Rick Perry indicted for abuse of power while Obama ignored

8/16/2014

AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, FileIn this Friday, Aug. 8, 2014, file photo, Texas Gov. Rick Perry delivers a speech to nearly 300 in attendance at the 2014 RedState Gathering, in Fort Worth, Texas.

AUSTIN, Texas — A grand jury indicted Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Friday for abusing the powers of his office by carrying out a threat to veto funding for state prosecutors investigating public corruption, making the possible 2016 presidential candidate his state’s first indicted governor in nearly a century.

A special prosecutor spent months calling witnesses and presenting evidence that the Republican governor broke the law when he promised publicly to veto $7.5 million over two years for the public integrity unit, which is run by Travis County District Rosemary Lehmberg’s office. Several top aides to the governor appeared before grand jurors in Austin, but Perry wasn’t called to testify.

Perry was indicted by an Austin grand jury on felony counts of abuse of official capacity and coercion of a public servant. Maximum punishment on the first charge is five to 99 years in prison. The second is two to 10 years.

Perry said Lehmberg, who is based in Austin, should resign after she was arrested and pled guilty to drunken driving in April 2013. A video recording made at the jail showed Lehmberg shouting at staffers to call the sheriff, kicking the door of her cell and sticking her tongue out.

Lehmberg, whose blood-alcohol level was nearly three times the legal limit for driving, served about half of her 45-day jail sentence but stayed in office, despite Perry’s assertions that her behaviour was inappropriate.

Perry eventually carried out his veto threat. No one disputes that he is allowed to veto measures approved by the Legislature, including part or all of the state budget. But the left-leaning Texans for Public Justice government watchdog group filed an ethics complaint accusing the governor of coercion since he threatened to use his veto before actually doing so in an attempt to pressure Lehmberg to quit.

Lehmberg, a Democrat, oversees the office’s public integrity unit, which investigates statewide allegations of corruption and political wrongdoing. Perry said he wouldn’t allow Texas to fund the unit while Lehmberg remained in charge. He used his line-item veto power to remove funding for the unit from the Texas budget.

The indictment is the first of its kind since 1917, when James “Pa” Ferguson was indicted on charges related to his veto of state funding to the University of Texas in effort to unseat faculty and staff members he objected to. Ferguson was eventually impeached, then resigned before being convicted.

In office since 2000 and the longest-serving governor in Texas history, Perry isn’t seeking re-election in November. But the ongoing criminal investigation could mar his political prospects as he considers another run at the White House, after his 2012 presidential bid fell apart.

Perry and his aides say he didn’t break any laws.

“The veto in question was made in accordance with the veto power afforded to every governor under the Texas Constitution, and we remain ready and willing to assist with this inquiry,” spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said in April, after the grand jury was convened in the case.

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"WTF" Headline Of The Day: Mexico’s Jobless Rate Falls to 4.9% in 2nd Quarter

8/15/2014

Mexico’s Jobless Rate Falls to 4.9% in 2nd Quarter

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s unemployment rate fell to 4.9 percent of the workforce in the second quarter of 2014, down slightly from 5 percent in the same period of last year, officials said.

A total of 2.5 million people were out of work in the April-June period in Mexico, whose workforce of 52.1 million people represents 58.6 of the nation’s population, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) said on Wednesday.

The underemployed population, or those with the need and willingness to work longer hours than what their current job allows, fell to 8.2 percent of all employed persons, down from 8.5 percent in the second quarter of 2013.

Inegi considers as employed any person 14 years of age or older who works at least six hours a week at any occupation.

A total of 28.6 million people were part of the informal economy in the second quarter (accounting for 57.8 percent of the employed population), down 2.3 percent from the April-June 2013 period.

Of the employed population, 61.5 percent worked in the services sector, 24.3 percent in manufacturing, and 13.7 percent in the primary sector (agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining).

Nearly 68 percent of Mexican workers are salaried, 22.2 percent are self-employed, 5.8 percent do not receive set salaries because they work in family-owned businesses and 4.2 percent are employers.

Mexico has a population of 119.5 million, according to the latest projections based on the 2010 census, of whom 53.3 million live in poverty. 

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Lack of Immigration Law Enforcement Claims Yet Another Child Victim's Innocence

8/15/2014

Harlingen police believe child rape suspect fled to Mexico

amirez Gonzalez // Harlingen Police Department Photo

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Authorities are asking for the public's help in finding a man who is wanted for raping a child and may have fled to Mexico.

Harlingen police told Action 4 News that Raul Ramirez Gonzalez is wanted on an aggravated sexual assault of a child charge.

Details about the case were not immediately available but investigators believe that the 46-year-old man may have fled to Mexico.

Anyone with information about his whereabouts is asked to call the Harlingen Area Crime Stoppers at (956) 425-TIPS or (956) 425-8477.  

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Transparency Denied: Judge shuts down live tweets in ex-Sheriff Lupe Treviño lawsuit

8/15/2014

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A judge has ruled that live updates on Twitter will not be allowed for a deposition involving ex-Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño.

The former sheriff was recently sentenced to five years in federal prison for money laundering but his legal woes are not over.

Treviño is still facing civil lawsuits filed against him while he was serving as sheriff.

In one of the lawsuits, former Republican sheriff candidate Robert Caples sued Treviño over illegal campaign contributions from Weslaco drug trafficker Tomas "El Gallo" Gonzalez.

Javier Peña, an attorney for Caples, questioned Treviño during a deposition back on August 1st.

A deposition is a question-and-answer session between both parties during the "discovery phase" of a lawsuit and is not part of the trial.

Peña's law firm provided live updates of their questions and the ex-sheriff's answers from the proceedings on their Twitter account.

Treviño's defense attorney Preston Henrichson objected to the line of questioning and the live tweets.

Both sides of the lawsuit appeared before Judge Rudy Delgado in the 93rd State District Court in Edinburg to resolve the issue late Wednesday morning.

After hearing both sides, Judge Delgado ordered that the deposition will be allowed to continue on Friday afternoon.

Peña is free to ask whatever questions he wants during the remaining hour and 48 minutes of time that he has left in the deposition.

But Judge Delgado ordered that Peña cannot tweet the proceedings.

"Our technology is far outpacing ability to formulate rules," Judge Delgado.

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Business-related crimes could be getting lighter sentences

8/15/2014

The federal panel that sets sentencing policy eased penalties this year for potentially tens of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders. Now, defense lawyers and prisoner advocates are pushing for similar treatment for a different category of defendants: swindlers, embezzlers, insider traders and other white-collar criminals.

Lawyers who have long sought the changes say a window to act opened once the U.S. Sentencing Commission cleared a major priority from its agenda by cutting sentencing guideline ranges for drug crimes. The commission, which meets Thursday to vote on priorities for the coming year, already has expressed interest in examining punishments for white-collar crime. And the Justice Department, though not advocating wholesale changes, has said it welcomes a review.

It's unclear what action the commission will take, especially given the public outrage at fraudsters who stole their clients' life savings and lingering anger over the damage inflicted by the 2008 financial crisis. But the discussion about tweaking sentences for economic crimes comes as some federal judges have chosen to ignore the existing guidelines as too stiff for some cases and as the Justice Department looks for ways to cut costs in an overpopulated federal prison system.

Sentencing guidelines are advisory rather than mandatory, but judges still rely heavily on them for consistency's sake. Advocates arguing that white-collar sentencing guidelines are "mixed up and crazy" could weaken support for keeping them in place, said Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman, a sentencing law expert.

The commission's action to soften drug-crime guidelines is a signal that the time is ripe, defense lawyers say.

Just as drug sentences have historically been determined by the amount of drugs involved, white-collar punishments are typically defined by the total financial loss caused by the crime. Advocates hope the commission's decision to lower sentencing guideline ranges for drug crimes, effectively de-emphasizing the significance of drug quantity, paves the way for a new sentencing scheme that removes some of the weight attached to economic loss.

A 2013 proposal from an American Bar Association task force would do exactly that, encouraging judges to place less emphasis on how much money was lost and more on a defendant's culpability. Under the proposal, judges would more scrupulously weigh less-quantifiable factors, including motive, the scheme's duration and sophistication, and whether the defendant actually financially benefited or merely intended to.

The current structure, lawyers say, means bit players in a large fraud risk getting socked with harsh sentences despite playing a minimal role.

"It's real easy to talk about 10, 15, 20 years, but when you realize just how much time you're talking about ... it's too much," said Washington defense lawyer Barry Boss, an ABA task force member.

No one is seeking leniency for imprisoned financier Bernie Madoff, who's serving a 150-year sentence for bilking thousands of people of nearly $20 billion, or fallen corporate titans whose greed drove their companies into the ground. But defense lawyers are calling for a sentencing structure that takes into account the broad continuum of economic crime and that better differentiates between, for example, thieves who steal a dollar each from a million people versus $1 million from one person.

Any ambitious proposal will encounter obstacles.

It's virtually impossible to muster the same public sympathy for white-collar criminals as for crack-cocaine defendants sentenced under old guidelines now seen as excessively harsh, which took a disproportionate toll on racial minorities. The drug-sentencing overhaul also was promoted as fiscally prudent, because drug offenders account for roughly half the federal prison population. Tea Party conservatives and liberal groups united behind the change.

In comparison, the clamor for changing white-collar guidelines has been muted. The Justice Department, already criticized for its paucity of criminal prosecutions arising from the financial crisis, has said it's open to a review but has not championed dramatic change.

"I don't think there's a political will for really cutting back or retooling the guidelines," said Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman.

The commission's last major change to the economic crime guidelines came more than a decade ago, when it stiffened penalties. But as fraud sentences have increased, some judges have deviated from the guidelines to impose terms far more lenient than the government's recommendations. One judge, Frederic Block of the Eastern District of New York, cautioned in 2008 that the guidelines should not be a "black stain on common sense."

When some adhere to the guidelines but others don't, critics say, the result can be as haphazard as if guidelines didn't exist at all.

In Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, an outspoken critic of the guidelines, in 2012 sentenced former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta to two years in prison on insider-trading changes, about one-fifth the government's recommended sentence. And in Florida, Judge James S. Moody Jr. sentenced a group of health care executives in May to sentences so lenient that he acknowledged prosecutors might think "that I've lost my mind."

A former Wall Street trader convicted of abusing a government bailout program could have received a double-digit sentence under the guidelines but got two years instead. The Connecticut judge who imposed the sentence last month, Janet C. Hall, called the guidelines unhelpful "because the loss aspect of the crime, in effect, overwhelms all the other aspects."

Washington lawyer Barry Pollack, an officer of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said while the commission could let the guidelines stand, he hopes for some movement.

"I think the real question is will they take the lesser and easier step of simply reducing sentences across the board, or will they use this as an opportunity to revisit the entire philosophy behind the white-collar sentencing guidelines," he said. "I think only time will tell on that."

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Immigration Failure: Sex offender caught arousing himself inside convenience store

8/15/2014

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A cashier caught a man touching himself inappropriately while staring at her, documents reveal.

The man accused of the inappropriate act is a registered sex offender, and he was caught at an Aziz store in McAllen.

The alleged indecent exposure happened on August 9th at the store located on the 2800 block of West Highway 83 in McAllen.

Police were dispatched to the convenience store, and documents show the man was arousing himself “underneath the table”, according to an offense report.

Rene Jaimes is accused of committing the act and then running outside the store.

Police showed up to the location, and Jaimes was not inside the store.

That’s when a cashier told police she screamed at him and told him to leave.

Jaimes was found sitting down next to a small bush in back of a palm tree near the scene of the alleged crime.

Jaimes was booked on the charge of indecent exposure and given a criminal trespass warning.

Police documented in their offense report that Jaimes is a registered sex offender.

Records show the 38-year-old was previously arrested for indecent exposure in Houston before the McAllen arrest.

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Immigrants using lawyers, lawsuits to achieve the American Dream

8/15/2014

Another lawsuit alleging discrimination by Bernalillo County leaders has emerged. This lawsuit claims that a director made disparaging remarks about Hispanic men and treated Hispanic male staff unfairly.  

Three Hispanic men working for Animal Care Services at Bernalillo County claim they were tormented for years by their boss Matthew Pepper, and were forced to work in an environment where slurs against Hispanics were common.

The lawsuit claims Pepper said that "all Hispanic women had the same hair style" and that "Hispanic employees needed to be cleaned up."

He also allegedly "called a truck with a camper shell a 'Mexican RV'."

Matthew Pepper allegedly told "a Hispanic male that he should be fixed so that he wouldn't have any more children."

The suit claims Pepper disciplined Hispanic men far more harshly than their white counterparts, even placing GPS tracking units in the vehicles of only Hispanics.

Two of these Hispanic men were eventually fired.

Matthew Pepper resigned his position last week.

These allegations of race discrimination are stacked on top of other discrimination claims.

Bernalillo County Public Information Director Tia Bland is accused of bullying a subordinate and forcing her to work in an unsafe office.

Attorneys are working to involve 230 women in a class action lawsuit, alleging that they earn less pay at the county because of their gender.

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Denver joins "national moment of silence" for death of potential Ferguson cop killer

8/15/2014

...every cop is a criminal. And all the sinnerss are saints.....

With their hands raised, residents gather at a police line as the neighborhood is locked down following skirmishes on August 11, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Police responded with tear gas as residents and their supporters protested the shooting by police of an unarmed black teenager named Michael ...

A few hundred people massed in Civic Center Park Thursday evening, part of a nationwide vigil — the National Moment of Silence (NMOS).

The vigil honored victims of violence and police brutality, including Michael Brown, the unarmed teen who was killed in Ferguson, Mo., Sunday night.

Some participants carried signs with same words "Hands Up — Don't Shoot!" and "Don't Shoot — I'm Unarmed" — that have flooded television reports from Missouri in the aftermath of Brown's death.

Nearly 200 people attended the National Moment of Silence 2014 at Civic Center Park Thursday night to pay respects to fatal victims of police shooting and brutality including Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Mo. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

"I grew up watching racial violence in Tennessee and I've seen it continued here in Denver," said Jo Cusick, one of the co-organizers of the Denver vigil. "We're losing young black men, we're losing fathers and leaders of the community and until people start to speak up about it, it will just continue happening."

Before the gathering, Denver co-organizer Kenny Wiley explained in an email that, as an individual concerned with his community, he shares the values at the core of the NMOS event.

"I have been saddened and horrified by the rampant examples of police brutality all over the world. I then realized that being sad or upset ... didn't mean much unless I followed it up with action," Wiley said. "I was particularly attracted to #NMOS14 because of its peaceful, reflective nature, and because these vigils nationwide are, in many cases, being planned by individuals instead of groups, and by people with varying levels of activist experience and community organizing."

Denver organizers, like the rest of those across the nation, came together over social media to plan more than 90 NMOS events in 37 states.

At about 5:15 p.m., the crowd stood in silence. Afterwards, members of assorted clergy spoke of the need to come together. A hymn, "Guide My Feet While I Run This Race," was sung, and later people were encouraged to say the names of individuals killed in acts of police violence.

A complete list of Thursday's events, including several around Colorado, may be found on the NMOS Facebook page.

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