A look at Yahoo News ...

These are some of the lead stories ...

Pregnant Woman Dies After Horrifying Medical Mixup

As far as medical mix-ups go, it's a horrifying one. In October 2011, a 32-year-old woman underwent an operation at Queen's Hospital outside of London; Maria De Jesus was suffering from appendicitis and needed to have her appendix removed.

Texting Driver Who Slammed Cyclist: I, Like, 'Just Don't Care'

Poor Kimberley Davis. The 21-year-old Australian woman was livid when she slammed into a bicyclist while texting late last year, putting dents in her car. The victim suffered a spinal fracture and would spend the next three months in a hospital,

NJ Mom Charged With Unthinkable Crime (video about woman trying to drown here three kids in a river)

Bear Attack Victim Left Horrifying Phone Message for Husband

The Florida woman who was mauled by a bear while at home Saturday unintentionally left a nearly six-minute voicemail message on her husband’s phone that captures the voracity of the attack. “There

Male Police Officer Dresses As Amish Woman To Catch Alleged Child Predator [PHOTO]

Police officer Chad Adams dressed as an Amish woman for nearly two months earlier this year, in an attempt to catch a man who Amish families in Western Pennsylvania

Study finds signs of brain changes in pot smokers

NEW YORK (AP) — A small study of casual marijuana smokers has turned up evidence of changes in the brain, a possible sign of trouble ahead, researchers say.

Two more charged in gang-linked kidnapping of N.C. prosecutor's father

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina (Reuters) - Two additional suspects have been charged in the gang-related abduction of a North Carolina man whose daughter had 

 And so it continues ... more random violence and scary stories about the world. And none of it provides any context whatsoever about things we need to know to meaningfully function in the world and/or avoid dangerous situations.

 

 

The most important story is about what?

A missing plane?

Or threats to our democracy? Saw this at DailyKos today.

If you don't know what this refers to, you've not been watching or reading the news, because the story has been there.

But it is not still in the news, because a plane is still missing. And, oh yeah, there is still random acts of violence and tragedy:

BREAKING NEWS: SOUTH KOREA FERRY CAPSIZES

292 still missing

Scores of students were on the boat

A ferry carrying about 459 people, including 325 students, sank off South Korea. Four bodies have been found and 164 people have been rescued. "The water was so cold and I wanted to live," a student says. FULL STORY

• Survivors tell of panic aboard | Photos
• Stay safe and share images

So what is in the news today?

How about a missing plane? A potential civil war in Ukraine. Oh yeah, and random violence.

CNN's lead story:

Sonar sub's hunt cut short

Phone detected as jet vanished

The first mission of an underwater vehicle was aborted hours early, and a U.S. official says the phone of the jet's co-pilot was detected as the plane disappeared. FULL STORY

 

Fox News:

 

• Reuters

  'ON THE BRINK': Ukraine moves to drive out pro-Russian forces in east

  UKRAINE LAUNCHES military operation to quash a pro-Russian insurgency in eastern cities where several government buildings have been seized, while a self-defense unit (above) protects the Ukrainian parliament building in Kiev, as Moscow declares Ukraine on the brink of civil war. 
  
  
  
  
  ABC News:
  
  
  
  Boston Marathon: A Year Later

  A timeline of events from the Boston Marathon bombing tragedy.

   

  NY Times:

   

  

  Reuters

  Bullets, Blood, Then a Cry of ‘Heil Hitler’

  By STEVEN YACCINO and DAN BARRY

  Until Sunday’s shootings outside two Jewish community facilities, Frazier Glenn Miller had been vocal about his views that Jews should be killed, but had not acted on them.

  Apparent Anti-Jew Hate Crime Instead Hits Christians

 

 

Whose interests are served in the law?

This issue is raised in the book.

In it, I argue that the law tends to represent the powerful but also suggest that normal, ordinary people can also have their will impact the law, consistent with the pluralist view of the law. Yet, there is no doubt that the powerful tend to win when it comes to making the law.

This is not, and should not be, a controversial statement. After all, lawmakers tend to be very wealthy. So, they make the law. Also, it is the powerful who tend to fund the law as well, in the form of campaign contributions.

Thus, studies like this one should not surprise you. Here is a summary from Think Progress:

When organized interest groups or economic elites want a particular policy passed, there’s a strongly likelihood their wishes will come true. But when average citizens support something, they have next to no influence.

That’s according to a forthcoming article in Perspectives on Politics by Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University. The two looked at a data set of 1,779 policy issues between 1981 and 2002 and matched them up against surveys of public opinion broken down by income as well as support from interest groups.

They estimate that the impact of what an average citizen prefers put up against what the elites and interest groups want is next to nothing, or “a non-significant, near-zero level.” They note that their findings show “ordinary citizens…have little or no independent influence on policy at all.” The affluent, on the other hand, have “a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy,” they find, “more so than any other set of actors” that they studied. Organized interest groups similarly fare well, with “a large, positive, highly significant impact on public policy.”

When they hold constant the preferences of interest groups and the rich, “it makes very little difference what the general public thinks,” they note. The probability that policy change occurs is basically the same whether a small group or a large majority of average citizens are in favor. On the other hand, all else being the same, opposition from the wealthy means that a particular policy is only adopted about 18 percent of the time, but when they support it it gets adopted 45 percent of the time. Similar patterns are true for interest groups. The impact could also be even higher than their findings, as there may be policy differences among those they count as wealthy, which means that the imprecision in their measure “is likely to produce underestimates of the impact of economic elites on policy making,” they write.

The news: A disaster

What is news?

Disasters.

Like this: 

Australian PM 'confident' signals are from black box

Search narrows

Tony Abbott said searchers think they "know the position of the black box flight recorder to within some kilometers." FULL STORY

• Flight 370: What we know now
• Listening for ping: Water plays tricks
• Why no debris? | Theory  
• Replicating dramatic altitude drop  
• Missteps made   | Photos | Maps

Like this:

Students' journey of hope ends in tragedy

A truck slammed head-on into a bus carrying students in Northern California, killing five students, three chaperones and both drivers, police said. FULL STORY

 Like this:

Police: No known target in Pa. school stabbing spree

Is it any wonder why people who watch a lot of TV end up seeing the world as a mean and scary place?

An important new book!

This is a blog about the media and crime/criminal justice.

Yes, books are a form of media.

And a new book is a must read.

It is Matt Taibi's The Divide. Click on the image to look inside the book.

Here is a description of the book from Amazon.com:

Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:

Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.
 
Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.

In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.

In The Divide, Matt Taibbi takes readers on a galvanizing journey through both sides of our new system of justice—the fun-house-mirror worlds of the untouchably wealthy and the criminalized poor. He uncovers the startling looting that preceded the financial collapse; a wild conspiracy of billionaire hedge fund managers to destroy a company through dirty tricks; and the story of a whistleblower who gets in the way of the largest banks in America, only to find herself in the crosshairs. On the other side of the Divide, Taibbi takes us to the front lines of the immigrant dragnet; into the newly punitive welfare system which treats its beneficiaries as thieves; and deep inside the stop-and-frisk world, where standing in front of your own home has become an arrestable offense. As he narrates these incredible stories, he draws out and analyzes their common source: a perverse new standard of justice, based on a radical, disturbing new vision of civil rights.

Through astonishing—and enraging—accounts of the high-stakes capers of the wealthy and nightmare stories of regular people caught in the Divide’s punishing logic, Taibbi lays bare one of the greatest challenges we face in contemporary American life: surviving a system that devours the lives of the poor, turns a blind eye to the destructive crimes of the wealthy, and implicates us all.

In other words, this is about how the rich get away with crime while the poor do not.

If you don't know Taibi's work, he is a journalist and contributing editor for Rolling Stone and the author of five previous books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Great Derangement and Griftopia.

Here is what the news media are obsessing about ...

Two stories:

1) 2 NEW SIGNALS

All 4 pulses were within 17 miles

"I'm now optimistic. We'll find the aircraft or what's left of the aircraft in the not too distant future," says Australian official. FULL STORY

• Opinion: Issue bigger than finding jet
• How they're hunting for the pings
• Piecing together a plane wreck  
• Photos: The search   | Maps
• Partner: The 'plane was taken'  

2) OSCAR PISTORIUS CROSS-EXAMINATION

'You killed Reeva Steenkamp. Say it.'

A prosecutor had a photograph of Reeva Steenkamp's bullet-shattered head displayed in court today, telling Oscar Pistorius to look at it. Pistorius refused. "I was there," he said. LIVE BLOG

More:

• LIVE: Watch  
• Prosecutor grills him
• Photos: The trial  
• Pistorius in court  
• Athletes charged with murder   

You could know EVERYTHING about these cases and know literally NOTHING about the world. Which is why this wall to wall coverage is harmful for Americans and our country.

This is all news.

Well, I mean it should be.

But it is not.

Why do you think that is so? Corporate ownership of the media?

From Truthout:

The following are all relevant, fact-based issues, the "hard news" stories that the media has a responsibility to report. But the corporate-owned press generally avoids them.

1. U.S. Wealth Up $34 Trillion Since Recession. 93% of You Got Almost None of It.

That's an average of $100,000 for every American. But the people who already own most of the stocks took almost all of it. For them, the average gain was well over a million dollars -- tax-free as long as they don't cash it in. Details available here.

2. Eight Rich Americans Made More Than 3.6 Million Minimum Wage Workers

A recent report stated that no full-time minimum wage worker in the U.S. can afford a one-bedroom or two-bedroom rental at fair market rent. There are 3.6 million such workers, and their total (combined) 2013 earnings is less than the 2013 stock market gains of just eight Americans, all of whom take more than their share from society: the four Waltons, the two Kochs, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett.

3. News Sources Speak for the 5%

It would be refreshing to read an honest editorial: "We dearly value the 5 to 7 percent of our readers who make a lot of money and believe that their growing riches are helping everyone else."

Instead, the business media seems unable to differentiate between the top 5 percent and the rest of society. The Wall Street Journal exclaimed, "Middle-class Americans have more buying power than ever before," and then went on to sputter: "What Recession?...The economy has bounced back from recession, unemployment has declined.."

The Chicago Tribune may be even further out of touch with its less privileged readers, asking them: "What's so terrible about the infusion of so much money into the presidential campaign?"

4. TV News Dumbed Down for American Viewers

A 2009 survey by the European Journal of Communication compared the U.S. to Denmark, Finland, and the UK in the awareness and reporting of domestic vs. international news, and of 'hard' news (politics, public administration, the economy, science, technology) vs. 'soft' news (celebrities, human interest, sport and entertainment). The results:

-- Americans [are] especially uninformed about international public affairs.
-- American respondents also underperformed in relation to domestic-related hard news stories.
-- American television reports much less international news than Finnish, Danish and British television;
-- American television network newscasts also report much less hard news than Finnish and Danish television.

Surprisingly, the report states that "our sample of American newspapers was more oriented towards hard news than their counterparts in the European countries." Too bad Americans are reading less newspapers.

5. News Execs among White Male Boomers Who Owe Trillions to Society

The hype about the "self-made man" is fantasy. In the early 1970s, we privileged white males were spirited out of college to waiting jobs in management and finance, technology was inventing new ways for us to make money, tax rates were about to tumble, and visions of bonuses and capital gains danced in our heads.

While we were in school the Defense Department had been preparing the Internet for Microsoft and Apple, the National Science Foundation was funding the Digital Library Initiative research that would be adopted as the Google model, and theNational Institute of Health was doing the early laboratory testing for companies like Merck and Pfizer. Government research labs and public universities trained thousands of chemists, physicists, chip designers, programmers, engineers, production line workers, market analysts, testers, troubleshooters, etc., etc.

All we created on our own was a disdainful attitude, like that of Steve Jobs: "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

6. Funding Plummets for Schools and Pensions as Corporations Stop Paying Taxes

Threeseparatestudies have shown that corporations pay less than half of their required state taxes, which are the main source of K-12 educational funding and a significant part of pension funding. Most recently, the report "The Disappearing Corporate Tax Base" found that the percentage of corporate profits paid as state income taxes has dropped from 7 percent in 1980 to about 3 percent today.


7. Companies Based in the U.S. Paying Most of their Taxes Overseas

Citigroup had 42% of its 2011-13 revenue in North America (almost all U.S.) and made $32 billion in profits, but received a U.S. current income tax benefit all three years.

Pfizer had 40% of its 2011-13 revenues and nearly half of its physical assets in the U.S., but declared almost $10 billion in U.S. losses to go along with nearly $50 billion in foreign profits.

In 2013 Exxon had about 43% of management, 36% of sales, 40% of long-lived assets, and 70-90% of its productive oil and gas wells in the U.S., yet only paid about 2 percent of its total income in U.S. income taxes, and most of that was something called a "theoretical" tax.

8. Restaurant Servers Go Without Raise for 30 Years

An evaluation by Michelle Chen showed that the minimum wage for tipped workers has been approximately $2 an hour since the 1980s. She also notes that about 40 percent of these workers are people of color, and about two-thirds are women.

Lots of criminal justice policy in the news

From the national to the state levels, and even some local news on criminal justice policy today. What is incredible is that much of this is coming from major officials government, including state governors. Here is a summary from one article in USA Today summarizing what these articles are really about:

What happened? Dwindling public resources jump-started a movement as stressed government budgets were unable to keep pace with the rates of prosecution and incarceration. It costs the United States about $80 billion per year to house more than 2 million in jails and prisons.

Lawmakers, criminal justice officials and analysts say there is a growing philosophical component to this seismic shift that is raising fundamental questions of fairness. The vanguard of the movement - which includes such unlikely partners as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., - for the first time in a generation is collectively acknowledging that some of the most extreme punishment policies have largely failed.

State's criminal justice system needs 'major' reform, Utahns say

ksl.com-Apr 5, 2014

The meeting was the second of a series of public hearings meant to facilitate discussion of criminal justice policy changes. "I'm actually very ...

Deseret News

Families, former inmates, experts critique Utah criminal justice system

Salt Lake Tribune-by Marissa Lang-Apr 3, 2014

The final Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice hearing for ... on how to improve the state's criminal justice policy and better serve its ...

Utahns offer input on criminal justice system reform
Deseret News-Apr 3, 2014

Explore in depth (3 more articles)

 

 

NEWS.GNOM.ES

Toughness on crime gives way to fairness, cost reality

Marshfield News-Herald-Mar 30, 2014

Lawmakers, criminal justice officials and analysts say there is a growing ... has been unwinding the costly convergence of extreme penal policy ...

Cops and Economists: Contrasting yet Complementary Views on ...

EconoMonitor-1 hour ago

... unintended consequence—the way drug policy enriches criminals. ... the labor market effects of contact with the criminal justice system ...

After a one day break due to yet another mass shooting ...

CNN is back to this same story:

BREAKING NEWS: THE SEARCH FOR FLIGHT 370

TICK, TOCK, TICK ...

What happens when pinger dies?

It's a mundane sound, like the ticking from a loud wall clock. But searchers are desperate to hear Flight 370's pinger. FULL STORY

• Search goes under water
• Iranian's misdeed keeps mom away
• Hampered by ocean trash | Maps
• Husband: Life is at a standstill  
• Photos: The search for Flight 370  

Meanwhile, the lead story on MSNBC is about the man who literally created the Iraq war and all the mess that followed:

Then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld speaks to reporters in the briefing room at the Pentagon on Oct. 26, 2006 in Arlington, Va.

Mark Wilson/Getty

Rumsfeld’s slippery memory

 And over at Fox, the lead story is of course something negative about the federal government.

POWER GRAB': GOP tells EPA to ax water rule amid outcry from farmers

• AP
• GOP LAWMAKERS are calling on EPA chief Gina McCarthy to reconsider a proposal to regulate many of the nation's streams and wetlands amid intense backlash from farm groups fearing the water rule will drive up business costs.
• Critics say 'transparent' administration anything but open about federal regulations
• Watchdog: EPA human test subjects not always told about lethal risks of studies
• EPA accused of stonewalling records requests from conservative groups
• VIDEO: Global warming media hysteria?

How and why corporations get away with crime

As noted in the book, the media generally ignore issues of corporate crime.

That is, in part, because the law tends not to define harmful acts of corporations as crimes.

But, even when a major corporation actually violates the criminal law--and people die!--the media still tend not to depict their acts as crimes.

Instead, the stories examine "recalls" and "defects."

So how about GM, which knowingly sold cars that they knew to be defective, defects which directly caused the deaths of more than a dozen people?

How come it takes a comedian on "Comedy Central" to focus our attention on it? Brilliantly so here.

Fixing the cars was not "an acceptable business case" because it would take too long and cost too much.

If GM were a person, it would sort of be like Jeffrey Dahmer. Yeah, someone should write a book about how corporations are like psychopaths. Maybe that will make a difference?

Listen. Google this. It will take seconds. You'll learn GM knew. The fix cost 57 CENTS. Yet they did not do it. And its current CEO calls this "unacceptable." Ok, so who is going to prison for it?

From my friend Mary

My friend Mary today posted this on her Facebook page:

"The SCOTUS just sold out the U.S. and there was an 8.2 magnitude earthquake in Chile, yet CNN's top 'breaking news' story is STILL about a plane that crashed into the ocean weeks ago."

Amen.

Here is what she is talking about with the SCOTUS (US Supreme Court). Mark it down. April 2, 2014, the day democracy in America died.

Yet, the lead story on CNN was still about a missing plane.

Well, untill yet another shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. It is now CNN's lead story.

FAIR on the drug war

From Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):

"When [President] Obama said pot wasn't more dangerous than alcohol, it was a huge understatement: Statistically, alcohol is vastly more deadly. Yet media portrayed his remarks as enormously controversial--judging his statement by culture war rather than public health standards."

I find this so interesting, because it is pretty close to being exactly what I told my students in my drug war class. Alcohol kills about 88,000 people a year, not including people killed in alcohol-related car crashes, yet data from the CDC's Wonder program show that marijuana kills maybe 1.48 people per year.

Do the media accurately tell this story? See for yourself. Talk about embarrassing.

Can you say disgusting?

Remember the case of affluenza? The kid who killed four people and basically got away with it because he was rich?

How about this case?

A Delaware man convicted of raping his three-year-old daughter only faced probation after a state Superior Court judge ruled he "will not fare well" in prison.

In her decision, Judge Jan Jurden suggested Robert H. Richards IV would benefit more from treatment. Richards, who was charged with fourth-degree rape in 2009, is an unemployed heir living off his trust fund. The light sentence has only became public as the result of a subsequent lawsuit filed by his ex-wife, which charges that he penetrated his daughter with his fingers while masturbating, and subsequently assaulted his son as well.

Richards is the great grandson of du Pont family patriarch Irenee du Pont, a chemical baron.
According to the lawsuit filed by Richards' ex-wife, he admitted to assaulting his infant son in addition to his daughter between 2005 and 2007. Richards was initially indicted on two counts of second-degree child rape, felonies that translate to a 10-year mandatory jail sentence per count. He was released on $60,000 bail while awaiting his charges.

Richards hired one of the state's top law firms and was offered a plea deal of one count of fourth-degree rape charges -- which carries no mandatory minimum prison sentencing. He accepted, and admitted to the assault.

In her sentence, Jurden said he would benefit from participating in a sex offenders rehabilitation program rather than serving prison time.

Wait, so poor people fare well in prison?

Still obsessed

Even after a mudslide in the United States that may have killed more than 100 people--apparently in a place built by people with knowledge that a massive landslide would one day likely occur in the area--the nation's news organizations are still obsessed with the mystery surrounding one disappearing plane.

BREAKING NEWS: MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370

NEW 'OBJECTS' IN NEW FLIGHT 370 SEARCH AREA

Change based on radar analysis

After the search for Flight 370 debris moved 680 miles to the northeast, a plane takes images of "objects." Those will be analyzed in Australia. FULL STORY

• Brother's text back to airline: F--- you
• Still mystery in 1977 Malaysia crash
• New search is closer to Australia  
• Partner: My world is upside down  

Of course I understand why this story is "newsworthy" but the level of coverage has been nothing less than astounding, especially considering how many people die (and are killed) from other causes that never make the news.

This is a reminder of one of the main points of the book: The media focus on some things and not others, directly impacting the things that people think about, worry about, and fear (and the things they don't).

Exciting criminal justice reforms?

Increasingly, in the face of tight state and federal budgets, governments are considering major criminal justice reforms.

Two examples discussed in an op-ed in the New York Times:

The Smarter Sentencing Act — introduced in the Senate last year by Richard Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, and Mike Lee, the Utah Republican — would halve mandatory minimum sentences for certain nonviolent drug crimes, which currently stand at five, 10 and 20 years. It would also give judges more discretion to sentence below the mandatory minimum in some cases, and it would provide a chance at early release for thousands of inmates sentenced under an older law that disproportionately punished crack cocaine offenders.

 

The Recidivism Reduction and Public Safety Act, introduced by Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, and John Cornyn, the Texas Republican, would allow low-risk prisoners to earn credit for early release by participating in education, job training and drug treatment programs.

 

The op-ed has also generated some interesting letters to the editor in response.

 

We discussed this issue yesterday on the campus of Appalachian State University as part of its amazing series of social justice week events. My take? It's great we're discussing reforms, no matter the motivation. But, given that much of the motivation is financial in nature, I fear we'll lose focus once the budget situation turns around, if it ever does.

 

In fact, it is the conservative political ideology promoted by state and federal legislators since the 1960s that has gotten us into this mess, an ideology that says individual criminals are solely responsible for their crimes and only a get tough on crime response will stop them. This has not only led to massive disparities in criminal justice practice but also broken the bank.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About that missing airplane ...

Yesterday I posted this as my Facebook status: "Imagine all the time and money and human resources devoted to telling the story of one missing airplane. Now imagine what we could have done with it all and what a better world it would be if we had."

Of course, it takes a comedian to show how ridiculous it all is:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/stewart-mocks-malaysia-jet-coverage

And yep, CNN is still at it today:

BREAKING NEWS: MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370

Where's the evidence?

Families, experts want proof

One thing's missing from the official version of what happened, say some experts and family members: hard evidence.FULL STORY

• Weather delays search
• How number crunchers figured it out
• Flight 370's flammable cargo
• How recovery works | Passengers
• What wreckage could reveal | Map

And so just look at all the stories NOT being widely covered in the news, but that are featured in sources like Truthout ... these stories are not covered by sources like CNN because they are complex and thus not easily boiled down to soundbites and ridiculous speculation.

Who's Buying our Midterm Elections?

By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Report

NASA Climate Predictions Show Serious Threat to Humanity

By Jessica Desvarieux, The Real News Network | Video Interview

New Lawsuit Alleges That Wells Fargo Has a Manual for Mass Fabrication of Foreclosure Documents

By Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism | News Analysis