EFTA00695928.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: jeevacation@gmail.com Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 05/07/2017 Date: Sun, 07 May 2017 11:07:51 +0000 Attachments: IMMIGRATION_AND_PUBLIC_SAFETY_The_Sentencing_Project_March_2017.docx; The_Danger_of_Trump? s_Civil_Warignoran_ce_Jamelle_Bouie_SLATE_May_3,2017.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(I).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(14).png; image(I5).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(18).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png; image(22).png DEAR FRIEND Don't Blame Jesus Blame game: Trump casts immigrants as dangerous criminals, but the evidence shows otherwise Inline image 1 Starting from his first day as a candidate, President Donald Trump has made demonstrably false claims associating immigrants with criminality. As president, he has sought to justify restrictive immigration policies, such as increasing detentions and deportations and building a southern border wall, as public safety measures. He has also linked immigrants with crime through an Executive EFTA00695928 Order directing the Attorney General to establish a task force to assist in "developing strategies to reduce crime, including, in particular, illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and violent crime," and by directing the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to assist and publicize victims of crimes committed by immigrants. A rigorous body of research by both The Sentencing Project and the Cato Institute supports the following conclusions about the recent impact of immigrants in the United States: 1. Immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native born citizens. 2. Higher levels of immigration in recent decades may have contributed to the historic drop in crime rates. 3. Police chiefs believe that intensifying immigration law enforcement undermines public safety. 4. Immigrants are under-represented in U.S. prisons. Inline image 2 Trump Administration officials said the strategy is intended to reframe the political debate over immigration reform from what they view as a misplaced emphasis on the well-being of the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to the negative impacts their presence can have on local communities. At the White House, President Trump has on several occasions used the bully pulpit to highlight some of the most sensational crimes by immigrants, and he met in the Oval Office with family members of their victims. "We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored," Trump said during his prime-time address to Congress last month before highlighting each of the families' stories. "These brave men were viciously gunned down by an illegal immigrant with a criminal record and two prior deportations," Trump said to two widows of law enforcement officials killed in the line of duty. "Should have never been in our country." EFTA00695929 In his first week in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to deport most illegal immigrants who come in contact with law enforcement. His order is based on the widespread perception that illegal immigrants are a significant source of crime in the United States. This brief uses American Community Survey data to analyze incarcerated immigrants according to their citizenship and legal status. All immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives relative to their shares of the population. Even illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans. BACKGROUND Estimates of the total criminal noncitizen population vary widely, from about 820,000 according to the Migration Policy Institute to 1.9 million according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but rarely is the number of those incarcerated estimated. Empirical studies of immigrant criminality generally find that immigrants do not increase local crime rates and are less likely to cause crime than their native-born peers, and that natives are more likely to be incarcerated than immigrants. There are two broad strands of this literature. The first is an area approach that analyzes how immigrants affect crime in locations where they settle, finding a general decrease in crime rates. The second broad strand of research examines immigrant institutionalization rates and uniformly finds that that native-born Americans are more likely to be incarcerated than immigrants as a percentage of their population. Illegal immigrant incarceration rates are not well studied, although one investigation estimated that 4.6 percent of Texas inmates are illegal immigrants while illegal immigrants comprise 6.3 percent of that state's total population. The best research on illegal immigrant crime exploits a natural experiment to see how the removal of illegal immigrants from an area through the Secure Communities (SCOMM) program affects local crime rates. SCOMM was an interior immigration enforcement program started in 2008 that checked the fingerprints of local and state arrestees against federal immigration databases. If ICE suspected the arrestee of being an illegal immigrant, then ICE would issue a detainer to hold the arrestee until ICE could pick them up. The Obama administration ended SCOMM in 2014, but the Trump administration reactivated it. If illegal immigrants were more crime prone than natives, the crime rates in those local areas that were first enrolled in the program should have seen crime decline relative to areas that were not. As it turned out, SCOMM had no significant effect on local crime rates, which means that illegal immigrants were not more crime prone than natives. But critics, including civil rights advocates and immigration lawyers, said the Trump administration is purposely inflating the dangers and scapegoating a wide swath of immigrants to manipulate public fears and create more political support for its hardline policies. IMMIGRANTS COMMIT CRIMES AT LOWER RATES THAN NATIVE BORN CITIZENS EFTA00695930 "Research dating back more than a century documents a pattern whereby the foreign-born are involved in crime at significantly lower rates than their peers," note Bianca Bersani and Alex Piquero, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and a criminologist at the University of Texas, respectively. These scholars contribute to a vast body of research demonstrating that popular fears about immigration and crime have been unfounded. Inline image 3 Foreign-born individuals ("first-generation immigrants") report lower rates of criminal offending than native-born citizens and they have less contact with the criminal justice system, as measured by arrest records. Indeed, two notable studies, highlighted in a report by the American Immigration Council, find: • Foreign-born individuals are less likely than native-born individuals to have engaged in violent or non-violent antisocial behaviors in their lifetimes, including harassment, assault, and acquiring multiple traffic violations, "despite being more likely to have lower levels of income, less education, and reside in urban areas." The study's authors add that these findings hold for immigrants from major world regions including Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Their analysis drew on survey data from a nationally representative sample of over 40,00o U.S. residents aged 18 years and older. • Foreign-born youth enrolled in U.S. middle and high schools in the mid-199os had among the lowest delinquency rates when compared to their peers. These researchers focused on non- violent delinquent acts such as stealing, damaging property, or selling drugs. In fact, the prevalence of foreign-born individuals among the Latino population helps to explain differences in violent crime rates between whites and Latinos. Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson and colleagues have found that "the lower rate of violence among Mexican Americans compared with Whites was explained by a combination of married parents, living in a neighborhood with a high concentration of immigrants, and individual immigrant status." Thus all else equal, ethnic/racial groups with a higher proportion of immigrants exhibit lower rates of crime. IMMIGRANTS ARE UNDERREPRESENTEDIN U.S. PRISONS U.S. State and Federal Prison Populations by Citizenship EFTA00695931  Inline image 4 Legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives. After immigration law violations, drug convictions were the next largest category of federal offenses of which non-citizens were sentenced (24%). In contrast, drug offenses accounted for 38% of federal sentences for U.S. citizens. Undocumented immigrants who receive federal criminal sentences are even more likely to be convicted of an immigration law violation as their most serious offense. Nearly three-quarters (93%) of the 25,670 undocumented immigrants sentenced in federal criminal courts in 2015 were convicted of an immigration offense. In addition, in that year: • Twenty percent of undocumented immigrants who received federal sentences were convicted of drug offenses (5,218 sentences). As noted above, drug offenses accounted for 38% of federal sentences for U.S. citizens. • Six undocumented immigrants received federal sentences for murder and manslaughter. This comprised .02% of federal sentences for this group (in contrast to .3% for U.S. citizens). Seen another way, undocumented individuals accounted for 4% of the 143 federal sentences for these offenses. U.S. citizens, in contrast, received 88% of these sentences (126 sentences). AGAIN: Trump has been making that connection from his first campaign speech in June 2015, when he referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists, criminals and drug dealers. He appeared at campaign events with "angel moms" whose children had been killed by undocumented immigrants. Beyond illegal immigration, Trump has characterized legal immigrants as potential terrorist threats in his attempts to enact a ban on refugees and travelers from several majority-Muslim nations. Although his two travel-ban orders have been blocked in federal court, the most recent one included a provision mandating that the government begin publicizing information about acts of "gender-based violence against women," including "honor killings," in the United States by foreign nationals. In a visit to DHS in January, during which he signed a pair of executive orders to ramp up deportations in the United States, Trump said, "Pundits talk about how enforcing immigration laws can separate illegal immigrant families, but the families they don't talk about are the families of Americans." Trump's focus on those families, through the new office called Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE), represents a sharp break in rhetoric from his predecessor. President Barack Obama emphasized a balance between upholding the law and showing empathy toward immigrants who had not committed crimes, particularly those known "dreamers" who arrived in the country illegally as children and were often depicted as hard-working strivers. EFTA00695932  HIGHER LEVELS OF IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE HISTORIC DROP IN CRIME RATES The influx of immigrants in recent decades has coincided with a significant decline in reported crime rates, which may have been influenced by the growing immigrant population. Research has demonstrated that communities with larger immigrant populations have outpaced the public safety gains of their peers. Inline image 5 In 1990 the reported violent crime rate was 730 offenses per 100,000 residents. That same year the number of foreign-born individuals living in the United States was roughly 19.8 million (3.5 million of whom were undocumented). The violent crime rate began to fall in the mid-199os and by 2014 it was half of its 1990 level, at 362 offenses per 100,000 residents. By that year, the foreign-born population had more than doubled, reaching 42.2 million people (including 11.1 million undocumented people). Research has shown that crime rates have also decreased in "gateway" cities, which are the entry point cities to the United States and often the most densely immigrant-populated places. In addition, southwestern Border States and cities were found to be safer than similarly sized non-border areas in 2010. Even at the neighborhood level, communities with larger immigrant populations have lower crime rates. One study found that people living in Chicago neighborhoods in 2005 with at least 4o% immigrants were 8o% less likely to experience violence than people living in neighborhoods with no immigrants. In addition, immigration was generally found to not affect homicide rates of Latinos and to have mixed effects on the rate among African Americans, according to a study that looked at the relationship between immigration and homicide from 1985 to 1995 in Miami and San Diego, and from 1985 to 1994 in El Paso. Before and after his election, Donald Trump has raised concerns about increasing crime and immigration in the United States. Indeed, he has signed an executive order and made regular statements alleging that curbs to unauthorized immigration and dismantling sanctuary cities would reduce U.S. crime rates. The evidence presented here concludes otherwise. EFTA00695933 A century of research has shown immigrants do not threaten public safety and, in fact, are less likely to commit crime than native-born citizens. False statements about immigrant criminality contribute to unfounded public fears that threaten the safety of immigrants and U.S. citizens. Improving public safety is a complicated question that cannot be addressed by scapegoating foreign-born residents but rather by investing in effective community-based solutions that address the true causes of crime. ****** So True 400o years and we are back to the same language gt Inline image 1 ****** Dinosaurs EFTA00695934  Inline image 2 The shopping mall maybe the next dinosaur as a number of big-name chain have announced hundreds of new store closings and still others moved aggressively to recalibrate their businesses for the online shopping stampede. Payless Shoes filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and outlined plans to immediately close nearly 400 of its 4,400 stores globally. While Ralph Lauren is shuttering its flagship Polo store, a foot-traffic magnet on tony Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the latest step in a massive cost-cutting effort. Big-box office supplies stalwart Staples is reportedly considering putting itself up for sale. The shakeout among retailers has been building for years and is now arriving in full force. The retrenchment comes as shoppers move online and begin to embrace smaller, niche merchants. As a result, many major chains find themselves victims of a problem of their own making, having elbowed their way into so many locations that the United States has more retail square footage per capita than any other nation. To use the industry vernacular, they are simply "overstored." Many have begun cutting back, sending ripples through the economy. The wave of store closures by Macy's and Sears alone will empty 28 million square feet of retail real estate, according to an analysis by research firm CoStar. Often those vacancies are slow to fill, leaving shopping centers less hospitable to the chains that remain, feeding even more departures and job losses. The malaise has spread even as the economy overall grows stronger and the stock market marches higher. Just this week, Urban Outfitters reported that in the current quarter to-date, its comparable sales are "mid single-digit negative." The women's clothing chain Bebe said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that it is closing 21 locations. Last week, yoga clothier Lululemon chief executive Laurent Potdevin acknowledged that the chain had seen "a slow start to 2017." Few traditional retailers are immune: The Limited filed for bankruptcy and shuttered all 250 of its stores. Hudson's Bay, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, announced a $75 million annual cost-cutting effort . Banana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch each named a new chief executive, leadership changes that were precipitated by ongoing struggles to connect with customers. In a report published in late February, Standard & Poor's said it had already lowered ratings 20 times on various retailers this year. S&P analysts wrote that they expect to see "increased levels of stress for the sector in 2017." EFTA00695935 As big retail closes stores, it has cost many Americans their jobs. So far in 2017, retailers have announced plans to slash more than 38,000 positions, according to data from job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. And yet some of those losses have probably been offset by new jobs at start-up retailers and e-commerce operations. Amazon.com, for example, said this year that it expects to create 100,000 full-time roles over 18 months. Retailers are deploying different kinds of firepower to try to regain some momentum. J. Crew announced this week that it is parting ways with its longtime creative director, Jenna Lyons, a change that effectively concedes that it needs to fix its fashion if it wants to boost its sales. Still other companies are exploring branching into different kinds of retailing formats: Ralph Lauren, for example, said it is exploring new opportunities for its Ralph's Coffee concept. Macy's is selling off some of its lucrative real estate portfolio, hoping to strengthen its balance sheet. Another chain, J.C. Penney, looks to be trying to position itself to take advantage of fallout from the turmoil: The retailer has started to carry large appliances again, a potentially shrewd move that could fill a void in the marketplace as Sears and HHGregg close stores. It doesn't help any of these legacy bricks-and-mortar companies that customers are increasingly seeking out under-the-radar labels with a more specialized, boutique feel. The likes of Bonobos, Warby Parker, Shinola and Marine Layer are picking off shoppers that might once have filled their closets with goods from more ubiquitous chains. Meanwhile, as worries mount for bricks-and-mortar players, Amazon's stock hit an all-time high Wednesday. While others pare back, the Seattle company announced a deal to stream NFL games, a milestone that underscores the e-commerce giant's growing muscle. According to research from Slice Intelligence, Amazon captured 38 percent of all dollars spent online during the holiday season. The next-closest retailer, Best Buy, had a mere 3.9 percent. And now the old guard has to worry about Amazon encroaching in new ways: It is branching into physical retailing, including opening several bookstores. In Seattle, it is preparing to open a concept called Amazon Go, a technology-powered grocery store that would not require shoppers to go through a checkout line. All of this change is not just pushing traditional retailers to reduce their overall numbers of stores — it is also forcing them to rethink what their stores should look like. Office Depot, for example, is converting some stores to a smaller footprint of just 15,000 square feet. Target recently announced that it is testing a new store prototype in which there will be a separate entrance and dedicated parking for shoppers looking to retrieve a "buy online, pick up in store" order. As a result, the shopping mall as we know it today, may be on its way to extinction.... much like the dinosaurs. ****** Donald Trump gives a baffling, extremely incorrect history lesson on Andrew Jackson The fact that .Jackson died 16 years before the Civil War apparently didn't stop him from being "really angry" about it. EFTA00695936  R, Inline image 1 A portrait of former President Jackson hangs on the wall behind President Trump, accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, as he speaks in the Oval Office on March 31. It's not unusual for an American president to try and learn from this nation's history. But the lessons that President Donald Trump has apparently drawn from his studies border on the surreal. The current president shared his thoughts on his predecessor Andrew Jackson in a Sirius XM interview set to broadcast on May 1, 2017. Those thoughts bore only a very casual relationship to anything that Andrew Jackson actually did. "I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War," Trump said. "He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, `There's no reason for this.'" Of course, Jackson couldn't have been that angry over "what was happening with regard to the Civil War." He died in 1845, a full 16 years before the start of the Civil War. It's unclear why Trump believes Jackson would have prevented the Civil War if he had been "a little later." After all, "Old Hickory" famously threatened to send federal troops into South Carolina after the state claimed it had the right to nullify a federal tariff. But maybe Trump believes that Jackson, an unapologetic supporter of slavery, would not have given the South cause to secede in the first place. Ned Resnikoff Dan Rather Is DONE, Posts BRUTAL Takedown Of Donald Trump After His Ridiculous Civil War/Andrew Jackson Claims I TruthExaminer.com EFTA00695937  Inline image 2 I wanted to let this story go. I really did. I don't want to be distracted from all the important things taking place. Where are we on the Russia investigation again? But the sheer craziness of this obsession by Donald Trump with Andrew Jackson and the Civil War is a carnival act unlike anything I have ever seen at the White House. And not to let something drop, there is Mr. Trump on Twitter just recently pouring gasoline on the fires of his ignorance. Never mind that Mr. Trump's knowledge of American history seems below that of most grade schoolers. Never mind that Jackson is not exactly the kind of president, or man, you would want to hold up as an example. And never mind that there is an implicit criticism of arguably our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. (It reminds me of his slam against John McCain and how war heroes aren't captured. Apparently great presidents don't wage a war to keep the Union together). These are the rantings of someone who really should be focused on the job of governing. Should we not conclude that he approaches policy decisions with the same half-baked conspiracies with which he apparently approaches history? To be President of the United States is to part of the great American story. To not understand that story is to not understand the presidency. Maybe Frederick Douglass can give Mr. Trump some advice. Apparently, he's "an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more." Dan Rather EFTA00695938  lit Inline image 2 The above was the end of the my piece until I read the article in this week's SLATE Magazine by Jamelle Bouie - The Danger of Trump's Civil War Ignorance which truly provided a short background behind cause of the Civil War and an clear analysis of why President Trump's "alternative history" claims about Andrew Jackson's character, priorities and that he, instead of 'low energy' Abe Lincoln, (considered by most as one of the greatest Presidents ever, if not the greatest), could have stopped the Civil War and suggesting that would have been good for the Country, without acknowledging that in 1860 there were more than 4,000,000 slaves held in bondage. Above all, Trump's musings are a reminder that his ignorance isn't an act or a performance. Excerpts from Bouie's article —Trump (the dealmaker) isn't wrong to think there was a deal that could have prevented the Civil War. There was. But the price of that deal was the maintenance of slavery; in fact, the strengthening of a monstrous system of violence and exploitation. That this wasn't obvious to President Trump — that, judging from his continued tweets on the issue, it still isn't — is as revealing as it is troubling. It suggests a worldview in which everything can be resolved by deals, where there are no moral stakes or irreconcilable differences, where there aren't battles that have to be fought for the sake of the nation and its soul. Slavery had to be eradicated, and war was the only option. Any deal that was achievable would have been an immoral maintenance of an abominable status quo. Likewise, Trump seems to see presidential leadership as a game of deal making, where the best and most effective presidents are those that make the most "deals." But this just isn't true. Deal making and negotiation are part of the job of the presidency, but they have to happen with a purpose in mind; with an idea of the good within reach. Simply striking a deal for the sake of a deal is a recipe for terrible missteps or outright capture by antagonistic interests. Trump's amoral and opportunistic approach may pay dividends in the world of real estate, but it can bring disaster in government, obscuring real challenges, alienating potential allies, and bringing bad outcomes. Above all, Trump's musings are a reminder that his ignorance isn't an act or a performance. The president of the United States isn't just inexperienced; he is profoundly unknowledgeable about his EFTA00695939 country and its history, as uninterested in the challenges of the past as he is the dilemmas of the present. He knows nothing of the world around him, other than the selected information he receives from his advisers, which then gets restated to us, the public, in often-garbled form. This ignorance isn't just embarrassing; it's also a threat to our collective and institutional well-being. A president who knows nothing of the past will likely blunder in office; a president who knows nothing of history will likely repeat the worst mistakes of his predecessors; a president who all but relishes his ignorance will, at some point, lead us all into disaster. Attached please find, Jamelle Bouie's article in its entirety as it is a insightful synopsis of the events, people and attitudes that led to the Civil War I urge everyone to download and read.... ****** Please Tell Me He Didn't Say That If they get too comfy in assisted housing, he says, they won't ever want to leave. Inline image 1 Every so often you read something and can't believe what you read. Most recently for me it was an article in the Huffington Post by Sam Levine under the heading — Ben Carson Wants To Make Sure Poor People Aren't Too Comfortable — because if they get too comfy in assisted housing, he says, they won't ever want to leave. One of the priorities for Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is that ne is concerned that those who rely on the government for help with their housing aren't too comfortable. I know that when he is touring public housing he sprinkles phrases like "creating a nurturing environment" but when he is with his fellow cronies and the Conservative Establishment the tenor of his conversation is completely the opposite. EFTA00695940 The New York Times recently followed Carson as he toured housing facilities in Ohio, where he seemed very interested in the amenities residents received. During one stop, Carson noted that an apartment complex for veterans was just missing pool tables. He also simply nodded along when he learned that employees stacked bunk beds at one homeless shelter where they deliberately deny residents television. Carson told the Times that his understanding of compassion meant not giving those who need help "a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: just stay here. They will take care of me.'" Carson appeared more interested in talking about the comfort level of residents than federal funding during his tour, according to the Times. When Trisha Farmer, the CEO of a housing facility that provides support for recovering drug addicts asked Carson for federal support, he replied he wanted to incentivize "those who help themselves." He then repeatedly asked how comfortable her facilities were letting people get, according to the Times. About 2.2 million families depend on housing assistance from HUD through the agency's Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher system. The average household income for families getting HUD assistance was $13,726, according to the 2010 census data. Before President Donald Trump nominated him to lead HUD, Carson had no experience in housing policy or government. A close friend of Carson's had previously told The Hill that Carson didn't want to run a federal agency because he had no experience doing so, although he eventually accepted the position. Carson told the Times he wanted to focus on getting developers to hire low-income residents for construction projects. Trump's proposed budget would slash funding for HUD by more than $6 billion. The cuts would include eliminating the Community Development Block Grant Program, which provides assistance to a number of community organizations, including Meals on Wheels. The president has also proposed eliminating a program that helps the poor pay to heat their homes. The $3.3 billion cut to that assistance program would save just 0.2 percent of discretionary spending. In an interview with the Times, Carson suggested that HUD programs wouldn't be eliminated entirely. "I know they have been called out for elimination. My impression is that what [President Trump] is really saying is that there are problems with those programs," Carson said. "And I think it may have been someone on his staff who kind of said, `Well, maybe we just need to get rid of the whole program.' No, we don't need to get rid of the whole program because there are some extremely good things there." During his confirmation hearing, Carson expressed skepticism of the very concept of helping people get housing, saying the best thing the government could do for someone getting public assistance was to get them off it. This is one of the problems with novices. They don't understand the complexity. As the President admitted, he didn't realize how complex healthcare was or that how difficult the job of the Presidency. When Ben Carson believes that his priority is getting people out of public housing he obviously doesn't understand the actually responsibilities of his job. Because unless he is generating jobs (or education to get jobs), for people living is public housing other than making them more comfortable, there is little else that he can do for them. And being insensitive to their comfort as if poverty is a crime and public housing is a sort of purgatory is cruel or stupid. EFTA00695941 The reality is that although there are millions of Americans scamming the system, there are tens of millions more who are not. They include homeless families, children, the elderly, returning veterans with PTSD and millions of Americans with physical and mental challenges as well as tens of millions who have fallen through the cracks as the jobs for their skills have been outsourced to Bangladesh, China and elsewhere or are now performed by robots or evaporated like those jobs in the asbestos industry that were plentiful in the 197os. And for the person heading the department with the responsibility of helping those in need of housing feel uncomfortable is appalling. Why should poor innocent children live in uncomfortable conditions because their parents can't find a job that support market rents? Why should the elderly on fixed incomes, live in poverty in the richest country of the world? Why should those who have physical and mental challenges or returning veterans be denied creature comforts of a middle-class quality of life, when our current government is proposing trillions of dollars in tax breaks for the Top i%? Why don't more people see what Ben Carson and his cohorts are suggesting as immoral and ugly? Especially, when these same people consistently drape themselves in the cloak of Christianity? "I see each individual as human capital that can be developed to become part of the engine that drives our nation — or, if not developed, becomes part of the load," he said. As someone who spent the first twelves of my life in railroad cold water flat, that made public housing look like paradise, I can assure Secretary Carson and others that poor people don't need to be incentivize to want to "move up to the Eastside" as George Jefferson use to say. Poverty is not due to the lack of personal responsibility as many conservatives believe. And just because you, Ben Carson, and I have made it out of poverty to live in a world that no one could have envisioned, doesn't mean that those children and parents who didn't are slackers. We need our political leaders to be more sensitive to the needs of those who have fallen through the cracks and not act like overseers on a plantations trying to keep slackers from slacking. But as long as we have a government that believes that dispensing money from the top to create opportunity for us all, the attitude that those at the bottom are what is dragging the country down.... And this is my rant of the week.... WEEK's READING S Carlos the Jackal Venezuelan playboy Illich Ramirez Sanchez - who once one of the world's most wanted terrorists. EFTA00695942  Inline image 1 Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez (born 12 October 1949), also known as Carlos the Jackal, is a Venezuelan terrorist currently serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murder of an informant for the French government and two French counter-intelligence agents. While in prison he was further convicted of attacks in France that killed 11 and injured 150 people and sentenced to an additional life term, and to a third life term in March 2017. A committed Marxist-Leninist, Ramirez Sanchez is commonly described as one of the most notorious political terrorists of his era. When he joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1970, recruiting officer Bassam Abu Sharif gave him the code name "Carlos" because of his South American roots. After several bungled bombings, Ramirez Sanchez achieved notoriety for the 1975 raid on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) headquarters in Vienna, which killed three people. This was followed by a string of attacks against Western targets. For many years he was among the most wanted international fugitives. Carlos was dubbed "The Jackal" by The Guardian after one of its correspondents reportedly spotted Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal near some of the fugitive's belongings. His upbringing and early life seemed filled with contradictions. His family background was upper- middle class, with his father operating an exclusive, highly lucrative law practice alongside being a deeply committed Marxist, ensuring his son received an education which emphasized communist political theory and revolutionary ideas. Ramirez's mother was a popular socialite, allowing her son to develop a playboy lifestyle which seemed to go against the revolutionary ideas he professed. Poor performance and conflicts with academic authorities saw Ramirez expelled from Patrice Lumumba People's Friendship University in Moscow in 1970. He swiftly joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), commencing his training as a militant revolutionary. During this time he was given the name 'Carlos, possibly in reference to his South American heritage. Carlos' first mission for the PFLP was to assassinate Joseph Sieff, president of the popular British retail chain Marks and Spencer and a prominent Jewish figure. Carlos forced his way into Sieffs home on 3rd December 1973 and seriously wounded him with a gunshot wound to the head. Carlos was forced to flee before he could kill Sieff however, his gun jamming before he could fire the final shot. Over the next few years Carlos was involved in several other terrorist attacks. He played a key part in planning the occupation of the French embassy in the Netherlands by the Japanese Red Army. As the French negotiated the hostages' release, it was Carlos who threw a grenade at a crowded Parisian cafe. EFTA00695943 The attack killed two and wounded many more. Fearing further attacks, the French authorities had agreed to the Japanese Red Army's demands within a few days. In June 1975, one of Carlos' accomplices was apprehended by the French police. He led them to the flat Carlos was staying in, where they were welcomed by the Venezuelan terrorist with drinks and conversation. As the police started to relax, Carlos took out a machine gun and opened fire — killing two French detectives and the informant who had betrayed Carlos. The event was a turning point, Carlos moving from relative obscurity to the subject of an international manhunt. The media soon dubbed him `Carlos the Jackal'. The attack on the OPEC headquarters in 1975 was by far the biggest operation of Carlos the Jackal's career however, malting his name recognized with fear around the world. The target of the attack was a meeting of oil ministers from oil producing countries, in the Austrian capital Vienna. A heavily armed group of Arab and German terrorists, led by Carlos, stormed the site of the meeting with machine guns. Three people were killed, while 63 were taken hostage, including eleven oil ministers. Carlos issued clear, simple demands. A communique explaining the Palestinian cause was to be broadcast on Austrian television and radio networks every two hours, and a bus would be supplied to take the terrorists and their hostages to Vienna airport. Austrian authorities, likely fearing a massacre and aware of Carlos the Jackal's brutal reputation, swiftly met all of the demands of the group dubbed the `Arm of the Arab Revolution'. The terrorists escaped to Algeria, where all of the hostages were released unharmed. Such was the shock caused by the event that OPEC would not hold another summit for 25 years. For almost twenty years Carlos escaped capture, the ominous aurora around the terrorist growing each year he evaded the authorities. In 1994 he was finally caught while recuperating from a medical procedure in Sudan. He was clandestinely extradited to France where he was charged with the 1975 murders. At trial he denied all involvement, and accused Israel of being a terrorist nation, claiming his motives had only ever been to secure Palestinian liberation, "When one wages war for 3o years, there is a lot of blood spilled - mine and others. But we never killed anyone for money, but for a cause — the liberation of Palestine." He was found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison along with two of his accomplices. His life has since been dissected and discussed in movies and books, the shifting interpretations of his actions, from fame obsessed murderer to honest believer in a controversial cause, providing an insight into the shadow he left over the world in the 1970s. For his part, Ramirez Sanchez denied the 1975 killings, saying they were orchestrated by Mossad, the Israeli secret service, and condemned Israel as a terrorist state. During his trial in France in 1997, he said, "When one wages warfor .30 years, there is a lot of blood spilled—mine and others. But we never killed anyonefor money, butfor a cause—the liberation of Palestine." In May 2007, anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere ordered a new trial for Ramirez Sanchez on charges relating to "killings and destruction ofproperty using explosive substance? in France in 1982 and 1983. The bombings killed eleven and injured more than roo people. Ramirez Sanchez denied any connection to the events in his 2011 trial, staging a nine-day hunger strike to protest his imprisonment conditions. The trial, which had been expected to last six weeks, began on 7 November 2011, in Paris. Three other members of Ramirez Sanchez's organization were tried in absentia at the EFTA00695944 same time: Johannes Weinrich, Christa Margot Frohlich, and Ali ICamal Al-Issawi. Germany has refused to extradite Weinrich and Frohlich, and Al-Issawi, a Palestinian, "is reportedly on the run." Ramirez Sanchez continues to deny any involvement in the attacks. On 15 December 2011, Ramirez Sanchez, Weinrich and Issawi were convicted and sentenced to life in prison; Frohlich was acquitted. Ramirez Sanchez appealed against the verdict and a new trial began in May 2013. He lost his appeal on 26 June 2013 and judges in a special anti-terrorism court upheld his life sentence. In October 2014, he was also charged for a Paris drugstore attack in September 1974 that killed two and wounded 34. After a lengthy appeal of the charges, in May 2016 his trial was ordered to proceed and opened in March 2017. On 28 March 2017, he was sentenced to a further life term for this attack. I remember back in the 197os in France, friends telling me that they had just partied with Carlos the Jackal as he was known to like high-end discos/clubs and champagne but the funny thing is, that like many people today, I thought that he was long dead... ****** HOW TRADER JOE'S WINE BECAME CHEAPER THAN BOTTLED WATER Charles Shaw wine, aka "Two Buck Chuck," is one of the best-selling products ever sold at Trader Joe's, topping 800 million bottles in its first 12 years. Inline image 1 It might sound insane, but there's a decent bottle of wine out there that costs less than some bottles of water. That's been the gimmick of Charles Shaw, aka "Two Buck Chuck," which hit the shelves at Trader Joe's in January 2002. The wine's $1.99 price tag, simple off-white label, and saccharine EFTA00695945 flavor, closer to grape juice than wine, sparked a collective freak out among American bargain hunters. It flew in the face of the wine world's snobbery; it was an every person's bottle of wine. For years, there's been more legend than truth in the story of how it remains so inexpensive. Word on the street was that Shaw had slashed the price to spite his ex-wife, who owned half of his Napa Valley winery. Others claimed branches, dead birds, and insects were fermented as filler along with the grapes to keep costs down. Chuck Shaw himself -- who went broke, sold the brand, and disappeared from the limelight decades ago -- never quite set the record straight. To get to the bottom of it, the author tracked down a half-dozen insiders from the early days of the winery, including the reclusive man behind the label, who now lives alone in a Chicago high-rise and says he's poised for a comeback with a new wine brand. The upshot? None of the lore is exactly true -- but the real story is just as juicy. 2 Inline image 2 The man behind the label Before his name became synonymous with bargain booze, Charles Shaw was an early pioneer of the Napa Valley wine industry and made delicious, award-winning vino. Chuck Shaw, founder of Charles Shaw (after graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1965 and finishing his army commitment, Shaw went onto Stanford Graduate School of Business): I was going to Stanford in 1971, taking a small-business class. My professor told each student to find a company in the area to work with. I heard about a guy who was making wine out of his garage, so I started working with him and fell in love. I knew I wanted a vineyard. But my wife, Lucy, said, "You don't have any money," so I took a job at a bank. The bank later asked me to go to Paris and my office ended up being right behind [famous wine expert] Steven Spurrier's school (where he became enamored of Beaujolais wine). I got hooked. I flew to Napa and bought 20 acres above Lake Hennessey. Bob Dempel, vineyard manager for a decade: He used Lucy's mother's money to start the winery. She had grown up wealthy; it was her inheritance. EFTA00695946 Shaw: I moved my family there to start Charles Shaw winery in 1974. We were part of a pioneering group out there. In 1978, we made our first production of gamay. We were so excited. It was carbonic, it had an amazing garnet color and was really quite striking. I liked to drink it with a Tiffany's all-purpose glass. You could smell it just sitting at the table, and people said it had notes of banana. "CHARLES SHAW WINE USED TO BE GREAT --AND NOBODY DRANK IT. NOW, ITS TERRIBLE AND IT'S SELLING LIKE GANGBUSTERS." Keith Wallace, wine expert and author: The wine he made back then was actually really good. But nobody was buying it because nobody knew much about gamay. The irony is that Charles Shaw wine used to be great -- and nobody drank it. Now, it's terrible and it's selling like gangbusters. Shaw: By 1983, we were charging $13.50 for a bottle. In 1992, the business had grown to 115 acres. It was some of the best wine in the Napa Valley. We won awards internationally. Pretty soon, we were putting out 15,000 cases a year of multiple types of wine with some 6o employees. Dempel: Beaujolais nouveau was his pride and joy. Back then, a bottle was more than I could afford. It used to be very high-end. I would be there weekly inspecting the crop and I got to know Chuck and Lucy well. He was athletic and exceptionally good-looking and so was Lucy. Everyone in the Napa Valley knew them. When they walked into a restaurant, people would stare and say, "There go Charles and Lucy Shaw." They were treated like Jackie and JFK. Like a Camelot couple. Bad breaks and big mistakes After years of success as a legitimate Napa Valley winery, bad business moves, a baffling streak of bad luck, and an explosive divorce lead to the downfall of the multimillion-dollar brand. Dempel: They started bleeding money in the early '9os. Shaw: I made some big mistakes. I released a batch of wine in small wooden barrels, which was a real popular thing to do at the time. This was 1986. The supplier was supposed to use beeswax but instead they used paraffin [a