Florida State Seminoles

[Tree]

The cost of camping equipment isnt a barrier, and anyone with a brain knows it except this "journalist." I can take a drive and see a wide variety of fairly advanced gear just under the local freeway bridges owned by people who dont have shit and in fact are homeless and I dont even live in LA, SF, Seattle, Austin, etc. The pic actually says "want more diversity in camping, start with the gear" which is dumb. The minimal amount of camping gear you need is extremely cheap, especially if you're shopping at Wal*Mart, which of course this "charity" is not doing, they started buying from REI which is probably the most wasteful thing I can imagine. It's like starting a soup kitchen that wants to serve fois gras and caviar.

Minorities are disproportionately poor and yeah that is probably part of the issue, but not because of the gear. They are also disproportionately from single parent households, which is likely also a big factor. This charity is performing some sort of service by trying to drum up minority interest in camping by giving stuff away, and that's fine for a little puff piece, but acting like the price of camping gear is some kind of equal access issue (which it does say) is ludicrous. The very poorest people in our society can afford camping gear, and recreational camping in general is a hobby for many, many lower class people.

3-4 sleeping bags, a tent, some gas money. You really don't think that could be prohibitive for some folks? And that's not even taking into account money needed to actually do things other than sleep once you get there.

[aTm]

Camping is basically the lowest cost vacation there is. Nobody is not going camping because they are too poor to afford gear. Your gas money part nudges up against something though, although you are still off (gas money is not camping gear). Transportation is likely a barrier for some people, especially for large public transit oriented poor populations, where the bus cant just drop you off at a campground. But again, that's got nothing to do with the price of gear, and its also not exclusive to camping over any other out of town recreational activity in any way whatsoever. That's just called being poor. And even so, millions of poor people go camping in this country.

[eCat]

3-4 sleeping bags, a tent, some gas money. You really don't think that could be prohibitive for some folks?

as opposed to what?

There has to be a minimum entry barrier to camping just due to its concept but its also the most accessible vacation to Americans possible. Its like saying bread is cost prohibitive for some folks.I guess its true but you really can't make bread cheaper than we have it today.

[hedge]

When I was smoking crack, I camped out in the bathroom all the time. The cost of the crack wasn't that much, but the spiritual cost was devastating...

[sardis]

Camping is a right.

[eCat]

wtf?

A 5-year-old boy is dead after a man in Wilson, North Carolina, reportedly ran up to the child while he was playing in a neighborhood street and fatally shot the child in the head.


What are the details?

According to a report from WRAL-TV, the shooting took place on Sunday.

Cannon Hinnant was playing outside his father's house on the dusky summer evening when their neighbor — 25-year-old Darius N. Sessoms — charged Cannon, produced a handgun, and shot him in the head.

The child's 7-year-old and 8-year-old siblings witnessed the murder.

First responders came to the scene and transported the little boy to Wilson Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Doris Labrant, a neighbor, said she witnessed Sessoms running up to Cannon, putting the gun to his head, and firing the weapon before fleeing the scene into his own home.


She couldn't believe her eyes.

"My first reaction was he's playing with the kids," she recalled. "For a second I thought, 'That couldn't happen.' People don't run across the street and kill kids."

Labrant said the situation became all too real when she saw the child's father react to the horrific scene.

Authorities took Sessoms into custody on Monday night and charged him with first-degree murder. He is being held in the Wilson County Jail without bond.

Authorities have not yet determined a motive in the shooting, but insisted that the killing wasn't random, as Sessoms was reportedly friendly with Cannon's father.

[crotch]

more on e's post...........

https://www.dailywire.com/news/black-ma ... aME3jWoQFA

[crotch]

.........more from the Civil Rights Attorney who just a few months ago despised the ground that Trump walked on. Now one of his biggest fans.

[crotch]

[crotch]

[crotch]

........and one more for my poor misguided liberal Dem friends here

[eCat]

but will any African Americans remember this when its time to vote for Kamala to be president (after Biden is declared incompetent)

3,100 inmates to be released as Trump administration implements criminal justice reform

Justice Department officials on Friday announced that 3,100 inmates are being released from federal prisons across the country because of a change in how their good-behavior time is calculated — a significant step, they said, in the implementation of a new criminal justice reform law.

Associate Deputy Attorney General Antoinette T. Bacon said the largest portion of the 3,100 inmates being released are drug offenders, though the group also includes those convicted of weapons and sex offenses, robbery and national-security-related crimes. They are scattered across the country and will probably all be out of Bureau of Prisons custody by Saturday, officials said.

Since the act’s passage, Rosen said, 1,691 people convicted of crack cocaine offenses also have received sentence reductions. That is because the measure retroactively applied a different sentencing law meant to resolve the disparity between penalties for those convicted of possessing crack cocaine and those convicted of possessing powder cocaine.

-------------

By comparison

58 federal prisoners were granted an early release by Barack Obama as part of a pronounced late-presidency focus on criminal justice reform.

[hedge]

Most of Obama's commutations were for drug charges. Meanwhile, Trump only pardons his cronies and accomplices...

By the end of his second and final term on January 20, 2017, United States President Barack Obama had exercised his constitutional power to grant the executive clemency—that is, "pardon, commutation of sentence, remission of fine or restitution, and reprieve"[1]—to 1,927 individuals convicted of federal crimes. Of the acts of clemency, 1715 were commutations (including 504 life sentences) and 212 were pardons.[2][3] Most individuals granted executive clemency by Obama had been convicted on drug charges,[4] and had received lengthy and sometimes mandatory sentences at the height of the war on drugs.[5]

Obama holds the record for the largest single-day use of the clemency power, granting 330 commutations on January 19, 2017, his last full day in office.[6][7] He also issued more commutations than the past 13 presidents combined.[2][8]

[eCat]

I just showed you were the Trump administration release 3100 people mostly drug offenses. That's him and Kanye being big buddies

My source on Obama was clearly wrong - or at least early in his criminal reform.

[hedge]

"I just showed you were the Trump administration release 3100 people mostly drug offenses."

Not sure why you're giving Trump the credit for this:

"For years, Congress had attempted to pass criminal justice reform legislation, such as the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act (SRCA) introduced in 2015 by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). But the SRCA failed to pass in 2016 despite overwhelming bipartisan support, thanks to opposition from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and then-Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

That all changed last December when the Senate finally passed, and President Trump signed, the FIRST STEP Act — a modest bill that, despite some initial setbacks, includes key parts of the SRCA. That makes it the first major reduction to federal drug sentences."

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ ... ppens-next

Look, I applaud Trump for signing this, but it's not like (as the article stated) congress hasn't been trying to pass something along these lines for years - blocked by republicans, if the snippet I posted above is true. What it looks like to me is that the new Act recalculated "good time", which would massively reduce federal prison sentences (time served anyway), b/c under the old Federal guidelines you only got something like 50 days off your sentence per year for good behavior (or whatever).

That's very different from state level guidelines, where you see stuff like somebody getting sentenced to, say, 15 years and they get out in 4. That kind of shit is the norm in the state prison systems, but not federal. So what it sounds like this new Act is doing is giving way more time off for good behavior, which is great. Whatever they got to do to make drug sentences shorter (and eventually, hopefully, nonexistent), I all for it. But it's not like Trump just came up with this himself. It will be interesting to see who and how many people's sentences he commutes if he loses in November. That will tell the real story. I hope he outdoes Obama, but we'll see...

[hedge]

"Trump nominated Jeff Sessions, a vocal critic of any reduction to the U.S. prison population, to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Nonetheless, Grassley and Durbin reintroduced the SRCA again in October 2017 and navigated it through committee in early 2018. The bill looked poised to stall once again due to vocal opposition from Sessions."

[hedge]

'Mitch Better Have My Money': Kentuckians Gather Outside McConnell's Office to Protest Alleged Blocking of Stimulus

Kentucky residents recently gathered outside of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office to protest his alleged blocking of a second coronavirus stimulus aid package.

https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-better-h ... ed-1524614

[Jungle Rat]

Ditch Mitch. Please

[eCat]

people lining up to demand money from the government

I grew up in a household that refused food stamps or any form of welfare (at least in their eyes what welfare was). My parents didn't want anyone to know we couldn't take care of ourselves. I do remember my grandmother getting those blocks of government cheese and giving them to us. It was a feast or famine lifestyle. New color TV this month, no meat for 2 weeks and canned garden vegetables the next.


A different world.

[hedge]