The stock markets are crashing, the Coronavirus is sweeping the planet and the American so-called President claims everything is fine.
There is more to life than stocks and virus.
The Guardian 3.9.2020
US Federal Court appeals panel in San Francisco reinstates 2016 judgment that found no proof 1971 song breached copyright of Taurus by Randy Wolfe.
A US appeals court has reinstated a ruling that British rockers Led Zeppelin did not steal part of their song Stairway to Heaven from another band.
The San Francisco 11-judge panel affirmed a 2016 judgment that found no proof the classic 1971 Zeppelin song breached the copyright of Taurus, written by Randy Wolfe from a Los Angeles band called Spirit.
In 2018 that ruling was overturned by a three-judge panel in San Francisco, which said certain instructions to the district court jury had been “erroneous and prejudicial”, and failed to clarify that the arrangement of elements in the public domain could be considered original.
Led Zeppelin took the case to a larger panel whose decision on Monday, based on the 1909 Copyright Act, put the original ruling back in place.
Stairway to Heaven is estimated to have grossed $3.4m during the five-year period that was at issue in the earlier civil trial.
The Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page – who was sued along with the group’s singer Robert Plant and another surviving bandmate, John Paul Jones – testified in 2016 that the chord sequence in question had “been around forever”.
But Wolfe’s trustee, Michael Skidmore, said the songs had similar chord progressions and Page may have written Stairway to Heaven after hearing Taurus while Led Zeppelin and Spirit toured together.
“Obviously the court got it wrong,” said the trustee’s lawyer, Francis Malofiy. “This is a big loss for creators, those who copyright laws are meant to protect.” Malofiy said he may appeal to the US supreme court.
Lawyers for Led Zeppelin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Amy Klobuchar is the logical choice for Joe Biden should he become the Democrats candidate. First and foremost, a woman will greatly enhance the electability of Biden.
Senator Klobuchar is smart, competent, politically savvy and someone who is qualified to be a Chief Executive.
Independent – UK 3.8.2020
Amy Klobuchar had a slip of tongue when speaking to a crowd of supporters, suggesting she might be Joe Biden‘s pick for vice president.
The Minnesota senator was speaking at a campaign rally for Mr Biden on Saturday in Michigan when she sparked the rumours.
“I could not think of a better way to end my candidacy, as hard as it was to do with our beloved staff and everyone else, than to join the tick–” she’s heard saying to the crowd.
It sounded like Ms Klobuchar wanted to say the word “ticket”, hinting she could join Mr Biden as his vice president pick.
People in the Grand Rapids crowd thought the same thing, and they started cheering and chanting the senator’s name.
Ms Klobuchar then corrected herself by saying she was going to say “terrific” not “ticket”.
“Guys, I was going to say … ,” she said over chants of her name, “than to join the terrific, the terrific, terrific campaign of Joe Biden.”
Ahead of Super Tuesday, the senator dropped out of the race to earn the Democratic nomination and endorsed the vice president shortly after. Her endorsement helped boost him in the polls and come away as the frontrunner ahead of Bernie Sanders.
Mr Biden has not revealed who he will select to be his running mate, but Ms Klobuchar’s name has been tossed around as a potential option for him. Senator Kamala Harris‘ name has also been floated around after she dropped out of the race. She endorsed his run in a statement on Sunday morning.
Last fall, the vice president mentioned several possibilities, including former Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. But whether he’s asked anyone to officially join his ticket remains unknown.
The post-mortems on Elizabeth Warren’s withdrawal as a Presidential candidate continue to pour in.
It is sad but true but the most incisive reporting about Senator Warren’s run for the Presidency are being published when she is no longer in the race.
Excerpted from The Guardian 3.7.2020 – Moira Donegan
She faced the impossible: be competent but not condescending, cheery but not pandering, maternal but not frumpy, smart but not haughty
A woman cannot be elected president.
If that statement was not true when Elizabeth Warren announced her intent to run, on New Years Eve 2018, it has become true now. With her exit from the race, the last serious female presidential candidate has now dropped out, and what was once a historically diverse field has narrowed to two very old white men, the former vice-president Joe Biden, 77, and the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, 78. The next president, it is now assured, will be a man. Again.
The message to the children was that women can do anything, that when they grow up their talents won’t be ignored, their intelligence won’t be mocked, their horizons won’t be narrowed because of their sex.
But if anything, Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy proved that this is not true. There is no way for a woman to be enough to overcome misogyny – there is no amount of smart she can be, there is no amount of good she can be, there is no point at which she will be so overpoweringly hardworking and so obviously qualified that people who do not want women to have positions of prominence and authority will have to give her one anyway. What happened to Elizabeth Warren is proof that women’s lives are still constrained and narrowed by sexism, that women’s talents and ambitions still matter less than men’s.
I don’t think that Elizabeth Warren lied very much during this campaign. I don’t think she lied about her principles, or her policy agenda, or about Bernie Sanders. If she ever lied, it was to those little girls.
All of this could have been avoided if the media and the electorate were less blinded by cynicism, sexism and fear and more willing to see Warren for who she was – the most capable, competent and kindest candidate in the race.
As a woman, the Massachusetts senator always faced an uphill battle of double standards and misogynist resentment. She had to be competent but not condescending, cheery but not pandering, maternal but not frumpy, smart but not haughty. As she rose in the polls last summer and fall, she came under the kind of scrutiny that male frontrunners are not subjected to, and faced skepticism about her claims and character that male candidates do not face.
This is the fate of a lot of women who come close to attaining power, and empirical data backs up the phenomenon: writing in the Washington Post, the Cornell philosopher Kate Manne cited a 2010 Harvard study that found that women are viewed more negatively simply by seeking office. “Voters view male and female politicians as equally power-seeking, but respond to them quite differently,” Manne writes. “Men who seek power were viewed as stronger and tougher, while power-seeking women provoked feelings of disgust and contempt.”
As a result, all of Warren’s virtues were recast as vices in the public eye. Her impressive credentials and superlative intellect became out-of-touch elitism. Her joyousness and enthusiasm were cast as somehow both insincerely pandering and cringingly over-earnest. This kind of transformation of neutral or positive character traits into negative ones is not something that happens to men in similar positions. Sanders can aestheticize his practiced cantankerousness for laughs and sympathy without anyone asking if its a put-on. Biden can use slang from the 1930s without anyone ever questioning whether the ostentatious folksiness of his “no malarkey” messaging might be just a tad affected. But for Warren, every smile was interpreted as a sign of concealed hatred, of secret, nefarious motives.
Thousands of Germans take to the streets to voice in no uncertain terms their disgust and sense of apprehension at the rise of Neo-Nazi sentiment in Germany.
Similiar street action needs to happen in America in the aftermath of a Nazi sympathizer displaying the Swastika at a Bernie Sanders campaign event.
The only way to stop the pestilience of Neo-Nazism is to stamp it out.
Deutsche Welle 3.6.2020
Germany is experiencing a steady increase in far-right, racist and anti-Semitic hate crimes. At least 7,500 people in Munich gathered to protest against the trend, pointing a finger at far-right Alternative for Germany.
More than 7,500 people gathered in Munich on Friday to rally against far-right terror, racism, anti-Semitism. The protest was also angled against the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The demonstration was organized in light of the rise of far-right attacks in Germany in recent months, such as in Hanau.
Organizers had expected at least 5,000 participants, and police estimate over 7,500 attended.
“Hate, agitation and anti-Semitism have no place here,” wrote Bavarian Premier Marcus Söder on Twitter, after giving a speech at the demonstration.
“We need to be certain that the poison does not trickle down into the groundwater of our democracy,” he said at the rally, according to the dpa news agency, echoing words used by German Chancellor Angela Merkelafter the Hanau attack.
AfD ‘want to drag Germany back to the 1930s’
Söder also strongly criticized the AfD for their part in the rise of the far-right in Germany, saying that they wanted to drag Germany back to the 1930s, according to Bavarian broadcaster BR.
Protesters brandished signs with slogans like “colorful not brown” and “grandmothers against the right.” The Left party and the Greens were also among the protesters.
A small group of critics of the demonstration tried to disturb Söder’s speech.
The AfD has 22 seats in Bavaria’s state parliament in Munich, a part of Germany known for its conservative values. The AfD has caused controversy in the state of Thuringia, with political parties floundering over their promises not to cooperate with them on any level.
America is now living in its own Weimar (1918-1933) Republic which led to the ascension of Adolf Hitler to power in Germany and the Holocaust which followed.
The political atmosphere in America is very dangerous right now and politics have moved way beyond the normal political discourse.
Bernie Sanders needs protection of the Secret Service to ensure his safety to the greatest extent possible.
The Times of Israel 3.6.2020
‘It is horrific. It is beyond disgusting that, in the United States of America, there are people who would’ display Nazi symbols, Sanders says.
A suspected white nationalist unfurled a nazi flag at a Bernie Sanders rally in Arizona late Thursday, before it was pulled down by other members of the crowd and he was thrown out of the building by security.
In video from the scene, the crowd can be seen cheering as Sanders takes the stage. The man then unfurls the swastika banner. Jeers erupt as those around him notice the Nazi flag and rip it down. Security officers then escorted him out the building.
One attendee at the rally told Buzzfeed that the man shouted anti-Jewish slurs at Sanders and gave the Nazi salute.
Apparently, Sanders did not see the flag in real time. But his spokesman, Mike Casca, told Buzzfeed that: “The senator is aware of the flag with the swastika on it and is disturbed by it.”
Video shows Sanders appeared to smile when he saw the man being escorted out, saying: “Whoever it was, I think they are a little outnumbered tonight.”
“And more importantly they are going to be outnumbered in November,” he said.
Sanders told reporters on Friday that the incident doesn’t raise “a question of whether I feel unsafe,” but of the bigger impact of anti-Semitism in the public square.
“It is horrific. It is beyond disgusting that, in the United States of America, there are people who would” display Nazi symbolism, Sanders said. He thanked local law enforcement for their handling of the episode.
“It was absolutely wild,” campaign surrogate Brianna Westbrook told the Washington Post. “I never thought I would have seen a swastika at a political event. It’s gross.”
“It really wakes you up and you see how bad things really are and the climate that we’re in,” she said.
The Anti-Defamation League called the incident”a new level of depravity.”
“Targeting a Jewish candidate with a Nazi flag represents a new level of depravity. There is no place for hate in politics. Disagree on issues, but all good people should flat out reject this kind of poison when it appears in the 2020 race,” tweeted CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.
The progressive Jewish activist group IfNotNow called it an act of anti-Semitism.
“All people of conscience must condemn this antisemitism against the most visible Jewish politician in the country,” they tweeted.
The ADL identified the white supremacist as Robert Sterkeson of Glendale, Arizona, who on multiple occasions has posted video of himself harassing Muslim and Jewish targets.
On Oct. 27, 2018, the day a white supremacist murdered 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue complex in Pittsburgh, Sterkeson unfurled a Nazi flag at a Jewish National Fund conference in the Phoenix area shouting anti-Semitic epithets while someone filmed him.
“Flying the swastika at Jewish National Fund conference on the same day as the synagogue shooting! #RobertBowersDidNothingWrong,” Sterkeson said at the time on social media.
There were several other disturbances and scuffles at the rally, including another man who was ejected by police after unfurling a pro-Trump banner.
Many on social media called for security to be stepped up for Sanders.
Sanders, 78, was long reluctant to discuss his Jewish upbringing but began to open up well into his 2016 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination when he became the first Jewish candidate to win major-party nominating contests.
He has made his Jewish identity a central factor of his 2020 campaign, although he has also drawn criticism for agreeing to have as surrogates like activist Linda Sarsour and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who have been accused of peddling anti-Semitic myths.
In February Sanders said being Jewish was one of two main factors that shaped his world view.
“It impacts me very profoundly,” he said. “When I try to think about the views that I came to hold there are two factors. One I grew up in a family that didn’t have a lot of money…and the second one is being Jewish.”
Sanders recalled as a child reading “big picture books of World War II” and “tears were rolling down my cheeks” as he learned the fate of Jews. He also remembered seeing Holocaust survivors in his Brooklyn neighborhood with numbers tattooed on their arms, and a recent visit to his father’s hometown in Poland, where locals took him and his brother to a site where Nazis committed a mass murder of Jews.
Much of Sanders’ extended family perished in the Holocaust.
He said the experiences shaped his views, particularly in opposing US President Donald Trump and the “racial division” he said Trump promoted.
It’s a sad but politically typical day in 2020 America.
The most competent and qualified person running for President in 2020 has withdrawn from the race. From the moment Senator ElizabethWarren announced her candidacy she has been held up to a vicious double standard which prevails in this country.
Labels never affixed to the guys were hung around the neck of Senator Warren from day one.
Smart, politically aggressive women are skewered with typical sexist labels. “Shrill,” “School marm,” “snake” just to name a few. Never mind that Senator Warren is a tenured law professor with decades of experience in government and academe.
In the minds of too many Americans, men and regrettably women, Senator Warren was tarred with the label of someon who couldn’t meet the standards of leadership.
What do we have now? Two old white guys vying to run against a misogynist, abusive circus clown with orange hair.
The Nation – Elie Mystal 3.5.2020
Warren was a brilliant candidate who would have made a great president. The problem? She’s a woman—and she isn’t “perfect.”
Democrats are not going to be the ones to get a woman elected president. This party, as currently constituted, is never going to fully get behind a woman candidate, because no real woman can match the pubescent fantasy of a woman Democrats seem to want.
I don’t remember how old I was when I realized that Weird Science was a horrible movie. I remember liking it as a kid. The plot line, which involves two nerds building a machine to create the perfect woman by making a literal Barbie doll come to life—in the form of Kelly LeBrock—probably seemed like a viable way to make a friend, to me. But once I learned to exercise cognitive function, the problems with that movie became so obvious that I was embarrassed that I hadn’t noticed them previously. I mean, the emotional climax involves LeBrock, who comes equipped with magic powers, summoning a mutant biker gang to kidnap the “hot girls” so the boys can confront the girls’ abductors, learn about courage, and make the girls fall in love with them. What the hell is that?
We live in a deeply sexist culture, and that misogyny is broadcast and reinforced through every cultural vector available. It is internalized, by men and women, and it takes intentional reflection and deprogramming to even start to break free from its grip.
And yet, despite the best efforts of many thinkers and activists to get America to start treating half of its population as equal members of the country, our best shot at electing a woman president probably involves the Republicans’ finding a woman who is willing to kidnap other women to make men feel strong.
Senator Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the Democratic primary earlier today. The announcement was not surprising. She couldn’t convince white suburban voters that she could take on Donald Trump. She couldn’t convince white progressives that she could take on corporate America. She couldn’t convince African Americans in the South or Latinx voters out West or any broad swath of voters that she could do either.
Sexism played a role in the failure of all her arguments. Some people openly said that a woman couldn’t beat Donald Trump. Other people made the same point, but more subtly. And most people did the usual, frustrating thing where they said a woman could win, “but not that woman.” She was called “shrill,” she was called a “school-marm,” she was called a “snake.” She got criticized for not hitting certain candidates “hard enough” and then got criticized for vaporizing other candidates down to the molecular level. And when she actually talked about the sexism she faced, and all women candidates face, the conversation became about what she could do to overcome it instead of about what everybody else needed to do to stop it.
But what makes the Warren experience all the more frustrating is that she is the candidate Democrats asked for back in 2016. This is the candidate Democrats said they wanted when they were busy calling Hillary Clinton “inauthentic” and “uninspiring” and “pandering.” She was the candidate progressives used to explain that, while Clinton was a “corrupt, neoliberal shill,” they were totally not sexist and would vote for some other woman.
Elizabeth Warren was the “Stacey Abrams” of 2016: the woman, not in the race, that people who are voting for men say they would totally vote for if she would just run. I’m sure by 2024, these same people will find all sorts of problems with Abrams. I know they will, because they always find a problem with a woman once she’s actually asking for power.
No woman can be explicitly feminist enough while also nonthreatening to male swing voters. No woman can be laughably overqualified compared to her male opponents while still being a “new” and “fresh” face to lead the party. No woman can be strong, sweet, tough, flexible, brilliant, accessible, fiery, motherly, and attractive, but not distractingly so, all at the same time. And if a woman can’t be all those things, well, why take the risk of promoting a woman when we can find a perfectly mediocre man just lying around waiting for somebody to give him a chance?
Democrats will never agree on their perfect woman candidate, but Republicans will. That’s because, while Democrats are easily intimidated by a woman who runs to free other women, modern Republicans are quite comfortable with women who hold other women back. The essential qualification for a Republican woman candidate is that she must be willing to participate in the project of upholding the patriarchy. As long as she loudly and aggressively does that, Republicans will get to yes.
Republicans can get over being slapped upside the head for an inappropriate joke; what they can’t forgive is a woman who slaps them with a lawsuit so they can’t make the joke to the next woman who comes along. As long as Republican women are “cool with it,” one of them will eventually become the president.
The left offers no such pathway. In Dame magazine, Heather Digby Parton put it like this after Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016:
2016 did show that parts of the country were ready for a woman president. What a majority wasn’t ready for was a feminist president as the traditional voters in rural, white America came out strongly for her sexist opponent. This is why I believe that the woman who breaks America’s highest and strongest glass ceiling will most likely be a conservative like Margaret Thatcher or Teresa May in the UK. (You’ll notice that the Labor [Party] has never had a woman leader.)
Democrats will not elect a woman who supports the patriarchy. They also won’t elect a woman like Warren, who means to smash it. They will excoriate a woman as a “weak” “flip-flopper” who tries to do something in between. And one day we’re going to wake up and Nikki Haley or Ivanka Trump is going to be president, and we’re all going to wonder how the hell that happened.
It will happen because Republicans are comfortable with their sexism, while Democrats refuse to confront their own. Democrats won’t embrace misogyny like Republicans, but won’t examine it long enough to overcome it.
A woman absolutely can win the presidency. If she’s magic.
It was an attack on the media and an outrage that San Francisco police raided the Richmond District home of a freelance journalist who leaked police reports following the February 22, 2019 death of the late Public Defender Jeff Adachi.
The SFPD front office could learn who was responsible for the illegal release of these reports to a friendly journalist.
Instead, the cops tried to cover their tracks by arresting the journalist. The arrest with discharged by the District Attorney.
Now the taxpayers can foot the bill for another instance of SFPD misbehavior.
San Francisco Chronicle 3.2.2020
The city of San Francisco has agreed to pay freelance journalist Bryan Carmody $369,000 for illegal police raids on his home and office last year after he obtained from a source a police report on the death of Jeff Adachi, the city’s public defender.
The late Jeff Adachi
The settlement of the claim is expected to be approved by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, paying Carmody back for his losses May 10 when police sledgehammered the front gate of his home in the Outer Richmond, held him in handcuffs for six hours and seized his phones, computers and other equipment.
The raids created an uproar among First Amendment advocates, prompting at least two other lawsuits, which are still pending.
“It is heartening to see that Bryan is going to receive some recompense for this outrageous violation of his rights,” said David Snyder, executive director of the San Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition, which filed a California Public Records Act request seeking communications between Mayor London Breed and the police about the raid. “It’s only proper that the city should be compensating him for his losses.”
Five search warrants were obtained from judges apparently for information about the unauthorized leak of a secret police report on Adachi’s death a year ago. Carmody, a stringer, obtained the report and sold it to local television stations, angering city officials who felt it was inappropriate to spread confidential information about Adachi after his untimely death.
Brian Carmody speaking with Society of Professional Journalists
Several of the judges have said police officers who submitted sworn affidavits applying for the warrants did not tell them that Carmody was a journalist and have since declared the searches illegal.
Under California’s shield law, journalists are protected from revealing their sources or unpublished information unless it can be shown that they obtained the information illegally. The law also prohibits judges from issuing warrants to search a journalist’s home or property to uncover news sources.
Police Chief Bill Scott defended the raid for two weeks, then acknowledged it had been wrong and apologized while apparently holding lower-ranking officers responsible.
I am a regular Trader Joe’s customer, having shopped there for years. The inventory is uniformly good and the staff are always professional and ready to help the customer.
Joe Coulombe is to be thanked for founding such a successful organization.
Associated Press 2.29.2020
LOS ANGELES — Joe Coulombe envisioned a new generation of young grocery shoppers emerging in the 1960s, one that wanted healthy, tasty, high-quality food they couldn’t find in most supermarkets and couldn’t afford to buy in the few high-end gourmet outlets.
So he found a new way to bring everything to market, from a then-exotic snack food called granola to California-produced wines that rivaled anything from France. He made shopping for them almost as much fun as sailing the high seas when he created Trader Joe’s, a quirky grocery store filled with nautical themes and staffed not by managers and clerks but by “captains and mates.”
From the time he opened his first store in Pasadena in 1967 until his death Friday at age 89, Coulombe watched his namesake business rise from a cult favorite of educated but underpaid young people — and a few hippies — to a retail giant with more than 500 outlets in over 40 states.
A giant yes, but one that across more than half a century has never lost its reputation for friendly service from employees in goofy Hawaiian shirts, a newsletter that looks like it was published in the 1890s, and rows and rows of high-quality, moderately priced healthy food and great wine, even if you sometimes can’t ever again find exactly the same thing.
“He wanted to make sure whatever was sold in our store was of good value,” said Coulombe’s son, also named Joe, who added that his father died following a long illness. “He always did lots of taste tests. My sisters and I remember him bringing home all kinds of things for us to try. At his offices he had practically daily tastings of new products. Always the aim was to provide good food and good value to people.”
He achieved that by buying directly from wholesalers and cutting out the middleman, in many cases slapping the name Trader Joe’s on a bag of nuts, trail mix, organic dried mango, honey-oat cereal or Angus beef chili. He named several products after his daughters Charlotte and Madeleine and gave quirky names to others. Among them were Trader Darwin vitamins and a non-alcoholic sparkling juice called Eve’s Apple Sparkled by Adam.
He prided himself on checking out every vintage of wine from California’s Napa Valley, including Trader Joe’s standby, Charles Shaw, known as Two-Buck Chuck because it sold for $1.99. (It still does in the California stores, although shipping costs have increased the price in other states.)
After selling Trader Joe’s to German grocery retailer Aldi in 1979, Coulombe remained as its CEO until 1988, when he left to launch a second career as what he called a “temp,” coming in as interim CEO or consultant for several large companies in transition. He retired in 2013.
Joseph Hardin Coulombe, an only child, was born on June 3, 1930, in San Diego and lived on an avocado ranch in nearby Del Mar. After serving in the Air Force, he attended Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in business administration. There he met his future wife, Alice.
Chesa Boudin ran and was elected as District Attorney on a platform to reform and reprioritize the mission of his office. During his first 51 days in office the new DA is keeping the promise to San Franciscans who elected him last November.
San Francisco Examiner 2.28.2020
District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced policy changes Friday aimed at reducing racial disparities in policing and sentencing.
The district attorney’s office will no longer seek charges for contraband found during “pretextual” traffic stops and will not charge status enhancements that increase jail sentences, such as those imposed for gang membership or for having three strikes, Boudin said Friday.
The directives are intended to push police to implement reforms that were recommended by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2016 including taking steps to reduce racial bias in policing, he said.
“We urge the police to continue getting weapons off the street and enforcing traffic laws, but to do so in a way that is not racially motivated, and that does not continue to undermine the relationship between the communities where most crimes are committed and the police and law enforcement agencies that are sworn to serve and protect there,” Boudin said.
DA Chesa Boudin announcing policy changes 2.28.2020
Boudin clarified that the pretextual traffic stop policy was aimed at minor infractions where contraband was seized during consent only searches. Exceptions would be made for circumstances where an officer was assaulted or the person evaded arrest.
Since 2016, the San Francisco Police Department has completed 16 percent of the 272 reforms recommended by federal authorities, including six related to racial bias. According to the DOJ report, African-Americans were pulled over in traffic stops in the City five times more than any other demographic, well out of proportion with their representation in the driving population.
Supervisor Shamann Walton, who represents the Bayview District and surrounding neighborhoods, said he personally experienced racial profiling when he was pulled over twice as a teenager. He said he was demeaned and called racial slurs by white officers.
“We know that racial profiling and implicit bias is real, we know that anecdotally and statistically,” said Walton, who came out in support of Boudin’s new policies. “Most racial profiling and implicit bias stops that happen in the city happen in my district. Police data will show you that disproportionately black people that look like me will be stopped and pulled over.”
Boudin promised to end the use of sentencing enhancements for perceived gang affiliations and third strikes as part of his campaign before he was elected in November 2019. He argued that said enhancements do not help recidivism rates, and said the focus of the criminal justice system should be on rehabilitation and healing.
In California, more than 45 percent of those serving a life sentence based on three strike charges are black, according to a Stanford University study.
“Enhancements sent me to the edge of hopelessness, I felt expelled from society,” said James King, who was sentenced to 25 years to life and received 5 years in enhancements in 2004, but had his sentence commuted by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018.
Since taking office in January, Boudin has drawn harsh criticism from the San Francisco Police Officer’s Association, which even called for federal intervention to prosecute a man who was shot by a police officer when the DA’s office chose not to pursue charges. The union, which also spent more than $600,000 in a campaign against Boudin before he was elected, was characteristically critical of Friday’s announcement.
“In his short tenure, Chesa Boudin has demonstrated that he is a clear and present danger to the law-abiding residents, businesses and visitors of San Francisco,” said SFPOA President Tonya Montoya. “Chesa Boudin is emboldening criminals and we are all going to pay a steep price for his absurd policies.”
Boudin said he is willing to work with police in implementing the new policies.
The Montana Supreme gets it after a local Judge told the accused, “It’s women who commit this crime most of the time…and they commit it big time.”
The Court reversed the sentencing and order a new trial.
And I thought we are living in the 21st century. Someone forgot to tell the Montana jurist. What is most appalling beyond the blatant sexism of the Judge is the fact embezzlement carries a 20 year prison sentence in Montana.
Punitive is the only word to describe such draconian sentencing.
The Missoulian 2.26.2020
The Montana Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed a Missoula woman’s two embezzlement convictions based on a few key factors, among them a state prosecutor’s concession she is entitled to a new trial.
Linda Faye Harris, 61, will also appear before a new judge following Tuesday’s order. In her appeal, Harris argued the judge presiding over her case showed bias when he was open about both prematurely considering her guilty and surmising women to be more often guilty of embezzlement than men.
“It’s women that commit this crime most of the time,” District Judge Robert “Dusty” Deschamps III said, according to the transcripts from the January 2018 sentencing hearing included in court filings. “And they commit it big time. And it seems like once they start doing it, they just keep coming back. And she’s evidence of that pattern.”
Harris was convicted in a bench trial in 2017 on two counts of felony theft by embezzlement for taking $9,493 from Gentle Dental and $24,890 from Northwest Denture Center.
Harris initially pleaded no contest to both charges. After hearing evidence presented at a restitution hearing, however, Deschamps asked Harris if she’d like to withdraw the pleas and challenge the charges at trial. She agreed, and Deschamps set the case for a bench trial.
Supreme Court Justices noted in their order, filed on Feb. 25, that Deschamps never asked Harris if she was waiving her right to a jury trial. Additionally, he had declined prosecutors’ attempts to reintroduce evidence heard at the earlier restitution hearing, instead deciding to refer back to the testimony from the restitution hearing, justices wrote. Based on that testimony, Deschamps told Harris he was already mulling a guilty verdict on one count before the bench trial had concluded.
When Deschamps convicted Harris on both counts, sentencing her to 20 years in state prison with 15 years suspended, he set the sentence to run consecutively with a previous sentence for an earlier embezzlement, a $180,000 theft for which she was serving a suspended sentence when the new charges came along.
Harris’ attorneys argued in her appeal that Deschamps had imposed an illegal sentence because it was based, at least in part, on her gender. According to court filings that include parts of the transcript from Harris’ sentencing hearing, Deschamps had deemed embezzlement charges to be “women’s crimes.”
“… And I just think prison authorities and the Department of Corrections need to take that into consideration when releasing these people on parole. They’re serial offenders.”
Harris’ attorneys argued in their August 1, 2019, opening brief that Deschamps’ statements warranted at least a new sentencing before a different judge.
Assistant Attorney General Brad Fjeldheim conceded in a Feb. 20 filing that Harris is entitled to a new trial before a new judge because she had not waived her right to a jury trial. Additionally, Fjeldheim wrote, Deschamps should not have relied on testimony from the restitution hearing during Harris’ bench trial.
“On these grounds, the State concedes, because Harris did not get a fair trial,” Fjeldheim wrote.
Lee's Perspective 