046 The Erickson Report for January 20 to February 2, Page 1: Good News

We are going to start with some bits of Good News from over the past couple of weeks.

First up, this is just feel-good news.

The Cyber Ninjas, the outfit which faced months of criticism over its shoddy practices and partisan roots in conducting that lie-driven "audit" of the 2020 presidential count in Arizona which despite it all still concluded that Biden won the state, is closing down.

This follows a rebuttal from officials in Maricopa County, the target of the fraudulent recount, who asserted that of the 77 claims the Cyber Ninjas made about the balloting, 76 were false or misleading along with a county judge holding the company in contempt and ordering it to pay $50,000 per day in sanctions for failing to provide records related to the so-called audit to the Arizona Republic newspaper.

Karma can be a bitch.

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Next, a bit of Good News out of the UK.

On October 17, 2019, three members of Christian Climate Action, an arm of Extinction Rebellion, blocked a train in London for over an hour during morning rush hour. The train was headed into the city's financial district, and the group said the protest was to symbolize how business-as-usual must be stopped and was a proportionate response to the existential threat of climate change.

The three - Reverend Sue Parfitt, 79; Father Martin Newell, 54; and former university lecturer Phil Kingston, 85 - were charged with violating the Malicious Damages Act, carrying a potential sentence of, if I read the Act correctly, two years in prison.

On January 14, the were acquitted by a jury.

What's more, on the same day, Extinction Rebellion (or XR) protester James Brown had his sentence cut from 12 months to four after super-gluing himself to the roof of a plane at London City Airport and those events followed the December acquittal six of XR members who were charged with the blocking a train during a similar action at Canary Wharf station in April 2019; that jury took less than an hour.

It appears that the people, if not the government, of the UK are coming to see the climate crisis for what it is.

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Next: Anti-hunger and anti-war activists in Florida have won their seven-year legal battle against the city of Fort Lauderdale, which has been trying to prevent the local chapter of Food Not Bombs from giving free food to people in need at a downtown park.

Last August, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th District ruled unanimously that the rule "unconstitutional as applied to Food Not Bombs" and the city's requirement for a permit - which could cost up to $6000 - can't qualify as a "valid regulation" of Food Not Bombs' First Amendment rights because it is "utterly standardless," that is, it could be denied for literally any reason or no reason at all.

On January 5, the group announced a settlement with the city, under which the city admits it was wrong, pays the group a small amount of damages, and covers at least some significant part, if not all, of the group's legal expenses.

The reason Fort Lauderdale and other cities have tried and are trying to impose bans like these comes down to one issue: wanting to hide the issue of homelessness because that seems easier and cheaper than doing anything about it.

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Another: Last March, Texas Gov. Greg Abattoir launched Operation Lone Star, deploying thousands of National Guardsmen, Texas Department of Public Safety cops, and other state resources to the border with Mexico and giving them the authority to arrest suspected migrants under suspicion of criminal trespassing on private and state property.

One such person arrested is Jesús Alberto Guzmán Curipoma, an engineer from Ecuador who hoped to submit a request for asylum. He was arrested in September at a railroad switching yard on a charge of criminal trespass.

On January 13, Travis County Judge Jan Soifer declared his arrest unconstitutional, making some immigration advocates hopeful the ruling could create a pathway for other migrants arrested under the program.

Guzmán Curipoma's attorneys successfully argued that Operation Lone Star violates the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution and therefore prohibits state laws form interfering with immigration enforcement by the federal government.

What makes this remarkable is that the Travis County District Attorney's Office, which represented the state in the hearing, agreed. Travis County District Attorney José Garza said in a statement that the program is "an impermissible attempt to intrude on federal immigration policy" and "has failed to satisfy basic, fundamental, and procedural state and federal constitutional safeguards."

A spokesperson for Gov. Abattoir said they expect the ruling will be overturned because the judge couldn't issue that ruling without hearing from the Attorney General. Which seems doubly weird because I was not aware a judge had to check with Abattoir's administration before issuing a ruling and how are they going to appeal when there was someone representing the state of Texas at the hearing who agreed with the decision. But that kind of thing never stopped them before, so who knows.

It's still a win.

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Next, something I don't know I can truly call Good News for reasons I will try to make clear, but the news here is that Greg and Travis McMichael, two of the men convicted in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, have been sentenced to life without parole and the third, William "Roddie" Bryan, to life with parole possible after 30 years.

I take satisfaction in the fact that this is an indication that maybe, at long last, we as a people are taking racist murder more seriously. Still, I can't be entirely happy about this because of my conviction that our so-called criminal justice system is deeply screwed up.

Which brings me to something that is definitely good News.

Early this month, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced sweeping changes to the borough’s criminal justice system. Among other changes, he said prosecutors should no longer seek prison sentences of more than 20 years except in exceptional circumstances and urged them to only pursue prison for the most serious offenses, looking instead to "diversion and alternatives to incarceration." The idea is to shift away from pursuing lesser crimes like marijuana misdemeanors, prostitution, and fare evasion to focus more on violent crime including guns and domestic violence.

The Sentencing Project applauded the changes, noting it has previously recommended a 20-year cap on prison sentences and noting that "Virtually no other nation in the world routinely pursues extreme sentences beyond 20 years. The United States is a clear and appalling outlier."

But of course Bragg faces extreme vituperation from the usual suspects, including right-wing grifters going on about "bloodbaths"and cops, including city Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, who sent an email to every member of the NYPD saying "I am very concerned about the implications to your safety" - or, in other words, "Look out, he's gonna get you killed." Although I strongly suspect she's more fearful for the impact on her department's budget than any on the safety of cops.

It remains to be see how strong Bragg can be in the face if the vicious reactions, ones he surely should have seen coming, but at the very least a marker has been laid down: This can be a notion of what "defund the police" can look like in practice. And that is decidedly Good News.