America’s Reputation Drops From #1 to 6th Place in World Reputation Under Chumph

The Russians elected a criminal scumbag as America’s “leader”. Not much different than having elected a Mugabe, Dutarte. or other 3rd world dictator.

Everybody knows what the Chumph is… And it is destroying America’s reputation.

Germany supplants US as the country with the best global reputation

America’s brand has taken a major hit in the age of Trump.

At least that’s according to a survey that ranks the world’s best nation brands.

The United States lands with an overall No. 6 ranking in the Anholt-GfK Nation Brands Index, which measures 50 nations in multiple categories, including governance, exports, culture, people, tourism and immigration/investment. The United States was the overall No. 1 in 2016, but Germany took the top spot this year.

The source of America’s big drop? President Donald Trump, says Simon Anholt, a political consultant who developed the brand survey more than a decade ago.

“We are witnessing a ‘Trump effect,’ following President Trump’s focused political message of ‘America First,’ ” Anholt said in a statement.

Anholt noted that despite the big drop in the overall ranking, Americans interviewed for the survey actually had a more positive assessment of their country than they did last year.

And this year isn’t the first time that the United States has experienced such a big drop in the survey. Anholt said the nation saw a “similar fall in global perception” after the re-election of President George W. Bush in 2004. The US fell to No. 7 then.

Germany ranked first this year thanks to big gains in the governance, people and culture categories.

The UK, which took a hit last year after the Brexit vote, regained enough ground to hang on to No. 3 in the survey, and Anholt said that showing indicates the United States should be able to bounce back, too.

“Previously, America has never stayed outside the top ranking for more than a year at a time,” he said. “It will be interesting to see whether this holds true in the 2018 ranking.”

France came in at No. 2, while Canada and Japan tied for fourth place. The rest of the Top 10 is Italy at No. 7, Switzerland at No. 8, Australia at No. 9 and Sweden at No. 10.

No non-Western countries managed to crack the Top 10.

Germany replaces US as country with best international image

Nation	2017 Rank	2016 Rank	Score change 2017 vs. 2016
Germany	1	2	+0.99
France	2	5	+1.56
United Kingdon	3	3	+1.27
Canada	4	4	+.096
Japan	4	7	+2.12
United States	6	1	+0.63
Italy	7	6	+0.74
Switzerland	8	8	+1.34
Australia	9	9	+0.76
Sweden	10	10	+1.30

 

White Boy “Justice” – Child Rapist Gets 60 Days In Jail

You know the “Justice” system in America is corrupt and racist when a white child rapist can spend less time in jail than a black teen caught with a joint of Marijuana.

Father who ‘repeatedly raped his 12-year old daughter’ gets 60-day sentence. Fury erupts.

Judge Robert McKeon

As the judge in the Stanford rape case learned, along with the judge in the “affluenza” drunken driving case, the whole world is watching them. A crowd, an angry crowd, can form in a matter of days of people outraged by what they consider a lenient sentence for a heinous crime.

In the case of Judge Robert McKeon, as of early morning Wednesday, almost 20,000 people had signed a Change.org petition calling for his impeachment for the 60-day sentence he gave a Glasgow, Mont., man who pleaded guilty to repeatedly raping his prepubescent daughter.

“A father repeatedly raped his 12-year old daughter,” Deputy Valley County Attorney Dylan Jenson said during an Oct. 4 sentencing hearing.

“It’s time to start punishing the judges who let these monsters walk our streets,” read the petition.

Prosecutors had recommended a mandatory 25-year sentence, 100 years with 75 suspended, which is what state law calls for.

Instead, though, Judge McKeon handed down a far lighter sentence: a 30-year suspended prison sentence, which means the man will only serve it if he fails to meet the conditions of his probation.

Among those conditions, which McKeon called “quite rigorous,” was the requirement for the man to register as a sex offender, the Glasgow Courierreported. He also cannot access pornography and has limited access to the Internet.

In addition, the man will serve 60 days in jail, but McKeon gave him credit for the 17 days he already served, meaning he’ll only spend another 43 days in jail.

The Washington Post is not identifying the convicted man as it could expose the identity of his victim.

In most of these controversial cases, the judges under siege tend to remain silent. What makes McKeon’s case unusual is that he has chosen to defend himself in public.

In an email to the Associated Press, McKeon said he had several reasons for handing down the seemingly light sentence….Read the Rest Here…

 

DOJ Newest Civil Rights Strategy – Locking Up Bad Judges

By now it should be obvious to everyone that the problems in Law Enforcement extend to the Judiciary. Further – conservative “No-Tax” freaks on the right have created a system wherein any semblance to a fair an equitable tax system is replaced by a predatory Judicial and draconian laws shifting the tax burden onto the poor. The Ferguson Report was a watershed in exposing such criminal schemes, often which target minorities under The New Jim Crow.

It has been a long time coming, but the DOJ is finally preparing to hold corrupt and predatory Judges at the local level…Accountable.

TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnaping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

What is interesting about this law, is it goes far beyond just the issue of Debtors, and suggests that even local legislators may be held accountable for willfully creating local laws which violate Civil Rights as defined under the Constitution. Which doesn’t mean that a local law challenged before a higher court and ruled unconstitutional makes local legislators liable – but does mean those legislatures which (as in North Carolina) have ruled the Federal Constitution null and void can be tried and jailed for passing laws violating Civil Rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

I gotta believe that Tea Baggers in jail are going to have a harder time than Jared the child molester.

 

How Locking Up Judges Could End Debtors’ Prisons

Civil rights lawyers want the DOJ to give judges who break the law a taste of their own medicine.

Justice Department officials warned U.S. judges and court administrators this week that practices like incarcerating poor people without determining whether they could afford outstanding fines are illegal and unconstitutional.

But civil rights advocates with clients who’ve had their lives torn apart after being accused of petty crimes, receiving traffic tickets or charged with municipal code violations say the feds have a much more effective method of fixing the widespread problem: locking up judges.

In a nine-page letter sent to all state chief justices and state court administrators on Monday, the DOJ’s Vanita Gupta, who heads the Civil Rights Division, and Lisa Foster, the director of the Office of Access to Justice, urged local officials to “review court rules and procedures within your jurisdiction to ensure that they comply with due process, equal protection, and sound public policy.”

Judges who incarcerate poor people because they missed a payment are breaking the law, the letter said. What many courts consider a “routine administrative matter” of forcing defendants to pre-pay a “bond” or “bail” before they’re allowed to schedule a court date is actually unconstitutional, Gupta and Foster wrote. Locking people in cages for long periods of time solely because they can’t afford to buy their freedom is a violation of the country’s supreme law, the U.S. Constitution.

Civil rights advocates praised the Justice Department for sending the letter. However, they say there’s a much more powerful tool available if the feds really want to deter judicial crime: Federal prosecutors can hold judges accountable for their unlawful conduct by charging them with a federal crime.

Section 242 of Title 18 of the U.S. code — the so-called “color of law” statute — is the same federal civil rights legislation that Justice Department prosecutors use against police officers and prison guards who use excessive force and make false arrests. The law applies to prosecutors and judges, too. But the feds don’t use it against them often.

Hub Harrington, a former circuit judge in Shelby County, Alabama, who in 2012called Harpersville Municipal Court a “debtors prison” and a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket,” suggested prosecuting judges who break the law at a December meeting at the White House. He said he approached the Justice Department and the Alabama Attorney General about the issues in Harpersville and was frustrated that former Municipal Court Judge Larry Ward wasn’t charged over his conduct.

“We’ve been talking about the victims,” Harrington said at the time. “What about the perpetrators? We got the laws in place. We already have the law you can’t put indigent people in jail without a hearing. We don’t need more laws. We need to enforce the ones we’ve got.”

Alec Karakatsanis from Equal Justice Under Law, an organization that has been suing cities engaged in widespread unconstitutional practices, said the DOJ letter was a good start and could help “eradicate any notion that any judge can be ignorant of basic principles of constitutional law.” But he hoped bad judges would be indicted.

“For a long time, our courts have become places where impoverished people and people of colors’ rights are violated with virtual impunity every day as a matter of daily practice,” Karakatsanis said. “You’d like to think that the people who are tasked with applying the law are held to the same standards as everyone else, and when people are blatantly violating the law, there should be consequences for them.”

It would be “a hard argument for any judge to make that they thought it was OK for them to be throwing people in jail for not being able to make payments without making any type of inquiry into their ability to pay,” he added. But the problem is so widespread and commonplace that prosecution could be less likely.

“It’s not just a ‘few bad apples,’ we have a legal system that has lost it’s way, become desensitized towards caging people,” Karakatsanis said. “One of the really difficult and sad things about our legal system is that the more common something is, the more difficult it is to prosecute because there’s this sense that ‘Well, everyone is doing it, so it would break the system.’” …Read The Rest Here…

 

Rev “Mack Daddy” Church Repossed

Reverent Mack Daddy, Aka Pastor James David Manning of Atlah Worldwide Church and YouTube fame as a black conservative willing to attack President Obama…

Is going down. His Church is now up for Auction. Apparently being Hannity’s House Negro didn’t pay enough to pay the bills.

I have posted about him previously –

Rev Mack Daddy At It Again

Rev Mack Daddy is Back!

Rev Long Legged Mack Daddy’s Meltdown – “Black People are Stupid”

Now it seems Mack Daddy has picked on the wrong folks in NYC…

This Vehemently Anti-Gay Church Might Get The Ultimate Karmic Smackdown

An LGBT advocacy group hopes to secure the ATLAH World Missionary Church for its homeless clients.

A New York church notorious for posting homophobic messages on its billboard may be on the auction block. But if fundraising efforts are successful, the parish’s history of hate could be repurposed into something truly beautiful.

A New York state judge has ordered the ATLAH World Missionary Church to be sold at a public foreclosure auction, according to court records cited by DNAinfo New York. The church, which has been known to display messages like “Jesus would stone homos” and “Obama has released the homo demons on the black man” on its billboard, has reportedly amassed debts and tax liens totaling more than $1.02 million.

The Harlem church could prove to be a commodity in Manhattan’s cutthroat real estate market. But the Ali Forney Center, an advocacy group dedicated to homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens and young adults, hopes that an online fundraiser will help raise $200,000 to secure the property as housing for its clients.

Carl Siciliano, who is the Ali Forney Center’s founder and executive director, said in a press release that repurposing the church to house homeless LGBT youth would “truly be a triumph of love over hatred.”

“The biggest reason our youths are driven from their homes is because of homophobic and transphobic religious beliefs of their parents,” he said. “Because of this, it has been horrifying for us to have our youths exposed to Manning’s messages inciting hatred and violence against our community. It has meant the world to us that so many Harlem residents have stood up to support our young people, and are now urging us to provide urgently needed care at the site of so much hatred.”

LGBT rights activist Scott Wooledge, who is working with the Ali Forney Center to raise the funds to buy the church and has raised over $200,000 for homeless youth over the past two years, echoed those sentiments.

“We, as a community, have a golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn what was once a center of appalling hate into a home where our youth can be safe, nurtured, supported and thrive into self-sufficient adults,” he told The Huffington Post in an email. “Let’s seize the day, and turn the page on an ugly chapter in Harlem’s history.”

Stacy Parker Le Melle, founder of Harlem’s “Love Not Hate” Movement, told The Huffington Post, “When the ATLAH story broke on Thursday, immediately I heard from neighbors: Wouldn’t it be amazing if an LGBT group could acquire the property? What if it were the Ali Forney Center? We all knew that this would be poetic justice. We need to care for those kicked out of homes, often on religious-based grounds. We need to care for those most vulnerable to ATLAH’s hate speech.”

ATLAH’s pastor seemed to downplay his parish’s debts in an interview withDNAinfo New York, and vowed to cite the church’s tax exempt status in its fight against the foreclosure order, which he called a “land grab.”

“I assure you, it’s about a water bill and a tax that can’t be levied against this church,” Rev. James David Manning, who made headlines in 2014 when he argued that Starbucks flavored its coffee drinks with “sodomites’ semen,” told DNAinfo.

 

Tamir Rice Grand Jury Irregularity

It now appears that the Tamir Rice Grand Jury my not have been legal…And that no Vote of the Jury as required by law was ever taken. This further reinforces the belief that the entire thing was a sham, set up by the prosecutor…

Report: Tamir Rice Grand Jury Never Actually Voted on Whether to Indict Officers

The grand jury that declined to indict two police officers in the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice never actually voted on whether to bring charges, an investigative report from Cleveland says, leaving open the question of how the controversial decision was actually reached.

The alt-weekly Cleveland Scene‘s report revolves around the concept of the “no-bill,” which is the name for a grand jury’s formal decision—arrived at by voting—not to bring charges in a given case. (The opposite of a “no-bill” is a “true bill,” i.e. a decision to indict.) When Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty announced on Dec. 28 that officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback would not be charged in Rice’s death, he said only that the grand jury “declined to indict” the officers, leading many observers to assume that a no-bill had been voted on. But the Cleveland Scene‘s reporters could find no documentation of such a decision, and a spokesman for the Cuyahoga prosecutor’s office responded to the publication’s queries by saying that there had been no vote.

Two area law professors told the Scene they had never heard of a grand jury behaving in such a way. What’s more, reporters were unable to find any official documentation in the Cleveland court system of the grand jury having concluded its business:

We were then directed to the Cuyahoga County grand jury office. Wednesday morning, a clerk there told Scene that the “mysterious document” may or may not exist and that, even if it does, it could only be provided to us via court order by Administrative and Presiding Judge John J. Russo … Russo, who spoke to Scene by phone, professed to be as confused as we were. “When you say ‘document,’ I’m not sure what you mean. I don’t know what that is. It’s either a true bill or a no bill,” he said.

But actually, no.

His staff determined Wednesday that a “no-bill” had never been filed.

What any of this means for Rice’s case is unclear. A lawyer representing the Rice family said the lack of a no-bill could constitute another indication that McGinty—who formally recommended against indicting Loehmann and Garmback andpresented expert reports to the grand jury that backed up his recommendation—had not taken the idea of prosecution seriously.

A federal investigation into Rice’s death is reportedly ongoing; Rice’s family has also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the officers involved.

 

Orange Jumpsuit Politician – Jesse Jackson, Jr.

This one goes under the heading of… What was he thinking?

 

Jesse L. Jackson Jr. sentenced to 30 months in prison

Jesse L. Jackson Jr., the namesake of the famed civil rights leader and once-promising Illinois congressman, was sentenced to 21 / 2 years in prison Wednesday for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign money to fund an extravagant lifestyle over many years.

In an emotional hearing in federal court in the District, Jackson said he failed to separate his personal life from his political activities and “could not have been more wrong.”

Jackson, 48, and his wife, Sandra Stevens Jackson, pleaded guilty in February to using about $750,000 in campaign funds to pay for high-end items, such as fur wraps and a gold-plated Rolex watch, in addition to private-school tuition and trips to Costco.

“I misled the American people, I misled the House of Representatives,” Jackson said as he dabbed his eyes with a pile of tissues. “I was wrong and I do not fault anyone.”

He asked to serve his term in Alabama, “far away from everybody for awhile.”

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson (no relation) said the former congressman and his wife used his campaign funds as a “personal piggy bank.”

“There may be blurred lines for Congress to follow when their lives are political, this case did not come near those areas,” she said after a more than three-hour hearing. “This was a knowing, organized joint misconduct that was repeated over many years.”

The judge also ordered Jackson to perform 500 hours of community service that is unrelated to politics. She sentenced Sandra Jackson to one year in prison.

Prosecutors said in court papers that Jesse Jackson Jr. was driven by “greed and entitlement,” and they asked the judge to sentence him to a prison term of four years, which falls on the lower end of federal guidelines.

In court Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves called Jackson’s crimes “staggering,” in part because the couple had sufficient independent financial resources, earning nearly $350,000 in 2011.

“These were extreme abuses that strike at the integrity of the campaign finance system,” Graves said.

The defense team asked for a term of less than four years, saying that a shorter term is critical to Jackson’s mental health and that a lengthy sentence would be “devastating” to the couple’s two children – ages 13 and 9…

In the spirit of bipartisanship…

Perhaps his new room mate will be Va. Governor Bob McDonnell, or AG Ken Cuccinelli…

 

More Heat on “Justice” Tommie Clarence

Clarence Thomas and his soul mate Antonin Scalia are a disgrace to the Supreme Court – and the nation. They have turned the Supreme Court into a cash and carry brothel for special interests and conservative money men. It would appear that members of the Supreme Court in the United States, truly sit above the law.

More Ethics Trouble for Clarence Thomas

If Clarence Thomas was hoping that liberals might just forget about his cozy ties to a Dallas real estate developer, or his failure for a decade to disclose the hundreds of thousands of dollars his wife earned from a conservative think tank, well, he would be wrong. As President Obama’s health care reform bill gets closer and closer to a hearing before the high court, liberal groups are continuing to press for some sort of disciplinary action against Thomas, or at least to force him to recuse himself from hearing the health care case.

To that end, on Tuesday, the left-leaning Alliance for Justice and the good-government group Common Cause asked the Judicial Conference of the United States, which oversees the federal courts, to investigate whether Thomas violated the Ethics in Government Act. The groups allege that Thomas may have violated the act when he failed to disclose his wife Ginny Thomas’s compensation—upwards of $700,000—from the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.

The groups also are asking the Judicial Conference to investigate whether Thomas may have failed to report travel paid for by the Texas real estate developer Harlan Crowe, as reported by the New York Times. The Judicial Conference was holding its semi-annual meeting in DC this week when the advocacy groups sent their letter. If the Conference concludes that the allegations have merit, federal law requires that if it “has reasonable cause to believe has willfully falsified or willfully failed to file information required to be reported” it must refer the case to the attorney general. Common Cause president Bob Edgar said in a statement Tuesday:

In America, no one is above the law, including Supreme Court justices. For more than a decade, Justice Thomas omitted information about his wife’s income, clearly required by the Ethics in Government Act, from his annual financial disclosure report. Surely such a repeated violation, by someone entrusted to apply laws far more complex than the Ethics Act, at least deserves a formal review by the Judicial Conference and the Attorney General.

Odds are slim that even the Judicial Conference is going to ask Eric Holder to investigate Thomas. But you can’t really fault them for trying. Thomas’s lapses seem egregious enough for some higher authority to take a second look.

Unfortunately, thanks the the separation of powers doctrine, there really isn’t a higher authority when it comes to the Supreme Court. Some members of Congress are trying to change that. Also this week, the Alliance for Justice has been trying to rally support for congressional hearings on a bill introduced earlier this year that would force Supreme Court justices to be covered by the code of conduct that applies to other federal judges and create new procedures for when a justice may have to recuse from hearing a case. Given that virtually no Republicans have signed on, this law, too, has no hope of going anywhere, at least not any time soon. But the Democrats behind it get points for trying anyway…

 

The Buffalo Beast Punks Scott Walker

Hat Tip to Roderick for being first off the blocks with this one!

What happens when the guy who bought Scott Walker calls? Walker infamously refuses to answer the calls of any of the Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate…

So why exactly is he answering Koch?

Part Deux…

Now it is pretty obvious who Walker reports to, and that the effort to smash unions has been bought and paid for by the Koch brothers.

The person representing himself as David Koch wasn’t in this call as the following explains –

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker answers his master’s call

It really is all about Dirty Money – and Walker is a Koch whore.