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Congress Gutted Researchers’ Ability to Study Gun Violence. Now They’re Fighting Back.

by LarryEastham239 Posted on January 20, 2017

Mother Jones

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On November 14, six days after Donald Trump won the presidential election, more than 80 researchers from 42 schools of public health gathered for a closed-door meeting at the Boston University School of Public Health. Their agenda: how to get around the federal government’s de facto ban on researching the health impact of gun violence and get it done anyway.

“The idea was to pull together a meeting to say, ‘We have had no change in the number of firearm deaths and firearm injuries since 2000. It’s become endemic,'” says Sandro Galea, a physician, epidemiologist, and the dean of the BU School of Public Health, who organized the hush-hush meeting. “There has been no action on this to speak of at the federal level, and there has been no clear statement from academic public health on this issue. We brought people together to ask, ‘What should academic public health be doing toward moving us collectively toward mitigating the consequences of gun violence?'”

Despite the more than 30,000 gun-related deaths that occur in America every year, firearms receive relatively little attention as a subject of public-health research. A recent research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that gun violence is the least-researched leading cause of death in the United States. This is largely because of a 1996 bill that prevented the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other agencies from using federal money to “advocate for or promote gun control.” The lack of funding combined with the toxic environment that surrounds the debate over gun rights has made most public-health researchers wary of touching the topic.

JAMA/Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

The group that met at BU in November hope to reverse that two-decade trend. They drafted a call to action, the final version of which was published yesterday in the American Journal of Public Health. It outlines a plan to beef up gun violence research and scholarship by seeking funding from the private sector, as well as seeking common ground between pro-gun advocates and gun safety advocates, and developing state-level initiatives.

“Federal funding is not going to happen with the National Rifle Association around,” says John Rosenthal, a Massachusetts-based businessman and gun owner who was a keynote speaker at the November meeting. In 1994, he started Stop Handgun Violence, which has advocated stricter gun laws in his home state. (Massachusetts has the third-lowest gun violence rate in the nation, and some of its toughest gun laws.) “In the absence of public funding, this call to action could lead to significant private funding,” he says. “If enough schools of public health really look at it—and this is a public health epidemic—then lives will be saved. I think there will be a critical mass with this group and more that will follow.”

Galea says gun researchers have a lot of catching up to do. “The fundamental, foundational work of documenting the full scale of the health consequences of firearms has not been done,” he says. “It’s the kind of project that we do all the time. It just hasn’t been done with firearms because there haven’t been resources.”

Even if the researchers overcome these financial obstacles, they must still contend with the political climate. “Trump was a clear supporter of gun rights throughout the campaign and has widely claimed support from the gun lobby as a core part of his appeal; the gun lobby spent more than $30 million on the campaign,” they write in their call to action. “This portends challenges to advancing gun policy at the federal level in the next four years, if not longer.”

The NRA has called out Galea for his “deeply flawed research,” likening his defense of a controversial recent study of gun laws to “the behavior of a mule.” “It is very charged when you have the NRA calling you out personally,” Galea says. “It has a chilling effect. It’s hard to encourage young people to make a career out of studying something which brings with it the threat of a public fight with a group as powerful as the NRA.” After 20 years of delay, Rosenthal says it’s time to stop ignoring one of the country’s leading causes of death. “We’ve reached a tipping point,” he says. “Enough is enough.”

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Congress Gutted Researchers’ Ability to Study Gun Violence. Now They’re Fighting Back.

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Trump Somehow Found Time Today to Meet With Monsanto Execs

by BeatrizVSGP Posted on January 12, 2017

Mother Jones

Amid the furor surrounding allegations of covert ties with Russian intelligence figures as well as his first press conference since winning the election, President-elect Donald Trump found time in his hectic Wednesday schedule to meet with two towering figures in the agriculture world, reports Fox Business Daily. But the main conversation topic wasn’t the job opening atop the US Department of Agriculture, the sole cabinet spot awaiting an appointment from Trump.

Rather, the meeting involved German chemical giant Bayer’s $66 billion buyout of US seed/agrichemical giant Monsanto—a deal that will have to pass antitrust muster with Trump’s Department of Justice (more on that here). Fox reports that Bayer CEO Werner Baumann and his Monsanto counterpart Hugh Grant met with the incoming president at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan to promote the merger. In an email to the news organization, a Monsanto spokesperson confirmed that the two execs “had a productive meeting with President-Elect Trump and his team to share their views on the future of the agriculture industry and its need for innovation.”

Baumann and Grant have plenty to be concerned about regarding possible antitrust obstacles to their mega-deal. As I’ve reported before, a combined Bayer-Monsanto would own 29 percent of the global seed market, and 25 percent of the global pesticide market. And if the pending merger between agribiz goliaths Dow and DuPont also wins approval, three enormous companies—the above two combined firms, plus Syngenta (itself recently taken over by a Chinese chemical conglomerate)—would sell about 59 percent of the globe’s seeds and 64 percent of its pesticides. In this post, I tease out how such concentrated power can harm farmers and consumers alike.

And as The Wall Street Journal reports, opposition to these mergers has arisen even in rival agribusiness circles, including among the motley crew of execs and aligned GOP farm-state pols who served on Trump’s rural advisory committee during the campaign. Iowa corn, pork, and ethanol magnate Bruce Rastetter, a member of that committee and a leading candidate for the USDA post, told The Journal he “plans to raise his concerns about the mergers directly with Mr. Trump in the near future.” Rastetter is tightly aligned with Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, whom Trump has picked to serve as ambassador to China.

As with everything else he does, Trump seems intent on plunging these momentous decisions—on both the future of the seed market and the leadership of the USDA—into a swirling sea of chaos and drama.

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Trump Somehow Found Time Today to Meet With Monsanto Execs

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Living At Home Has Become Steadily More Popular Since the 1960s

by VioletLJGnnihr Posted on December 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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According to the Wall Street Journal, millennials are living in their parents’ basements at record rates:

Almost 40% of young Americans were living with their parents, siblings or other relatives in 2015, the largest percentage since 1940, according to an analysis of census data by real estate tracker Trulia.

Despite a rebounding economy and recent job growth, the share of those between the ages of 18 and 34 doubling up with parents or other family members has been rising since 2005. Back then, before the start of the last recession, roughly one out of three were living with family.

Hmmm. “Rising since 2005.” I’ll assume that’s technically true, but take a look at the chart that accompanies the Journal piece. The number of young adults living with their parents rose in the 70s. And the 80s. And the aughts. And the teens. Basically, it’s been on an upward trend for nearly half a century. That seems more noteworthy to me than the fact that it failed to blip slightly downward after the Great Recession ended.

Part of the reason, of course, is that people have been getting married and settling down later in life. According to the OECD, the average age at first marriage has increased nearly five years just since 1990, and ranges between 30 and 35 around the world:

The United States is still at the low end of the world average.

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Living At Home Has Become Steadily More Popular Since the 1960s

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As Always, Inflation Is Yet Again Right Around the Corner

by LeolaGeach156 Posted on December 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Wall Street Journal has annoyed me again today. See if you can spot how they got my dander up:

A rallying stock market, rising bond yields and the return of inflationary pressures are creating new challenges for the Federal Reserve….Many Fed watchers see the prospect of tax cuts and fiscal spending under Donald Trump, as well as rising oil prices and inflation expectations, pointing to a pickup in the pace of rate increases.

….Many money managers say an upsurge of inflation throughout 2017 ranks among the top risks to a continued advance in U.S. stocks….On the bond market, meanwhile, a gauge of 10-year inflation expectations rose to the highest level in more than two years and edged above the Fed’s 2% inflation target….The fiscal stimulus Mr. Trump has proposed could boost demand and send inflation higher. Expectations of higher inflation have firmed further after the agreement by oil-producing nations boosted crude prices.

Sigh. Here’s a chart of all the commonly used inflation measures:

The ordinary measures of inflation (in red) are rising, but only to the level of two years ago—and well below the Fed’s target of 2 percent. The core measures of inflation (in blue) are pretty steady at well under 2 percent. And the 10-year-breakeven (in brown), which is a measure of inflation expectations, has been on a steady downward march for three years.

The only measure that’s both rising and breaking past the 2 percent target is the 10-year-breakeven—but only if you look at the daily change over just the past five weeks. So which measure does the Journal show in its chart? The daily change of the 10-year-breakeven over the past five weeks.

Inflation is always right around the corner, isn’t it? No matter how you have to twist things to make it come out that way, it’s always right around the corner.

But maybe we should turn the corner first before we panic. After all, 2 percent is a target, not a ceiling. After years of sub-2-percent inflation, surely we can wait until we’ve had at least a few months of 3 percent inflation before we break out the hammer and shatter the punch bowl?

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As Always, Inflation Is Yet Again Right Around the Corner

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The Scriptwriter for “The Trump Show” Needs to Get a Grip

by GuadalupeWentche Posted on December 10, 2016

Mother Jones

From the Wall Street Journal:

Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Rex Tillerson has emerged as the leading candidate to become President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, according to two transition officials, marking the latest twist in a multiweek search for a top diplomat.

….Among those considered for the post, Mr. Tillerson has perhaps the closest ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, having negotiated a 2011 energy partnership deal with Russia that Mr. Putin said could eventually be worth as much as $500 billion. In 2012, the Kremlin bestowed the country’s Order of Friendship decoration on Mr. Tillerson.

Oh come on. Trump is planning to nominate a wealthy, inexperienced fossil-fuel mogul whose only qualification—literally—is that he’s sort of chummy with Vladimir Putin? And Republicans are expected to confirm him?

Who’s writing the script for this show? No one’s going to believe these plot twists. I gave up on Designated Survivor after a couple of episodes, and it was more realistic than this.

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The Scriptwriter for “The Trump Show” Needs to Get a Grip

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Trump’s Labor Secretary Pick Tried to Overturn Roe v. Wade. He Almost Succeeded.

by LachlanLemmons0 Posted on December 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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President-elect Trump is expected to name Andrew Puzder, chief executive of the company that runs fast food giants Carl’s Jr. and Hardees, to head the Department of Labor. This choice has already sparked concern among labor advocates, given Puzder’s frequent commentaries opposing minimum wage increases.

But reproductive rights advocates should also be concerned. Puzder has long opposed abortion rights and even wrote the Missouri abortion law the Supreme Court upheld in its 1989 Webster v. Reproductive Health Services decision. This was a seminal case that allowed states to impose far more restrictions on abortion care than had previously been permitted under Roe v. Wade, including limits on the use of public funds and facilities for abortion care.

Donald Trump has promised to appoint anti-abortion Supreme Court justices, and his vice president-elect Mike Pence has said he wants to “send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history.” Back in the ’80s, when he was a lawyer working in St. Louis, Puzder acted on similar convictions. In a 1984 article in the Stetson Law Journal, Puzder and another lawyer proposed that the Missouri legislature pass a law defining life as beginning at conception in broader contexts—in property or contract law, for instance. Puzder saw its purpose as mounting a challenge against Roe, which had legalized abortion a little less than a decade earlier. If the court recognized that a fetus had rights in contexts other than abortion, he reasoned, it created a foundation for challenging legal abortion down the line.

“This is not an abortion statute,” Puzder told the Chicago Tribune in 1989, three months before Webster was heard by the Supreme Court. “It is designed to make the Supreme Court face the question of deciding whether a state can decide when life exists.”

Puzder worked with Sam Lee, a local anti-abortion lobbyist, to move the proposal to the legislature. The two got acquainted because Puzder had often helped get Lee out of jail following his arrests during sit-ins at abortion clinics “by arguing a defense of necessity,” noted the Tribune. “Lee had to break the law and trespass because he believed that life began at conception and that the only way to stop the greater crime was to limit access to the clinic. The defense almost always worked.”

The two added a slew of other abortion restrictions to the bill—including one prohibiting the use of public resources to provide or counsel on abortions—and soon it was signed into law in Missouri. The measure was challenged by a local abortion clinic, Reproductive Health Services, and provisions of the law were subsequently found unconstitutional by several appeals courts. Ultimately, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court found that none of the bill’s provisions were unconstitutional, dealing a blow to abortion rights advocates—but the high court clarified their ruling should not be taken as a referendum on the original decision in Roe v. Wade. Puzder now will likely join an administration that plans to complete a mission he began thirty years ago.

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Trump’s Labor Secretary Pick Tried to Overturn Roe v. Wade. He Almost Succeeded.

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Potential Trump Pick for Homeland Security Wants to Send up to 1 Million People to Gitmo

by RoccoMcChesney Posted on November 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump was scheduled to meet Monday with Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr., a Trump supporter and surrogate during the campaign who is now reportedly being considered to head the Department of Homeland Security. Clarke is known for his extreme views on policing—including his conviction that there is a war on cops but no police brutality—and for his attacks on Black Lives Matter. One of his most out-there positions: suspend the constitutional rights of up to a million people, and hold them indefinitely at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Clarke’s extremist approach to homeland security is no secret. In his upcoming memoir, Cop Under Fire: Moving Beyond Hashtags of Race, Crime and Politics for a Better America, he advocates treating American citizens suspected of terrorism as “enemy combatants,” questioning them without an attorney, and holding them indefinitely, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Their cases would be handled by a military tribunal rather than a traditional court.

But a year ago, Clarke went further and called for rounding up Americans who sympathize with terrorists and shipping them to an offshore prison. During a December 2015 segment of his show, The People’s Sheriff, on Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze radio network, Clarke suggested that any person who posts pro-terrorist sentiments on social media be arrested, deprived of the constitutional protection against unlawful imprisonment (known as habeas corpus), and sent to Guantanamo Bay indefinitely. He estimated the number of people who could be imprisoned under his proposal could reach 1 million. Presumably, this would include American citizens. (The Democratic research group American Bridge caught Clarke proposing this idea.)

“I suggest that our commander in chief ought to utilize Article I, Section 9 and take all of these individuals that are suspected, these ones on the internet spewing jihadi rhetoric…to scoop them up, charge them with treason and, under habeas corpus, detain them indefinitely at Gitmo,” Clarke said.

Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution allows the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus only “when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Clarke added that locking up suspected terrorists in American prisons and jails would turn those facilities into “terrorist recruitment camps.” That’s why these people would have to be packed off to Guantanamo.

“We have no idea how many people out there have pledged allegiance or are supporting ISIS, giving aid and comfort, but I would suggest hundreds of thousands, I would suggest maybe a million,” Clarke said. “It’s just a guess. And then you take the known terrorists that are here, and you think we’re going to arrest all these people and put them in jails and then sentence them to prison? It’s idiotic. Take them to Gitmo and hold them indefinitely under a suspension of habeas corpus. We’re at war. This is a time of war. Bold and aggressive action is needed.”

Clarke is prone to exaggerations and extreme talk. Last year, for example, he predicted on Twitter that “before long, Black Lies sic Matter will join forces with ISIS to being sic down our legal constituted republic. You heard it first here.”

It’s unclear what kind of comment or act would land an American citizen indefinitely in Guantanamo under Clarke’s plan. In the radio segment, he said he was not suggesting indefinite detention for “some innocuous statement, I’m not going to go that far.” He pointed to “the woman out in San Bernardino” as an example, referring to the female shooter in the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, who pledged allegiance to ISIS on Facebook shortly before murdering 14 people. “That’s beyond the pale,” he said. But he also said anyone who has “pledged allegiance or are supporting ISIS, giving aid and comfort” would qualify. He did not say how tweets and Facebook posts would be policed or how 1 million people would be arrested and incarcerated in a prison that has up to now held fewer than 800 prisoners.

Listen to Clarke’s comments here:

Listen to the full episode here:

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This Critique of Fake Election News Is a Must-Read for All Democracy Lovers

by RowenaSimonds8 Posted on November 19, 2016

Mother Jones

This story was first published in Pacific Standard.

In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s narrow upset victory last week, many journalists and critics have leveled a finger at Facebook, claiming the social network was partly to blame for the growing milieu of false and misleading “news” stories that only serve to insulate potential voters within an ideological cocoon of their own making.

As Facebook continues to influence voter behavior with each passing election, the rising tide of fake news poses an existential threat to conventional journalistic organizations. “This should not be seen as a partisan issue,” sociologist Zeynep Tufecki observed in the New York Times on Tuesday. “The spread of false information online is corrosive for society at large.”

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg flatly rejected the assertion that Facebook shaped the election. “Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic,” he insisted; of course, the remaining 1 percent of users still encompass some 19.1 million people. Despite Zuckerberg’s denial, Facebook is now actively reassessing its role in distributing false information. And while the social media giant is taking tiny steps toward addressing the issue — excluding fake news sites from its advertising network, for one — it may take a renegade task force within Facebook itself to force how the company to truly understand its outsized influence on how Americans see the world at large.

Until technology companies cope with the structural sources of fake news, it’s up to the American people to rethink their consumption habits. That’s where Melissa Zimdars comes in. A communications professor at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, Zimdar recently began compiling a list of “fake, false, regularly misleading and/or otherwise questionable ‘news’ organizations” in a widely shared Google Doc of “False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and Satirical ‘News’ Sources.” It is a cheat sheet for media literacy in the Facebook age.

Zimdars’ viral guide — which encompasses websites from the outright fake (nbcnews.com.com) to the ideologically skewed (The Free Thought Project) to the clickbait-inflected (the Independent Journal Review)—began as a media literacy companion for her students. She decided to open-source the list after encountering an outright falsehood at the top of her Google News feed: that Hillary Clinton lost the popular vote.

“It’s a WordPress site! 70news.wordpress.com! And Google treated it like news!” Zimdars said when reached by phone on Tuesday. “That’s when I decided to make this public.” Pacific Standard spoke with Zimdars about fake news, Facebook, and the future of media literacy.

What inspired you to put this guide together?

I had been taking notes and making an unofficial list of questionable news sources to share with my students for the last few days, but I put in a lot of effort on Monday. The original impetus came from a general concern over the years about the sources students were using in their assignments or alluding to in their talking points. I say this not even as a reflection of where I currently teach; I’ve felt this way at every school I’ve worked at.

I strongly believe that media literacy and communication should be taught at a much younger age. Teachers don’t normally approach this content until the college level, and students continually have trouble determining what aspects of an article and website to examine to determine whether it’s actually something they want to cite or circulate.

There’s a wide variety of sites on your list.

The first category is sites that are created to deliberately spread false information. The 70news.wordpress.com site that was at the top of Google News searches about election results is an example. We don’t really know the intent of some false websites — whether they crop up to generate advertising revenue, or to simply troll people or for comedy purposes — but they all belong to one category: blatantly false.

The second category is websites or news organizations that usually have a kernel of truth to them, relying on an actual event or a real quote from a public official, but the way the story is contextualized (or not at all contextualized) tends to be misrepresentative of what actually happened. They may not be entirely false — there may be elements of “truthiness” to them — but they’re certainly misleading.

The third category I’ve used included websites whose reporting is OK, but their Facebook distribution practices are unrepresentative of actual events because they’re relying on hyperbole for clicks.

This category has caused the most controversy and, well, been taken as offensive to some publications. Upworthy wasn’t happy about its inclusion on this list; neither was ThinkProgress, who I initially included because of its tendency to use clickbait in its Facebook descriptions. A number of websites—both liberal and conservative publications—have contacted me; one even threatened to file “criminal libel” against me, although I don’t think they know what that means.

These websites are especially troubling because people don’t actually read the actual stories — they often just share based on the headline. I had the Huffington Post on my list of 300 potential additions because they published an article on Monday with a headline that claimed Bernie Sanders could replace Donald Trump with a little-known loophole. The article itself was chastising people for sharing the story without actually clicking it, but so many people were sharing it like, “oh, there’s a chance!” An effort to teach media literacy ended up circulating information that was extremely misleading.

How much of the rise of fake or misleading news sites can be attributed to structural changes in media consumption wrought by Facebook?

Facebook has absolutely contributed to the echo chamber. By algorithmically giving us what we want, Facebook leads to these very different information centers based on how it perceives your political orientation. This is compounded by the prior existence of confirmation bias: People have a tendency to seek out information they already agree with, or that matches with their gut reaction. When we encounter information we agree with, it affirms our beliefs, and even when we encounter information we don’t agree with, it tends to strengthen our beliefs anyway. We’re very stubborn like that.

I haven’t studied this yet, but my assumption is that this trend toward fake news reinforces this confirmation bias and strengthens the echo chamber and the filter bubble. It’s not just the media, but this weird relationship between how the technology works, this proliferated media environment, and how humans engage psychologically and communicatively.

Facebook is currently struggling with how to address these structural causes. What are some potential solution? I recently read a story about how a group of Princeton University students created an open-source browser extension that separates legitimate news sources from phony ones.

We definitely need media literacy from a young age, but that’s a very delayed process. We can use technology to try to help the situation, but after I read that same article about the Facebook plugin, a reporter from the Boston Globe and I were trying to test it and it didn’t seem to work. I’m glad it’s open source; a lot of programmers had approached me about creating something that people worried about misinformation can actively work on.

But my concern is, ironically, because I’m going through these sources and passing judgment, that as we’re doing this on a structural scale, what will be built as a check and balance for whatever method we end up using? How can some technology solution dynamic enough and reactive enough so that, if a website improves, or one that has a good reputation goes off the rails, it’s able to adapt? What are the metrics by which we’re categorizing news sources?

This seems like a good case for editors, which Facebook has been dealing with for some time.

Some people argue that part of this problem of fake news is inherently connected to editorial trends in mainstream journalism, from consolidation to a greater emphasis on corporate profits. Editing isn’t inherently a safety measure of this technology, even if it’s clearly necessary.

While tech companies grapple with structural issues, what needs to be done to engender media literacy in our classrooms and, I suppose, in our households?

It starts with actually reading what we are sharing. And it’s hard! Look, I’m a professor of media and I’ve been guilty of seeing something posted by a friend I trust and sharing it. I’ve been complicit in this system. The first thing we need to do is get people to actually read what they’re sharing, and, if it’s too much trouble to do that, we’re going to have serious difficulty getting people to look up and evaluate their sources of information.

One of the best things people can do is police websites that are spam or fake on Facebook. But when someone asked me about engaging with people, my advice was “do so with your own risk.” I’ve had tons of trolls and hateful messages and comments since I made this Google Doc public. You have to be prepared to deal with that stuff if you’re even going to try to course-correct misinformation on the Web.

So what, in an ideal world, is the solution here? What’s the future you envision for a cheat sheet like yours?

I think librarians should rule the world! I’ve been approached by people about creating more durable and dynamic documents that can go through a rigorous process to determine how resources are included or excluded or categorized. It’s like trying to index the entire Internet, and it feels impossible, but if we could start holding a few of the major sources of misinformation accountable, that would be important to me.

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Bullying in Schools Is Out of Control Since Election Day

by ThanhDeGillern Posted on November 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the week since Donald Trump’s election, a rash of racist, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic incidents—from chants of “Build that wall!” to swastika graffiti—have surged inside classrooms, on college campuses, and in communities around the country.

As of Monday, the Southern Poverty Law Center had collected more than 400 allegations of election-related intimidation and harassment nationwide. The SPLC has been sounding the alarm for months about the so-called “Trump effect” in America’s schools—the rise of classroom bullying and harassment driven, at least in part, by the antagonistic rhetoric of the presidential campaign—and more than one-third of the incidents it has tracked took place at K-12 schools or universities.

These reports coincide with the release of the FBI’s annual report on hate crimes in America. The new federal data, out Monday, showed a roughly 6 percent increase in assaults, bombings, threats, and other hate crimes in 2015. Anti-Muslim crimes jumped nearly 67 percent from 2014; the 257 incidents were the most since 2001, when there were 481 such attacks. Black people faced the most race-based attacks, with incidents up 7.6 percent, and anti-Jewish crimes, which remained the highest among religious-based attacks, went up about 9 percent.

Meanwhile, of the 437 alleged incidents compiled by the SPLC in the last week, more than 160 occurred in K-12 schools and universities. Here are five notable examples:

DeWitt Junior High School (DeWitt, Michigan): A day after the election, a teacher saw a couple of students lying on the ground before school started, joking they’d form a wall. The teacher told them to move. Later, students locked arms and prevented other students from passing. Some made comments toward minority students. Corina Gonzalez told the Lansing State Journal that her daughter tried to get to her locker when a group of boys blocked her. “They were chanting things such as, ‘Donald Trump for president. Let’s build the wall. Let’s make America great again. You need to go back to Mexico,'” Gonzalez told the Journal.

John Dieter, superintendent of DeWitt Public Schools, condemned the “reprehensible and completely unacceptable” actions in a letter to parents. He added that it wasn’t a “coincidence” that the events took place after the election. “Our children are still processing everything that they have heard and seen and they are trying to make sense of their world,” Dieter told parents, adding that Trump, President Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton all had called for unity. “We need to share this message with our children and we need to move forward and heal.”

York County School of Technology (York, Pennsylvania): Video surfaced last Wednesday showing two students carrying a Donald Trump/Mike Pence sign through a hallway. One of them shouted, “White power!” After reports of the incident spread, students protested and came forward to discuss harassment they had experienced during the campaign season. Gov. Tom Wolf condemned the acts as “overt racism.” The York Dispatch reported that last Friday, representatives from the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the state Human Relations Commission visited the school to evaluate the situation and offer support to students. And on Sunday, the York Daily Record reported that three students had been disciplined, and that York Area Regional Police Department was investigating allegations of harassment.

Victorria Markle and Eibreha Drayden, two freshmen at the school, told the Dispatch that they had noticed episodes of harassment throughout the last month. Markle, who is part black, told the paper that she had been called the N-word and threatened with stabbing and murder. She added she heard shouts from a group of students when she entered school on Wednesday. Drayden, who is part Mexican, told the Dispatch she was whistled at like a dog and had been told she would be sent over the wall.

Council Rock North High School (Newtown, Pennsylvania): Council Rock School District Superintendent Robert Fraser sent a letter last week to parents across the district about acts of vandalism and harassment at Council Rock North High School. Someone wrote “I Love Trump,” drew swastikas, and added a derogatory remark about gay people on a piece of paper in the girls’ bathroom. Another person left graffiti on a toilet paper dispenser in another girls’ bathroom, writing: “If Trump wins, watch out!” Someone drew two swastikas in a boys’ bathroom. And a Latina student uncovered a note in her backpack that told her to return to Mexico. (Other Latinos heard inappropriate remarks.)

“I cannot emphasize strongly enough how inappropriate these actions are and that they simply will not be tolerated,” Fraser told parents. Newtown Township Police and the Council Rock School District were investigating. Parents and educators met to discuss what transpired on Monday.

Royal Oak Middle School (Royal Oak, Michigan): At lunchtime, seventh-grader Josie Ramon sat in the cafeteria when she heard a group of students chanting, “Build a wall!” Ramon, who is Mexican American, pulled out her phone and took video and shared it with her mother, Alicia. “Tears were running down my face,” Ramon told the Detroit News last week. “I was so upset.”

Royal Oak Schools Superintendent Shawn Lewis-Lakin said in a statement that school personnel responded to the incident, adding that “because of the strong emotions and intensity of rhetoric” following the video’s spread on social media, families had expressed concern about school safety. “In responding to this incident—indeed in responding to this election—we need to hear each other’s stories, not slogans, we need to work towards understanding, not scoring points,” Lewis-Lakin said last week. “We need to find a way to move forward that respects and values each and every member of our community.”

North Bend Middle School (North Bend, Oregon): Students shouted “Go back to Mexico!” at an 11-year-old Colombian American student. North Bend School District superintendent Bill Yester told a local newspaper last week that while the election played a part in the bullying, school personnel dealt with it quickly and held an assembly on harassment. “We’re going to be in good shape,” he said. “We will continue to watch it, and parents were called about their students’ behavior, but if those parents are supportive, this will stop.”

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Bullying in Schools Is Out of Control Since Election Day

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Self-driving truck uses first shipment to deliver Budweiser. Sigh.

by TerriGoward2812 Posted on October 26, 2016

Turns out, they’re not all true.

The Republican presidential nominee appeared on Herman Cain’s radio show on Tuesday, and he had quite a bit to say about wind and solar power, and birds too. Here’s part of the transcript, courtesy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, with our fact-checking notes added in brackets:

Trump: Our energy companies are a disaster right now. Coal. The coal business is — you know, there is such a thing as clean coal [False]. Our miners are out of work — now they’re just attacking energy companies like I’ve never seen them attack anything before.

They want everything to be wind and solar. Unfortunately, it’s not working on large-scale [False]. It’s just not working [False]. Solar is very, very expensive [False]. Wind is very, very expensive [False], and it only works when it’s windy [False].

Cain: Right.

Trump: Someone might need a little electricity — a lot of times, it’s the opposite season, actually. When they have it, that’s when you don’t need it. So wind is very problematic [False] and — I’m not saying I’m against those things. I’m for everything. I’m for everything.

Cain: Right.

Trump: But they are destroying our energy companies with regulation [False]. They’re absolutely destroying them [False].

Cain: But their viability has to be demonstrated before you shove it down the throats of the American people. That’s what you’re saying.

Trump: In all fairness, wind is fine [True]. Sometimes you go — I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Palm Springs, California — it looks like a junkyard [False]. They have all these different —

Cain: I have.

Trump: They have all these different companies and each one is made by a different group from, all from China and from Germany, by the way — not from here [False]. And you look at all these windmills. Half of them are broken [False]. They’re rusting and rotting. You know, you’re driving into Palm Springs, California, and it looks like a poor man’s version of Disneyland [False]. It’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen [False].

And it kills all the birds [False]. I don’t know if you know that … Thousands of birds are lying on the ground. And the eagle. You know, certain parts of California — they’ve killed so many eagles [False]. You know, they put you in jail if you kill an eagle. And yet these windmills [kill] them by the hundreds [False].

But solar and wind power are on a meteoric rise, whether Trump likes it or not.

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Self-driving truck uses first shipment to deliver Budweiser. Sigh.

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