Author Archives: RuthieHemmant

People Magazine Just Made an Unprecedented Push for Gun Control Laws

by RuthieHemmant Posted on October 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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People magazine, one of the country’s largest publications, with a circulation of more than 3.5 million readers, just threw its weight behind the push for increased gun control by publishing contacts for every member of Congress, and urging their readers to lobby for action.

In an editorial on Wednesday, the magazine’s editorial director Jess Cagle explained the unprecedented decision to enter the gun debate after the latest mass shooting at a community college in Oregon.

The early warning signs that could stop the next shooting rampage

As President Obama said, our responses to these incidents—from politicians, from the media, from nearly everyone—have become “routine.” We all ask ourselves the same questions: How could it happen again? What are we doing about gun violence in America? There are no easy answers, of course. Some argue for stricter gun laws, others say we should focus on mental health issues, some point to a culture that celebrates violence.

But this much we know: As a country we clearly aren’t doing enough, and our elected officials’ conversations about solutions usually end in political spin.

In this issue we pay tribute to the nine Oregon victims, as well as 22 other men, women and children who’ve lost their lives in mass shootings—incidents where a murderer has opened fire on a crowd—in the U.S. during the past 12 months.

The move by People is remarkable considering the magazine—a staple at every newsstand and doctor’s office in America—is traditionally associated with celebrity gossip and general human interest stories that carry little risk of being offensive or overtly political, meaning its message could reach many more Americans outside the DC echo chamber, in which action on gun violence has completely stalled.

Read People‘s entire announcement here.

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People Magazine Just Made an Unprecedented Push for Gun Control Laws

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Three Things I Don’t Care About

by RuthieHemmant Posted on June 23, 2015

Mother Jones

There are lots of topics I don’t write about (or write very little about), and normally nobody notices. Or, if they do, they don’t know why I haven’t written about any particular one of them. Maybe it’s just uninteresting to me. Maybe I’ve gotten temporarily bored by it. Maybe I don’t know enough about it. Maybe I can’t think of anything interesting to say that hasn’t already been said. Could be lots of reasons.

That said, here are three things I haven’t written about, and probably won’t:

Should we call Dylann Roof a terrorist? In the dim past, back when we used to blog earnestly about such things, I always argued that this was a silly distraction. You can call members of Al-Qaeda terrorists or extremists or militants or whatever. For Republicans, this eventually became some kind of weird litmus test designed to show that Democrats were appeasers, and it was ridiculous. Ditto today, coming from the Democratic side. Call Roof a terrorist if you want, or call him a madman or a racist psychopath. I don’t care.

The pope on climate change. I’m not Catholic. I’m not even Christian. Pope Francis seems like a relatively good guy as popes go, but I don’t care what he thinks about much of anything. I’m certainly not going to opportunistically start now just because he happens to be saying something I agree with.

Donald Trump. Oh please.

That’s it. We’ll soon be back to our regularly scheduled program of stuff I do write about.

IMPORTANT NOTE! I almost forget to add a caveat that’s critical in the blogosphere: this is just me. Everyone else should feel free to write about all these things. This post should not be taken as a personal condemnation of anyone who chooses to do so. First Amendment. De gustibus. Etc.

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Three Things I Don’t Care About

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No, 60 Minutes, Clean Tech is Not Dead

by RuthieHemmant Posted on January 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On a recent episode of 60 Minutes, investigative reporter Lesley Stahl trained her eye on “The Cleantech Crash.” In the 14-minute segment, Stahl told the story of how the Obama administration and Silicon Valley venture capitalists (or, in Stahl’s phrasing, “the smart people who funded the Internet”), backed a bevy of alternative-energy startups, only to see the sector implode, leaving taxpayers holding the bag.

If this would-be exposé felt familiar, that’s because it was all over the media two years ago. Why 60 Minutes decided to drag it back into our living rooms in January 2014 is a mystery. By now, the Solyndra horse is so dead that even Fox News is tired of flogging it.

But there’s a more important reason you haven’t heard much about the “clean-tech crash” in the past couple of years: It turned out to be, in many ways, a myth. Yes, a lot of the alternative-energy startups that Silicon Valley investors flocked to five years ago have run into serious trouble. A few were among those that got government support. In the 60 Minutes segment, Stahl named nine failed or struggling companies in all—lumping in those that received government loans with some that didn’t—then declared herself “exhausted.” I guess it’s a good thing, then, that she didn’t try to name all the ones that succeeded: There are a lot more than nine of those.

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No, 60 Minutes, Clean Tech is Not Dead

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