Homeless in Arizona

Sex-offender data is used to collect money and intimidate

I have always disliked the governments requirement that sex offenders are required to register with the government and have their personal information placed in online databases that anybody can view on the internet.

I think the governments intent is to humiliate, belittle and intimidate the alleged sex offenders and it doesn't serve any legitimate function of protecting public.

Last the term "sex offender" is misleading. If you get arrested for taking a leak in an alley under Arizona's laws you are considered a "sex offender" and required to register under this stupid law.

Judge Finds Violations of Rights by Sheriff Joe

Judge Finds Violations of Rights by Sheriff

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Published: May 24, 2013

PHOENIX — A federal judge ruled on Friday that Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies had violated the constitutional rights of Latinos by targeting them during raids and traffic stops here and throughout Maricopa County.

With his ruling, Judge G. Murray Snow of United States District Court delivered the most decisive defeat so far to Sheriff Arpaio, who has come to symbolize Arizona’s strict approach to immigration enforcement by making it the leading mission for many of the 800 deputies under his command at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

At 142 pages, the decision is peppered with stinging criticism of the policies and practices espoused by Sheriff Arpaio, who Judge Snow said had turned much of his focus to arresting immigrants who were in the country illegally, in most cases civil violations, at the expense of fighting crimes.

He said the sheriff relied on racial profiling and illegal detentions to target Latinos, using their ethnicity as the main basis for suspecting they were in the country illegally. Many of the people targeted were American citizens or legal residents.

“In an immigration enforcement context,” Judge Snow ruled, the sheriff’s office “did not believe that it constituted racial profiling to consider race as one factor among others in making law enforcement decisions.” In fact, he said its plans and policies confirmed that, “in the context of immigration enforcement,” deputies “could consider race as one factor among others.”

The ruling prohibits the sheriff’s office from using “race or Latino ancestry” as a factor in deciding to stop any vehicle with Latino occupants, or as a factor in deciding whether they may be in the country without authorization.

It also prohibits deputies from reporting a vehicle’s Latino occupants to federal immigration authorities or detaining, holding or arresting them, unless there is more than just a “reasonable belief” that they are in the country illegally. To detain them, the ruling said, the deputies must also have reasonable suspicion that the occupants are violating the state’s human-trafficking and employment laws or committing other crimes.

Tim Casey, a lawyer for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, said the office intended to appeal, but in the meantime it would “comply with the letter and spirit of the court’s decision.”

He said the office’s position is that it “has never used race and never will use race to make any law enforcement decision.”

The office relied on training from the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, he said, adding, “It’s obvious it received bad training from the federal government.”

The ruling is a result of a federal civil trial last summer in which Sheriff Arpaio and his office were accused in a class-action lawsuit of singling out Latinos for stops, questioning and detention. It says deputies considered the prevalence of Latinos when deciding where to carry out enforcement operations, in many cases in response to complaints based solely on assumptions that Latinos or “Mexicans,” as some complainants put it, were necessarily illegal immigrants.

Regardless of the type of enforcement — workplace raids, traffic stops or targeted patrols in areas frequented by day laborers — Sheriff Arpaio’s deputies were required to keep track of the number of people arrested on federal immigration violations, as well as state charges, Judge Snow said. In news releases, Sheriff Arpaio’s office often referred to the operations as integral parts of the sheriff’s “illegal immigrant stance.”

Cecillia Wang, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that brought the lawsuit, said, “Let this be a warning to anyone who hides behind a badge to wage their own private campaign against Latinos or immigrants that there is no exception in the Constitution for violating people’s rights in immigration enforcement.”

Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting from New York

Judge rules against 'America's toughest sheriff' in racial profiling lawsuit

Judge rules against 'America's toughest sheriff' in racial profiling lawsuit

Tim Gaynor and David Schwartz Reuters

10:35 a.m. CDT, May 25, 2013

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers in his crackdown on illegal immigration, a federal judge found on Friday, and ordered him to stop using race as a factor in law enforcement decisions.

The ruling against the Maricopa County sheriff came in response to a class-action lawsuit brought by Hispanic drivers that tested whether police can target illegal immigrants without racially profiling U.S. citizens and legal residents of Hispanic origin.

U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow ruled that the sheriff's policies violated the drivers' constitutional rights and ordered Arpaio's office to cease using race or ancestry as a grounds to stop, detain or hold occupants of vehicles - some of them in crime sweeps dubbed "saturation patrols."

"The great weight of the evidence is that all types of saturation patrols at issue in this case incorporated race as a consideration into their operations," Snow said in a written ruling.

He added that race had factored into which vehicles the deputies decided to stop, and into who they decided to investigate for immigration violations.

The lawsuit contended that Arpaio, who styles himself "America's toughest sheriff," and his officers violated the constitutional rights of both U.S. citizens and legal immigrants alike in their zeal to crack down on people they believe to be in the country illegally.

The ruling came days after a U.S. Senate panel approved a landmark comprehensive immigration legislation that would usher in the biggest changes in immigration policy in a generation if passed by Congress.

The bill would put 11 million immigrants without legal status on a 13-year path to citizenship while further strengthening security along the porous southwestern border with Mexico.

Arpaio declined to comment on the ruling. An attorney representing the sheriff's office said his clients were "deeply disappointed by the ruling" and would lodge an appeal.

"The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has always held the position that they never have used race and never will use race in making a law enforcement decision," attorney Tim Casey told Reuters.

"We do disagree with the findings and my clients do intend to appeal, but at the same time ... we will work with the court and with the opposing counsel to comply fully with the letter and the spirit of this order," he added.

'ILLEGAL AND PLAIN UN-AMERICAN'

Cecillia Wang, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project and plaintiffs' counsel, called the judge's ruling "an important victory that will resound far beyond Maricopa County."

"Singling people out for traffic stops and detentions simply because they're Latino is illegal and just plain un-American," Wang said after the ruling was made public.

"Let this be a warning to anyone who hides behind a badge to wage their own private campaign against Latinos or immigrants that there is no exception in the Constitution for violating people's rights in immigration enforcement."

During testimony in the non-jury trial last year, Arpaio said he was against racial profiling and denied his office arrested people because of the color of their skin.

The sheriff, who won re-election to a sixth term in November, has been a lightning rod for controversy over his aggressive enforcement of immigration laws in the state, which borders Mexico, as well as an investigation into the validity of President Barack Obama's U.S. birth certificate.

The lawsuit was brought against Arpaio and his office on behalf of five Hispanic drivers who said they had been stopped by deputies because of their ethnicity.

The plaintiffs, which include the Somos America immigrants' rights coalition and all Latino drivers stopped by the sheriff's office since 2007, were seeking corrective action but not monetary damages.

Arpaio has been the subject of other probes and lawsuits. In August, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona said it had closed a criminal investigation into accusations of financial misconduct by Arpaio, and it declined to bring charges.

A separate U.S. Justice Department investigation and lawsuit relating to accusations of civil rights abuses by Arpaio's office is ongoing.

Arizona has been at the heart of a bitter national debate over immigration since Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed a 2010 crackdown on illegal immigration.

The federal government challenged the crackdown in court and said the U.S. Constitution gives it sole authority over immigration policy. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has allowed to stand the part of the law permitting police to question people they stop about their immigration status.

Snow scheduled a hearing in the case for June 14 at 9:30 a.m. at the Sandra Day O'Connor U.S. Federal Courthouse in Phoenix.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor and David Schwartz; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Eric Walsh, Toni Reinhold)

Arpaio’s fantasy ends here

Arpaio’s fantasy ends here

The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 24, 2013 6:56 PM

From the beginning, this racial-profiling case clearly had legs.

It was brought against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio by people of Hispanic ancestry with real-life stories to tell.

By Americans from Chicago. By Mexican citizens with a perfectly legitimate right to be in the United States. By people of a darker hue who suffered the indignity of seeing lighter-hued people in the same car treated far, far more kindly by Arpaio’s deputies.

All of those plaintiffs, according to U.S. District Judge Murray Snow, told the same story with clarity: They were targeted in the course of sweeps by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office solely because they were Latino.

Snow ruled on Friday, nearly eight months after the seven-day trial, that Arpaio’s department had engaged in forbidden racial profiling.

The case parallels the still-pending federal case against Arpaio brought by the Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights. But while that case — led by President Obama’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Labor, Thomas Perez — appears to rest heavily on expert testimony and statistical analysis, this case stands on evidence closer to the ground.

That evidence included Sheriff Arpaio’s own words.

In addition to weighing the strong, personal stories related by the plaintiffs, Judge Snow also considered Arpaio’s often intemperate observations about his rationale for conducting so-called “crime sweeps” in neighborhoods that just happened to be largely Hispanic.

Hubris and ego have long been hallmarks of America’s Toughest Sheriff. His snarky, smirking, contempt-laden denials that his sweeps profiled Hispanics always pushed the margins of believability. Now, a federal judge has called him on it.

The ruling will be appealed. That was guaranteed, regardless of which way the judge ruled. But Snow’s order that the Sheriff’s Office halt its practice of using Hispanic ancestry as a reason for stopping drivers is only the beginning. In addition to the Justice Department case, Snow indicated that still more remedies may follow his injunction against Arpaio’s practices.

The motivation behind Arpaio’s obnoxious sweeps can be traced to a specific incident in 2005, which constituted a political epiphany for the image-conscious sheriff. He saw the public reaction — outrage — when a young veteran was arrested for holding a group of suspected illegal aliens at gunpoint.

From that moment forward, he saw political gold in transforming himself into America’s Toughest Immigration Warrior.

Judge Snow’s decision is evidence that Arpaio’s gold fantasy is finally turning back into lead.

Court - Sheriff Joe guilty of profiling Mexicans

Judge: Sheriff Arpaio’s agency engaged in racial profiling

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 24, 2013 10:06 PM

A federal judge’s ruling that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office engaged in racial profiling against Latinos could bring significant changes to the agency’s controversial approach to immigration enforcement.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow issued a lengthy ruling that prohibits sheriff’s deputies from using race as a factor in law-enforcement decisions, from detaining people solely for suspected immigration violations and from contacting federal immigration authorities to arrest suspected illegal immigrants who are not accused of committing state crimes.

The ruling, issued Friday afternoon — more than eight months after the final arguments were heard — brings an end to a case that started with the 2007 arrest near Cave Creek of Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, a day laborer.

Snow’s ruling also provides thorough dissection of the constitutional violations that Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration-enforcement efforts imposed on Latinos in Maricopa County, and it frequently contrasts Arpaio’s own news releases and statements to media with testimony he offered during the trial.

Critics of Arpaio’s immigration enforcement efforts, many of whom have for years accused the Sheriff’s Office of discriminating against Latinos, said they felt vindicated by the ruling.

“It seems like what we have always known, that racial profiling was being done, was brought out by Judge Snow; now I think we all need to look at the remedies,” said Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, a longtime critic of the sheriff’s immigration policies.

“In my mind, people have been very abused in our communities,” she said. “We knew racial profiling was taking place and it was very hard to prove it.”

Arpaio’s attorney, Tim Casey, strongly denied that sheriff’s deputies ever engaged in racial profiling and promised to appeal the ruling.

Casey also took a broad view of the issue, drawing on recent court rulings, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Arizona’s immigration-enforcement law, to conclude that the federal government is trying to send a message to local law enforcement.

“It is very clear that when it comes to people in the country unlawfully, that federal law does not want any local law-enforcement participation,” he said.

‘Nothing has changed’

Arpaio’s boast that his office would not change its approach to immigration enforcement after the federal government stripped deputies of that authority in 2009, and his subsequent decision to train deputies based on an inaccurate understanding of immigration law, made plaintiffs’ claims relevant, Snow wrote.

Had the Sheriff’s Office ceased immigration enforcement after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials removed the deputies “287(g)” authority to enforce federal immigration law, the plaintiff’s claims might have been moot, he wrote.

“As was made clear by the testimony of the sheriff and other members of the MCSO command staff at trial, nothing has changed,” Snow wrote.

The case began when Melendres, a Mexican tourist in the United States legally, was stopped outside a church in Cave Creek where day laborers were known to gather. Melendres, the passenger in a car driven by a White driver, claimed that deputies detained him for nine hours and that the detention was unlawful.

Eventually, the case grew to include complaints from two Hispanic siblings from Chicago who felt they were profiled by sheriff’s deputies, and from an assistant to former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon whose Hispanic husband claims he was detained and cited while nearby White motorists were treated differently.

The lawsuit did not seek monetary damages. Instead, plaintiffs asked for the kind of relief the Sheriff’s Office has resisted in the past: a declaration that spells out what deputies may or may not do when stopping potential suspects, and a court-appointed monitor to make sure the agency lives by those rules.

Snow gave each side 20 hours to present their case in a tightly controlled trial that took place in late July and early August last year in the federal courthouse in downtown Phoenix.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs took a three-pronged approach, using Arpaio’s own statements about undocumented immigrants along with racially insensitive requests from constituents for immigration enforcement to show what they called the sheriff’s callous attitude toward the rights of Latinos and his agency’s intention to discriminate.

Data showing that Latino drivers were more likely to be stopped during the sheriff’s immigration sweeps, and that those stops were likely to last longer, was designed to show the outcome of that intent. And statements from residents who claimed they were victims of profiling was intended to illustrate the impact of the sheriff’s policies.

Setting policy at the Sheriff’s Office

The ruling indicates that Snow, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush in 2007, agreed with the attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union on many of their points. He frequently cites Arpaio’s statements to the media and his office’s news releases to draw conclusions about Arpaio’s point of view at the time of the immigration sweeps and work-site raids, regardless of what the sheriff said on the witness stand.

At one point, Snow says flatly that the sheriff’s testimony was incorrect when it came to the issue of whether racially insensitive e-mails from constituents motivated some of the sheriff’s saturation patrols, in which deputies would typically flood neighborhoods with high Hispanic populations.

“The evidence demonstrates that on October 4, 2007, the MCSO conducted a small-scale saturation patrol on the corner of Ellsworth and Ocotillo, based on a complaint transmitted to the MCSO on October 2 that Hispanic day laborers congregated there,” Snow wrote.

Cecillia Wang, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the ruling supports the ACLU’s claim that the direction in the Sheriff’s Office comes from Arpaio, despite deputies’ attempts during the trial to distance the six-term lawmaker from day-to-day decisions of the office.

“What he says publicly either to constituents in response to their racist e-mails, or what he writes in his book, did set the tone and set policy for the Sheriff’s Office. The evidence showed that the sheriff does set policy. His response to overly racist letters led down the road to these immigration raids,” Wang said. “This is an agency where you saw a classic instance of a law-enforcement culture that led directly to a situation where all the Latino residents of the county who the sheriff swore to protect and serve were victimized by his law enforcement.”

Snow also frequently cited data presented at the trial about the ethnicity of the suspects the sheriff arrests and detains to come to the conclusion that sheriff’s deputies used race as a factor in making law-enforcement decisions. Even if race was not the only factor, as the Sheriff’s Office has contended, the practice resulted in more Latinos being arrested during the sheriff’s sweeps and Latinos being detained longer than non-Latino counterparts during traffic stops.

The practices led to violations of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, Snow wrote.

Snow used the data provided to support his skeptical view that sheriff’s deputies actually engaged in a “zero tolerance” policy requiring them to arrest anyone who violated the law during patrols.

Several deputies testified that bad drivers are so prevalent in Maricopa County it is easy to find moving violations to make traffic stops. [Yea, and even if you aren't a bad drive they will make something up - Look he is weaving 2 nano inches every 2 miles.]

“To accept Deputy (Michael) Kike’s testimony in its entirety would mean that Deputy Kikes spent at least four days on traffic patrol in an environment where so many people commit traffic or equipment infractions it would be impossible to stop them all,” Snow wrote. “And all of that resulted in five arrests over four days, all of which just happened to be of Hispanic persons who were in the country without authorization.”

Monitoring still a sticky issue

The most immediate and visible effect of Snow’s ruling could be his injunction preventing sheriff’s deputies from contacting ICE when they have detained suspected undocumented immigrants who are not accused of violating a state law.

After deputies lost their federal-immigration authority, the Sheriff’s Office enacted a policy that authorized deputies to contact ICE’s law-enforcement agency response team whenever they encounter such immigrants.

The Sheriff’s Office has not had a formal saturation patrol in years, but the agency continues to engage in work-site raids looking for identity theft and fraud suspects. Casey, Arpaio’s attorney, said it was too early to tell what Snow’s ruling would do to those operations.

The stickier issue might come with the role of a court-appointed monitor to ensure the ruling is properly enacted: Arpaio flatly refused to consider the idea in an effort to resolve a racial-profiling complaint the U.S. Justice Department brought against the Sheriff’s Office. That case hasn’t been resolved. [F*** a court monitor. Sheriff Joe needs to be removed from the job and placed in prison for violating our rights!!!]

Casey indicated Arpaio’s feelings have not changed. [Arpaio is a corrupt racist cop who probably will never change]

“I don’t know how there can be a monitor on a constitutionally elected representative,” Casey said. “It will supplant the sheriff’s authority.” [Again, don't monitor Sheriff Joe, put him in prison where he belongs!!!]

Wang declined to provide details on what the ACLU will ask for, but said some oversight would be necessary to correct problems the federal court identified.

Snow set a hearing for mid-June to determine how the Sheriff’s Office will ensure it is adhering to the court’s ruling.

“When you’ve got an agency that is so deeply infected from the top with both a culture and a policy that results in this type of unconstitutional conduct, you need to have concrete provisions to ensure we uproot the problem,” Wang said.

But future hearings have no bearing on the significance of Friday’s ruling, Wang added.

“I want people in the county to know that this is an immediate and permanent injunction,” she said. “Anyone in the county who is discriminated against can immediately go into court and seek relief.”

And if that means more litigation, and more costs to taxpayers, Wilcox, the county supervisor, said the county would have to do whatever is necessary. [Mary "Bullet in the Butt" Rose Wilcox is also corrupt and just as bad as Sheriff Joe. She voted to steal a billion or so for that worthless Bank One Ball Park. Google Larry Naman]

“I hope the county is not having to suffer monetarily because of all this,” Wilcox said. “But whatever it takes to right it, we are going to have to bite the bullet and do what it takes.”

Judge: Arpaio's office systematically profiles Latinos

Judge: Arpaio's office systematically profiles Latinos

Posted: Friday, May 24, 2013 5:18 pm | Updated: 7:19 pm, Fri May 24, 2013.

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services | 4 comments

A federal judge on Friday found the department run by the self-professed "toughest sheriff in America'' was guilty of racial profiling and ordered the agency's practices permanently halted.

In a 140-page ruling, Judge Murray Snow said members of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department, under the direction of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, were detaining individuals they believed to be in this country illegally without some other reason to arrest them for violating any state laws. Snow said that continued to occur even after the Department of Homeland Security revoked the MCSO's authority to identify and detain those not in the country legally.

RELATED: "Reasonable Doubt" -- The East Valley Tribune's five-part series investigating the hidden costs of the MCSO's immigration enforcement efforts... winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting [See this URL]

"In some instances these policies result in prolonging the traffic stop beyond the time necessary to resolve the issue that initially justified the stop,'' Snow wrote. And he said that, absent some reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, holding people longer than necessary violates their constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

Snow said that entitled Hispanic individuals who sued to an injunction permanently barring the sheriff's department from using Hispanic ancestry or race to determine whether to stop a vehicle. It also prohibits deputies from detaining or arresting Latino vehicle occupants on a belief that they are in this country illegally if race is the only factor they have.

The order also bars the agency from detaining Latino occupants of vehicles stopped for traffic violations any longer than necessary to process the citation unless they have "reasonable suspicion'' that any are committing a federal or state crime.

Arpaio told Capitol Media Services he does not believe his agency engages in racial profiling.

"That's why we're going to appeal it,'' he said.

Byt Dan Pochoda, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, said the ruling confirms the allegations that Latinos have been "terrorized'' by MCSO deputies and "forced to endure years of racial harassment and abuse.'' And Pochoda, in a prepared statement, said all that can be laid at the feet of "Arpaio's proven willingness to seek political gain at the expense of public safety and constitutional guarantees.''

Snow said that, at least on paper, the instructions to deputies were that vehicles were not to be stopped based on the race of any subject in a vehicle.

But he said evidence painted a somewhat different picture.

"While officers were prohibited from using race as the only basis to undertake a law enforcement investigation, they were allowed as a matter of policy and instruction to consider race as one factor among others in making law enforcement decisions in the context of immigration enforcement,'' the judge wrote.

Snow reached his ruling after reviewing years of crime prevention "saturation patrols'' by the department. He said these were far from neutral.

"The MCSO almost always scheduled its day labor and small-scale saturation patrols where Latino day laborers congregated,'' he said. "The same is true for a considerable number of its large-scale saturation patrols.''

And Snow said it is clear that the purpose of these patrols was to enforce immigration laws, citing the news releases issued by the agency's public relations department.

"These news releases either emphasized that the patrols' purpose was immigration enforcement, or prominently featured the number of unauthorized aliens arrested during such operations,'' Snow said. "Most of the time, the reports ignored any other arrests that took place.''

Snow also said the saturation operations were just a pretext to stop vehicles with people who may be in this country illegally.

"During saturation patrols, participating deputies conducted many stops for minor violations of the traffic code, including minor equipment violations,'' the judge said. "This departments from MCSO's traffic enforcement priorities during regular patrols.''

And Snow said that, generally speaking, deputies "had no difficulty in finding a basis to stop any vehicle they wished for a traffic infraction.''

Ron Paul slams Boston police in Marathon bombing

Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston

by Ron Paul

Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.

These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.

What has been sadly forgotten in all the celebration of the capture of one suspect and the killing of his older brother is that the police state tactics in Boston did absolutely nothing to catch them. While the media crowed that the apprehension of the suspects was a triumph of the new surveillance state – and, predictably, many talking heads and Members of Congress called for even more government cameras pointed at the rest of us – the fact is none of this caught the suspect. Actually, it very nearly gave the suspect a chance to make a getaway.

The “shelter in place” command imposed by the governor of Massachusetts was lifted before the suspect was caught. Only after this police state move was ended did the owner of the boat go outside to check on his property, and in so doing discover the suspect.

No, the suspect was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public. He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs with the police.

As journalist Tim Carney wrote last week:

“Law enforcement in Boston used cameras to ID the bombing suspects, but not police cameras. Instead, authorities asked the public to submit all photos and videos of the finish-line area to the FBI, just in case any of them had relevant images. The surveillance videos the FBI posted online of the suspects came from private businesses that use surveillance to punish and deter crime on their property.”

Sadly, we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston.

Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.

This is unprecedented and is very dangerous. We must educate ourselves and others about our precious civil liberties to ensure that we never accept demands that we give up our Constitution so that the government can pretend to protect us.

Source

Ron Paul slams Boston police response to blasts

Catalina Camia, USA TODAY 3:47 p.m. EDT April 29, 2013

Former congressman Ron Paul was no fan of the police presence and manhunt tied to the Boston Marathon bombings.

The libertarian-thinking, former GOP presidential candidate slammed what he called the "military-style takeover" of Boston on April 19, the day Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick asked residents of Boston and its nearby suburbs to "shelter in place."

"The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city," Paul wrote on the website of Lew Rockwell, a libertarian writer. "This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself."

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged in connection with the blasts that left three people dead and more than 260 injured. His older brother, Tamerlan, died in a firefight with police hours before Dzhokhar was tracked down.

Paul served in Congress for 23 years, before retiring in January. The Texan was well known for criticizing what he believed was big government intrusion, in everything from tax and financial policy to national security. The scenes in Boston of police going door-to-door, closed businesses and public transportation shut down were more appropriate for "a military coup in a far off banana republic," Paul wrote.

Patrick last week defended the "shelter in place" decision. "I think we did what we should have done and were supposed to do with the always-imperfect information that you have at the time," he is quoted as saying in The Boston Globe.

Source

Ron Paul criticizes Marathon bombing response

Globe Staff

April 29, 2013

WASHINGTON — Former US representative Ron Paul has a warning for Americans after the Boston Marathon bombings, and it may come as a surprise.

The prominent libertarian says citizens should perhaps be more frightened by the police response to the attack — which killed three and injured scores more — than by the explosions themselves.

In an article called “Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston,” the former Republican representative and two-time presidential candidate compares the intense April 19 search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to “scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic.”

“The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city,” Paul writes. “This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.”

Paul argues that the Boston case sets a dangerous precedent, recounting scenes of “paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.”

“Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties,” Paul writes. “That is what happened in Boston.”

During the search, authorities encouraged residents in the Boston area to stay inside their homes.

It created surreal scenes on the Friday after the attack, with eerily quiet streets.

Governor Deval Patrick last week defended the decision to shut down the Boston area.

“I think we did what we should have done and were supposed to do with the always-imperfect information that you have at the time,” Patrick said at a news conference Friday.

— MATT VISER

<SNIP>

Is it time to end the war on drugs????

Corporate welfare at Tempe Town Lake!!!!

Corporate welfare at Tempe Town Toilet!!!!

1) A large part of the time the park is not open to the public, but used for events to raise money for the royal rulers of Tempe. And these events are expensive to attend and most of the working class people that live in Tempe can't afford to attend the events, despite the fact that these people were forced to pay for Tempe Town Toilet with their hard earned tax dollars.

2) These events cause huge traffic jams and parking problems in the downtown Tempe area

3) When these events are concerts they routinely keep people awake late at night in the entire downtown area, and as far north as Roosevelt Road in Scottsdale which is also Continental Drive in Tempe. I am not sure how far south the concerts can be heard.

Also check out:

Source

Tempe to weigh revising Town Lake plan

By Dianna M. Náñez The Republic | azcentral.com

Tue Jul 30, 2013 12:10 AM

The Tempe City Council took a leap of faith more than a decade ago when it sank $44.8 million into building a 2 1/2-mile-long lake in the desert.

The council hoped that risking the debt to create high-profile waterfront property would pay off in the long run for Tempe, then a landlocked city desperate for new development.

But 14 years after the lake opened in 1999, city finance officials say Tempe is faced with a reality check that Town Lake is far from reaching the city’s development goals.

Tonight, the council is expected to consider revising a financing plan for Town Lake.

City finance officials have said the revised plan would give developers a financial break on their share of costs tied to the man-made lake [i.e. - stiff us taxpayers with the cost], make private development more affordable [i.e. stiff us taxpayers with the cost] and, ultimately, advance Tempe’s plans to secure sufficient lakeshore private development to ease the hefty public costs of maintaining Town Lake. [now the last phrase certainly is an oxymoron - give tax dollars private developers to lower the cost to taxpayers - now that's an impossibility - the more we give them the more it costs us]

But critics argue that taxpayers have long carried the financial burden for private lake development.

The new plan offers no guarantee that economic breaks for developers will actually spur construction, argue Joe Pospicil and Art Jacobs, two longtime Tempe residents who regularly question city finances and criticize lake expenses.

If approved, the revised plan also would shift the burden of paying for a new west-end lake dam, which the city has estimated will cost at least $37.4 million, to Tempe taxpayers, freeing developers from sharing the expense to replace the dam. [That a fancy way of saying give boatloads of our hard earned tax dollars out in corporate welfare rich corporations - the rich corporations that give bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions to the members of the Tempe City Council]

Approval of the city proposal would mark the second time a Tempe City Council, aiming to drive development, has tweaked the original 1995 lake-financing plan in favor of developers. The first was in 1997.

Mayor Mark Mitchell said he believes the proposal merits more time in the public realm so that council members may gain sufficient community feedback. [Translation - he wants to make it look like the taxpayers approve of the members of the Tempe City Council giving boatloads of our cash to the rich corporations that gave the members of the Tempe City Council bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions]

But it remains to be seen whether Mitchell’s colleagues agree that the council has a responsibility to arrange future forums for the public to question and comment on the proposal.

As of Monday, the proposed changes were included on the agenda for today’s council meeting.

The finance proposal is not set for a two-hearing process, which would have allowed for public comment at the first hearing and then required a vote and a second opportunity for public comment at a future council meeting.

That means the council could choose to approve the revised Town Lake financing plan with little opportunity for public input.

But before the council agenda was posted on the city’s website Friday, Mitchell said he still had questions about the financing plan.

“When we initially developed the lake, we had a plan, but it’s a working document,” he said. “We might change it, we might not. (But) we’ll have enough time to thoroughly review (any formal changes).” [translation - we know how to run your life better then you do, but if we screw it up don't blame us]

Mitchell said he expects staff today to merely explain the long-term impact of the proposed changes. [That pretty simple Mayor Mitchell, you and the other royal members of the Tempe City Council will be giving our hard earned tax dollars out as corporate welfare for years to come to corporations that give you bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions]

The proposed finance changes were triggered by an economic reality check, Roger Hallsted, the city finance analyst for the Rio Salado Community Facilities District, told The Arizona Republic.

“From all of our original projections, (we were) thinking really by about this time ... the lake would be built out,” Hallsted said.

Tempe’s goal is for private development on 120 acres to generate assessment fees covering 60 percent of annual operations costs. [So us taxpayers will be forced to pay for 40 percent of the developers costs]

But a Republic analysis last year revealed that in the 13 years since the lake was filled, private development still only covered about 20 percent of operation and maintenance costs, well below the 60 percent envisioned in the original city plan. [So in stead of us taxpayers being stuck with paying 40 percent of the developers costs, we are stuck with paying 80 percent of the developers costs - if you ask me us taxpayers are getting screwed on this deal]

Tempe taxpayers have and continue to pay the majority of the $2 million to $3 million in annual costs for operations and maintenance as well as most of the bill for the $44.8 million in original construction costs. [translation - us taxpayers are getting screwed - also did you know that the city of Tempe spends more on Tempe Town Toilet, aka Tempe Town Lake then on all the other parks in Tempe combined???]

Private investment has spurred construction of about 24 acres of condos, high-rise office and commercial space around the lake. Town Lake supporters blame the recession for slower-than-expected development. [Well why didn't the freaking geniuses on the Tempe City Council figure out this??? I guess they were too busy taking bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions from the rich developers]

The proposed changes to the financing plan are aimed at making land surrounding Town Lake more attractive to private development, Hallsted said. [yea, like giving then 10 times as much corporate welfare as originally planned]

If the council approves the changes, Town Lake developers would pay less toward their share of payments for the original construction costs. [And us taxpayers get screwed again and will have to make up the difference]

The proposal emanated from Tempe’s Enhanced Services Commission, Tempe Finance Manager Ken Jones said. [It sounds more like it came from the developers who will be getting the corporate welfare if you ask me!!!!]

The commission includes representation from Jones; Town Lake developers; Nancy Hormann, the president of the group that manages the downtown Tempe district; and Arizona State University, which owns and is attempting to develop acres of lakeshore property. [yes I was right, it did come from the developers who will are getting the corporate welfare!!!!]

A Republic review of public records from the commission meetings shows that commission members have spent the past year discussing development and maintenance plans for the lake.

At a January meeting, Jones asked for “the logic behind asking the council to cover the cost of replacing the dams,” according to public records of the meeting. [If you remember it was the idiots on the Tempe City Council who get screwed on the damn. The accepted a worthless ORAL 30 year guarantee on the damn, which failed after 10 years causing us taxpayers to get stuck with the replacement costs]

Hallsted said shifting the cost of the dams from being a shared debt with private developers to a taxpayer-only-funded cost is the result of the original rubber dam deteriorating years earlier than expected. [yea, like I just said]

“These new dams, at $38 million to $50 million, if we were to put that in at the true cost, just the (Town Lake) infrastructure replacement budget would have gone from $531,000 (annually) to $2 million,” he said.

The city had to face facts, he said, that it would have to shoulder the dam’s cost rather than “bankrupting every single (lake) property owner,” Hallsted said. [f*ck you!!!! bankrupt the developers for making dumb decisions, not the taxpayers. Or let the members of the Tempe City Council pay for the whole thing.]

The commission questioned whether it’s “more expensive to build at the lake than anywhere else in the Valley” and whether the city was “willing to offer an incentive to level the playing field,” according to public meeting records. [Well maybe the idiots on the Tempe City Council should not have build the lake, since it is a money losing experience]

The commission recommended a plan that would lower an annual “holding fee” of sorts that developers pay until they build on their lake property. [translation - make the taxpayers pay more of the developers expenses - i.e. more corporate welfare for the rich corporations building stuff on Tempe Town Toilet]

If the revised plan is approved, that fee would be reduced from the current 5 percent to the rate of inflation, which is currently 2.2 percent, Hallsted said. [which the Tempe taxpayers will pay]

The financing proposal also includes lowering the annual interest rate developers pay over the 25 years they are allowed to pay back their share of lake construction. [again, which the Tempe taxpayers will pay]

The current interest rate is 5 percent, and the proposal would lower it to 3.64 percent, Hallsted said. He added that the proposal calls for the council to make the rate reduction retroactive to July 1, 2009.

If the council approves rolling back the fee, developers that have built existing commercial and residential development at the lake would receive credits on biannual debt payments they are currently making. [and us taxpayers will be stuck with even bigger bills. Of course the members of the Tempe City Council will get to keep the bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions they accepted from the developers of property at Tempe Town Toilet]

While critics worry that taxpayers are funding too much of the cost for Town Lake, Hallsted reasons that the revised plan will establish a realistic financing plan for the lake and encourage development that will help pay a greater share of the lake’s annual operations and maintenance costs. [why expect the developers to pay for their costs, when they can give small bribes, oops, I mean small campaign contributions to the Tempe City Council members who will stiff the taxpayers with the bill]

“The key thing,” he said, “is being fair to the citizens, but try to make it more enticing for developers to come in.” [translation - the key to this is SCREWING the taxpayers and forcing them to pay the developers bills]

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