Greetings Jeff, I don’t have a facebook, so I am hoping you will see this. I am working on a sociological study, the goal of completing it during the fall semester, with a former sociology professor of mine. It will involve a number of 1A audits, some based on your signs and actions (and, in fact, I had intended to use your videos for training other students in how to act with police). The paper is about generational differences in how people react to the camera, and especially gender differences (and how frequently women use “I feel unsafe” as an excuse to trample rights, and men use “women feel unsafe so I must protect them!” to trample rights). I would GREATLY appreciate any help you might be able to give, tips and places to research local laws, really anything. I have reached out to Long Island Audit as well, but have heard nothing back. Thank you for any help you might be able to give. Hopeful we may get to work together, even if only in a tiny fashion.
If anyone would be willing to upvote this in hopes of increasing the likelihood of Jeff responding, I would be incredibly grateful.
Just saw a press conference where the officials said they would crack down on visitors for anything they deem unwanted, not illegal, because they can.
Can’t wait to hear the rest of this story. I’m trying hard to imagine the relationship of the citizens to a future Urban State where all property is leased to businesses.
Good job identifying this problem, Jeff. Please challenge it.
To anyone who thinks this is okay, it may seem like a small matter for some private company to “manage” a public park, but it is still a public park. It is still owned by the city and is still being funded with public money even as members of the public are capriciously denied access to it. If a company wants to put money into making it better, great! We should welcome investment into our communities, just like we would from a volunteer group doing clean-up work or whatever. But at no point should the company or the volunteers become empowered to decide who can and can’t use the park.
If a company wants to own a park, it can make its own park on truly private property. There’s no rule against it. What’s happening here is some kind of unholy alliance between corporations and local authorities who want to be able to do things they’re prohibited from doing under the law. Normally the cops can’t kick Jeff (or any homeless person, or any person period who’s acting lawfully) out of the park, but now all of a sudden they have this new authority thanks to some questionable public-private deal.
This is wildly unacceptable. Do we have to worry soon about corporations “managing” public sidewalks and other city services so that they can exclude people at their pleasure?
“We appreciate with what you are doing but we are still going to stomp on your rights.” What kind of person prostitutes themselves in this manner? How does a city lease public property out to a private entity specifically to restrict public access to public property? I’d love to see how this works through the courts.
How offensive that the city thinks it can ignore the constitution by entering into a public private partnership or that a corporation like Brown and Brown who could use their significant resources to compassionately assist people experiencing homelessness instead choose to bribe the city to allow them to instead banish them. This isn’t just unconstitutional, it’s morally wrong. The city can’t outsource its unconstitutional actions. Their intent was clear in the statements made in advance. They should be ashamed of themselves and be held legally accountable for their egregious violations of the constitution.
“You’re not even being trespassed.” Immediately followed up by: “If you go back on there, you’re going to jail.”
Who Is Postmaster General Louis DeJoy? | NowThis
Louis DeJoy is the first person in nearly two decades to become postmaster general without any postal service experience.
However, he does have $1.2M of experience with political donations to Trump and another $1.3M to the GOP.
So how did DeJoy end up at the center of Trump’s attempt to upend the 2020 election?
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In US news and current events today, Louis DeJoy, a Business Executive, Trump mega-donor, and the 75th United States postmaster general, who by the way, has absolutely no experience working in the postal service is today’s focus for Who Is. DeJoy is the first person in nearly two decades to become postmaster general who was not selected from the postal service’s ranks. But DeJoy was a shoe-in nonetheless, he was appointed by the Postal Service’s board of governors who have deep ties to the GOP and Mitch McConnell. DeJoy himself donated over 1.2 million dollars to Trump’s 2016 campaign and 1.3 million dollars to the Republican Party. But what does all this back scratching mean? As a North Carolina businessman, DeJoy had significant investments in companies that compete or do business with the U.S. Postal Service AKA USPS, including financial interests in private delivery competitors to the USPS—meaning he stands to benefit if the public service went private. DeJoy has already taken drastic measures to upend American democracy as the nation largely looks to vote by mail amid a global pandemic which has killed nearly 200,000 Americans. Under DeJoy’s leadership the USPS has removed high-speed mail sorting machines from facilities, which would be used to sort ballots come November 3rd. One report says they planned to remove 502 mail sorting machines, or about 13% of its total inventory by September 30, conspicuously before the election. As if that weren’t enough, they’ve unbolted corner mailboxes, eliminated employee overtime, mandated that mail be kept until the next day if distribution centers are running behind, and as USA today notes, DeJoy has also restructured the USPS by “removing or reassigning nearly two dozen agency leaders, including displacing the two top executives who oversaw day-to-day operations.” He has also banned employees from making extra trips to deliver mail.
Betsy DeVos openly admits she’s using the pandemic to impose her private school choice agenda
“Yes, absolutely,” DeVos replied when asked if she was trying to “utilize” the crisis to help “faith-based schools”
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos admitted that she was trying to use the ongoing coronavirus crisis to push through her private school choice agenda during a Tuesday radio interview. DeVos made the comments during an interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, on his Sirius XM show. The interview was first flagged by the nonprofit education news outlet Chalkbeat.
Dolan asked the secretary whether she was trying to “utilize this particular crisis to ensure that justice is finally done to our kids and the parents who choose to send them to faith-based schools.”
“Am I correct in understanding what your agenda is?” he asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” DeVos replied. “For more than three decades, that has been something that I’ve been passionate about. This whole pandemic has brought into clear focus that everyone has been impacted, and we shouldn’t be thinking about students that are in public schools versus private schools.”
Department of Education spokeswoman Angela Morabito said in a statement to Chalkbeat that DeVos “is helping Catholic schools just as she is helping all schools; this does not mean she is favoring any one type of school over another.”
“There is no question that this crisis has impacted all students — no matter what kind of school they’re enrolled in,” she added.
DeVos’ comments came as she defended her decision to redirect coronavirus relief funds away from public schools with high numbers of impoverished students to private schools which tend to serve wealthy students. Congress allocated about $13.5 billion to help schools, most of which was intended to go to schools based on a formula that determines how many poor children they serve.
The formula has long allocated some of the funding for poor children who attend private schools, The Washington Post reported. But DeVos said states should calculate how many total students private schools serve rather than just the number of poor students. As a result, millions in aid will be redirected away from schools with high poverty rates to private schools which may not have many poor students.
The move drew criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
“My sense was that the money should have been distributed in the same way we distribute Title I money,” Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate Education Committee who is typically a DeVos ally, told reporters Wednesday. “I think that’s what most of Congress was expecting.”
Democrats also decried the decision.
“[The guidance] seeks to repurpose hundreds-of-millions of taxpayer dollars intended for public school students to provide services for private school students, in contravention of both the plain reading of the statute and the intent of Congress,” House Education Chairman Bobby Scott, D-Va., House Education Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLaura, D-Ct., and Senate Education ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a letter to DeVos on Tuesday.
“Given that the guidance contradicts the clear requirements of the CARES Act, it will cause confusion among states and local education agencies that will be uncertain of how to comply with both the department’s guidance and the plain language of the CARES Act,” the lawmakers urged, asking her to “immediately revise” the guidance.
But DeVos defended the decision Thursday to reporters.
“It’s our interpretation that [the funding] is meant literally for all students, and that includes students no matter where they’re learning,” she said.
The Democrats’ warning has proven right, however, as states are already dealing with confusion sparked by the policy.
The Education Law Center said DeVos’ policy was a “patent misreading” of the federal law and could redirect $800,000 in aid from Newark Public Schools in New Jersey to private school students. Tennessee’s education chief said she plans to follow DeVos’ guidance, but other school leaders argue that it is not legally binding and should be ignored.
Indiana’s schools chief Jennifer McCormick said that the state would ignore the guidance after consulting with the state’s attorney general.
“I will not play political agenda games with relief funds,” she said.
Scott told NPR that “there is rightfully pushback” on the decision.
“The actions of the Department of Education have left states and districts stuck between compliance with the law,” he said, “and adhering to ideologically motivated guidance.”
How Much of the Coronavirus Supplies are Going to the Private Sector?
Retweeting this without comment. But listen. https://t.co/VmElNyHbh0
— David Frum (@davidfrum) April 3, 2020
Why Can’t Trump Build Anything?
Infrastructure won’t happen until the Democrats regain control.
Donald Trump isn’t the first president, or even the first Republican president, who has sought to define his legacy in part with a big construction project. Abraham Lincoln signed legislation providing the land grants and financing that created the transcontinental railroad. Theodore Roosevelt built the Panama Canal. Dwight Eisenhower built the interstate highway system.
But Trump’s wall is different, and not just because it probably won’t actually get built. Previous big construction projects were about bringing people together and making them more productive. The wall is about division — not just a barrier against outsiders, but an attempt to drive a wedge between Americans, too. It’s about fear, not the future.
Why isn’t Trump building anything? Surely he’s exactly the kind of politician likely to suffer from an edifice complex, a desire to see his name on big projects. Furthermore, during the 2016 campaign he didn’t just promise a wall, he also promised a major rebuilding of America’s infrastructure.
But month after month of inaction followed his inauguration. A year ago he again promised “the biggest and boldest infrastructure investment in American history.” Again, nothing happened.
Last month there was reportedly a White House meeting to game outa new infrastructure plan. This time they mean it. Really. Would this administration ever lie to you?
The interesting question is why Trump seems unwilling or unable to do anything about America’s crumbling roads, bridges, water supplies and so on. After all, polls show that a large majority of the public wants to see more infrastructure spending. Public investment is an issue on which Trump could get substantial Democratic support; it would lift the economy, and also help repair the public’s perception that the administration is chaotic and incompetent.
Yet everything points to two more years of occasional bombast about infrastructure, with no follow-up. Why the paralysis?
Some news analyses suggest that it’s about money, that big infrastructure spending would happen if only Republicans and Democrats could agree on how to pay for it. But this is being credulous. Remember, in 2017 the G.O.P. enacted a $2 trillion tax cutwith absolutely no pay-fors; the tax cut is completely failing to deliver the promised boost to private investment, but there is no sign of buyer’s remorse.
So Republicans don’t really care about using debt to pay for things they want. And Democrats, whose top policy wonks have been telling them that deficit fears are excessive, would surely support a program of debt-financed infrastructure spending.
Trump Doesn’t Give a Dam
The $1.5 trillion number is just made up; he’s only proposing federal spending of $200 billion, which is somehow supposed to magically induce a vastly bigger overall increase in infrastructure investment, mainly paid for either by state and local governments (which are not exactly rolling in cash, but whatever) or by the private sector.
.. And even the $200 billion is essentially fraudulent: The budget proposal announced the same day doesn’t just impose savage cuts on the poor, it includes sharp cuts for the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy and other agencies that would be crucially involved in any real infrastructure plan. Realistically, Trump’s offer on infrastructure is this: nothing.
.. That’s not to say that the plan is completely vacuous. One section says that it would “authorize federal divestiture of assets that would be better managed by state, local or private entities.” Translation: We’re going to privatize whatever we can
.. Despite a modest rise in interest rates, the federal government can still borrow very cheaply: The interest rate on inflation-protected long-term bonds is still less than 1 percent, which is below realistic estimates of long-run economic growth, let alone the Trump administration’s fantasy numbers. So borrowing now to pay for essential infrastructure would still be good economics.
.. some Democrats feared that Trump really would go big on infrastructure, which might drive a wedge into their party and be highly popular besides.
.. An infrastructure program involving real money could be very lucrative for Trump cronies, or for that matter Trump himself. Yes, there are rules that are supposed to prevent that kind of profiteering, but does anyone think those rules would be enforced under current management?
.. Part of the answer is that in practice Trump always defers to Republican orthodoxy, and the modern G.O.P. hates any program that might show people that government can work and help people.
.. But I also suspect that Trump is afraid to try anything substantive. To do public investment successfully, you need leadership and advice from experts. And this administration doesn’t do expertise, in any field. Not only do experts have a nasty habit of telling you things you don’t want to hear, their loyalty is suspect: You never know when their professional ethics might kick in.
So the Trump administration probably couldn’t put together a real infrastructure plan even if it wanted to. And that’s why it didn’t.