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Power and Punishment: Two New Books About Race and Crime New York Times In 1995, one year after Bill Clinton signed the biggest crime bill in American history, the nation's first black United States attorney for the District of Columbia, Eric Holder, announced a major anti-crime initiative called Operation Ceasefire at a ...

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Power and Punishment: Two New Books About Race and Crime - New York Times

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) - It's good to be Lyft right now.

The company announced on Tuesday that it has raised a fresh $600 million from investors. The new funding bumps up Lyft's valuation to $7.5 billion -- still far short of Uber's estimated $68 billion worth.

The news comes at an interesting time, as Uber's ethics and company culture are being sharply criticized.

A former female engineer alleged sexism and harassment at Uber in February. The company hired Eric Holder to conduct an investigation, which is supposed to close at the end of the month. Uber is also fighting a lawsuit against Alphabet's self driving car unit, Waymo, which is accusing Uber of stealing trade secrets.

And in January, a boycott of Uber went viral. Social media users urged customers to #DeleteUber after the company was perceived as breaking up a taxi strike of drivers protesting President Trump's travel ban.

Lyft said it has seen a 60-percent increase in week-over-week new passenger signups since the #DeleteUber debacle.

According to a source, Lyft has been fundraising since late last year, just before Uber's troubles began.

But Lyft has used Uber's situation as a chance to position itself as the ethical alternative to Uber.

And apparently, Lyft's new investors agree.

"Every ride we requested began with our asking the driver which service they most preferred to drive for. Time and again, the answer was Lyft," wrote Vincent Letteri, director of private equity at KKR about the firm's decision to invest in Lyft. "In our analysis, we also saw a mature, focused management team that stands out."

Letteri cited Lyft's new Round Up & Donate program -- announced at the end of March. It's one way the company has worked to generate a more wholesome image for itself. It gives passengers the ability to round up fares to the dollar, donating that change to a charity of choice.

In addition to new funding from existing investors, Lyft's latest round of funding comes from new backers like KKR, Alliance Bernstein, Baillie Gifford, and Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board.

"We have big plans on the horizon, and will continue investing in new technology and hospitality in order to create experiences that passengers and drivers will love," said cofounder John Zimmer in a statement.

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Company's worth still more than $60B behind Uber - Tristatehomepage.com

Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions took office we have seen the removalof 46 U.S. attorneys, including two prominent African-Americans in Mississippi; the reversal of a policy that would have allowed federal contracts with the prison industry expire; ordered the review of consent decrees with major police departments; and most recently, ordered the end of a beneficial partnership between the government and the science community.

But the Washington Posthas detailed what could be worse than all of those things: a return to the bad old days of the war on drugs. The newspaper reports that Sessions has brought in Steven Cook, a federal prosecutor in Tennessee, to help him turn back some of the policies enacted by former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder regarding criminal justice. According to thePost, the two men plan on returning to the crime-fighting strategies of the 1980s and 90s, when crime was high, and so was the war on drugs, resulting in a detrimental net effect on communities of color.

Sessions spoke in Richmond, Va., a few weeks ago, noting that the country needs a return to the Just Say No approach to fighting drug trafficking. But far too many people remember that while late first lady Nancy Reagan asked this of the nations youth, urban violence skyrocketed as police, the prison system and the crack epidemic converged to decimate Black communities.

But noting the increase in homicides in cities such as Chicago, New Orleans and others, Sessions believes a tougher approach to crime is appropriate, despite the overall decreases in crime over the past 20 years.

If hard-line means that my focus is on protecting communities from violent felons and drug traffickers, then Im guilty, Cook said in an interview with thePost. I dont think thats hard-line. I think thats exactly what the American people expect of their Department of Justice.

In fact, during a panel by the Post in 2016, Cook was quoted as saying the federal criminal justice system is working as designed.

That design has a resulted in a total of 188,000 federal inmates alone, according to the Bureau of Prisons; 37 percent of them are Black. Thats only part of the number of incarcerated in the United States, the largest number in the world. According to Bureau of Justice statistics, there were 2.1million people either in prisonsor jails in 2015, almost 1 million of them Black. This figure doesnt count those under court or law enforcement supervision.

To put it in perspective, the total number of people incarcerated in the United States in 1980 was 503,000.

What we did, beginning in 1985, is put these laws to work, Cook boasted. We started filling federal prisons with the worst of the worst. And what happened next is exactly what Congress said they wanted to happen, and that is violent crime began in 1991 to turn around. By 2014, we had cut it in half.

Butstatistics show that manyof the people imprisoned during those days up until today have been low-level nonviolent offenders, not violent felons. They were largely driven by mandatory minimum sentences, for which organizations such as The Sentencing Project have advocated for elimination.

Obama and Holders policies included seeking the early release of certain nonviolent drug offenders and also a more intelligent approach to charging nonviolent offenders. Bills have also been introduced in Congress to reduce these sentences, rather than increase them. One in 2015 came close to passage, but Sessions spoke out against it, citing recent spikes in violent crime.

Violent crime and murders have increased across the country at almost alarming rates in some areas. Drug use and overdoses are occurring and dramatically increasing, said Sessions, who was then on the Senate Judiciary Committee and voted against it, the Post reported. Cook echoed the sentiment, saying it was the wrong time to weaken the last tools available to federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents.

The Trump administrations policy has been almost opposite of what Obamas was, favoring a heavy-handed approach to crime, particularly citing urban violence. Advocates of reducing mandatory minimums say Cook and Sessions will turn the government toward policies that have proven to tear apart families and harm communities.

If there was a flickering candle of hope that remained for sentencing reform, Cooks appointment was a fire hose, Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), told The Post. There simply arent enough backhoes to build all the prisons it would take to realize Steve Cooks vision for America.

Link:
How the Justice Department May Re-Declare the War on Drugs (and On Us) - EBONY.com

One of the Obama Justice Department's signature achievements was the creation of 14 police reform agreementscalled "consent decrees"with departments in cities including Baltimore; Ferguson, Missouri; and Cleveland that have allegedly been the site of systematic civil rights abuses. The Trump administration's Justice Department is led by Jeff Sessions, a 70-year-old white man from Alabama who is named after Jefferson Davis; Sessions is a little less of a leftist on civil rights issues than Obama and Eric Holder were. He has announced plans to "review" all of the consent decrees and has been trying to delay the adoption of Baltimore's, which was only agreed to this January. That delay effort ran into a wall Fridaya wall named federal judge James K. Bredar. Via the Baltimore Sun's Justin Fenton:

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Judge Rejects Jeff Sessions' Bid to Back Out of Baltimore Civil Rights Deal in Quite Spicy Fashion - Slate Magazine (blog)

By Joel Connelly, SeattlePI

When discussing marijuana legalization at Senate hearing, , Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., weightily argued: "Lady Gaga says she's addicted to it and it is not harmless." According to People mag, Gaga said that she smoked marijuana to deal with the mental and physical challenges of her career

Sessions is now U.S. Attorney General. Gov. Jay Inslee and three other governors, whose states have legalized recreational marijuana, want Sessions to keep his hands off a regulatory system that is working.

When discussing marijuana legalization at Senate hearing, , Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., weightily argued: "Lady Gaga says she's addicted to it and it is not harmless." According to People mag, Gaga said that

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is no fan of the ganja. Here's some of the things he's said on it in the past.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is no fan of the ganja. Here's some of the things he's said on it in the past.

Dosages can be constructed in a way that might be beneficial, I acknowledge that, but if you smoke marijuana for example, where you have no idea how much THC youre getting, its probably not a good way to administer a medicinal amount. So forgive me if Im a bit dubious about that.

Dosages can be constructed in a way that might be beneficial, I

As U.S. Attorney in Alabama in the 1980s, Sessions famously said he thought the KKK "were OK until I found out they smoked pot."

As U.S. Attorney in Alabama in the 1980s, Sessions famously said he thought the KKK "were OK until I found out they smoked pot."

Attorney General Sessions also called Obama's lax approach to marijuana "one of his great failures."

Attorney General Sessions also called Obama's lax approach to marijuana "one of his great failures."

Stay off our pot, Inslee and governors tell AG Sessions

The Trump Administration should keep its hands off states that have legalized recreational marijuana, Gov. Jay Inslee and three other governors said in a Monday letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The open letter asked Sessions and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to "engage with us before embarking on any changes to regulatory and enforcement systems."

The letter was signed by governors of four states where voters have legalized cannabis for recreational use: Inslee, Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon, Gov. Bill Walker of Alaska, and Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado.

Sessions railed against pot during his days as an ultraconservative senator from Alabama, taking particular exception when President Obama told an interviewer that alcohol was more dangerous than cannabis.

"Lady Gaga says she is addicted to it and it is NOT harmless," Sessions told a hearing with then-Attorney General Eric Holder.

Growing, possessing and using marijuana remains a crime under the Federal Controlled Substances Act. As AG, however, Holder fashioned a policy that let Colorado and Washington go ahead with legalizing and regulating marijuana use.

The feds laid down key conditions and stipulations, namely no cannabis trade with other states, and keep gangs out of the business.

The governors' letter calls on Sessions and Mnuchin to keep the guidelines established under Holder.

They warned that a federal crackdown on marijuana "would divert existing marijuana product into the black market."

And, the governors argued that legalization has reduced "inequitable incarceration" of peoples of color. Recent evidence shows that African-Americans were a target when the Nixon Administration launched its "War on Drugs" in 1970.

"Any forced change in federal enforcement policy will interrupt the collaborative approach we have taken with local law enforcement and the federal government," Mark Bolton, an adviser to Hickenlooper on marijuana policy, said in a statement.

"Our hope is that we can continue working with the administration to build on a regulatory system that prioritizes protecting public safety and public health."

As a recently minted grandfather, Gov. Inslee in 2012 opposed the statewide initiative that legalized recreational marijuana. The initiative passed, however, carrying counties on both sides of the Cascades.

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Stay off our pot, Inslee and governors tell AG Sessions - seattlepi.com