walmarts swell with poor people once a month at midnight — when the govt's electronic dole payout goes through from usatoday: Once a month, just after midnight, the beeping checkout scanners at a Walmart just off Interstate 95 come alive in a chorus of financial desperation. Here and at grocery stores across the country, the chimes come just after food stamps and other monthly government benefits drop into the accounts of shoppers who have been rationing things like milk, ground beef and toilet paper and can finally stock up again. Shoppers mill around the store after 11 p.m., killing time until their accounts are replenished. When midnight strikes, they rush for the checkout counter.
debtors' prisons make a comeback…in the US from allgov: America’s jails are increasingly becoming de facto debtors’ prisons as the legal system levies more fees than ever on individuals who wind up behind bars simply because they can’t pay their bills or the administrative penalties imposed by judges. Both the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have issued reports on the rise of debt-related incarceration, noting that courts are administering more fees these days as a way to make up for budget shortfalls.
dying communities see salvation in new prisons from ap: Although rural communities have successfully lobbied for — and built — prisons for years, not many studies have been done on their economic impact. Some studies indicate slight economic gains for some prison towns, according to a Congressional Research Service report in April. Others that have become prison anchors might have not grown as fast as those without prisons. Florence, Colo., where a federal prison complex went up in 1994, was once a major oil producer and gold-smelting center and now has some new businesses. New federal prisons have recently started hiring in West Virginia, which has seen a decline in coal jobs, and in an impoverished farming community in California. Others are being built in Mississippi and Alabama.
the dollar will be 'utterly destroyed' from blacklisted news: The dollar will "utterly get destroyed" and become "virtually worthless", said Damon Vickers, chief investment officer of Nine Points Capital Partners. Due to the huge wage disparities between the United States and emerging markets like China, Vickers said that may resolve itself in some type of a global currency crisis.
"If the global currency crisis unfolds, then inevitably you get an alignment of a global world government. A new global currency and a new world order, so we may be moving towards that," he said.
from washington times: With only eight takers since the program's creation this month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has decided to scrap itsself-deportation program for illegal immigrants who previously had ignored court orders to leave the country. The pilot program, which began Aug. 5 in five cities, officially ended Friday. It had been offered to the more than 457,000 illegal immigrants nationwide who ignored judicial orders to leave the country. Known as “Scheduled Departure,” the plan gave illegal immigrants facing deportation a total of 90 days to turn themselves into ICE, allowing them to plan their departure date and to coordinate their travel plans with relatives instead of facing the prospect of being arrested, detained and deported.
illegal immigrants returning to mexico in record numbers from fox news: Illegal immigrants are returning home to Mexico in numbers not seen for decades — and the Mexican government may have to deal with a crush on its social services and lower wages once the immigrants arrive. The Mexican Consulate's office in Dallas is seeing increasing numbers of Mexican nationals requesting paperwork to go home for good, especially parents who want to know what documentation they'll need to enroll their children in Mexican schools.
"Those numbers have increased percentage-wise tremendously," said Enrique Hubbard, the Mexican consul general in Dallas. "In fact, it's almost 100 percent more this year than it was the previous two years."
The illegal immigrant population in the U.S. has dropped 11 percent since August of last year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Its research shows 1.3 million illegal immigrants have returned to their home countries.
Some say illegal immigrants are leaving because a soft economy has led to fewer jobs, causing many laborers to seek work elsewhere. Others argue that a tough stance on immigration through law enforcement has spread fear throughout the illegal population.
ice: nearly 600 detained in mississippi plant raid from austin american-statesman: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement updated the tally of people arrested at a large immigration raid in Laurel, Miss. The raid, at an electric transformer manufacturing facility, netted 595 illegal immigrants, ICE said Tuesday. Of those, 106 were offered “an alternative to detention based on humanitarian reasons.” According to various press reports, most of the 106 were parents of small children and were given ankle bracelets and told to appear in court at a later date.
from biloxi sun herald: Medgar Evers once said, "You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea." It was 45 years ago today that Evers, the field agent for the Mississippi NAACP, was assassinated outside his Jackson, Miss., home just hours after leaving the Coast where he'd been planning a protest with Dr. Gilbert Mason for June 16, 1963, in an effort to gain blacks access to Mississippi's public beaches.
Evers was shot shortly after midnight on June 12 as he got out of his car and dragged himself to the back door of his home, where he died in front of his wife and three children. Evers' killer, Byron De La Beckwith, was convicted of his murder more than 30 years later in 1994 after Evers' body was exhumed and the bullet tied the suspect to the murder. "Every year this time," said Robert L. Stepney, who fell quiet before remembering the anniversary of his friend's death. He thinks about Evers, his college roommate for three years, and said, "You don't have many good friends."
from steve watson: Federal law enforcement agencies co-opted sheriffs offices as well state and local police forces in three states last weekend for a vast round up operation that one sheriff's deputy has described as "martial law training".
Law-enforcement agencies in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas took part in what was described by local media as "an anti-crime and anti-terrorism initiative" involving officers from more than 50 federal, state and local agencies.
Given the military style name "Operation Sudden Impact," the initiative saw officers from six counties rounding up fugitives, conducting traffic checkpoints, climbing on boats on the Mississippi River and doing other "crime-abatement" programs all under the label of "anti-terrorism".
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from ap: The Mississippi River rose Monday to levels not seen in Memphis since the 1930s, swamping homes in low-lying neighborhoods and driving hundreds of people from their homes. But officials were confident the levees would protect the city's world-famous musical landmarks, including Graceland and Beale Street, and that no new areas would see any serious flooding. As residents in the Home of the Blues waited for the river to crest as early as Monday night at a projected mark just inches short of the record set in 1937, officials downstream in Louisiana began evacuating prisoners from the state's toughest penitentiary and opened floodgates to relieve pressure on levees outside of New Orleans.
