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The AMA Represents Only About One-Sixth of All Doctors

by SonjaNewrnd Posted on December 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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How do doctors feel about the nomination of Rep. Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services? The New York Times weighs in:

When President-elect Donald J. Trump chose Representative Tom Price of Georgia to be his health and human services secretary, the American Medical Association swiftly endorsed the selection of one of its own, an orthopedic surgeon who has championed the role of physicians throughout his legislative career.

Then the larger world of doctors and nurses weighed in on the beliefs and record of Mr. Price, a suburban Atlanta Republican — and the split among caregivers, especially doctors, quickly grew sharp. “The A.M.A. does not speak for us,” says a petition signed by more than 5,000 doctors.

A faithful reader emails to ask: “I remember reading recently that a shockingly low number of doctors are members of the AMA. So what is it exactly?”

Membership numbers, it turns out, are not a secret, exactly, but neither does the AMA go out of its way to make them easy to find. Their current membership is about 235,000, but you have to adjust this number to remove students, retired doctors, and so forth. Based on publicly available data, and guesstimating that about one-fifth of its members aren’t practicing physicians, here’s what the AMA’s membership looks like. They were indeed a powerhouse in the 50s, but no so much anymore:

Keep this in mind whenever you hear that “the AMA” endorses a political position—regardless of whether it’s one you approve of or not. They represent only about a sixth of all the physicians in the country. The rest may have very different opinions indeed.

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The AMA Represents Only About One-Sixth of All Doctors

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Anti-LGBT Bathroom Law Just Cost North Carolina the All-Star Game

by gisellenewbery Posted on July 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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The National Basketball Association is officially pulling the plug on North Carolina as the site of its annual All-Star game. The move, an economic blow for the city of Charlotte, comes nearly four months after Gov. Pat McCroy signed into law a sweeping bill (HB2) that struck down workplace discrimination protections for LGBT employees and forced transgender people to use public restrooms that match their biological sex.

Back in April, NBA commissioner Adam Silver warned that the league might take the All-Star weekend away from Charlotte if the state kept its discriminatory legislation intact. “While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2,” the NBA said in a statement Thursday. The league plans to reconsider Charlotte as a site in 2019 “provided there is an appropriate resolution to this matter.”

Gov. McCroy promptly shot back, noting that the “sports and entertainment elite, Attorney General Roy Cooper and the liberal media” have misrepresented the law’s intention. “American families should be on notice that the selective corporate elite are imposing their political will on communities in which they do business, thus bypassing the democratic and legal process,” he said in a statement.

The league’s decision adds to the mounting pressure on state leaders from businesses, athletes and entertainers, advocacy groups, and politicians to make amends. In response, North Carolina lawmakers drafted legislation in late June that would roll back the portions of HB2 that required “certificates of sex reassignment” before a trans person could use the desired bathroom. The amendments also added language about federal protections, restored the ability of LGBT people to sue for employment discrimination, and increased penalties for people convicted of certain crimes against others in bathrooms. But the ACLU and others spurned the attempts, calling instead for a full repeal.

As Deadspin points out, this isn’t the first time criticism from professional sports leagues have prompted changes to anti-LGBT laws. Two years ago, after Arizona lawmakers passed a law that let businesses turn away gay, lesbian, and transgender customers as an expression of the business owner’s religious beliefs, NFL officials considered relocating the Super Bowl from Arizona to Tampa. (Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the measure.)

The NFL also suggested that Atlanta’s bid to host the Super Bowl in 2019 was at risk over Georgia’s similar “religious freedom” law—Gov. Nathan Deal eventually vetoed the bill. Last April, amid condemnation from NASCAR , the NCAA, and the NBA Indiana governor and VP hopeful Mike Pence modified a similar “religious freedom” law—and took a lot of heat from fellow conservatives as a result.

Read the NBA’s full announcement here:

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Anti-LGBT Bathroom Law Just Cost North Carolina the All-Star Game

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African-American Gun Ownership Is Up, and So Is Wariness

by ThurmanBounds1 Posted on July 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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The video that made the rounds following the police shooting of Philando Castile, a black man shot during a traffic stop in a Minnesota suburb last week, sparked outrage on social media and international protests over the weekend. According to Castile’s fiancé, who shot and narrated the video, Castile was reaching for his ID when he was shot, after he had informed the officer he was armed and had a permit to carry. The shooting, and other cases like it, has sparked concern among black gun owners, and questions about whether the Second Amendment is being applied equally to them. “It terrifies me,” the founder of the Dallas-based Huey P. Newton Gun Club, which advocates black gun ownership, told the New York Times.

The number of black Americans who own guns appears to be on the rise. According to a 2014 Pew survey, 19 percent of black adults said they owned a gun, up from 15 percent in 2013. In another 2014 survey, 54 percent of black adults said they believed owning a gun makes people safer. Two years earlier, only 29 percent said so.

Black Americans have historically been the target of black codes and Jim Crow laws aimed at disarming them, notes Philip Smith, founder of the National African American Gun Association. He attributes the ownership increase to several factors. Many blacks, he says, are simply feeling the need to protect themselves against violent crime. (Black Americans are more likely to be the victim of a gun homicide than are members of other ethnic groups.) Fear of terrorism also comes into play, he says—the reasons, he adds, vary by sub-demographic—single women, married fathers, rural vs urban, etc.

Smith launched his organization in Atlanta in February 2015. It now boasts more than 11,000 members, he says, and has chapters or groups interested in forming one in about a dozen states—65 percent of the members are women. Before, it was, “‘Don’t get a gun because you can kill yourself’ or ‘your kids can hurt themselves.’ But people are saying, ‘Hold on, if I’m in a home by myself at five o’clock in the morning and someone comes banging through my door to rob and kill my family, the police are not going to make it there in enough time. So I need to be able to deal with that threat.'”

Smith, who has a concealed carry permit, says he has been pulled over more than once while carrying a gun. He told the officers that he was carrying, and there were no problems. But he’s certainly aware of encounters that did not go so smoothly. “I’ve seen situations on YouTube and stories on the internet and in newspapers where people had been in situations like mine where they say, ‘Get out of the car! Put your hands on the hood!’ They arrest you or put you in the back of the car, they take your gun, and they run your gun. It can go a thousand ways.”

Another encounter that went south took place in Florida one night last October, when Palm Beach Gardens police officer Nouman Raja approached 31-year-old Corey Jones, whose vehicle had broken down on a highway exit ramp late at night. Raja, who didn’t identify himself as a cop, was dressed in plain clothes and driving an unmarked police van. He opened fire after Jones, likely unaware that he was dealing with law enforcement, allegedly drew a gun on Raja, according to the Associated Press. Jones also had a concealed carry permit. (The officer was charged with manslaughter and attempted murder, the AP reported.) Jones’ family published an open letter to Castile’s parents last week, reading in part, “Your son’s life mattered. Our son’s life mattered.”

After watching the Castile shooting video, Smith told me, he will no longer tell an officer who pulls him over that he is armed. “I keep my gun on my hip. They don’t know I have it there anyway. Give me my ticket and I’m on my way,” he says. “I don’t want to add any layer of additional pressure to that situation when I interact with the cops.”

A 2015 study by researchers at the University of Illinois found that people will shoot at images of armed black men more quickly than images of armed men of other races, and take more time to decide not to shoot when presented with an image of an unarmed black man. More recent data suggests that black people are no more likely to be shot by an officer than white people, although cops are more likely to use other kinds of force against African Americans.

Robin Wright, who studies implicit bias at Ohio State University, told the New York Times that black gun owners face negative perceptions about their intent. “It’s really just getting at what we know to be a pervasive stereotype of blackness and criminality,” she said. “If you see a black person with a weapon, you don’t assume that it’s legal.”

Racial bias may also have played a role in the police shootings of 12-year-old Tamir Rice and 22-year-old John Crawford in separate Ohio incidents in 2014. Both were carrying toy guns, and were shot even though Ohio is an open carry state. (Another black man, Jermaine McBean, was shot in 2013 while walking through his Broward County, Florida, apartment complex carrying a toy rifle.)

In a CNN interview, Castile’s mother said that on the day before her son was shot, her daughter—who also has a concealed carry permit—expressed concern about carrying a gun because the police might “shoot first and ask questions later.” Smith told the Times over the weekend that black gun owners need to be aware of the racial dynamics, but that that shouldn’t deter them from exercising their right to bear arms: “If I went around worrying about what everybody’s thinking as I’m carrying a gun on my hip,” he said. “I would go crazy.”

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African-American Gun Ownership Is Up, and So Is Wariness

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Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 2015

by Lucile70Wh Posted on December 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’ve wanted to use this headline1 for a long time, and now I have. I guess I could just end this post right there, or maybe ramble on about how Hunter S. Thompson’s 1972 collection of campaign reporting was one of the books that got me interested in politics in the first place. Me and a million others, I suppose.

But no. I actually have a point to make, and I will get around to making it, I promise. First, though, I’m turning over the mic2 to my great-grandblogger3 Martin Longman. He was bemused by blogger Tom Maguire’s casual acceptance that fear is a perfectly reasonable emotion to exploit in a political campaign:

At first, I was offended. Then I realized that we’re both probably correct in our own way, but with limitations.

I’m sure if I challenged him, Maguire would recite countless examples of Democratic politicians exploiting the fears of the electorate. These would be fears about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, or fears about NSA surveillance, or fears about grandma losing her Medicare or Social Security….I think this is different in kind, though, than using fear itself as a political tool….What’s really bad, in my opinion, is to deliberately increase people’s sense of insecurity not primarily so that they will demand policies to keep them safe but to make them more inclined to vote for you and your political party. Making people afraid for political gain is cynical and almost cruel.

As Longman suggests, this is a mighty thin line to draw, and I’m not sure it’s the right line anyway. Here’s the thing that liberals tend not to want to accept: different people evaluate threats in far different ways. This is not right or wrong. It’s just human nature.

I tend to be almost absurdly non-fearful, for example. This is not because I’m brave in the usual sense: I run from fights at the first opportunity and I have no idea if I’d rescue a drowning child from a watery maelstrom. I’m talking about more abstract fears. Should you be afraid of being mugged? Afraid of terror attacks? Afraid of earthquakes?6 In my case, I never even bother getting out of bed if I feel an earthquake. I just roll over and wait for it to stop.

This is, by almost any measure, stupid. Sure, most earthquakes around here are fairly small. But not all of them. Wouldn’t it make sense to at least hop out of bed and get ready in case my house starts to collapse? Yes it would. I’m putting my life in danger by underplaying the threat.

So who has the more correct view of national security threats, liberals or conservatives? As it happens, liberals tend to feel less threatened than conservatives by danger from others, something that we paid a big political price for when we ignored the huge rise in violent crime in the 60s and 70s. Conservatives tend to respond more strongly to threats from others, something that they paid a political price for in the aftermath of the Iraq War. In the first case, conservatives understood the reality better. In the second case, liberals did.

This is not because conservatives were smarter the first time and we were smarter the second time. It’s because, at a very deep level, we react to threats differently. There’s no purely objective way to decide who’s right and who’s wrong in any particular case, but I think you can reasonably say that sometimes conservatives are closer to right and sometimes liberals are closer to right.

So what’s the right response to terrorist attacks? I can’t even imagine being personally afraid of one. The odds of being targeted by some insane jihadist are astronomical. But a vast number of people feel very, very differently.7 At a gut level, they’re afraid that what happened in Paris and San Bernardino could happen to them—and they want something done about it. Are they right? Or am I right? Who can say?

But that’s why conservatives are exploiting this fear. Conservatives consider terror attacks a serious and alarming threat. Liberals tend not to, which is why our politicians mostly adopt a pretty even tone about them. In both cases, this response is politically useful. Mainly, though, it’s genuinely how they feel. Conservatives really do feel threatened. Liberals really don’t.

Keep this in mind. It’s not a sham. It’s not just cynicism. I happen to think conservatives are wrong about this, and I think their campaign-trail exploitation of terrorist fear has gone far beyond anything even remotely reasonable. But at its core, this is a real disagreement. How safe are we and what should we do to increase our safety? When you cut through the bombast, there’s a very hard, very bright, very deep, and very human core of division here. And there’s no guarantee that you or your tribe has the right take on it.

1Yes, I know I’ve punctuated it differently than the book.

2Even though I’m officially an old person, I am adopting the Washington Post dictum that mike is no longer acceptable shorthand for microphone in modern America. It lives on in the NATO alphabet, though.

3Longman4 is my third successor as blogger at the Washington Monthly.

4Or “Phil’s brother,” as his closest friends call him.5

5That’s just a joke. Martin is Phil Longman’s brother.

6Needless to say, this depends a lot on circumstances. Women in dangerous neighborhoods are quite legitimately more afraid of being mugged than men in the suburbs. People living in Beirut are more afraid of terror attacks than people in Atlanta. People in Tokyo are more afraid of earthquakes than people in London. Still, we can reasonably talk about averages here.

7This is clear both anecdotally and via polling. I know personally plenty of people who are afraid of a terrorist attack. And recent polls are quite clear that a large majority of Americans are concerned about further attacks.

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Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 2015

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"I Rap About a Lot of the Stuff You Rant About": Killer Mike Interviews Bernie Sanders

by MildredWhittle Posted on December 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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When Bernie Sanders held a rally in Atlanta last month for his presidential campaign, the senator from Vermont was introduced by local rapper Killer Mike. Prior to the rally, Sanders and Killer Mike sat down to record an interview, which was released in six parts on Tuesday. “I rap about a lot of the stuff you rant about,” Killer Mike says at the start, before delving into a broad conversation about economics, criminal justice, gun control, and everything in between.

Killer Mike (born Michael Render) is half of the MC duo Run the Jewels, and has long laced his lyrics with messages about politics, activism, and social justice. His emergence as a popular political figure dates back to an onstage speech at a concert in St. Louis the night a grand jury decided to not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown. Run the Jewels released a powerful music video tackling police violence earlier this year. Killer Mike is now the sort of artist who prompts print magazine profiles about how he’s reviving hip-hop as a political platform.

His interview with Sanders, conducted just before Thanksgiving at an Atlanta barbershop owned by Killer Mike, is not an objective examination of the candidate: Killer Mike gushes over Sanders, whom he had already endorsed earlier this summer. “That’s some bomb shit,” Killer Mike says by way of asking Sanders about his civil rights activism with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s.

“What we saw—if I can use some bomb shit—is our friends getting the shit kicked out of them and getting beaten to hell,” Sanders replies, explaining why he got involved while he was a student at the University of Chicago.

Sanders appears to be enjoying himself throughout most of the chat, awkwardly reaching over for fist bumps throughout the interview. He nods along while Killer Mike calls Donald Trump a fascist and compares him to Hitler and Mussolini. “You’re right, it is scary,” Sanders says of Trump’s campaign. When the two turn to marijuana decriminalization—”I’m a marijuana smoker and I think that’s absolute bullshit,” Mike says of the federal prohibition—Sanders backs him up. “Of course it’s crazy; everybody knows it’s crazy,” Sanders says.

Watch the six-part interview—in sections labeled “Economic Freedom,” “Social Justice,” “Rigged Economy,” “Free Health Care: It Ain’t a Big Deal,” “This Country Was Started As An Act Of Political Protest,” and “Democrats Win When People Vote”—below:

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"I Rap About a Lot of the Stuff You Rant About": Killer Mike Interviews Bernie Sanders

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Parachute Drops, Cheerleaders, and Giant Flags: How the Pentagon Paid Pro Sports for PR

by ElviaY85qvu Posted on November 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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If you’ve been to a pro sports game recently, you’ve almost certainly seen tributes to the military, from unraveling giant American flags showing to photos and videos of servicemen and women on the Jumbotron. A new senate report by Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake, released yesterday, finds that many of these seemingly voluntary displays were in fact paid for by the Department of Defense. Between 2012 and 2015, the Pentagon paid sports teams $53 million for marketing and advertising, including at least $6.8 million for what the report dubs “paid patriotism.”

The senators obtained 122 Pentagon contracts with sports leagues and teams for what they described as “marketing gimmicks.” Among the top recipients of military money were NASCAR ($1.6 million over four years), the Atlanta Falcons ($879,000), the New England Patriots ($700,000), and the Buffallo Bills ($650,000).

Last year, the Pentagon spent millions on advertising with sports teams as it was simultaneously requesting funding from Congress to cover a $100 million budget shortfall to pay its troops, according to the report.

Here are a few team-specific promotional deals that stuck out in the 150-page report:

Charlotte Hornets: “One parachute drop-in” by an Air Force member at each home game
Dallas Mavericks: Letting the Texas Army National Guard “bring out their mechanical bull and/or rock wall for fans to enjoy”
Minnesota Wild: A color guard ceremony and letting a National Guard soldier “rappel from the catwalk to deliver the game puck”
Indianapolis Colts: “For use of a luxury suite, autographed items, pregame field visits and cheerleader appearances.”
Milwaukee Brewers: $49,000 to recognize the Wisconsin Army National Guard during performances of “God Bless America” at each Sunday home game
Atlanta Falcons: Recognition of the Army National Guard “birthday,” the opportunity for a National Guard soldier to perform the national anthem, and the opportunity for soldiers to “hold a large American flag on the field during a military appreciation game.”
Green Bay Packers: A “party deck” for 200 National Guard soldiers and their families
Minnesota Lynx: A military night featuring a “soldier rappelling from the arena catwalk while another soldier performed the national anthem”
NASCAR: A ride-along with Richard Petty and appearances with Petty and Aric Almirola.
Iron Dog: VIP passes to the Alaskan snowmobile race
Alamo City Comic Con: Admission for 20 soldiers and their family members. (We know, comic book conventions aren’t sporting events, but this is too weird not to include.)

The issue of paid patriotism first emerged this spring, when Sen. Flake questioned the military tributes at New York Jets games. Since then, the Pentagon has banned paying for these salutes to the troops, and the NFL has called on its teams to stop accepting payments for them.

According to a Pentagon memo included in the report, the department maintains that the advertising helped with recruiting, especially since youth “have grown less positive about the associations they make with military service.” Senators Flake and McCain counter that “If the most compelling message about military service we can deliver to prospective recruits and influencers is the promise of game tickets, gifts, and player appearances, we need to rethink our approach to how we are inspiring qualified men and women to military service.”

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Parachute Drops, Cheerleaders, and Giant Flags: How the Pentagon Paid Pro Sports for PR

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Los Angeles and Beijing Are Teaming Up to Fight Global Warming

by Anh40L3815000 Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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The story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

China’s mega-cities and major US metropolitan areas will pledge swifter and deeper cuts in carbon pollution on Tuesday, shoring up a historic agreement between presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping.

Beijing and 10 other Chinese cities will agree to peak greenhouse gas emissions as early as 2020—a decade ahead of the existing target for the world’s biggest emitter, under a deal to be unveiled at a summit in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Seattle will commit to go carbon neutral by 2050, with more than a dozen other major metropolitan areas in the US, and the entire state of California, pledging an 80 percent cut in emissions by mid-century. Atlanta, Houston, New York, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City also put forward new climate commitments.

“This is a big deal,” Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles told the Guardian. “It is the heavy hitters. It is the biggest emitters, and it is the folks who are coming ready to act.”

The new, more ambitious goals from local governments in the world’s two biggest carbon polluting countries boosted hopes for critical climate change talks in Paris at the end of the year, and the prospects of avoiding a global temperature rise above 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), which would tip the world into dangerous and irreversible warming.

United Nations officials have acknowledged the pledges from countries to date will not cap warming at 2 degrees.

The announcement on Tuesday ratchets up a deal reached by presidents Obama and Xi last November to cut their carbon pollution. Xi promised at the time that China would reach peak emissions by 2030—or earlier.

China on its own was responsible for about 29 percent of the world’s carbon pollution in 2013, because of its heavy reliance on coal, about twice as much as the US.

At Tuesday’s summit, Chinese cities and provinces in the Alliance of Peaking Pioneer Cities will bring forward their date of peaking emissions.

Beijing, Guangzhou, and Zhenjiang will pledge to peak emissions by the end of 2020. Shenzhen and Wuhan will pledge to peak emissions by 2022, and Guiyang by 2025.

“The commitment of so many of its largest cities to early peaking highlights China’s resolve to take comprehensive action across all levels of government to achieve its national target,” the White House said in a fact sheet.

Brian Deese, a senior adviser to Obama, said the cities and provinces between them represented about 25 percent of China’s total urban emissions.

“This is important because the commitment to peaking mega-cities highlights that they are moving to achieve their national target as early as possible,” he told reporters on a conference call. “The two largest emitters in the world are taking seriously our commitment to meet the ambitious goals set last year.”

However, some of the most polluted cities in China, and the ones most dependent on coal, were not on that list.

Among other deals to be announced at the summit, Los Angeles will help clean up the choking air in Chinese cities.

Since the start of this year, Obama has set a blistering pace on climate change, with the administration rolling out new initiatives every few days.

The intense activity is intended in part to reassure the international community that Obama is committed to fighting climate change, despite the opposition from Republicans in Congress.

The commitments from China neutralize one of the Republicans’ main arguments against a climate change deal—that America on its own can achieve little, and that China is unwilling to act.

“The agreement between presidents Obama and Xi broke new ground and showed that in the developing world it is possible to make commitments to climate change—that you can go beyond saying we can’t make a commitment. We are still growing,” Garcetti said. “This new alliance of peaking pioneer cities will be able to push national goals aggressively.”

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Los Angeles and Beijing Are Teaming Up to Fight Global Warming

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Jimmy Carter: Cancer Has Spread to My Brain

by Celinda37H Posted on August 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Thursday morning, former President Jimmy Carter revealed he will begin radiation treatment for four spots of melanoma that were detected on his brain. He will start the first round of four radiation treatments this afternoon.

Carter made the announcement at a scheduled news conference at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Speaking to reporters, he said that even though he initially thought he only had a few weeks left to live, he was “surprisingly at ease” with his diagnosis.

“I’ve had a wonderful life,” Carter added. “I’ve had a wonderful life, thousands of friends. I’ve had an exciting and adventurous and gratifying existence. But now I feel that it’s in the hands of the God, whom I worship.”

Carter said doctors first discovered the lesions when he underwent surgery to remove a small mass in his liver earlier this month.

When asked if there was anything in his life he wish he could have done differently, Carter expressed regret over the Iran hostage crisis.

“I wish I had sent one more helicopter to get the hostages and we would have rescued them,” he said. Then in a lighthearted joke, Carter added, “Maybe I would have been reelected.”

The 90-year-old former president first revealed he had cancer last Wednesday.

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Jimmy Carter: Cancer Has Spread to My Brain

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Justice Clarence Thomas Cites NFL Player’s Memoir to Support Executing Mentally Disabled Man

by KatheriIVGI Posted on June 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Supreme Court justices generally support their opinions with references to other cases and perhaps the occasional scientific study. But on Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas cited an unusual source in his dissent in a death penalty case: the memoir of a professional football player. The player is also the son of the victim in the case. Thomas’ unorthodox move prompted two of his fellow conservatives to distance themselves from this section of his dissent, which they otherwise supported.

The case in question is Brumfield v. Cain, in which death row inmate Kevan Brumfield argued that the state of Louisiana denied him the opportunity to prove in court that he is intellectually disabled and, consequently, exempt from execution. Brumfield’s attorney had presented evidence that Brumfield was born prematurely, had been in special ed in elementary school, had a low IQ of 75, had been abused by his stepfather, and had spent time in a mental hospital and group homes due to his disability. But he was sentenced to death before a 2002 Supreme Court decision that the Eighth Amendment barred the execution of the intellectually disabled. After that decision, Brumfield petitioned the Louisiana courts to allow him a hearing to show that his disability should exempt him from execution. The Louisiana courts denied his requests, and the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. On Thursday, the Supreme Court majority reversed the lower court and ruled in Brumfield’s favor, sending his case back to Louisiana for further hearings on his mental capacity.

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Justice Clarence Thomas Cites NFL Player’s Memoir to Support Executing Mentally Disabled Man

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The Pentagon Gave How Much Taxpayer Cash to the NFL?

by JonelleLaffer Posted on May 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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For the last three years, the Department of Defense has forked over $5.4 million to 14 NFL teams to pay respect to service members during games. And while that’s a small line in the behemoth Pentagon budget, at least one GOP senator isn’t thrilled about it.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) criticized the “egregious and unnecessary waste of taxpayer dollars” on Monday after a weekend report by NJ.com found the Defense Department and the New Jersey National Guard paid the New York Jets $377,000 for in-game salutes and promotional activities at professional football games. The Atlanta Falcons received more than $1 million during that time, while the Baltimore Ravens raked in $885,000.

“While it may be appropriate for the National Guard or other service branches to spend taxpayer funds on activities directly related to recruiting,” Flake said, “giving taxpayer funds to professional sports teams for activities that are portrayed to the public as paying homage to US military personnel would seem inappropriate.”

What did the National Guard get in return? From NJ.com‘s Christopher Baxter and Jonathan Salant:

The agreement includes the Hometown Hero segment, in which the Jets feature a soldier or two on the big screen, announce their names and ask the crowd to thank them for their service. The soldiers and three friends also get seats in the Coaches Club for the game.

…

Aside from the Hometown Heroes segment, the agreements also included advertising and marketing services, including a kickoff video message from the Guard, digital advertising on stadium screens, online advertising and meeting space for a meeting or events.

Also, soldiers attended the annual kickoff lunch in New York City to meet and take pictures with the players for promotional use, and the Jets allowed soldiers to participate in a charity event in which coaches and players build or rebuild a playground or park.

The Jets also provided game access passes.

Flake, who first highlighted the National Guard’s spending as part of his #PorkChops campaign on wasteful spending, said his office had found “a number of advertising and promotion contracts between the Pentagon and professional sports teams in the MLB, NBA, NASCAR, Major League Soccer and the NCAA,” according to the Hill.

Here’s the full list of NFL teams that received DOD money, via NJ.com:

Taken from: 

The Pentagon Gave How Much Taxpayer Cash to the NFL?

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