Amazon has quietly launched Amazon Reload, promising Prime subscribers a 2-percent reward back on every purchase as long as they jump through a few hoops. The deal builds on Amazon‘s gift card system, though it can be funded with any debit card or bank account. Effectively, in return for preloading cash into your Amazon account, the retail behemoth is promising … Continue reading
Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday and Twitter was sending out straight fire the entire time.
Sessions was being questioned about alleged Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. Twitter was doing what it does best.
Here were our favorites:
Never stop, Twitter. Never
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Republicans Insist They're Being Transparent With Their Hidden Health Care Bill
Posted in: Today's ChiliWASHINGTON ― Senate Republicans, after holding closed-door meetings with President Donald Trump and senior administration officials on their still-secret health care bill, declared Tuesday that actually, they are being transparent.
“Nobody’s hiding the ball here. You’re free to ask anybody anything,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters, when asked about the charge from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that Republicans are “ashamed” of the Obamacare repeal bill they are writing.
Although Republicans later backed down, just two hours before McConnell spoke they had tried to bar reporters from asking questions in public hallways outside of hearing rooms.
That juxtaposition with McConnell’s “ask anybody anything” line brought ringing scorn on Twitter.
McConnell was not alone in asserting transparency.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.), one of Obamacare’s most vehement critics, said Democrats were just griping about the process. But he claimed that process will be entirely transparent ― once the GOP is done writing the bill.
“Now we hear [Democrats] complaining about transparency,” Barrasso said. “The Republican Senate bill, under reconciliation, will go to the Senate floor, and be open for amendments. It will be an open amendment process.”
The efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act, as Obamacare is formally known, are moving ahead through a so-called reconciliation process that allows bills that affect the budget to pass with just 51 votes, instead of the 60 usually required in the Senate.
Republicans have been struggling to find 51 members who agree on a measure, and have been working in closed-door groups to come up with a bill ever since the House passed a measure that would leave an additional 23 million people without insurance coverage.
McConnell also suggested that new hearings weren’t required because Democrats and Republicans had held them in the past.
“There’ve been gazillions of hearings on this subject, when they were in the majority, when we were in the majority,” McConnell said. “We understand this issue pretty well, and we’re now working on coming up with a solution.”
Schumer chuckled at McConnell’s claim that no one was “hiding the ball.”
“No hearings, no chance to make amendments? I take total issue with it,” Schumer said. “I have never seen such legislative malpractice, by any leader, as this.”
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) noted that McConnell had once been a strong advocate for transparency when Democrats passed Obamare after more than a year of hearings and 25 hours of debate on the Senate floor.
Bennet quoted McConnell saying then: “Above all, he said, the American people, above all, they are tired of a process that shuts them out. They are tired of giant bills negotiated in secret, then jammed through on a party line vote in the middle of the night.”
“Let me put it this way,” Bennet added. “If the process we had wasn’t enough… what they’re giving is really giving the back of their hand to the American people.”
The retracted bid to bar interviews in the hallways did not escape Schumer either.
“They’re afraid to talk about their health care bill, so they’re trying to move cameras away,” Schumer said. “They’re really ashamed of the bill they have.”
An unlikely figure joined Schumer in his criticism of Republican health care efforts on Tuesday: Trump reportedly told GOP senators in a meeting at the White House that the repeal bill passed by the House was “mean.”
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It seems as though no one can stop talking about President Donald Trump — but that doesn’t mean “Broad City” has to.
Series co-creator Ilana Glazer told USA Today Monday that Trump’s name will be bleeped out in Season 4, which will start to air on Comedy Central Aug. 23. Glazer, who created “Broad City” with longtime comedic partner Abbi Jacobson, revealed that they had written the new season anticipating a world where Hillary Clinton was elected president.
But then, Glazer said, “this game-show host became president of our country, [and] we rewrote a lot.”
“There’s no airtime for this orange [person],” Glazer continued. “We bleep his name the whole season.” Apparently, one episode in the new season will involve a plotline where Ilana finds it hard to orgasm under the current administration, knowing so many people are in danger.
The show’s no stranger to politics — in its third season, Ultimate Kween Clinton herself made a cameo, though Jacobson at the time said her appearance wasn’t about “trying to make a statement.”
While Abbi and Ilana — fictional or otherwise — would’ve likely preferred to see Trump’s political career a distant memory by now, we’ll need their catchphrases, positive vibes and humor to get us through.
“Broad City” Season 4 premieres this August. Check out the trailer here.
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In an apparent effort to siphon more business from retail competitors, the online ordering giant Amazon is offering discounts to welfare recipients, though experts say it’s unlikely that many will sign up.
Last week, Amazon announced that it would offer membership to its Amazon Prime service — which comes with perks including free expedited shipping and access to its video and music streaming platforms — at a discounted rate of $5.99 per month for active recipients of federal assistance like food stamps.
Most people won’t be able to actually spend benefits online ― at least not yet. But Amazon is likely betting that someday soon, they will. And when that day comes, the corporate giant wants a cut of the action, which is already worth billions to Walmart and other big retailers.
More than 42 million Americans currently receive food stamps, aka Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, which average about $125 a month per person and can be redeemed at grocery stores for most food products. At an annual cost of about $70 billion, alleviating the hunger of America’s poor is a massively profitable enterprise for America’s retailers.
Amazon, along with six other retailers, is already participating in a two-year pilot program in which they will accept SNAP benefits as payment for online grocery orders in three states, so this latest move marks a doubling down on its efforts to vie with competitors like Walmart for lower-income customers. If the pilot program looks promising, online use of benefits could one day be more widely adopted.
The head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, said online ordering held promise for SNAP recipients in areas lacking good grocery stores. “Online purchasing will also help those who are unable to access a grocery store due to a disability or lack of transportation,” former agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack said last year.
Amazon’s discounted Prime offer is significantly more affordable than the $10.99 a month — or $99 a year — typically charged to Amazon Prime customers, but experts believe the lower rate still won’t see much uptake from low-income customers who receive food stamps or participate in other eligible programs like the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program or the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
Each of these programs distributes benefits on an electronic benefits transfer card, or EBT card, which works like a regular debit card.
University of Georgia SNAP expert Travis Smith said it’s unlikely a lot of EBT users will sign up, since they are poor and the $5.99 monthly fee “is still too expensive for low-income households because Walmart offers goods at a lower price.”
An Amazon spokesperson said the response to the discount has been “great” but declined to share Prime signup numbers from the first week of its EBT discount program in response to a HuffPost query.
Instead, the spokesperson reiterated a previous statement issued attributed to Greg Greeley, vice president of Amazon Prime: “We designed this membership option for customers receiving government assistance to make our everyday selection and savings more accessible, including the many conveniences and entertainment benefits of Prime.”
Other experts agreed that most recipients of SNAP or the other programs likely won’t take advantage of this discount, pointing to other barriers to participation such as lagging access to high-speed internet among low-income households.
Still, University of Illinois agriculture professor Craig Gundersen noted, the benefits offered by membership — such as the free shipping — could prove particularly beneficial for seniors and individuals with reduced mobility.
Further, Gundersen called Amazon’s announcement particularly promising in light of a proposal from the Trump administration to introduce a new fee for retailers who participate in SNAP, a move that could hit small retailers like bodegas especially hard and potentially cause them to leave the program.
“This is the exact sort of thing going in the correct direction of giving people more options,” Gundersen added. “This is a great thing for folks who really do need it.”
Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat and loud defender of food stamps, said it didn’t matter if Amazon was just trying to make a buck.
“Everything helps,” McGovern said. “I want more corporations like Amazon and others to understand that we all have a role to play in combating hunger.”
Experts say SNAP and its predecessor, the Food Stamp Program, helped eradicate starvation in the United States in the 20th century. Nevertheless, the program faces an uncertain future in Congress and the Trump administration has targeted it for cuts.
Shannon Maynard, executive director of the Congressional Hunger Center advocacy group, applauded Amazon for adjusting its model and trying to be more accessible to low-income customers. Their effort — even if it ultimately fails — could provide valuable information toward solving the nation’s ongoing hunger-related challenges.
“We need to explore innovation and try new things to address issues like senior hunger and food deserts,” Maynard told HuffPost. “So often we talk about the same challenges and don’t try to do things differently, so how do you expect a different outcome?”
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Just one week into production of the fourth season of “Bachelor in Paradise,” it all appears to be over.
The cast, after several days on lockdown, was sent home from the Mexican resort where filming took place. Reports have swirled about an inappropriate sexual encounter between two cast members ― an encounter in which at least one person was allegedly too drunk to consent. On Sunday, Warner Bros. issued a statement acknowledging that they “have suspended production” over “allegations of misconduct.
“We are conducting a thorough investigation of these allegations,” the production company said. “Once the investigation is complete, we will take appropriate responsive action.”
Reports differ regarding what actually caused the show to shut down, but most now indicate that two contestants, DeMario Jackson and Corinne Olympios, became extremely drunk during the first day of filming and had an explicit sexual encounter in the pool on site as the cameras rolled. A producer, who believed that the female contestant was too intoxicated to consent, reportedly filed a complaint of misconduct after the incident. Production was suspended, and the cast was eventually sent home after filming just a couple days of the series.
Where did it all go so wrong for a campy dating show that has spawned goofy GIFs galore, an alarmingly high rate of engagements and a still more alarming rate of broken engagements?
With an internal investigation still underway and most news about the situation coming to the public through anonymously sourced TMZ articles, it’s far too soon to diagnose exactly where this aborted season went off the rails. It may be weeks, even months, before the public gets any clarity about what happened in Paradise. Of course, that hasn’t stopped many from jumping onto Twitter or Instagram to confidently speculate about which contestants are to blame, or to make racist, sexist insinuations about them.
Though it’s shocking, in another sense it’s unsurprising that the fun-in-the-sun ethos of “Paradise” has taken such a dark turn. Though this scandal may have been the first to halt production of the show, it’s not the first sign that the crew has been putting juicy plotlines ahead of the well-being, and even the safety, of its cast.
“Bachelor in Paradise,” like all the “Bachelor” shows, harvests entertainment from the irresistible human drama of gorgeous people competing for each other’s romantic attention. It doesn’t maintain its top spot in the reality dating pantheon by just “letting it happen,” though; the show’s producers notoriously coach contestants to make proclamations or romantic overtures that will actually sink their chances, but might make for more titillating TV. On the current season of “The Bachelorette,” the show brought on two unpleasant young men with a pre-existing rivalry from another, lesser-known reality show to milk their bad blood for ratings.
So far, so whatever ― these days, if you admit that you didn’t realize every confrontation and kiss on the show is likely producer-instigated, you’ll be called naive by members of Bachelor Nation. BUT that doesn’t mean we should be blasé about producers standing by during, and possibly even encouraging, dangerous situations.
The particular setup of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” typically keeps a lid on overt misconduct. With just one man or woman dating over 20 people, the jealousy between rivals is almost too spread out to explode. The lead’s desirability is too valuable to the franchise for encouraging criminal misbehavior to be a good business decision, and there’s no one else for contestants to get messy with in the corners (except, on one or two notable occasions, the crew themselves).
Nonetheless, the drama can get out of hand if producers allow feuds to escalate or fail to respond to red flags from certain cast members, and recent seasons have raised questions of how the show is protecting itself from liability. On Season 12 of “The Bachelorette,” several of the men became alarmed by Chad Johnson’s belligerent behavior, physical aggression and colorful threats (“I’m gonna cut everyone here’s legs off and arms off and there’s gonna be torsos and I’m going to throw them in the pool,” he exploded at one point), but he remained in the mansion until star JoJo Fletcher eliminated him from the competition ― albeit with the showy addition of an on-camera security guard to oversee peace in the house.
“Bachelor in Paradise,” with its unstructured setting and roughly equal groups of men and women from the show, takes more after “The Bachelor” franchise’s rowdier, gender-balanced cousins ― think MTV’s “Are You The One,” featuring 20-plus men and women living together and dating each other for several weeks. (“AYTO” has seen physical altercations and raunchy sexual encounters more than once.)
“Paradise” is known as the silly, chill member of the “Bachelor” family, but the combustible mix of partner-switching couples and lax oversight seems destined to have blown up sooner or later.
It was Johnson, brought back to the franchise after his unsettling turn on “The Bachelorette,” who exposed flaws in the “Paradise” safety measures last summer. On the first night of the third season, Johnson and fellow contestant Lace Morris became very drunk, flirted heavily and began making out amid the partying. Fairly standard “Paradise” stuff, except that an intoxicated Johnson began manhandling Morris, sparking an escalating physical and verbal altercation in and around the pool. Despite this, both contestants were allowed to stay as their teary, semi-violent fight continued into the night. At one point, Johnson threw an ableist slur at another cast member, Sarah Herron, who was born with only the upper part of one arm.
Not until the next morning, after Johnson’s unpredictable drunken rampage had petered out, was he removed from the situation; even so, his dismissal from the show by Chris Harrison was filmed in front of the entire cast, squeezing a bit more great TV from the situation. The cast, by the time he left, seemed genuinely rattled by how far things had been allowed to go. Sure, they’d signed up to be on a hookup-fueled reality show packed with tears and drama, but they hadn’t signed away their basic human rights, nor did they come with the expectation of being verbally and even physically abused.
With the night on the verge of a real catastrophe, viewers wondered, why didn’t production step in until it had calmed down? Were they gambling that things would go no further? After years of successfully producing the “Bachelor” shows, were they not even thinking of their liability? Are their contracts ironclad? Were they willing to risk a lawsuit for the sake of the juicy footage?
Meanwhile, contradictory reports on the recent scandal continue to filter through to the media. Reality Steve’s latest update reveals that his sources perceived the encounter as consensual and that Corinne was the instigator, while a Daily Mail interview with an anonymous crew member paints a disturbing picture of producers allowing cameras to roll while a borderline unconscious Corinne was assaulted, then put to bed without any medical care. Which, if any, account is true? It’s unclear. But most reports suggest that producers, as the ostensible adults in the room during a booze-fueled tropical speed dating zone, allowed a situation to escalate to the point that a credible complaint of misconduct could be made against the show.
The contestants, many happily point out, are adults and are not forced to drink or do anything; nonetheless, they’ve signed over a great deal of control in their life to a production team with the understandable expectation that those in charge won’t let anything genuinely dangerous happen to them. After this incident, in combination with past kerfuffles on the show, that expectation appears misguided, but it is a very human one. A production also needs to be prepared to take responsibility for setting up volatile situations and continuing to point cameras at them even after contestants have begun to act harmfully toward themselves or others. Regardless of the severity of what went wrong on set, public sex between drunk cast members arguably falls into that category.
Fans of the show may be understandably disappointed that this season, and very likely any planned future seasons, will never air. (Though the show has not officially been canceled, all contestants were flown home, filming does not seem set to resume and the original premiere date is rapidly approaching, making it extremely likely that a formal cancellation is coming.) But the disappointment can, and should, be an opportunity for the show itself and for the audience to think carefully about how much messy drama we expect from our reality shows, and what risks cast members may assume in order to meet those expectations. In Johnson’s appearances, for example, production didn’t step in even when overt threats were made or he became drunk to the point of being out of control; fortunately, things didn’t go any further, but they easily could have.
This season, the outcome was still worse ― and the questions about whether the “Bachelor” shows do enough to protect their contestants have only grown more difficult to ignore.
For more on the “Bachelor in Paradise” scandal, listen to this week’s episode of “Here to Make Friends,” featuring Reality Steve and former cast member Michael Garofola:
You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture. Read more here.
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After seeing how few photos she had that included her and her kids, a mom has shared her plea for parents to capture more memories with their families.
Blogger Cyndy Gatewood, a mom of three who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, shared a post on Facebook on June 5 encouraging dads to take more photos of their wives with their kids.
“When she’s in the kitchen talking to your son about his day, take the picture,” she wrote in her post. “If she’s rolling around on the floor with the kids or helping one with their homework, take the picture. Time goes by so fast and every day these sweet babies are getting older and older. Before we know it, they’ll be packing up their cars and moving off to college.”
Gatewood told HuffPost she felt motivated to write the post after realizing she only had a few photos of her and her kids, and they were selfies and only showed her from the neck up. The post was also inspired by her love for looking at photos of her mom, who died from breast cancer when Gatewood was 20 years old.
“I have a box of pictures of her that I look at often and compare. I look closely at those pictures and think, ‘Do I have her hands? Does my daughter have her eyes?’” she said. “Not once have I ever looked at a picture of her and thought, ‘Gosh, she was a mess that day.’ Or ‘Wow, she wasn’t wearing any makeup!’ All I ever see when I look at those pictures is love and memories. I cherish them.”
Gatewood’s post, which has been shared more than 269,000 times as of Tuesday, echoes many other moms’ messages about capturing memories with their families. In 2012, HuffPost contributor Allison Tate wrote a viral essay, “The Mom Stays In The Picture,” in which she stressed why she wants her kids to have photos both of her and with her.
“Someday I won’t be here ― and I don’t know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now ― but I want them to have pictures of me,” she wrote. “I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother.”
Gatewood told HuffPost that since she shared her post, she has already begun taking her own advice.
“I had a friend snap some pictures of me with my kids at the pool yesterday. As someone who never wants to be reminded what I now look like in a bathing suit after having three kids, it was so empowering!” she said. “I stopped worrying about what I looked like and instead knew this was something my kids will have to look back on. My husband also recently took some of me cooking with my daughter in the kitchen and catching him doing that made me smile.”
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WASHINGTON ― Attorney General Jeff Sessions repeatedly refused to answer questions before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday ― not because he or President Donald Trump were asserting executive privilege, but just in case the president might want to do so in the future, Sessions said.
“I am protecting the right of the president to assert it if he chooses,” Sessions told the committee.
The attorney general, a longtime Trump ally, said he himself could not invoke executive privilege to refrain from discussing certain matters related to the executive branch and the president. He said that Trump could do so, if he chose, but that the president had not done so.
Still, Sessions repeatedly declined to talk about his past conversations with Trump and other top officials, even while claiming he wasn’t invoking executive privilege.
Similar exchanges happened over and over again, as senators pressed Sessions on the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, an investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election and the attorney general’s recusal from that investigation.
Democrats grew frustrated with Sessions’ failure to answer their questions.
“You’re impeding this investigation,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said.
“I’m protecting the president’s constitutional right by not giving it away before he has a chance to review it,” Sessions replied.
At one point, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) accused Sessions of stonewalling. Sessions did not take the remark well.
“I am not stonewalling,” Sessions said. “I am following the historic policies of the Department of Justice. You don’t walk into any hearing or committee meeting and reveal confidential communications with the president of the United States ― who is entitled to receive confidential communications ― in your best judgment about a host of issues and have to be accused of stonewalling for not answering on that.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) asked Sessions later what exact policy prevented him from answering questions.
The attorney general was unable to cite a specific written policy, although he did say he thinks there is written policy on the topic. He said his staff discussed the matter and principle behind it.
“The Constitution provides the head of the executive branch certain privileges, and one of them is confidentiality of communications,” Sessions said. “And it is improper for agents of any departments in the executive branch to waive that privilege without a clear approval of the president.”
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Man Who Faced 20 Years For Marijuana Possession To Be Freed After Legal Battle
Posted in: Today's ChiliA Louisiana man sentenced in 2013 to 20 years behind bars for a marijuana possession charge is set to be released from prison in the coming days after a successful appeal in state court.
In August 2011, a New Orleans police officer pulled over a vehicle for a broken tail light and found Corey Ladd, now 31, with a half-ounce of marijuana. It was Ladd’s third arrest for marijuana possession, making it a felony in Louisiana. He also had two other felony drug convictions ― one for possession of LSD, another for a single pill of hydrocodone.
Because of his record, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro chose to prosecute Ladd under the state’s habitual offender law, which allows judges to mete out lengthy prison sentences for nonviolent offenses often involving drugs.
After a jury found Ladd guilty in 2013, Judge Karen Herman sentenced him to “20 years hard labor at the Department of Corrections.” Following an appeal, Herman in 2015 reduced Ladd’s sentence to 17 years.
But Ladd’s attorney, Kenneth Hardin of the Orleans Public Defenders, appealed again, and last year a panel of state judges ruled that the “sheer harshness” of Ladd’s sentence “shocks the conscience.”
Ladd was back in Herman’s courtroom last week hoping for a more substantial reprieve. Some key factors had changed since his last hearing. In a move that lowered the maximum potential sentence, the district attorney’s office agreed to take Ladd’s conviction under the habitual offender law “off the table,” citing a 2015 state law that relaxed penalties for marijuana possession.
Although Herman still could have sentenced Ladd to up to 20 years under previous guidelines for a third-time marijuana possession offense, she opted for lenience, commending Ladd for his good behavior and dedication to drug treatment programs in prison. She reduced Ladd’s sentence to 10 years, gave him the benefit of “good time” served and placed him on parole for the remainder of his sentence.
“I want you to have every opportunity to be able to hold your child and help your parents,” said Herman. “I want you to see your daughter walk down the aisle.”
Ladd, whose girlfriend was eight months pregnant at the time of his 2011 arrest, has never seen Charlee, his 5-year-old daughter, as a free man.
“Corey’s never held his daughter outside of prison walls,” Hardin said in an interview with HuffPost. “Her first day of school is in August and now he’s going to get to walk her there.”
Ladd hadn’t been able to see his family in more than a year, after he was moved to a correctional facility more than three hours away from where they live, Lisa Ladd, Corey’s mother, told HuffPost.
“It’s one thing to talk on the phone or see a picture online, but to get an actual hug, to feel that beating heart, those are the things that you need in life,” she said.
Now that Ladd is getting out, he’s planning to give back to others who find themselves in similar situations, his mother said.
“He realizes that there are still people [in prison] who need what he got,” she said. “Even if the attention that he was receiving didn’t help him, it had to help someone. It was always much bigger than Corey.”
Civil rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch had been keeping a close eye on Ladd’s legal battle. In a jointly authored report last year in favor of decriminalizing drug possession and use, the organizations noted that Ladd was just one of the nearly 140,000 people behind bars for possession on any given day in the U.S. That population is constantly fed by the 1.25 million drug possession arrests police make each year, which have had no measurable effect on drug usage rates, according to the report.
Ladd’s case is also the latest to challenge Louisiana’s pattern of harsh sentencing for nonviolent drug offenses, and specifically those involving small amounts of marijuana in Orleans Parish.
Last year, the Orleans district attorney’s office agreed to re-sentence Bernard Noble, a father of seven serving 13-and-a-half years without the possibility of parole for possessing the equivalent of two joints of marijuana. Like Ladd, he was prosecuted under Louisiana’s habitual offender law.
In December, Noble received a reduced sentence of eight years, of which he’s now served more than six. His attorneys are hopeful he’ll be released earlier on parole.
Gary Howard was not so fortunate. Last month, the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld his conviction for possession of 18 grams marijuana with intent to distribute, which drew him an 18-year prison sentence under the habitual offender law.
The decision drew a blistering dissent from Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette Johnson, who cited “rapidly relaxing social attitudes” toward marijuana in arguing that Howard should have faced prosecution for possession alone.
In her opinion, Johnson noted that it would cost the state about $23,000 annually to incarcerate Howard ― and about $400,000 over the course of his entire sentence.
“Imprisoning [the] defendant for this extreme length of time … provides little societal value and only serves to further burden our financially strapped state and its taxpayers,” she wrote.
Lawmakers took this sort of fiscal equation into account during a recent push to overhaul the state’s criminal justice system. Earlier this month, the state legislature passed a package of criminal justice reform bills intended to drive down Louisiana’s incarceration rate, which has been ranked the highest in the world. The measures are predicted to lower the prison population by 10 percent and save $78 million over the next 10 years.
Hardin said that as cases like Ladd’s have made headlines across the state, Louisianans have started to make clear they’re “fed up” with courts throwing away lives and money because of small-time, nonviolent drug offenses.
“Even the most conservative person was outraged by” Ladd’s sentencing, he said. “If people don’t care about the human aspect of it, they care about the money and the taxpayer result of it.”
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Newlyweds Pippa Middleton and James Matthews are positively owning wedding season style.
The duo touched down in Europe to attend a friend’s nuptials in Sweden on Saturday after their epic honeymoon abroad. Pippa rocked a floor-length floral gown from Erdem and walked hand-in-hand with her new husband, who wore a tailored tuxedo and classic white bowtie.
Pippa really knows how to stand out at a wedding, as evidenced by her infamously poofy bridesmaid dress from the ‘90s (not to mention her other, more famous bridesmaid dress).
Since their own ceremony last month, Pippa and James have flaunted their fashion prowess in Sydney, Australia and also holed up on a private island, presumably working on their tans.
Clearly, this Middleton can rock any role at a wedding. We can’t wait for the next event!
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