Tag Archives: citizen

It’s Not Just the Flags. All These Public Schools Are Named After Notorious Racists

by OuidaCarrigan Posted on July 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Confederate flag is hardly the only symbol of the South’s racist history that has yet to go away. Indeed, public schools nationwide still bear the names of long-dead champions of a white-supremacist state.

The good news is that several of those schools have reconsidered their loaded names. Last year, the Nathan B. Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Florida, became Westside High School. Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army and first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. And Aycock Hall at Duke University, named for former North Carolina Gov. Charles Aycock, an avowed white supremacist, became East Residence Hall. This move prompted East Carolina University eight months later to rename its own Aycock Hall as Heritage Hall. Last May, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill changed Saunders Hall to Carolina Hall to shed its association with Klan leader William Saunders.

Last week, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, who formerly served as San Antonio’s mayor, posted a message on his personal Facebook page calling on that city’s North East Independent School District to rename Robert E. Lee High School. “There are other, more appropriate individuals to honor and spotlight as role models for our young people,” Castro wrote.

But scores of American schools still bear the monikers of Confederate brass. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, we put together a map of some of those schools below. It includes more than 60 schools—mostly in the South, not surprisingly—and there are undoubtedly others, between private schools and public schools, that have changed names recently in the opposite direction. And then there are the schools located on streets named for Confederate figures, such as the ironically named Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School on Mosby Street in Richmond, Virginia. John Singleton Mosby, a.k.a. “the Gray Ghost,” was a Confederate colonel who reportedly wrote to a colleague, “I’ve always understood that we went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about.…I’ve never heard of any other cause than slavery.

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It’s Not Just the Flags. All These Public Schools Are Named After Notorious Racists

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Ted Cruz Wants to Subject Supreme Court Justices to Political Elections

by NatishaSisco Posted on June 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last week was a tough one for conservatives. In the course of two days, the US Supreme Court upheld a major part of the Affordable Care Act and effectively legalized same-sex marriage. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called it “some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history,” and he’s not going to take it lying down. The presidential candidate and former Supreme Court clerk says he is proposing a constitutional amendment that would force Supreme Court justices to face retention elections.

“Sadly, the Court’s hubris and thirst for power have reached unprecedented levels. And that calls for meaningful action, lest Congress be guilty of acquiescing to this assault on the rule of law,” Cruz wrote in the National Review after the court’s Friday ruling on same-sex marriage. “And if Congress will not act, passing the constitutional amendments needed to correct this lawlessness, then the movement from the people for an Article V Convention of the States—to propose the amendments directly—will grow stronger and stronger.”

Cruz’s plan calls for the justices to face retention elections beginning with the second national election after their appointment, and every eight years after that. “Those justices deemed unfit for retention by both a majority of the American people as a whole and by majorities of the electorates in at least half of the 50 states will be removed from office and disqualified from future service on the Court,” Cruz wrote.

In defending his plan, Cruz wrote that 20 states already have judicial retention elections. What he didn’t mention was that many of those states have taken steps to compensate for a major problem that tends to arise when judges’ jobs get politicized. Of the 39 states that have some form of judicial elections (whether retention or otherwise), 30 have bans on judges personally soliciting donors for money to avoid conflicts of interest. Those bans were recently upheld by the Supreme Court itself, which ruled in April in Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar that states can legally prohibit judicial candidates from directly soliciting money. Why?

“Judges are not politicians, even when they come to the bench by way of the ballot,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s 5-4 majority opinion in Yulee.

And there’s a good reason for Roberts’ reluctance to lump judges in with other politicians. In writing about the Yulee decision in April, Mother Jones reported:

Judicial elections have quietly become a major battleground in American politics over the last decade. State judicial candidates raised a combined $83 million in the 1990s, a total that was surpassed by roughly $30 million in the 2011-12 election cycle. More than $200 million has been donated to state supreme court candidates since 2000, and independent (and often unaccountable) spending on state judicial races has increased nearly sevenfold in that same time. Sue Bell Cobb, the retired chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, recently likened judicial elections to “legalized extortion.”

A major problem with all of this money is that more and more of it is independent and unaccountable spending, some of which comes from people who appear before the very judges they’re donating to. Even when judges don’t actively fundraise, outside groups pour funds into attack ads, putting money at the center of what was once a fairly sleepy and restrained electoral process. And that’s just on the state level. Imagine the national campaigns to retain (or unseat) Antonin Scalia or Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“If the justices themselves couldn’t raise the money, who would step forward to run campaign contributions?” asks Liz Seaton, the campaign deputy executive director of judicial watchdog group Justice at Stake. “Why? And to what end?”

Seaton says that political attacks on the Supreme Court after controversial decisions aren’t new, and that the founding fathers gave federal judges lifetime tenure to protect them from exactly the kind of political pressure Cruz is hoping to apply.

“What kind of political campaigning and spending would there be if such a system would be put in place?” Seaton asks. “It’s just hard to imagine just how much that would blow the system out of the water.”

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Ted Cruz Wants to Subject Supreme Court Justices to Political Elections

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The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained

by JestineChristia Posted on June 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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The US law enforcement community regards homegrown violent extremists, not radicalized Islamists, as the most severe threat from political violence in the country, according to a new study from the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. Released late last week, the report comes amid renewed focus on the problem ever since a 21-year-old avowed white supremacist carried out a mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. There is a growing body of research highlighting the threat from right-wing extremists, but who or what exactly does that term encompass, and how big really is the problem? Mother Jones examined various reports and contacted experts to find out more.

What are “far-right” or “right-wing” extremists?
While there is no uniform definition, these terms loosely encompass individuals or groups associated with white supremacist, antigovernment, sovereign citizen, patriot, militia, or other ideologies that target specific religious, ethnic or other minority groups. (Meanwhile, how to determine which violent attacks constitute an act of terrorism has been a subject of renewed debate.)

The available data on violent attacks perpetrated by right-wing extremists ranges widely, explains Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a national security expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. Researchers at the US Department of Homeland Security, New America Foundation, Southern Poverty Law Center, University of Maryland, and the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point have all compiled data on right-wing extremist violence using varying criteria over different periods of time, most of them going back to the mid 1990s, when the Oklahoma City bombing riveted attention on the problem. (The exception is the University of Maryland’s data, which dates to 1970, during a surge in violent far-left extremism.)

The various studies have all led to the same general conclusion: The threat from homegrown right-wing extremists has grown in recent years. “Since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating in the far-right of American politics,” Arie Perliger, the director of terrorism studies at the Combating Terrorism Center, wrote in a 2012 report.

How often do right wing violent extremists attack?
The University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database registered 65 attacks on American soil associated with right-wing ideologies since 9/11, versus 24 attacks by jihadist extremists. The New America Foundation, meanwhile, tallied 48 deaths from attacks by non-jihadist extremists over the same time period—including the Charleston shooting—compared with 26 deaths from attacks by jihadist extremists, including the one at Fort Hood in 2009, in which 13 were killed.

Courtesy of the New York Times

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which compiles data on “all violent attacks that were perpetrated by groups or individuals affiliated with far-right associations,” counted an average of 337 annual attacks by right-wing extremists in the decade after 9/11, including a total of 254 fatalities, or an annual average of about 18 deaths.

Arie Perliger, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

Daryl Johnson, a former DHS domestic terrorism intelligence analyst who now heads the consulting firm DT Analytics, says that attacks from far-right extremists “increased dramatically” after 2008. Johnson, who began tracking domestic terrorism while at DHS, estimates that there is currently an average of one plot or attack every 40 to 45 days. “We are in a heightened period right now,” he says.

Johnson’s view is supported by a 2012 report from Perliger at the Combating Terrorism Center: “Since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating in the far-right of American politics,” it notes.

How organized are these extremists?
As former Mother Jones staffer Adam Serwer reported in August 2012 when a neo-Nazi carried out a massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the number of American extremist groups has also risen overall in recent years:

How is law enforcement responding?
About three quarters of the 382 state and local law enforcement agencies surveyed by the Triangle Center listed anti-government extremism as a top threat in their jurisdiction, compared with 39 percent that listed violence connected with Al Qaeda or related groups.

In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League documented an upswing in far-right attacks against law enforcement:

Anti-Defamation League

But those numbers should be put into perspective, the report’s authors Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer note, since terrorism of all kinds represents a small fraction of total violent crime in the United States. The number of homicides in the US since 9/11 totaled more than 215,000.

And because the data on right-wing violence varies so much, “it’s hard to get a true understanding of the threat,” German says, adding that the FBI—whose number one priority is to protect the United States from a terrorist attack—does not publish data on domestic terrorism. “Instead, we rely on these private groups that are doing a public service by compiling and publishing information,” he says. The FBI does collect and publish limited data on hate crimes, which it defines as criminal offenses “against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” But German as well as researchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center point out that data relies on voluntary reporting and thus undercounts those numbers.

So what is the government doing about it?
The federal and local governments had ramped up efforts to combat domestic terrorism of all kinds in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. A few months following the 9/11 attacks, FBI official Dale Watson testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that “Right-wing groups continue to represent a serious terrorist threat.” But Johnson, German, and others assert that federal counterterrorism programs since 9/11 have focused overwhelmingly on the perceived threat from Islamic extremism. That includes the Obama administration’s “countering violent extremism” strategy, which “revolves around impeding the radicalization of violent jihadists,” according to a 2014 Congressional Research Service report.

The attack in Charleston underscored “the failure of the federal government to keep closer tabs” on right-wing extremists, argues Gerald Horne, a historian and civil rights activist at the University of Houston.

But the focus may soon increase. In February, CNN reported that US Homeland Security circulated an intelligence assessment that focused on the domestic terror threat posed by right-wing extremists. Kurzman and Schanzer also point to a handout from a training program sponsored by the US Department of Justice, cautioning that the threat from antigovernment extremism “is real.”

Who and where are the perpetrators of far-right extremist attacks?
According to Perliger’s research at West Point, 54 percent of such attacks since 1990—in which the perpetrators were caught or identified—were carried out by a single individual. About 75 percent of all perpetrators identified were 29 years old or younger.

Perliger also notes that attacks have moved beyond states in the South—the birthplace of groups such as the KKK and the site of major attacks during the 1960s—to places including California, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. “The existence of significant minority groups in the different states appears linked with the level of far-right violence they experience,” Perliger says. In a recent editorial, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees and J. Richard Cohen argued that far-right extremism is gaining ground beyond state boundaries: “Unlike those of the civil rights era, whose main goal was to maintain Jim Crow in the American South, today’s white supremacists don’t see borders; they see a white tribe under attack by people of color across the globe…The days of thinking of domestic terrorism as the work of a few Klansmen or belligerent skinheads are over.”

What factors might explain the latest rise in this kind of extremism?
Experts suggest that several factors may have played into it. Researchers commonly attribute the spike in right-wing attacks, around 2008, to the election of an African-American president. Around the time of Obama’s election, Johnson notes how the white supremacist web forum Stormfront had less than 100,000 registered users. “Today, it is over 300,000,” he says. Scholars have also debated the role that the 2008 financial crisis, a heightening debate over immigration, and other socioeconomic changes may have had. The Combating Terrorism Center’s Perliger points out that past spikes in far-right attacks also corresponded with the passing of landmark legislation such as the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and firearm restrictions during the 1990s.

Was the Charleston shooting a hate crime or an act of terrorism?
It had the marks of both, according to Horne, German, and others. FBI Director James Comey came under fire for saying the Charleston shooting did not appear to be an act of terrorism based on the available evidence. German adds that Roof’s racist comments about black people, his photos with flags invoking racist ideologies, and the fact that he killed a state senator, make clear that his attack on the church was both targeted and political.

Could the Charleston shooting have been prevented?
Violent attacks by extremists are difficult to predict, but both the government and researchers could be doing a better job of working to understand them, German says. “You have to understand both how the movement works and what parts are dangerous and what parts aren’t, as well as understanding how the particular terrorist activity starts,” he explains, adding that most research on terrorist attacks has fixated on their ideological roots, rather than on their methodologies. “That’s where you’ll see terrorism studies completely lacking, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been thrown into terrorism research. They’re not studying the right things.”

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The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained

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Bree Newsome Explains Why She Tore Down the Confederate Flag in South Carolina

by AllenDalrymple Posted on June 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday afternoon, Bree Newsome, the woman who scaled the flagpole at the South Carolina statehouse on Saturday and took down the Confederate flag, made her first public comments since her arrest, which were published on the progressive website Blue Nation Review. She detailed her recent history of activism and described her motivation:

The night of the Charleston Massacre, I had a crisis of faith. The people who gathered for Bible study in Emmanuel AME Church that night—Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson and Rev. Clementa Pinckney (rest in peace)—were only doing what Christians are called to do when anyone knocks on the door of the church: invite them into fellowship and worship.

The day after the massacre I was asked what the next step was and I said I didn’t know. We’ve been here before and here we are again: black people slain simply for being black; an attack on the black church as a place of spiritual refuge and community organization.
I refuse to be ruled by fear. How can America be free and be ruled by fear? How can anyone be?

So, earlier this week I gathered with a small group of concerned citizens, both black and white, who represented various walks of life, spiritual beliefs, gender identities and sexual orientations. Like millions of others in America and around the world, including South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and President Barack Obama, we felt (and still feel) that the confederate battle flag in South Carolina, hung in 1962 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, must come down. (Of course, we are not the first to demand the flag’s removal. Civil rights groups in South Carolina and nationwide have been calling for the flag’s removal since the moment it was raised, and I acknowledge their efforts in working to remove the flag over the years via the legislative process.)

We discussed it and decided to remove the flag immediately, both as an act of civil disobedience and as a demonstration of the power people have when we work together.

Explaining why she worked together with fellow activist James Ian Tyson, she continued:

Achieving this would require many roles, including someone who must volunteer to scale the pole and remove the flag. It was decided that this role should go to a black woman and that a white man should be the one to help her over the fence as a sign that our alliance transcended both racial and gender divides. We made this decision because for us, this is not simply about a flag, but rather it is about abolishing the spirit of hatred and oppression in all its forms.

Read Newsome’s whole statement here.

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Bree Newsome Explains Why She Tore Down the Confederate Flag in South Carolina

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Capture the Flag: A Brief History of Defacing Confederate Banners

by TimNIYCoxxwclyjq Posted on June 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Bree Newsome was tired of watching the Confederate battle flag fly on the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse. So on Saturday morning, the 30-year-old African American activist and singer-songwriter from North Carolina put on a harness, climbed 30 feet, and took down the flag herself. She was arrested and charged with defacing a state monument, while the flag was promptly returned to its place atop the pole. But at the end of a week in which the Confederate flag was removed for good from the Alabama statehouse, banned by many retailers, and condemned by politicians in Mississippi and South Carolina, the symbolism of Newsome’s ascent was hard to miss. An IndieGoGo account for her bail and legal defense fees raised $113,000 in three days. The internet quickly did its thing:

The photo of Newsome perched atop the pole may beckon to historians for another reason—deja vu. For about as long as the Confederate flag has flown, people have been trying to tear it down.

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Capture the Flag: A Brief History of Defacing Confederate Banners

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In a Few Years, Gay Marriage Will Be About as Threatening as Cell Phones

by KirbyFelton Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jonathan Bernstein gets it right on same-sex marriage:

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Supreme Court’s decision today in Obergefell, which recognizes marriage as a basic right, is that it’s not going to be very controversial.

….How do I know? Because we’ve seen it in state after state in which marriage equality was enacted. There’s no controversy remaining in Massachusetts; for that matter, there’s little or no controversy remaining in Iowa, which had court-imposed marriage equality in 2009. On a related issue, conflict over gays and lesbians serving in the military ended immediately after “don’t ask don’t tell” was replaced four years ago. In practice, extending full citizenship and human rights to all regardless of sexual orientation and identity is actually not all that controversial — at least not after the fact.

I get the fact that gay marriage seems creepy and unnatural to some people. I don’t like this attitude, and I don’t feel it myself, but I get it.

But you know what? Bernstein is right. For a while it will continue to be a political football, but not for long. Even the opponents will quickly realize that same-sex marriage changes….nothing. Life goes on normally. The gay couples in town still live and hang out together just like they always have, and a few marriage ceremonies didn’t change that. In their own houses, everything stays the same. The actual impact is zero. No one is trying to recruit their kids to the cause. Their churches continue to marry whoever they want to marry. After a few months or a few years, they just forget about it. After all, the lawn needs mowing and the kids have to get ferried to soccer practice and Chinese sounds good for dinner—and that gay couple who run the Jade Palace over on 4th sure make a mean Kung Pao Chicken. And that’s it.

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In a Few Years, Gay Marriage Will Be About as Threatening as Cell Phones

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Republicans Oppose Evidence-Based Medical Research Because….Obamacare

by itsmejenny Posted on June 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over at the Monkey Cage, Eric Patashnik ponders an oddity: Republicans generally support healthcare research funding, but they’ve turned against the idea of funding evidence-based research. This is despite the fact that Republicans, who normally support ways to spend tax dollars more efficiently, have been firm supporters for more than two decades? What’s going on?

One possible reason is that Republicans oppose taxpayer funding of all scientific research as a matter of principle. Yet the same House Appropriations Committee draft bill that targets health services research also provides a $1.1 billion increase in the budget of the National Institutes of Health.

A second possible reason is that Republicans are uninterested in evidence-based policymaking. But both Democrats and Republicans argue that better information is needed to make government more effective. For example, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (R-Wash.) recently introduced the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act of 2015 to evaluate the effectiveness of federal programs.

Hah hah. He’s just kidding. Patashnik actually knows perfectly well why Republicans have decided they hate evidence-based research. Remember death panels? Remember how the federal government was going to decide which treatments were worth giving to grandma and which ones weren’t? Remember how Republicans decided that “comparative effectiveness” research was just a tricky Democratic facade for their effort to take treatment decisions out of the hands of your beloved local doctor and instead put them into the hands of green-eyeshade bureaucrats?

Oh yeah. You remember. Here’s Patashnik on what happened to evidence-based research:

Federal investment in this research (although it predated the 2008 election) became closely tied to the Obama administration’s health-care reform agenda….An increased federal role in comparative effectiveness research, together with payments to physicians for voluntary counseling to Medicare patients about end-of-life options and the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (another agency the GOP wishes to kill) contributed to the “death panels” myth, which Republicans have used to frame health-care reform as “rationing.”

….Although evidence-based medicine might seem likely to have bipartisan support, it has become a partisan issue among voters. In 2010, Alan Gerber, David Doherty, Conor Dowling and I conducted a national survey to gauge public support for government funding of research on the effectiveness of treatments. Among those who reported not voting in 2008, there was not a large difference in support across Democrats and Republicans, but there were significant partisan differences among voters. Republican voters were much less supportive than Democrats. During the debates over the stimulus bill and health-care reform, the two parties took opposing stands on the federal government’s role in this effort, which led to the significant partisan split among politically engaged citizens.

So there you have it. Sarah Palin’s revenge. Common sense commitments to promoting evidence-based medicine became tied up in the Republican jihad against anything associated with Obamacare. So now it’s on the chopping block too. Welcome to the modern GOP.

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Republicans Oppose Evidence-Based Medical Research Because….Obamacare

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Decoding the Scene From Dylann Roof’s "Favorite Film"

by TarahFreeland Posted on June 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Screenshots taken from the film Himizu.

Among the many violent and racist images in the apparent manifesto of Dylann Roof, the alleged mass murderer, is something slightly more exotic: a reference to the 2011 ultra-violent Japanese crime drama, Himizu (a New York Times “Critics Pick”). The manifesto uncovered on Saturday morning reads: “To take a saying from my favorite film, ‘Even if my life is worth less than a speck of dirt, I want to use it for the good of society’.”

The movie, adapted from a popular manga by director Sion Sono, is set in tsunami-hit Japan in 2011, and follows the story of two teenagers—unloved, unwanted—struggling to survive amid the chaos wrought by the earthquake, and corruption. It’s a twisted and dark coming-of-age story (at some points a romance) that is beautifully shot and scored, but I wouldn’t say it’s an easy watch.

More Mother Jones coverage of the Charleston Shooting:


Here’s What We Know About the People Who Lost Their Lives in Charleston


Dylann Storm Roof Identified as Suspected Gunman in Charleston Mass Shooting (Updated)


Should the Charleston Attack Be Called Terrorism?


The Gun Lobby Blames the Charleston Mass Shooting on “Gun-Free Zones”


WATCH: Obama Just Delivered Remarks About the Mass Shooting in Charleston


Charleston’s Hometown Newspaper Is Putting Awful Cable News to Shame


Families of Charleston Shooting Victims: “We Forgive You”

The full scene in which that quote appears is in many ways far more disturbing than the quote in the manifesto, and might contain even darker clues about what might have inspired Roof’s attack at the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday, which killed nine people. One of the main characters, Sumida—a brooding, angry boy—is recording his own voice onto a tape deck, preparing for an act of mass violence in the streets of Japan:

It’s May 7, the first day of the rest of my life. No police, no suicide. I guess I’m stingier than I figured. Even if my life is worth less than a speck of dirt. I want to use it for the good of society. I must have been born to do some good. I’ll kill idiots who trouble citizens.

Sumida has just brutally attacked and killed his father in a fit of rage in the previous scene. Caked in mud, he returns to a trailer to contemplate his next steps—some kind of vigilante justice—covering his face and body in multi-colored paints, and rather calmly intoning his plans. He then takes a large knife and begins killing people.

The choice of a Japanese film might seem peculiar at first, given the manifesto is a white supremacy rant. But in a section titled “East Asians”, the essay reads: “Even if we were to go extinct they could carry something on. They are by nature very racist and could be great allies of the White race. I am not opposed at all to allies with the Northeast Asian races.”

The film was widely praised by reviewers. The Guardian wrote that the director “Sono retains his go-for-the-throat approach, but the violence here somehow connects with the brutal economic conditions, and he fosters very tender, affecting performances.”

If Roof watched the whole film, he surely missed the point—the moral universe of the film is pretty clear. The film ends with Sumida’s friend Keiko convincing him to give himself up to the police and seek redemption. The end of the film, tracking through the rubble left by the tsunami, is especially haunting.

“Let’s go to the police,” she says. “Sumida. Don’t give up. Live! Sumida. Say something. Don’t give up! Have a dream!”

Roof did the opposite: he extinguished the hopes and dreams of so many innocent people and their families on Wednesday night.

Watch the film’s trailer below:

Himizu (trailer) from Cinefamily on Vimeo.

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Decoding the Scene From Dylann Roof’s "Favorite Film"

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The Best Golfers in the World Are Playing on a Poop-Watered Course

by MizunoC36rm Posted on June 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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This weekend, the world’s most accomplished golfers have gathered at Chambers Bay on Washington state’s Puget Sound for the most challenging golf major of them all—the US Open Championship. The course’s difficulty and Scotland-style “links” layout has been the talk of the golfing world, as have the unique grasses used on the fairways and greens. Indeed, even the most fair-weather of golfing fans will notice the course is much browner than the typical sites for golf championships. Ever-fussy golfers are already complaining, but the landscaping of Chambers Bay is a win for the environment.

According to the Alliance for Water Efficiency, a typical golf course soaks up between 100,000 and one million gallons of water a week; golf courses in California’s Palm Springs use on average 800,000 gallons per day—more water than an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Golf resorts in dry states facing government-mandated water reductions and drought-shaming have begun to find ways to use recycled water and minimize the area they irrigate.

Chambers Bay—located in a region that’s also suffering from drought—aims to change golf courses’ wasteful reputation. The course is irrigated with reclaimed wastewater and fertilized with sewage from a nearby treatment plant. The groundskeepers landscape with native plants and have cleaned up land and marine habitats for local wildlife. Oh, and that brown grass everyone is fussing over? That’s Fescue, a drought resistant grass well-adapted to the relatively cool climate of Western Washington.

Ed Osann, who heads the water efficiency team at the Natural Resources Defense Council, praises efforts like those Chambers Bay have made—especially the fertilizer trick. Taking potable drinking water and spreading it on the ground, he says, simply “doesn’t make sense.”

Chambers Bay wasn’t always this way.

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The Best Golfers in the World Are Playing on a Poop-Watered Course

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Rand Paul’s Plan to Give the Economy a "Steriod Injection" Could Have Scary Side Effects

by AlvinMacDonnell Posted on June 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) unveiled his plan to give the economy a “steroid injection” by rewriting the country’s tax code down to a simple, straightforward flat tax of 14.5 percent on personal income and a 14.5 percent “business activity tax.” By Paul’s reckoning, this would save taxpayers billions and supercharge the economy almost immediately upon implementation. But at least one nonprofit group that advocates tax reform is saying that, just like a real steroid injection, Paul’s scheme to quickly bulk up the economy may have long-term and devastating effects for its health.

Setting aside all other questions about the credibility of a flat tax, nonprofit think tank Citizens for Tax Justice released its analysis of Paul’s proposal, and it’s ugly.

When the dust clears, this would leave the federal government with $1.2 trillion less in tax revenue in fiscal year 2016 if the plan were implemented immediately—a reduction of about one-third in total federal revenues. Over a decade, the plan would cost a stunning $15 trillion.

Ultimately, the fiscal realities of the tax plan might not matter. The flat tax has never caught fire as a presidential election issue. In 2012, Herman Cain had his “9-9-9” plan and Rick Perry suggested a 20 percent flat tax. Most famously, in 1996 there was Steve Forbes, who briefly looked like he could turn his magazine-famous name into a politically relevant one—but didn’t.

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Rand Paul’s Plan to Give the Economy a "Steriod Injection" Could Have Scary Side Effects

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