President Barack Obama. (photo: AFP)

The widespread mistrust of law enforcement that was exposed by the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Missouri exists in too many other communities and is having a corrosive effect on the nation, particularly on its children, President Barack Obama says. He blames the feeling of wariness on persistent racial disparities in the administration of justice.

Obama said these misgivings only serve to harm communities that are most in need of effective law enforcement.

“It makes folks who are victimized by crime and need strong policing reluctant to go to the police because they may not trust them,” he said Saturday night in an address at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual awards dinner.

“And the worst part of it is it scars the hearts of our children,” Obama said, adding that it leads some youngsters to unnecessarily fear people who do not look like them and others to constantly feel under suspicion no matter what they do.

“That is not the society we want,” he said. “It’s […]

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Via AlterNet

You might not know it from watching TV news, but FBI statistics show that crime in the U.S.-including violent crime-has been trending steadily downward for years, falling 19% between 1987 and 2011. The job of being a police officer has become safer too, as the number of police killed by gunfire plunged to 33 last year, down 50% from 2012, to its lowest level since, wait for it, 1887, a time when the population was 75% lower than it is today.

So why are we seeing an ever increasing militarization of policing across the country?

Given the good news on crime, what are we to make of a report by the Justice Policy Institute, a not-for-profit justice reform group, showing that state and local spending on police has soared from $40 billion in 1982 to more than $100 billion in 2012. Adding in federal spending on law enforcement, including the FBI, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Drug Enforcement Agency and much of the Homeland Security Department budget, as well as federal grants to state and […]

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Day after day I do research tracking the trends that are shaping our future. I do not care about politics in an ideological sense, seeing partisanship as differing processes that produce policies with objectively quantifiable outcomes. My calibration of trends is very simple: Is this trend producing wellness, at every relevant level from the individual to the planetary? Data is my mentor. As day has rolled into day, and year into year, doing this even day has taught me: It is possible to measure events quantified on the basis of wellness just as one can measure profit and loss. Using databases from recognized sources, such as The Gallup Organization, The Pew Research Group, the Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Gates Foundation, as a representative list, and examining variables such as life expectancy,1 Obesity,2 Type II Diabetes,3 literacy,4 numeracy,5 teen pregnancy,6 out-of-wedlock birth,7 heart disease,8 psychiatric prescription drug usage,8, 9 infant mortality,10 maternal mortality,11 child abuse,12 and incarceration,13 or just something as simple as having a sense of well-being,14 if we look at the data, seeing it unbiased by ideology or theology, it tells us that life-affirming wellness-oriented, democratic policies produce healthier more vital […]

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Sexy clothes and sex toys (Shutterstock)

In an effort to make up for nonpayment of income, withholding and sales taxes, the state of Kansas has approved the online auction of sex toys and DVD’s by a businessman to bring his tax debt current.

According to the Topeka-Capitol Journal, businessman Larry Minkoff, who did business under the ‘Bang’ name, had refused requests from the Kansas Department of Revenue for payment of over $163,986 in state taxes.

In July agents from the state raided Minkoff’s multiple store locations, seizing the sex novelties, books, and DVDs.

Following negotiations with the state, Kansas gave Minkoff his sex toys back with the agreement that he would liquidate the inventory through an online auction and forward the proceeds to the state to apply towards his tax debt.

The Kansas City Star reports that Kansas Democrats are using the auction to mock straight-laced Gov. Sam Brownback who is reeling from a tax shortfall in his state.

‘Brownback is so desperate to fill the massive hole in the state budget caused […]

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Thomson Reuters

MADRID/SYDNEY — A year after Spain, the sunniest country in Europe, issued notice of a law forcing solar energy-equipped homes and offices to pay a punitive tax, architect Inaki Alonso re-installed a 250 watt solar panel on a beam over his Madrid roof terrace.

“The government wanted people to be afraid to generate their own energy, but they haven’t dared to actually pass the law,” Alonso said as he tightened screws on the panel on a sunny summer day this month. He had removed solar panels from the roof last year.

“We’re tired of being afraid,” he said.

Halfway across the globe, in the “sunshine state” of Queensland, Australia, electrical engineer David Smyth says the war waged by some governments and utilities against distributed energy, the term used for power generated by solar panels, is already lost.

“The utilities are in a death spiral,” he told Reuters by telephone while driving between a pub where he helped set up 120 solar panels to cut its A$60,000 ($53,000) annual power bill and a galvanizing plant which was […]

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