Are the 1/6 insurrectionists generating some Karma at the D.C. jail?

Karma (informal): destiny or fate, following as effect from cause

In a strange article about the jail where some of the 1/6 traitors are being held, Problems at D.C. Jail Were Ignored Until Jan. 6 Defendants Came Along, reports of prisoner abuse, sewage leaks and other nasty things are being reported. State and local jail conditions in the US tend to range from bad to awful. Arguably, the situation is immoral, a national disgrace and definitely not Christian. Something is amiss and has been for a long, long time.

Jail cell at a for-profit facility in Mississippi[1]

(that's human blood on the floor)

The New York Times writes:

For several months, a few dozen men being held without bail in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have loudly and repeatedly complained about conditions at the District of Columbia jail.

Some, through their lawyers, have raised concerns about threats from guards, standing sewage, and scant food and water. A federal judge recently held top jail officials in contempt after they delayed prompt medical care for a Capitol defendant in their custody. Just last week, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, visited the jail and later likened the rioters inside to “prisoners of war,” suggesting that they had been mistreated because of their politics.

None of these allegations of neglect came as a surprise to local Washington officials, many of whom have complained about conditions at the jail for years.

“Recent reports about squalid conditions in the district jails are unfortunately not new,” Karl A. Racine, Washington’s attorney general, said at the hearing. Mr. Racine went on to say that “concerns about conditions at the jail received little attention until they were raised by mostly white defendants accused of perpetrating the Jan. 6 insurrection.”

While the 40 or so Capitol rioters housed at the jail are only a fraction of the roughly 1,400 inmates being held there altogether, their complaints about the place — which began almost immediately — have received outsize publicity. 

In September, as complaints about the jail increased in volume, a onetime campaign aide for former President Donald J. Trump held a rally in Washington in support of the defendants, billing the event as “Justice for J6.” But even though many on the right routinely refer to the rioters in custody as “political prisoners” (and to the section of the jail where they are kept as “the patriot wing”), few people — and almost no top Republican officials — attended the gathering in their honor.

After a report by the marshals was released, complaints by the riot inmates, if anything, got louder. In late October, a “cry for help” by one of the defendants, Nathan DeGrave, was released on Twitter. It referred to the D.C. jail as “Gitmo” and accused jail officials of subjecting the “Jan 6ers” to “psychological and mental abuse.”  

Patrice Sulton, the executive director of the DC Justice Lab, an organization that advocates criminal justice reform, said she was particularly frustrated that it took complaints from the recently arrived Jan. 6 defendants, most of whom are white, to get the authorities to focus on the plight of detainees at the jail, almost all of whom are Black.

“It just doesn’t sit well,” Ms. Sulton said.

Those poor 1/6 anti-patriots, being held as political prisoners and psychologically and mentally abused at the American Gitmo slammer facility in D.C. The horror. The horror. But on the bright side, maybe some Karma will flow from the traitor's complaints, causing D.C. jail conditions to improve somewhat for the Black detainees. Or maybe not. 

The NYT article also points out that officials in D.C., who have been fully aware of the situation for years, are feigning surprise and ignorance about the rotten conditions in their jail facilities. It is sort of like the cockroaches scrambling for cover with the light switch is flipped on. 

What?? Bad conditions in my jail??

Impossible! I'm shocked!

Questions: 

1. Should bad jail conditions be improved or, as the company comments below, prisons are meant to be tough environments, like those shown in the photos?

2. Why might it be that a few 1/6 traitors in the D.C. jail seem to have been able to get some attention drawn to the conditions they are being held in, but for years efforts by others to get attention to this failed? (systemic racism, maybe?)

Footnote: 

1. That facility has been sued over the disgusting conditions there. The company running this hell hole defends itself:

Lawyers for the state and representatives of Management & Training say prisons are meant to be tough environments, and that East Mississippi is no worse than most others.

“We can say — unequivocally — that the facility is safe, secure, clean, and well run,” Issa Arnita, a spokesman for the company, said in a statement released during the trial. “From the warden on down, our staff are trained to treat the men in our care with dignity and respect. Our mission is to help these men make choices in prison and after they’re released that will lead to a new and successful life in society.”

I bet that the East Mississippi hell hole is no worse than most others in that state, maybe in most or all other states too. From the photos that accompanied that article (see below and above), one can safely say that the facility is extremely dangerous, not secure, filthy, and barely run at all. The prisoners there have to make crude weapons to defend themselves from attacks by other prisoners because the guards are nowhere on the scene (coffee and donuts time for the guards!).

East Mississippi correctional facility

(that does not look to be very correctional)

It speaks for itself

Transparency and the rule of law under attack

Fungi are inherently happy

due to their ignorance 

Corruption and sleaze in government require sufficient opacity to stay under the press and public’s radar and plausible deniability for the bad guys when some of the badness does pop up and become public. This is the case everywhere. In the US, there are signs that the desire for secrecy is bipartisan and getting more aggressive. The New York Times discusses a recent example of abuses in law enforcement that government wants to be kept in secrecy. The NYT writes in an article, They Publicized Prosecutors’ Misconduct. The Blowback Was Swift.:

Grievances against 21 Queens prosecutors shared publicly online prompted a rebuke from the city, and has led to a lawsuit that raises questions about accountability in the justice system.

When three men convicted of murders they did not commit were exonerated in March, a group of law professors saw an opportunity to shed light on the kind of prosecutorial misconduct that had put the men in prison for decades.

Prosecutors working the men’s case had failed to turn over important evidence and had made false statements at trial, a judge found — textbook misconduct. And they were far from alone in the Queens district attorney’s office.

Normally, accusations of misconduct are handled out of public view by a little-known state committee. But the professors wanted to make some noise. They filed grievances against 21 Queens prosecutors, and instead of keeping their complaints quiet, they built a website and published everything online — and made plans to expand the effort to other boroughs.

The blowback from New York City was swift. A city lawyer called the grievances an abuse of the system and said that they had “concerned” local prosecutors. He accused the professors of politicizing the process and violating the law in a letter sent directly to the grievance committee responsible for disciplining lawyers.

The city’s pushback against the professors included the threat of further action if they continued to file grievances, according to a lawsuit filed publicly on behalf of the professors and their partner organization, Civil Rights Corps, in federal court in Manhattan this month.

Now, according to the professors’ lawsuit, New York City is arguing that the process of seeking consequences for prosecutorial misconduct should effectively be shielded from public view.

Ellen Yaroshefsky, a distinguished professor in legal ethics at Hofstra University who submitted an affidavit about prosecutorial misconduct in Queens in an unrelated case, said that the actions of the city’s lawyer, officially known as the corporation counsel, were “shocking.”

“These plaintiffs have ruffled the feathers of very powerful actors,” said Ms. Yaroshefsky, who was not one of the professors who filed the grievances.

Asked about the lawsuit, a spokesman for the city’s law department, Nick Paolucci, said that while prosecutors who committed misconduct should be held accountable, the professors’ attempted use of the grievance process was contrary to the law.

“Their frustration with their lack of progress to increase accountability through advocacy and the legislative process does not entitle them to misuse the attorney grievance process or bring a frivolous lawsuit to bring attention to their goals,” he said.  

The city has argued that the professors’ actions violated a New York law that requires that complaints related to lawyers’ conduct be kept private unless judicial authorities decide otherwise. The professors are asking that a judge declare that law to be unconstitutional, a violation of their First Amendment rights.

Vindicating the law is optional

Think about that for a minute. NYC says the whistleblowers broke the law and threatened to take “further action” if they didn't stop. Back in the days when the rule of law used to mean something after it was broken, assuming those days ever actually existed, it was supposed to be vindicated by prosecution, conviction and punishment. Nowadays, vindicating it is optional at least for white collar criminals. If the whistle blowers broke the law they would be prosecuted if the law had real teeth.

Obviously, if the prosecutors that got the whistle blown on them broke the law, they should also be prosecuted. The whistleblowers arguably did a public service by accusing corrupt prosecutors of hideous criminal acts. 

Keep the public in the dark and feed it BS

Equally concerning is New York City arguing to keep prosecutorial misconduct proceedings shielded from public view. Why? One can reasonably assume that if misconduct proceedings are done in secrecy, the bad prosecutors will not face much or any punishment. In effect, that would condone the sleaze of prosecutors screwing defendants by keeping exculpatory evidence hidden from them. 

Questions:

1. Why would or should a corrupt attorney or prosecutor who breaks laws, e.g., to put innocent people in jail, be afforded a secret prosecution, while other criminals are tried in public?

2. Is the argument that vindicating the rule of law is optional for white collar crooks overblown, e.g., Merrick Garland refuses to prosecute the ex-president for the multiple obstruction of justice felonies that he clearly committed[1], and NYC wants to keep prosecutor misconduct proceedings in secret? 

Footnote: 

1. There is no question about obstruction of justice. The ex-president did it multiple times. Mueller's investigation made that clear and undeniable. Hundreds of former federal prosecutors signed a public letter stating that they would have prosecuted, but for the lunacy of a quasi-rule that says a sitting president cannot be prosecuted. Nonetheless, US Attorney General Garland has opted to not prosecute the scumbag because he is rich, a White politician and/or powerful. Any one of those three “qualifications” would be sufficient for a white collar crook to face optional exposure to the rule of law. From the rest of us who commit the same crimes, the rule of law would be vindicated. Us regular people have no sleaze shield.

Quinta Jurecic at Lawfair analyzed the matter of obstruction. She wrote this in April of 2019 shortly after a still-redacted version of the Mueller Report was made public. To thus day and still in open contempt of transparency in the public interest, the full Mueller report remains hidden from the public and AG Garland is still just fine with it.

The Mueller report describes numerous instances in which President Trump may have obstructed justice. A few days ago, I threw together a quick spreadsheet on Twitter to assess how Special Counsel Robert Mueller seemed to assess the evidence. Unexpectedly, that spreadsheet got a fair amount of attention—so I thought I would delve back into the evidence to provide a revised visualization with a little more nuance, which will hopefully be helpful to people attempting to parse a legally and factually dense document.

The key question is how Robert Mueller and his team assessed the three elements “common to most of the relevant statutes” relating to obstruction of justice: an obstructive act, a nexus between the act and an official proceeding, and corrupt intent.

Her analysis found solid evidence of all three elements of obstruction at least four times. That amounts to four felonies.

A hearty thank you…

 

                                                                    My Great Niece

Thanks to all the veterans and active service members who have walked the walk of serving our country, the U.S.A.

You are much appreciated by many of us (yes, even us Dems)!

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Is Liberal Hypocrisy Fueling American Inequality?

 

The following NYT video asks why Democrats who argue for increased equality consistently fail to make the kinds of changes in state and local laws and regulations that are necessary to rectify the very inequalities they oppose. It is pointed out that in blue states with solid democratic majorities, the very inequalities opposed in the Democratic Party Platform are rampant, and, worse, perpetuated by a NIMBY mentality.  For example, zoning laws would have to change to build affordable housing.  Laws determining funding for school districts would have to change to allow the less privileged to enjoy equal opportunities and life chances. State and local tax codes would have to be reformed (some blue states have very regressive tax codes https://itep.org/whopays/  ). The video shows that such bottom-line changes are resisted consistently when democrats discuss the laws and regulations governing their own backyards. Is it unfair to call these local politicians and board members "hypocrites?" Are there good reasons for their reluctance to act in these areas that the video journalist neglects to mention? What do you think?

(Also, for those interested in this topic, I recommend the slim paperback, Dream Hoarders by Richard Reeves (2017), which claims that we should think of the main divide in this country not as the 99% vs. the top 1%, but the top income quintile (top 20%) vs. the rest (the "80%"). The reasons have much to do with the facts in the above video, which show these upper middle class households protecting their privileges relative to the rest of society, thus effectively stifling upward mobility in less affluent groups.You can read more about Dream Hoarders here, if interested: https://www.brookings.edu/experts/richard-v-reeves/  Reeves also heads up the Brookings Inst. Future of the Middle Class Initiative, which  deals with the issue of inequality and obstacles to upward mobility: https://www.brookings.edu/project/future-of-the-middle-class-initiative/  )