Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming is a striking geologic protrusion, sitting among the surrounding prairie. It’s also America’s first national monument! >> http://prks.org/2rZi9A8
Frustrated that the US Treasury Department is walking back plans to replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, Dano Wall created a 3D-printed stamp that can be used to transform Jacksons into Tubmans on the twenties in your pocketbook.
I was inspired by the news that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, and subsequently saddened by the news that the Trump administration was walking back that plan. So I created a stamp to convert Jacksons into Tubmans myself. I have been stamping $20 bills and entering them into circulation for the last year, and gifting stamps to friends to do the same.
You claim, on the opinion pages of the “failing” New York Times no less, that senior officials working for the president of the United States “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
“I would know,” you add dramatically. “I am one of them.”
Sorry, what was the point of this particular piece? And what is it that you want from the rest of us? A thank-you card? A round of applause? The nation’s undying gratitude?
Screw. You.
There is no redemption; no exoneration for you or your colleagues inside this shit-show of an administration. You think an op-ed in the paper of record is going to cut it? Gimme a break. You cannot write an article admitting to the president’s “anti-democratic” impulses while also saying you want his administration “to succeed.” You cannot publish a 965-word piece excoriating Donald Trump’s “worst inclinations” while omitting any and all references to his racism, bigotry, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and white nationalism.
You did find space, however, to heap praise on yourself and your fellow officials. “Unsung heroes.” “Adults in the room.” “Quiet resistance.” “Steady state.”
The reality is that you and your fellow officials are enablers of Trump; you are his protectors and defenders. You say it yourself. Why were there only “whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment,” which provides for the cabinet to remove the president from office if he is unable to do the job? Why not invoke it and let Mike Pence take over? (Are you, by the way, Mike Pence?)
If as you claim — and we all agree! — that the president you serve “continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic” with “misguided impulses,” then how can you advocate for anything other than his swift removal from office?
Your defense is that “no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.” Seriously? You don’t agree with former Secretary of State John Kerry that we’re already in the midst of “a genuine constitutional crisis,” given your own op-ed outlining his “erratic behavior” and “reckless decisions” and Bob Woodward’s new book describing “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” at the center of the Trump White House?
You are keen to remind the liberal readers of the New York Times that yours “is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left” and that you believe this administration’s policies have “already made America safer and more prosperous.” You cite “historic tax reform” and “effective deregulation” as the supposed “bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture.” But by tax reform, do you mean the Trump tax cuts that give the richest 1 percent of Americans almost half of the benefits? And by deregulation, do you mean the rescinding of Obama-era protections for the oceans; the lifting of controls on toxic air pollution; and the green light to Wall Street to once again cause havoc in the financial markets?
What is it, then, that you object to? Well, it seems, your biggest concern is “not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency,” but how Americans have “sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.”
Also, what did you think would happen when you signed up to work for a reality TV star who was accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women, and of rape by his first wife? Who stiffed hundreds of contractors, ripped off Trump University students, cheated on his third wife just months after she gave birth, and cut off health care coverage to his own nephew’s sick baby in a fit of rage?
You knew all of this and yet you still chose to work for him at the highest level of government. You now acknowledge that “the root of the problem is the president’s amorality.” But how about your own amorality? I hate to agree with your boss, but you are “gutless.” You’re a shameless coward, a cynical opportunist.
Don’t hide behind anonymity. Don’t pretend that you have “gone to great lengths” to restrain Trump and “put country first.”
Tell us your name. Quit your job. Call out this president in public.
Call him out for his bigotry, his mendacity, his sheer mental and emotional unfitness for the office he occupies. Call him out in front of a congressional committee. Or a court of law.
Actually, having a degree isn’t a specific requirement to become a foreign service officer. State Department leaves that door open. It’s statistically unlikely that someone would become a foreign service officer without one though.
Older people who perhaps have careers where they have gained significant professional experience without a bachelors or masters degree are the only ones I can think of that would likely fit the bill of getting into the foreign service without some sort of post-secondary education. Post-secondary education is not a requirement, but that doesn’t mean it’s likely for those without it to enter the foreign service. Also, the hiring process for the US foreign service is long, say a year on the short end of an estimate. Not something that someone generally waits around at home for a call back.
Actually, having a degree isn’t a specific requirement to become a foreign service officer. State Department leaves that door open. It’s statistically unlikely that someone would become a foreign service officer without one though.
Four Swedish police officers’ New York vacation was interrupted when a fight broke out on the subway. The train operator called for support, and — being cops and all — they dutifully stepped in to help until local authorities arrived.
The visiting cops had to subdue the two men involved in the fight, which no doubt takes skill to do safely. But it’s how they did their job after they gained control that really impressed people.
Say it louder for those in the back to hear. Calmly and unarmed.
Cops who help people, calmly disable a situation and restore public order rather than flex their authority, escalate the situation leading to a shit storm? Interesting….
The Native Land site is a collaborative effort to map the approximate boundaries of the territories and languages of the indigenous nations in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand.
This is the election that counts. Start educating yourself now on who will be campaigning to be your congresspeople/governor/etc.
Register to vote NOW. Don’t wait. You can do it any time.
This is the fight we need to win. VOTE
VOTE
VOTE
Also…reminder to pay attention to all local elections and VOTE. These elected officials are the people most likely to directly impact your life in the short term.
This has to start now. Right now.
Get your birth certificates. There may be a fee or long wait times. Make sure you get a certified copy.
Make sure you have ID. Dig into your state’s laws and the whole Real ID thing, because (and sorry I can’t research this now, but pneumonia) I believe there are certain states whose driver’s licenses don’t qualify for Real ID.
Make sure you’re registered to vote. Google it. Follow the instructions for your state.
Know where your local polling place is or find out if you can vote by mail.
Vote in ALL your upcoming elections. Yes, that means the little ones for city council or dog catcher or whatever. Vote those racist, homophobic, bigots out at every level.
They’re like weeds. You can pull up every visible bit, but if you leave one tiny segment of root, they’ll just come back.
To quote Mira Grant, rise up while you can. Because the Republicans are way the hell worse than zombies.
What’s next? A simple majority of House
members signed on to a discharge petition to force a floor vote on the
CRA before August recess begins on July 30. We currently have 177 out of 218
needed supporters. At the same time, the court case against the FCC’s
2017 action will be ramping up towards the end of the summer.
The remains of dozens of people found at a construction site in Texas this year are mostly likely those of African-Americans who were forced to work on a plantation there around the turn of the 20th century, officials said this week.
That finding, announced Monday, opens a window onto a little-remembered period in which blacks in certain Southern states were essentially treated like slaves post-emancipation.
The remains of about 95 people were discovered early this year on a construction site outside Houston, where the Fort Bend Independent School District is building a new school, according to school district officials and court records.
This week, archaeologists announced that the bones were most likely those of African-American laborers who worked as part of the so-called convict lease system, in which the state of Texas outsourced prisoners to work and live on plantations. Read more.
Opinion: U.S. And U.K. Remain United, Not Divided, By Their Common Language
“Great Britain and the United States are two nations separated by a common language.”
That’s the stock witticism, but if you ask me, it gets things backwards. Great Britain and the U.S. are more like two nations united by a divided language — or more precisely, by their mutual obsession with their linguistic differences. For 200 years now, writers from each nation have been tirelessly picking over the language of the other, with a mix of amusement, condescension, derision and horror.
“Trump Administration officials are acting as if there were a secure system in place for dealing with children who are taken away from their parents at the border when there is not.” Read more.
“They tell her to sleep, but that can’t be right. First she has to find her son, who is supposed to be here, too. They were separated along the way, overnight, a few days ago.” Read more.
“In the past decade, a growing number of immigrants fearing for their safety have come to the U.S., only to be sent back to their home countries—with the help of border agents, immigration judges, politicians, and U.S. voters—to violent deaths.” Read more.
“Nobody thought that it was good policy to separate parents from children—not immigration officials, not immigrant advocates, not Congress.” Read more.
“Uppgivenhetssyndrom, or resignation syndrome, is an illness that is said to exist only in Sweden, and only among refugees. The patients have no underlying physical or neurological disease, but they seem to have lost the will to live.” Read more.
If all forty-nine Democrats and independents in the Senate vote against Kavanaugh as a bloc, he could still be confirmed. But even if it’s a hopeless gesture, it is vitally important that Democrats, their supporters, and anybody else who harbors a sense of fairness and history register a strong protest in the coming weeks and months.
ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis jury on Thursday awarded nearly $4.7 billion in total damages to 22 women and their families after they claimed asbestos in Johnson & Johnson talcum powder contributed to their ovarian cancer in the first case against the company that focused on asbestos in the powder.
The jury announced the $4.14 billion award in punitive damages shortly after awarding $550 million in compensatory damages after a six-week trial in St. Louis Circuit Court.
Johnson & Johnson called the verdict the result of an unfair process that allowed the women to sue the company in Missouri despite most of them not living in the state and said it would appeal, as it has in previous cases that found for women who sued the company.
“Johnson & Johnson remains confident that its products do not contain asbestos and do not cause ovarian cancer and intends to pursue all available appellate remedies,” spokeswoman Carol Goodrich said.
Mark Lanier, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement that Johnson & Johnson had covered up evidence of asbestos in their products for more than 40 years.
Medical experts testified during the trial that asbestos, a known carcinogen, is intermingled with mineral talc, which is the primary ingredient in Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower products. The plaintiffs’ lawyers said asbestos fibers and talc particles were found in the ovarian tissues of many of the women.
“We hope this verdict will get the attention of the J&J board and that it will lead them to better inform the medical community and the public about the connection between asbestos, talc, and ovarian cancer,” Lanier said. “The company should pull talc from the market before causing further anguish, harm, and death from a terrible disease.”
During closing arguments on Wednesday, Lanier told the jurors this case was the first where jurors saw documents showing that Johnson & Johnson knew its products contained asbestos and didn’t warn consumers, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The company has been sued by more than 9,000 women who claim its talcum powder contributed to their ovarian cancer. Johnson & Johnson has consistently denied that its products can be linked to the cancer.
Goodrich said the verdict awarding all the women the same amount despite differences in their circumstances showed evidence in the case was overwhelmed by prejudice created when so many plaintiffs are allowed to sue the company in one lawsuit.
“Every verdict against Johnson & Johnson in this court that has gone through the appeals process has been reversed and the multiple errors present in this trial were worse than those in the prior trials which have been reversed,” she said.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said punitive damage awards are limited by state law to five times the amount of compensatory damages awarded and defense lawyers probably would file a motion to reduce the award.
Six of the 22 plaintiffs in the latest trial have died from ovarian cancer. Five plaintiffs were from Missouri, with others from states that include Arizona, New York, North Dakota, California, Georgia, the Carolinas and Texas.
One of the plaintiffs, Gail Ingham, 73, of O’Fallon, Missouri, told The Post-Dispatch that she was diagnosed with stage-3 ovarian cancer in 1985 and underwent chemotherapy treatments, surgeries and drug treatments for a year before being declared cancer free in the early 1990s.
Ingham, who used baby powder for decades, said she joined the lawsuit because women who use baby powder “need to know what’s in there. They need to know what’s going on. Women need to know because they’re putting it on their babies.”
As the political season heats up,
Trump is ramping up his lies through his three amplifiers: Fox News, rallies,
and Twitter.
According to The Fact
Checker’s database, the average daily rate of Trump’s false or misleading claims is climbing.
The problem isn’t just the number
or flagrancy of the lies – for example, that Putin and the Russians didn’t intervene
in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump, or that the Mueller investigation is
part of a Democratic plot to remove him.
And it’s not just that the lies
are about big, important public issues – for example, that immigrants commit
more crimes than native-born Americans, or trade wars are harmless.
The biggest problem is the lies aren’t subject to the filters traditionally applied to presidential
statements – a skeptical press, experts who debunk falsehoods, and respected
politicians who publicly disagree.
The word “media” comes from the
term “intermediate” – that is, to come between someone who makes the news and
the public who receives it.
But Trump doesn’t hold press
conferences. He doesn’t meet in public with anyone who disagrees with him. He denigrates the mainstream press. And he shuns experts.
Instead, his lies go out to tens
of millions of Americans every day unmediated.
TV and radio networks simply rebroadcast his rallies, or portions of them.
At his most recent rally in Great
Falls, Montana, Trump made 98 factual statements.
According to the Washington Post’s fact checkers, 76 percent of them were
false, misleading or unsupported by evidence.
For example, Trump claimed
that “winning the Electoral College is very tough for a
Republican, much tougher than the so-called ‘popular vote,’ where people vote
four times, you know.”
Meanwhile, over 50 million
Americans receive his daily tweets, which are also brimming with lies.
Recently, for example, Trump tweeted that Democrats were responsible for his administration’s policy
of separating migrant families at the border (they weren’t), and that “crime in
Germany is way up” because of migration (in fact, it’s down).
Around 6 million Americans
watch Fox News each day and relate what they see and hear to their friends and
relations.
Fox News is no longer
intermediating between the public and Trump. Fox News is Trump. Trump takes many of his lies from Fox News, and Fox News amplifies Trump’s lies.
Fox News’s Sean Hannity is one of
Trump’s de facto top advisers. Trump has
just appointed Bill Shine, the former number two at Fox News, as his deputy
chief of staff for communications.
No democracy can function under
a continuous bombardment of unmediated lies.
So what are we to do, other than
vote November 6 to constrain Trump?
First, boycott Fox News’s major
sponsors, listed here. Vote with your wallet and starve the
beast. Get others to join you.
Second, attend Trump’s rallies,
as distasteful as this may be. You’re entitled to attend. He is, after all, the
president of the entire country.
Organize and mobilize large
groups to attend with you. Once there, let your views about his lies be heard
and seen by the press. You can find out when and where his rallies will occur here.
Third, sign up for his tweets, and
respond to his lies with the simple: “b.s.” You can sign up here.
Fourth, write to Twitter and tell its executives to stop enabling Trump’s lies. Its contact information is here.
In addition, as the Times’ Farhad Manjoo suggested recently, Twitter’s employees should be encouraged to
make a ruckus – as did Amazon workers who pushed the firm to stop selling
facial recognition services to law enforcement agencies, and Google employees
who pressured Google not to renew a Pentagon contract for artificial
intelligence.
Twitter defines its mission as
providing a “healthy public conversation.” Let them know that demagoguery isn’t
healthy.
Your vote on November 6 is the key,
of course.
But as the political season heats
up, Trump’s lies are heating up, too. And they will sway unwary voters.
So you need to be active now, before
Election Day – on behalf of the truth.
By some accounts, nearly half of America’s incarcerated population is mentally ill — and journalist Alisa Roth argues that most aren’t getting the treatment they need.
Roth has visited jails in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta and a rural women’s prison in Oklahoma to assess the condition of mentally ill prisoners. She says correctional officers are on the “front lines” of mental health treatment — despite the fact that they lack clinical training.
“Most of [the correctional officers] will talk about how this is not what they signed up,” Roth says. “Most of them have not had much training in dealing with mental illness — or they’ve had none at all.”
Roth witnessed high-risk prisoners in solitary confinement or chained up or wearing restrictive jumpsuits — which tended to exacerbate the prisoners’ distress.
Therapy, when available, was often conducted under stressful conditions. Roth describes one session in the Los Angeles County jail that took place through the slots of a cell door — forcing the prisoner and therapist to yell to be heard.
“The entire [jail] tier can hear everything that you’re saying,” Roth says. “Especially in a place where showing any weakness can be really dangerous … people are particularly unlikely to disclose anything personal or her that would make them vulnerable.”
Roth chronicles her findings in the book, Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness.
“Imagine if people had been going ‘don’t fight hate with hate’ back when Hitler was around.”
Fam…let me tell you bout Poland.
Let me tell you about how the entire rest of Europe sat ack and watched the invasion of Poland because they thought it would be “improper” to send military aid. How they were unwilling to enforce the treaties that Germany was breaking, because that would make them “just as bad.” They sat back and wrote strongly worded letters while fascists grew in power because they didn’t want to dirty their hands. They thought reasonable discussion and politics would be enough to stop a fascist dictator from rising to power.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t enough.
like yes, people literally did try that argument then too.
Everywhere there’s fascists there are fascist apologists hiding under the guise of pacifism, ready to enable their shit and demonize resistance.
My friends, this is a dark hour. Intolerance, cruelty, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and environmental destruction have been let loose across the land.
Trump controls the Republican Party, the Republican Party controls the House and Senate, and the Senate and Trump will soon control the Supreme Court.
Republicans also control both chambers in 32 states (33 if you count Nebraska) and 33 governorships. And in many of these states they are entrenching their power by gerrymandering and arranging to suppress votes.
Yet only 27 percent of Americans are Republican, and the vast majority of Americans disapprove of Trump. The GOP itself is now little more than Trump, Fox News, a handful of billionaire funders, and evangelicals who oppose a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage, and the Constitution’s separation of church and state.
So what are we – the majority – to do?
First and most importantly, do not give up. That’s what they want us to do. Then they’d have no opposition at all.
Second, in the short term, if you are represented by a Republican senator, do whatever you can to get him or her to reject Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, or, at the least, postpone consideration until after the midterm elections. Urge others to join with you. Senate switchboard: 202-224-3121
Fourth, don’t succumb to divisive incrimination over “who lost” the 2016 election (Hillary loyalists, Bernie supporters, Jill Stein voters, etc.). This will get us nowhere. We must be united.
Fifth, vote this November 6 for people who will stand up to the Trump Republican outrage. Mobilize and organize others to do so. Contact friends and relations in “red” states, and urge them to do the same.
Sixth, help lay the groundwork for the 2020 presidential election, so that even if Trump survives Mueller and impeachment he will not be reelected.
Finally, know that this fight will be long and hard. It will require our patience, our courage, and our resolve. The stakes could not be higher.
I’ve been meeting women who are crying so violently they can barely speak. I’m meeting women whose hands are shaking, who look at me with kind of a vacant gaze. It’s extremely upsetting to see.
Last week, it emerged that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (U.S.C.I.S.) had formed a task force in order to identify people who lied on their citizenship applications and to denaturalize them. Amid the overwhelming flow of reports of families being separated at the border and children being warehoused, this bit of bureaucratic news went largely unnoticed. But it adds an important piece to our understanding of how American politics and culture are changing.
A youth care worker who quit his job at a Tucson detention center for unaccompanied minors is speaking out about inadequate facilities, untrained staff and inhumane policies, after witnessing the devastation of family separations firsthand. Antar Davidson says he quit after he was forced to tell three tearful children who were separated from their mother not to hug one another. The facility is run by Southwest Key, a nonprofit that operates 27 facilities and has recently signed a lease to detain hundreds of separated children, including many who are a younger than 12 years old, in what’s being called a “baby jail” in a former warehouse and homeless shelter in Houston.
Antar Davidson told Democracy Now!:
“I realized that if I were to continue with Southwest Key, at least here in this facility, that I’d be told to do things that were… against the code of all humans’ morality… We’re not talking about an organization that was good. We’re talking about an organization that, for the past five years, has made millions of dollars in basically the detention of youth.”
Like many of you, I read the news of a single person killing at least 10 people in Santa Fe, Texas today. While this is an outrageous and horrifying event, it isn’t surprising or shocking in any way in a country where more than 33,000 people die from gun violence each year.
America is a stuck in a Groundhog Day loop of gun violence. We’ll keep waking up, stuck in the same reality of oppression, carnage, and ruined lives until we can figure out how to effect meaningful change. I’ve collected some articles here about America’s dysfunctional relationship with guns, most of which I’ve shared before. Change is possible – there are good reasons to control the ownership of guns and control has a high likelihood of success – but how will our country find the political will to make it happen?
Arendt offers two points that are salient to our thinking about guns: for one, they insert a hierarchy of some kind, but fundamental nonetheless, and thereby undermine equality. But furthermore, guns pose a monumental challenge to freedom, and particular, the liberty that is the hallmark of any democracy worthy of the name – that is, freedom of speech. Guns do communicate, after all, but in a way that is contrary to free speech aspirations: for, guns chasten speech.
This becomes clear if only you pry a little more deeply into the N.R.A.’s logic behind an armed society. An armed society is polite, by their thinking, precisely because guns would compel everyone to tamp down eccentric behavior, and refrain from actions that might seem threatening. The suggestion is that guns liberally interspersed throughout society would cause us all to walk gingerly – not make any sudden, unexpected moves – and watch what we say, how we act, whom we might offend.
Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains – “besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily – sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).
The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?
Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about ‘Basketball Diaries’?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.
The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”
In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.
There are nearly three hundred million privately owned firearms in the United States: a hundred and six million handguns, a hundred and five million rifles, and eighty-three million shotguns. That works out to about one gun for every American. The gun that T. J. Lane brought to Chardon High School belonged to his uncle, who had bought it in 2010, at a gun shop. Both of Lane’s parents had been arrested on charges of domestic violence over the years. Lane found the gun in his grandfather’s barn.
The United States is the country with the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world. (The second highest is Yemen, where the rate is nevertheless only half that of the U.S.) No civilian population is more powerfully armed. Most Americans do not, however, own guns, because three-quarters of people with guns own two or more. According to the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Policy Opinion Center at the University of Chicago, the prevalence of gun ownership has declined steadily in the past few decades. In 1973, there were guns in roughly one in two households in the United States; in 2010, one in three. In 1980, nearly one in three Americans owned a gun; in 2010, that figure had dropped to one in five.
The only guns that Japanese citizens can legally buy and use are shotguns and air rifles, and it’s not easy to do. The process is detailed in David Kopel’s landmark study on Japanese gun control, published in the 1993 Asia Pacific Law Review, still cited as current. (Kopel, no left-wing loony, is a member of the National Rifle Association and once wrote in National Review that looser gun control laws could have stopped Adolf Hitler.)
To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you’ll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don’t forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.
From 1979 to 1996, the average annual rate of total non-firearm suicide and homicide deaths was rising at 2.1% per year. Since then, the average annual rate of total non-firearm suicide and homicide deaths has been declining by 1.4%, with the researchers concluding there was no evidence of murderers moving to other methods, and that the same was true for suicide.
The average decline in total firearm deaths accelerated significantly, from a 3% decline annually before the reforms to a 5% decline afterwards, the study found.
In the 18 years to 1996, Australia experienced 13 fatal mass shootings in which 104 victims were killed and at least another 52 were wounded. There have been no fatal mass shootings since that time, with the study defining a mass shooting as having at least five victims.
At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”
In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.
This can’t be the last word on guns in America. We have to do better than this for our children and everyone else whose lives are torn apart by guns. But right now, we are failing them miserably, and Hodges’ words ring with the awful truth that all those lives and our diminished freedom & equality are somehow worth it to the United States as a society.
Everybody wants to think that if they were alive during slavery, they’d be an abolitionist. Everybody wants to think that if they were active during the time of lynching, they’d be rallying against and trying to prevent lynchings. Most of us believe that if we were alive and in a position to march in the 1950s, we’d be on the side of Dr. King. But today, we are in the face of all of these problems. One in three black male babies is expected to go to jail or prison. There are these constant shootings of unarmed black people. And the question is: If we’re not prepared to respond to these issues, if we’re not prepared to act today, then I don’t think we can claim that we would have acted any differently during slavery and lynching and segregation.
THE MONOPOLIZATION OF AMERICA: The Biggest Economic Problem You’re Hearing Almost Nothing About
Not long ago I visited some farmers in Missouri whose profits
are disappearing. Why? Monsanto alone owns the key genetic traits to more than
90 percent of the soybeans planted by farmers in the United States, and 80
percent of the corn. Which means Monsanto can charge farmers much higher
prices.
Farmers are getting squeezed from the other side, too,
because the food processors they sell their produce to are also consolidating
into mega companies that have so much market power they can cut the prices they
pay to farmers.
This doesn’t mean lower food prices to you. It means more
profits to the monopolists.
Monopolies All Around
America used to have antitrust laws that stopped corporations
from monopolizing markets, and often broke up the biggest culprits. No longer.
It’s a hidden upward redistribution of money and power from the majority of
Americans to corporate executives and wealthy shareholders.
You may think you have lots of choices, but take a closer look:
1. The four largest food companies control 82
percent of beef packing, 85 percent of soybean processing, 63 percent of pork
packing, and 53 percent of chicken processing.
2. There are many brands of toothpaste, but 70 percent of all of it comes from just two companies.
3. You may think you have your choice of sunglasses, but they’re almost all from one company: Luxottica – which also
owns nearly all the eyeglass retail outlets.
4. Practically every plastic hanger in America is now made by one
company, Mainetti.
5. What brand of cat food should you buy? Looks like lots of brands but behind them are basically just two companies.
6. What about your pharmaceuticals? Yes, you can get low-cost generic versions. But drug companies are in effect paying the makers of generic drugs to
delay cheaper versions. Such “pay for delay” agreements are illegal in other
advanced economies, but antitrust enforcement hasn’t laid a finger on them in
America. They cost you and me an estimated $3.5 billion a year.
7. You think your health insurance will cover the costs? Health
insurers are consolidating, too. Which is one reason your health insurance
premiums, copayments, and deductibles are soaring.
8. You think you have a lot of options for booking discount airline
tickets and hotels online? Think again. You have only two. Expedia merged with
Orbitz, so that’s one company. And then there’s Priceline.
9. How about your cable and Internet service? Basically just four
companies (and two of them just announced they’re going to merge).
Why the Monopolization of America is a Huge Problem
The problem with all this consolidation into a handful of giant firms is they don’t have to compete. Which means they can – and do – jack up your prices.
Such consolidation keeps down wages. Workers with less choice
of whom to work for have a harder time getting a raise. When local labor markets
are dominated by one major big box retailer, or one grocery chain, for example,
those firms essentially set wage rates for the area.
These massive corporations also have a lot of political clout.
That’s one reason they’re consolidating: Power.
Antitrust laws were supposed to
stop what’s been going on. But today, they’re almost a dead letter. This hurts
you.
We’ve Forgotten History
The first antitrust law came in 1890 when Senator John Sherman
responded to public anger about the economic and political power of the huge
railroad, steel, telegraph, and oil cartels – then called “trusts” – that were
essentially running America.
A handful of corporate chieftains known as “robber barons” presided
over all this – collecting great riches at the expense of workers who toiled
long hours often in dangerous conditions for little pay. Corporations gouged
consumers and corrupted politics.
Then in 1901, progressive reformer Teddy Roosevelt became
president. By this time, the American public was demanding action.
In his first
message to Congress in December 1901, only two months after assuming the
presidency, Roosevelt warned, “There is a widespread conviction in the minds of
the American people that the great corporations known as the trusts are in
certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare.”
Roosevelt used the Sherman Antitrust Act to go after the
Northern Securities Company, a giant railroad trust run by J. P. Morgan, the
nation’s most powerful businessman. The U.S. Supreme Court backed Roosevelt and
ordered the company dismantled.
In 1911, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust was broken up,
too. But in its decision, the Supreme Court effectively altered the Sherman
Act, saying that monopolistic restraints of trade were objectionable if they were “unreasonable” – and that determination was to be made by the courts. What
was an unreasonable restraint of trade?
In the presidential election of 1912, Roosevelt, running again
for president but this time as a third party candidate, said he would allow
some concentration of industries where there were economic efficiencies due to large
scale. He’d then he’d have experts regulate these large corporations for the
public benefit.
Woodrow Wilson, who ended up winning the election, and his
adviser Louis Brandeis, took a different view. They didn’t think regulation
would work, and thought all monopolies should be broken up.
For the next 65 years, both views dominated. We had strong
antitrust enforcement along with regulations that held big corporations in
check.
Most big mergers were prohibited. Even large size was thought to be a
problem. In 1945, in the case of United States v. Alcoa (1945), the Supreme
Court ruled that even though Alcoa hadn’t pursued a monopoly, it had become one
by becoming so large that it was guilty of violating the Sherman Act.
What Happened to Antitrust?
All this changed in the 1980s, after Robert Bork – who,
incidentally, I studied antitrust law with at Yale Law School, and then worked
for when he became Solicitor General under President Ford – wrote an
influential book called The Antitrust Paradox, which argued that the sole
purpose of the Sherman Act is consumer welfare.
Bork argued that mergers and large size almost always create
efficiencies that bring down prices, and therefore should be legal. Bork’s
ideas were consistent with the conservative Chicago School of Economics, and
found a ready audience in the Reagan White House.
Bork was wrong. But since then, even under Democratic administrations, antitrust has
all but disappeared.
The Monopolization of High Tech
We’re seeing declining competition even in cutting-edge,
high-tech industries.
In the new economy, information and ideas are the most
valuable forms of property. This is where the money is.
We haven’t seen
concentration on this scale ever before.
Google and Facebook are now the first stops for many Americans
seeking news. Meanwhile, Amazon is now the first stop for more than a half of
American consumers seeking to buy anything. Talk about power.
Contrary to the conventional view of an American economy bubbling
with innovative small companies, the reality is quite different. The rate at
which new businesses have formed in the United States has slowed markedly since
the late 1970s.
Big Tech’s sweeping patents, standard platforms, fleets of
lawyers to litigate against potential rivals, and armies of lobbyists have
created formidable barriers to new entrants. Google’s search engine is so
dominant, “Google” has become a verb.
The European Union filed formal antitrust charges against
Google, accusing it of forcing search engine users into its own shopping
platforms. And last June, it fined Google a record $2.7 billion.
But not in
America.
It’s Time to Revive Antitrust
Economic and political power cannot be separated
because dominant corporations gain political influence over how markets are
organized, maintained, and enforced – which enlarges their economic power
further.
One of the original goals of the antitrust laws was to prevent this.
Big Tech — along with the drug, insurance, agriculture, and
financial giants — is coming to dominate both our economy and our politics.
There’s only one answer: It
is time to revive antitrust.
Sub-Saharan immigrants in the U.S. tend to be more highly educated than those living in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Portugal – Europe’s historically leading destinations among sub-Saharan immigrants. Sub-Saharan immigrants in the United States are also more highly educated than U.S. native-born population.
Working off of the labor of others, only there because of being born into capital and pre-existing familial or business relations? Yep
And people still try to defend this shit with ‘Well they MUST work REALLY HARD to earn THAT kind of money!!!’
I assure you they don’t. I assure you the people earning the least money are working the most. I don’t see CEO’s doing 60 hour weeks just to keep food on the table. They don’t do that, because they don’t have to, because they get paid so much they aren’t desperate enough to have to.
If you follow me, reblog this. It is an important piece of data. I would love to see one for the annual tax expenditure of minimum wage versus CEO’s as a proportion of their annual income.
This is the aggregation of labor. This is what it looks like. It has happened before. It will likely happen again unless it is changed.
Our critic Michael Schaub – who would like you to know that he’s from Texas – says Lawrence Wright’s new book about his home state is essential reading, even for non-Texans.
Ronan Farrow just won the Pulitzer Prize for stories he wrote for The New Yorker, but before uncovering sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein for the magazine, he worked at the State Department as a special adviser in the Obama administration.
In War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence, Farrow writes about his time at the State Department and what he sees as a dangerous whittling away of the agency’s influence through mass firings and efforts to cut its budget.
It’s sometimes called “Racism by Proxy,” wherein white people (consciously or unconsciously) use the police to enforce their bigotry after they’ve projected their racist imaginations onto black people. Remember how Ronald Richielied and called the police on John Crawford and got him killed for carrying a toy gun – in a Walmart that was in an open carry state?
When a white person threatens to call the police on a black person, there is ALWAYS the added threat of lethal violence befalling the black person. And many times, white people are fully aware of this fact.
Since the days of slave patrols, to Emmett Till, the police have always been a tool of white supremacy. From racial profiling, to stop-and-frisk, to reporting “suspicious” behavior, to forced segregation it’s all the same animal – white people using the state, prompting the police to carry out even the most mundane kinds of racism, like arresting black people for the “crime” being in the wrong place.
The idea that Texas will be eternally red I think is a false one. But when it will turn is hard to say. Once it does turn, though, if you take the largest red state and add it to the blue column, the politics of America totally transform.
House of Brat 