthodox. It is not even Christian.

Scenes From The Patriarchal Liturgy On The Feast of St. Jonah

June 28 2012 (NS) in Moscow's Assumption Cathedral in the Kremlin

House of Representatives holds Attorney General in contempt

Republicans in the House voted Thursday to cite Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress in a politically-charged vote stemming from an investigation into alleged gun-running by the U.S. government.

The House voted 255-67, with one member voting "present," to cite Holder for criminal contempt. Most Democrats, led by the Congressional Black Caucus, abstained from the vote and staged a walk-out. But 17 conservative moderate and Democrats voted in favor of the resolution; two Republicans broke ranks to oppose it.

Read the rest here.